Six hilarious young women. Improvising an entire musical. Based off of an audience suggestion. What could possibly go wrong? Well, nothing actually. WFTCimprov group bring Notflix to the Brighton Fringe.
Great characters, good comedic timing, and a lovely relationship between the cast members
The show starts off with the audience writing down the last film they saw and a brief synopsis. After two are randomly pulled from the bucket, the audience get to decide which they want to see. Our choice was The Volcano – a film starring Tommy Lee Jones where he has to save the day after a volcano explodes over the city. The cast then improvised an entire musical based rather loosely on this film. Surprisingly, I don’t think you would likely find this version on Netflix.
All of the girls were brilliant. They managed to create a cheesy feel-good show, and they certainly weren’t afraid to take the mick out of a stereotypical musical. The cast member that stood out the most for me was Gemma Marie Everest. Her wonderful feminist character – Kathy with a ‘K’ – had some hilarious moments as the sassy assistant of Tommy Lee Jones, supported by her very strong singing voice. They all had great characterisation, and they obviously had the knowledge that much comedy derives from character, which they used to their advantage. Improvising is extremely difficult to do and, although the storyline rather lost its way at times, they managed to pull it off and create a modern, fresh and funny show.
Improvising is tough enough, let alone when singing. They managed to create some great original songs, whilst throwing in some recognisable stuff too, including songs from Justin Bieber and Hamilton. However, some of the songs did become quite repetitive as they struggled to come up with new lyrics at times, but then again some of the best musical theatre songs are often very repetitive! The Musical Director Jordan Clarke did a great job with adding dramatic effect to the performance and helping the girls create some rather interesting musical numbers.
Great characters, good comedic timing, and a lovely relationship between the cast members meant that they all bounced off each other brilliantly. If a scene wasn’t quite working, another member of the cast would jump in to save the scene, showing how well they worked as a team to create many laugh out loud moments. When going to see a Notflix show one thing you don’t know is what original musical you are going to see, but one thing you do know for certain is that you are going to be thoroughly entertained. These six young women proved that WFTCimprov are pretty good at what they do.
