Tickets can be booked on Eventbright. £9.50. It lasts 1 hr 40 mins with a 10 minute interval.
This latest improvised musical has a cast of four each working from a perspex case in the Showstoppers studio with the on line audience making the demands on them which decide what the show is going to be about and what musical styles are used. The agreed plot was about two couples celebrating 30 years of marriage who go for a ride in a baloon over New York when things happen - one suggested by the audience was a thunderstorm, aother was that they went back in time - but why spoil the surprise at how the improvisers cope. As for the title, various suggestions were short listed the winner being The Balloon Where it Happens. The bitter sweet result perforned by Pippa Evans, Justin Brett, Ruth Bratt and Adam Medigo turned out to be kind of Sondheim in mood as it was about the middle aged to elderly going back to their youth, changing the past, and discovering that they did not really like what the future turned out to be any better than the one they had left. Sound complicated? No matter. It is fun, the performers are on top of their game, the Covid dictated production is slick and someone runs down Donald Trump when driving a taxi so America gets a different president. Some of the songs are lovely, notably Do You Remember the Good Old Days and Walking into the Past.
Photograph: Hugo Glendinning.