Improv comedy

The Oxford Impsdir Jim Grant17 OctoberThe WheatsheafHaving recently returned from a tough spell at Edinburgh, the Oxford Imps are back in the warm and predictable atmosphere of their home turf, complete with familiar pub regulars. It is Monday night and the Imps, Oxford’s only improvised comedy troupe, are onstage at their adopted home, The Wheatsheaf pub in central OxfordDuring my pre-show interview with Hannah Madsen, who is co-founder, producer and fellow comedienne of the troupe, she prepared me for what to expect from the Oxford student crowd. “The audience doesn’t always know what’s actually funny”, she said, “So that part of the reward is re-educating them as the evening progresses.” Hannah’s warning is borne out: the more the audience tries to direct the humour towards predictable TV references and innuendo, the less material the Imps are left with. In the very first sketch, the Imps are offered “voluptuous spade” and “hairy armpit” as suggestions from sniggering audience members and as I snatch a glance at Hannah, who is onstage tonight she promptly rolls her eyes at one of the other performers in exasperation. Predictably the sketch suffers from a lack of momentum, and falls flat. Hannah has also mentioned to me in advance that the Imps like to play a game in which an audience member must shout out a profession, adding, “You would be amazed at how many people say ‘gynaecologist’ as a suggestion”.Forewarned is forearmed: it took almost half an hour but sure enough, a slightly muffled voice from the back of the room shouts it out, to be greeted with a trickle of laughter. Re-educating the audience may sound “a bit patronising”, as Hannah readily admits, but then the Imps’ own brand of humour is a little at odds with mainstream pub comedy, bringing an oddball, pantomimicedge to their improvised performances. Though she enjoys watching performers at London’s Comedy Store, led by such famous frontmen as Paul Merton, she feels their humour has evolved from the lager-lad ethos of “taking the piss”, which relies on a cynical upstaging of fellow comedians for effect.Though not without merit, it is a less spontaneous, less varied show than the Imps hope to achieve. With a distinctly trans-Atlantic cast, their style veers away from the traditionalBritish comedy model, their humour based instead on emotions and characters which subsume the occasional big comic moment for riotous applause at the end of each sketch. Their auditions are almost counter-intuitive, since they claim to turn away people who, despite being genuinely funny, prove incapable of supporting the rest of the cast. “You don’t need to be funny to start as an Imp”, Hannah insists, but you do need confidence and decisiveness. Their enthusiasm and spontaneity belies a strenuous work ethic, according to which every newcomer must undergo a term’s rehearsals before he is even allowed on the stage, and a strict ban on repeating gags prevents incipient staleness. If this all sounds too much like an Ivy League sports pep-talk, it is nevertheless a formula that has worked brilliantly so far.The Imps have performed 180 live shows and are so much a part of the fabric of Oxford culture that it is easy to forget their short lifespan. Even when they began in 2004, they appeared very much as the finished article, and two years on they have changed their members less regularlythan the staff of The Wheatsheaf. Having just spent a month in Edinburgh selling their show to a “more cultured” audience that expects more and forgives less than the students who will “laugh at anything”, this term might be the one time to catch them at their very best.ARCHIVE: 2nd week MT 2005