|
Spit Roast The cast of Spit Roast was always going to have a hard task translating the three tentative ideas of the audience (and some rather uninspiring props) into an improvisation which could captivate for 50 minutes. Given a title "Window Shopping"; a key word "Moist" and the phrase "Don¹t Touch!", it was difficult to see how the company would be able to continue the energy displayed in the warm-up, through a 50 minute production. The warm up was a hilarious potted version of Whose Line is it Anyway?, and included well-worn classics such as the "party" scene (how the host managed to identify a psychedelic mushroom before a man who had come out without his pants is beyond me), and the moving parts game. All the indicators were that the cast had the talent and spontaneity to make the main show work, and the audience went into the show with an open mind. Almost immediately it became obvious that some of the cast were out of their depth with so much freedom and so little structure, and the momentum of the warm-up was lost in the shallow character development that the improvisation exposed. The word and phrase were used only twice each throughout the entire piece, and were repeated in the same context on each occasion. Certainly the actors could have gone out of their way to gratify the audience by more extensive usage of their suggestions and prescriptive props (how easy it is indeed to use a hat or scarf, though the whistle and packet soup were conspicuously unused). There were moments of genius in the play, and the acting was generally of a high standard, though it was also true that some characters were so underdeveloped as to be entirely overshadowed. The audience was largely forgiving of the mundane and inane in anticipation of the next gem, and whilst this experiment in performance style did just about come off, the cast might have met with more success had they worked though a series of smaller sketches rather than attempting such an unwieldy project. Sherree Halliwell, 28 / 11 / 00 |