In a Fringe riddled with long-form improvisation – especially musicals – this is one of the stand-outs. An all female cast creates an entirely improvised musical based on an audience member’s film suggestion. In this case, Casablanca. Part of what made this brilliant was that most of the cast had never actually seen Casablanca, and so all they had to work with was that it was set in, of course, Casablanca, a common setting was Rick’s bar, and that it was about fighting Nazis with passports and love.
Genuinely worth a watch, and much better than an afternoon in spent bingeing on Netflix shows, dare I say it!
The range of musical genres made this a particularly enjoyable show – I was just starting to get comfortable with the traditional Broadway style music, when out of the blue came a hip hop number: He’s Not a Nazi, He’s Actually a Really Nice Guy. This kept the audience on their toes and is a great example of how Notflix isn’t just another improvised musical at the Fringe.
The performances are slick most of the time, but any looseness only made it funnier; seeing the actors snort through their lines or correct other cast members is one of the integral reasons why improv is so funny. The singing, too, is consistently brilliant – the quality of this alone was enough for you to enjoy the whole show thoroughly.
Aside from the looseness at times, there were a couple of moments where the pace was a bit too slow, which was the only let down. There was one idea that was explored twice in different songs, meaning that the plot was a bit stuck in a hole for a while around the middle. However, this block was confidently kicked through eventually, leading onto a brilliant tie-up: a misfit Nazi soldier leaving the ranks to join two rogue brothers who decide to fight the Nazis with love – and guns – and who speak in tap-dance morse code. It is little strokes of genius like this morse-code language that tipped this performance from good to fantastic.
Genuinely worth a watch, and much better than an afternoon in spent bingeing on Netflix shows, dare I say it!
