Adelaide Fringe 2014
#Hashtag
First Draft Theatre
Genre: Improvised Theatre
Venue: The Soul Box – 252 Hindley Street, Adelaide
Festival: Adelaide Fringe
Low Down
This fearless team will snatch your suggestions straight from Twitter and present moments of tenderness, hilarity and humanity with the speed and dexterity that only improvisation can deliver. The audience is encouraged to live-tweet suggestions and the end results are hilarious one-liners and banter.
Review
We all crowded into the Soul Box on Hindley Street, settled down with a drink and turned our phones ON. First order of the evening was to follow @FirstDraftMelb, the second was to #hashtag our suggestions for the Melbourne improvisers to perform.
The team consisted of five women who are all confident improvisers and gifted comediennes. The improvised scenes came thick and fast, one after the other, some 2 or 3 minutes long, others (and sometimes the funniest) were one-liners delivered from side of stage with no need of a scene to be played out. There were no introductions, no breaks, it was break-neck, tag-team, speed-datingesque improv.
On the wall behind the performers their Twitter feed was live and #suggestions were chosen at random. You could tell when someone’s suggestion was used by the “YES!” from the individual or laughter from the table. Typical of improv, though, there were moments of lapse, one performer cutting off another, a weak plot here and there, and some of the accents were faulty, but these minor flaws were forgiven as soon as another brilliant one-liner was delivered.
Characters and scenarios were returned to, including a rather clever George W Bush, and a family growing opium poppies in the town’s public gardens. There were some real gems – but being improv my gems will not be seen again, new ones, however, will shine.
