Tag Archives: Austentatious

AUSTENTATIOUS

★★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Reviews, , , , , , , , , , ,

AUSTENTATIOUS at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★★

“they really lean into the jokes of each moment, which makes it just really, really funny”

Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. A group of talented improvisers, with support from a pianist and lighting operator, improvise a brand new Austen-esque novel every night, based on a title suggestion from the audience. In today’s show, “Ghouls and Gumption” and “Dungeons and Darcy’s” were politely dismissed, before settling on “The Poisoned Petticoat” for this afternoon’s title. Whilst attempting to stick to the tropes of 19th century romance novels, improvised, sometimes-muddled plots and characters make the perfect ingredients for chaos.

The loose plot of today’s show involves Margery returning to Bath having been away for an entire month. Having left a girl, she is now a ‘fully grown woman’ and must find a man, crucially to avoid the fate of her cousin (also sister?) who at the ripe old age of five-and-twenty has missed the boat for romance. She meets the slimy Captain Whirligig, who seems to have a history of spinning women to death… and there’s also something about vomit. Oh, and there’s a petticoat maker, Miss Smith, who possibly makes a poisoned petticoat… or maybe it’s just biodegradable. Honestly the whole thing was so chaotic it’s hard to remember how consistent the plot was, and that’s sort of the fun of the whole thing, as the actors find themselves with increasingly farcical twists and turns in the stories which they have to try and get out of to reach each next bit.

There doesn’t seem much point reviewing the plot as you’ll get a completely different show each night, but what I can say is that these are improvisers at the absolute top of their game. Each scene starts with mostly two or three of the actors coming onto the stage and as the lights go up, the scene begins. Sometimes whoever turns up makes the scene feed nicely into the plot. Other times, they just have to sort of work out why they’re there. They do a great job at finding motifs and recurring gags which they bring back again and again throughout the story. The highlight from today’s was perhaps the ‘meeting room bookings’ which kept going wrong, and a very funny bit involving two of the actors camouflaging themselves to the wall, which had great comic payoff in a later scene. It’s hard to pick a standout performer as it’s such an ensemble effort, but today Cariad Lloyd and Lauren Shearing were particularly on their A-Game with the way they interacted with the others and helped to move the plot along.

What’s really interesting about the performance style is that the actors don’t shy away from pauses; in fact, it sort or becomes part of the style of the whole show, as they’re stuck in a scene working out what to say or do next to move the situation forward. They don’t tend to focus too much on plot narrative (although it does come up a little bit in each scene), but rather they really lean into the jokes of each moment, which makes it just really, really funny. We enjoy watching them struggle a bit, and sometimes an offstage actor will pop in just to throw an extra challenge to them.

There was a bit about two thirds through today’s show where the plot really had been forgotten and there were a few scenes that felt a little dry, but the lighting operator was quick to end these scenes with a blackout, which really helped to keep the pace up.

It’s a hugely entertaining show, and I’d even say you don’t really need to be much of an Austen fan to appreciate it. I would gladly go again and again and would definitely encourage it to be high up on your watch list if you’re after some top quality improv.

 

AUSTENTATIOUS at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Underbelly – Bristo Square

Reviewed on 11th August 2024

by Joseph Dunitz

Photography by Paul Gilbey

 

 


AUSTENTATIOUS

AUSTENTATIOUS

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL OUR REVIEWS FROM EDINBURGH 2024

 

Austentatious – 4 Stars

Reviews, , ,

Austentatious

Austentatious

Piccadilly Theatre

Reviewed – 23rd January 2018

★★★★

“a cast of actors who clearly enjoy performing together and challenging one another”

 

As a darling of the Edinburgh Fringe, Austentatious features some of the most prominent improv performers working in the UK today. The premise of the show is very, very simple: based on a single made-up title, the cast improvise a full play based on a fictional work of Jane Austen, where anachronisms, quick-wittedness, and the rigors of Regency etiquette collide. Austentatious features live musical accompaniment (improvised, of course) from the piano and violin.

Austentatious is riotously funny. The characteristic formality and stiffness of the epoche is fertile territory for the cast, who clearly revel in poking fun at the outdated setting. What’s more, this is a cast of actors who clearly enjoy performing together and challenging one another; Rachel Parris and Cariad Lloyd, in particular, have the peculiar gift of being able to smile as sweetly as sugar while making life as hard and as hilarious as possible for their fellow performers. The result is a constant stream of belly laughs, ably assisted by musicians and lighting technicians responding to the madness – and even getting a few laughs of their own.

Unfortunately, while other improvised shows may take a plethora of audience suggestions from the outset or demand suggestions on an ad hoc basis, the only suggestion that is taken from the audience in Austentatious is the supposed title of the story. The title given to the performance I watched, Don’t Look Back In Northanger Abbey, influenced only one aspect of the performance; the name of one of the characters. There was otherwise nothing that could not have been prepared beforehand and, therefore, despite being entirely improvised, Austentatious completely fails to offer the audience members the treat of seeing their obscure and wanton suggestions come to life on-stage. Unused suggestions were collected by the cast to be read out at the end as bonus jokes, but this brief section did not occur, presumably for time constraints. However, the cast did find time onstage to plug their merchandise, which struck me as a misplaced priority.

Instead, the story unfurls purely from the heads of the actors, and, despite the hilarity, Don’t Look Back in Northanger Abbey, never really went anywhere. In particular, the characters and plot were mostly very poorly-defined, which is a shame, given that they had not exposed themselves to the danger of audience input. This created a funny but rather static-feeling performance that was somehow at odds with the ‘anything can happen’ attitude improvisation demands. It is easy to imagine that, with so little input from the audience and the stock tropes of the Jane Austen genre, one Austentatious show might feel very much the same as another.

Clearly, running into its sixth year, the cast still haven’t run out of steam, as the show maintains an impressive following of appreciative fans. The question is, with such a talented group of performers, how long it will remain fresh and whether it will be strangled by its own success.

 

Reviewed by Matthew Wild

Photography by Robert Viglasky

 

 

Austentatious

Next Performance 13th February at Piccadilly Theatre

 

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com