By Jerome Studdy
If you’re keen to see Jonah get engaged in the belly of a whale, or see a young girl get a prom date with a fish because her dad made rouge from meal worms, or even see Weird Uncle Terry offer to help his niece throw up . . . sorry, that was last night’s show; and every show of ‘Wives and Mothers’ with improv comedy troupe Confetti Gun is set to be a weird and wonderful, never-before-seen collage of improvised sketches and girl-powered fun!
Last night’s show was improvised by Confetti Gun members, Juliet Rae Timmerman, Clare Cavanagh, Maddie Parker, Beth McMullen, and Kristy Lee Dawn, with special guests Kate Coates, Orya Golgowsky, and Maddy Begg. What these women do is masterful, hilarious, and absolutely terrifying.
I wish I could tell you what happened at the show last night, but half the time I was either too busy laughing, or so wonderfully confused by the jokes and plot twists unfolding on stage that I’m not entirely sure I could tell you what happened. There was an anaphylactic reaction to a bonsai tree, a girlfriend being tricked into cleaning an apartment on Airtasker, a “Cool Dad” throwing a tea-bag over his shoulder because that’s what cool dads do, Barbie’s corpse being laid on the floor because the morgue is renting out beds to people who want a nap, a 12 year old removing their soiled diaper to release the smell of freedom in New Government House, a lady being adored by Pablo Picasso after her breast augmentation to have one boob altered to the size and shape of a toddler, an absolutely genius running joke of Aqua’s Doctor Jones, and a 30 year old woman who wanted her birthday gift to be the same number of orgasms as she was years old! The group clearly have an excellent trust in one another, and a very clever and well-rehearsed set of improvisational skills. Their resourcefulness and adaptability made for some truly spectacular and messy on-stage moments.
From time to time there was the inevitable fumble or loss for ideas, but for the most part the show was energetic and flowed well from idea to idea. There were some moments where cast members overlapped, interrupted potentially wonderful ideas, and sometimes lacked cohesion and ensemble. The trickiest part of working on the fly is attention to detail. The skill the troupe displayed in being able to return content from previous sketches and manipulate it into new comedic material was incredible, however, there were a few scenes where characters had multiple different names because they hadn’t been caught by other cast members or they’d been remembered incorrectly. It’s easy as an audience member to make these minute critiques of the show, but to run without a script and give the audience what they did, the Confetti Gun girls and guests are to be commended.
Get yourself to the Sydney Comedy Festival to see this troupe perform. I wish I could tell you what you’d get, but they don’t even know that yet!
All opinions and thoughts expressed within reviews on Theatre Travels are those of the writer and not of the company at large.