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Astounding concept, flawed execution

★★★★☆

Before this evening, I had never seen a live improvised comedy show in my life. I was excited but a little bit worried about the imminent threat of audience involvement, which the Imps were so insistent would be a part of this show. I entered the Simpkins Lee theatre and plucked up the courage to sit at the very front – this turned out to be a very good decision.

The whole concept behind Hyperdrive is to do something genuinely innovative – to take that flourishing medium of improv, with all of its infinitudes of possibilities, and to smash it unrelentingly into the glittering world of internet communication, social media, and the silicon valley age. This show got off to a phenomenal start, with a ‘loading screen’ from three enormous projectors exclaiming that the systems were doing a wide variety of preparatory tasks – ranging from “Inquiring about the ethical standards of Oxford tattoo artists”, “re-evaluating life choices”, “annexing Crimea”, “problematizing gender binaries”, “testing burning jet fuel on steel beams”, and most intriguingly for me, “seducing reviewers”.

One of the driving gimmicks of the show was the promise of setting up a tinder account, to be managed by a member of the audience over the course of the evening. The pictures and bio of the account were decided through a poll, which the audience voted for on their phones; the outcome of which was a picture of a sliced ham, and a description that pertained to Winston Churchill’s penchant for “dank ass kush”.  This tinder account was then entrusted to an unsuspecting audience member, with the promise of building improv around the conversations that ensued; the audience were able to submit opening lines on a rolling feed on the projector screen.

Sadly, despite the 60+ matches that the ham was able to get on tinder, there was a lack of any substance to the ensuing flirtations which could have led to sketches – as one of the imps was forced to concede “well it doesn’t look like that’s going anywhere”. This was the first in a series of technical mishaps, which prevented this show from fully realising its potential. The next bit involved the Imps improvising a serenade over facetime for the girlfriend of an audience member. Sadly, the girlfriend failed to pick up on facetime, so the Imps were left singing and being filmed on a phone – still very funny and impressive, but not quite realising the potential of the show.

The improv sketches got of to a very good start – a series of images sourced using audience contribution and google made the backbone of a ‘what we did on our honeymoon’ sketch – with the married imps completely unaware of what was going to come up next on the slideshow. Similarly, a sketch where one imp had to read alternate lines from a random text conversation, whilst the other desperately forged a narrative out of the ensuing nonsensicality was incredibly impressive to watch.

The bulk of the improv was built around an audience member’s facebook profile, which was projected onto the big screen – all of the joys of profile pictures from 5 years ago, group chat nicknames and context-less timeline posts forming the heart of a series of sketches which careened wildly from a communist Disneyland, to an art exhibition featuring the director of the Imps turning himself into a burrito. An extended bit about Mary Somerville not getting onto the five pound note was enjoyable, until I realised that this Imps line up was comprised of seven white men and one woman – something about glass houses and stones might have been appropriate here.

Overall, this is a very funny show – packed to the gunnels with energy and some very bright ideas. It took the audience a little while to get into the swing of it, but the comedy really shone when the randomness of social media shone the light on little hints of shared understandings and common truths. It’s a shame that the Imps were occasionally let down by the technology that this show is so reliant on, but I hope this company continues to innovate and come up with this sort of exciting and boundary pushing comedy. 

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