Review: The League of Improv with Sophie Duker (Underbelly Boulevard)

Review by Seth Wilby

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I always say that seeing an improv show is a bit like gambling. You never know exactly what you’re going to get, and your ticket could easily end up delivering a far worse experience than what another night’s audience got. In many ways, that makes my job as a reviewer feel almost redundant - how am I meant to give my opinion on a show that will never, and can never, be performed again. Well, what I can do instead is advise on the risk of seeing this show, and in this scenario, I can be pretty sure that, if you’re in search of a great night out, your gamble will pay off. 

Each month, improv troupe ‘The League of Improv’ gather at Underbelly Boulevard in Soho for two hours of ridiculous improvised fun which sees them riffing off of audience comments to create numerous comedy sketches. Each show sees them joined by a different comedian to ‘host’ the night, interacting with the audience and triggering the ideas that the improvisers will create scenes around. For this month’s show, Sophie Duker took on this role, using her stand-up skill to bring her own anecdotes to the part.

Duker took to this element of her role brilliantly, seeming to have an implausibly farcical story for each scenario. These were great at moving the night along and keeping the audience’s energy high, particularly when she had to charm a seemingly hard-to-please crowd at the beginning. Sometimes, these segments did drag on slightly longer than necessary, and it didn’t always seem like she was procuring the best possible material for the team to work with, but, by the end, she had managed to create this wonderful sense of community within the small auditorium that really enhanced the feel of the whole evening. Duker’s strongest bits were when she was interacting with the crowd, ranging from discussions on the legal drinking age to a hilarious descent into the chaos of gun ownership, and these lead to some of the most unique-feeling improv moments too.

As mentioned, the show followed an almost sketch comedy-like format, with about ten minutes of discussion by Sophie being followed by a compilation-like collection of scenes which vaguely related to the conversations had with the audience. This loops six times (three in each act), yet the show could easily manage with fewer (it ended up running half an hour over its advertised ninety minute runtime), and maybe adding something a bit different for each iteration would help give the format some variety (perhaps one segment could involve exaggerated replications of an audience’s members story, instead of scenes based off of it, for example). Like most improv shows, it relies heavily on the audience for ideas, yet what this format achieves is that it offers the cast a lot of scope to spiral from these prompts into something with a lot more comedic potential if the audience don’t offer this themselves- the first segment of our show saw some rather mundane audience prompts, yet the cast managed to evolve a mention of spiders into an absurd burlesque moment. When Duker managed to collect a wider collection of whacky stories from the audience after the interval, the show massively picked up pace and energy, with the audience’s reaction reflecting that. Although it would have been nice to have seen this quality earlier, the format more than proved its worth by the second half. 

In a review, you normally have to be careful how much you actually disclose about the show itself, but, since it’s impossible to spoil an improv show, I’m able to give you a taste of the curveballs to expect from this troupe, who managed to take the show from Deptford to burrito pregnancies via the most ridiculous possible route. A mishearing of ‘Anglian Windows’ led to an impromptu musical number and some papal-based madness as the cast bounced ideas off each other, and Sophie’s mention of lesbian-only cruises created some brilliant callbacks to ‘the lesbian code’. A scene involving a couple looking to install a very short staircase showed the genius of the team’s punchlines as they linked this into Sophie’s confusion over sister-in-laws earlier in the show, and a moment involving several invisible people gave the night some physical comedy. The standout segment of the show by far though was a discussion on ethical non-monogamy, which very quickly became a gut-busting scene involving a children’s pop-up book with Bob the Builder, Dora the Explorer and an encounter in a car park. The variety of these sketches consistently delivered on non-stop awestruck laughter.

The format is one that proved the cast’s chemistry, with two useful attributes- the ability to ‘tap out’ a fellow cast member and to ‘wipe clean’ a scene, moving the show onto the next sketch. This ability was another stronghold of their format, as it meant that, whenever one member of the group felt a scene was dragging on too long to be funny, they could simply run across the stage and bring about a fresh agenda. However, they need to consider adding an explanation of these ‘rules’ beforehand, to prevent the initial confusion that arises from scenes seemingly starting and stopping randomly.

The cast of eight were superb at what they do, creating such a fun atmosphere through their cleverly developed scenarios that often feels like much more than an off-the-cuff idea. Although there was an initial flatness with some awkward silences dominating their first few skits, they soon got into a fabulous rhythm, with a great balance of many possible ‘genres’ of scene. Between the eight of them, they managed to hit every beat, with well-placed callbacks to earlier moments and some very smart one-liners that sent the scene in a totally absurd direction. That said, the cast did sometimes lack the chemistry displayed by some other improv groups, and could bring about even more laughs through deliberate attempts to ‘sabotage’ each other, which would have brought more comedic jeopardy to the show. Overall, though, by the end of the show, the cast managed to have the audience truly howling at every moment in this laugh-a-minute show which radiated fun at every moment.

While I still feel improv shows are like gambling, I feel confident to say that the League of Improv are a group I would happily take this risk with. If you are looking for a riotously fun night out, they are the answer, and I know I would happily make this my own monthly tradition.

For tickets and information about The League of Improv's future shows visit https://www.theleagueofimprov.com