Review: The League of Improv (Underbelly Boulevard)

Review by Sophie Wilby 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

London’s theatre scene is no stranger to improvised shows, from the Jane Austen-inspired Austentatious to Mischief Comedy’s Mischief Movie Night. And while improv is famously difficult to pull off, The League of Improv makes it look relatively easy with their quick wit and vast imagination. 

Each show features a special guest, and on this night it was stand-up comic Jake Lambert, who you might be familiar with from his appearances on Live at the Apollo and The Now Show. His role as the special guest is to coax a fun story from the audience for the eight-strong troupe to transform into an improvised comedy skit. It’s a role that he excelled in - bouncing between audience members and finding golden nuggets of fun stories to provide plenty of material for the improv troupe. 

This idea of riffing off of the audience’s experiences is certainly a fun one, offering more of a personal touch than perhaps the more standard format for improvisation but it does come with the added risk that the success of the night hinges even more on the crowd.

This is perhaps why there was a mixed success for the skits. Whilst some where genuinely laugh out loud funny (as you would hope for from an improvised comedy show), others fell a little flat which may be in part from the more limiting-side to the audience-story format. On this night four chairs served as the only props, yet somehow we travelled from Canadian bear encounters in Alaska to naval intelligence escapades, to taxi drivers in Mayfair and a even a rendition of “Lola” by The Kinks. 

From that description alone, the bredth of the storytelling shows that there’s little doubt as to the imaginative talent of cast. Yet, there were times when the performance felt stilted, as though they were scrambling to find the end to the scene. This meant that certain skits felt overly long, and gradually lost their humour along the way when it felt as though they could have been cut-off sooner to deliver more of an impact.

That being said, The League of Improv delivers an enjoyable night of spontaneous fun - certainly enough enjoyment that I would be happy to return and see what they could come up with on a different night with a different audience. 

For updates on and tickets for future performances of The League of Improv visit https://www.theleagueofimprov.com

Photos from https://www.theleagueofimprov.com