As anyone who’s seen the great TJ & Dave at this venue can testify, a particular pleasure derives from watching veteran improvisers at work. The anxiety that can attend this art form falls away, in the company of artists fully in control of the flow of their impulses and off-the-cuff ideas. That’s the case with this Chicago quartet, who arrive boasting Second City credentials, a founding role (alongside Amy Poehler) in the Upright Citizens Brigade, and TV credits including Veep, SNL and The Good Place.
Their improvising touch is sure, then – even if the format isn’t. They’re here to “bring long-form improv to the UK”, they tell us, but what follows is suspended somewhere between sketch comedy and long-form as usually understood. Expats don’t improvise a full-length story with a beginning, middle and end. They take themes and ideas from the audience, riff on them with recurring characters in loosely connected scenes – then reboot the process and start again.
It’s a format that tantalises then withholds the prospect of a narrative satisfaction, a uniting of all the disparate parts. Which – once you accept that’s what you’re getting – is fine. The quality of the performances, the vividness of the characters, the smoothness of the repartee – it’s all so delectable, I still found myself chuckling from start to finish. Tonight, we get a hapless barfly beaten up for his views on the climate crisis, a motorist cruising a posh party seeking sponsors for his purchase of a Bentley, and a ghostly grandpa hijacking a house sale.
That spectral visitation (played by first-among-equals Brad Morris) is greeted nonchalantly by the other performers on stage, which feels like a misstep. These grizzled veterans tend towards the sardonic, and, in improv terms, that can sometimes feel like blocking or lowering the stakes. There’s a special guest each night, too, which, for all that Rich Fulcher’s contribution was amusing enough, feels like a gimmicky add-on. No additions are required to this troupe of improv lifers, whose consummate interplay and keen but composed instinct for the funny deliver a substantial comic – if not narrative – payload.
At Soho theatre, London, until 13 January
