Elephants Eh?  What can I say?

I saw Showstopper’s newest musical, Elephants Eh? on Friday night at RWCMD’s Richard Burton Theatre.

The show told the story of a couple of Canadians, Pierre and Marie, on holiday on an African game reserve, its style a derivative blend of other hit musicals: Copacabana, Chess, Martin Guerre, Wicked, and Mary Poppins.  

Here’s the plot: One night in a Mombasa club, when the gamekeeper spikes their drinks with a truth serum which induces Pierre to tell his wife he doesn’t love her, the gamekeeper moves in on Marie. An African witch doctor removes the spell, the now pregnant Marie goes in search of Pierre, they leave Africa forever, return to Canada and open a Zoo.

Intrigued? Sound like something you would like to see?

Well, for better or for worse, you will never be able to see Elephants Eh? again. A one-off, produced with the help of the audience’s suggestions for setting, style, and storyline, Showstoppers pulled another minor miracle out of the bag. Their bag chock full of tricks and talent, they managed to produce a full-length musical of sorts that kept the audience highly amused and completely wrapped up in its ridiculousness.

If you are familiar with Showstoppers, then you will know to expect a ‘bunch of improvisers who have learned how to make up a fully-realised musical on the spot based on audience suggestions. It includes incredible, moving story lines, amazing songs, full group harmonies, dance numbers. It’s also very funny to watch.’

You might also know that ‘Showstoppers have been established since 2008, working out how to improvise in increasingly esoteric styles – musical, dance, straight theatre, film genres – whatever helps make the show more interesting.’www.showstopperthemusical.com

I am familiar with improv, and I had gone to the theatre with some idea of what to expect, but was most definitely in the minority having never seen a Showstoppers musical, and with no idea that they had achieved a cult status. Pre-show, the majority were chatting excitedly about what they were about to experience. Granted, it was staged at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, a fair share of suitably schooled drama students was to be expected. I was impressed by their savvy and, as an alumnus, I pulsed a bit with pride.  

With the house lights still on, a red telephone rang on stage.  Enter a guy (Seth McCann), whose first line on answering the phone: ‘Hello, Cameron’, got the show started, and the audience were already laughing.  It was a fast-paced feast from the get go: shifting from 0-120 in less than 30 seconds, the audience were drunk with participation, and gorging on their pre-packed Musicals meals and B.Y.O.Banter.  McCann took both the high- and the low-brow bends of the back-and-forth banter with cerebral ease and grace, while I, still sipping my aperitif, wondered whether there would be any hors d'oeuvres left for me? It was all happening so quickly, with so many in the know. It was all so ‘in’ that it actually made me nervous.  

While I worked at keeping pace, I also had to figure out if I was enjoying the experience, and whether what I was watching was any good. It really was an odd theatrical cocktail: the recipe yielded a simple and quite silly story, which had to be created, sung and played out on the spot by a cast of undoubtedly talented performers. (Andrew Pugsley, as the bi-lingual French Canadian Pierre was a strong lead, and he rescued quite a few musical mishaps. Lucy Trodd, as his monoglot English wife Marie stole the show. Her droll expressions, dry wit, and her musicality kept the show well nourished, on track and alive. Both Pugsley and Trodd’s lyrics really worked, and their scenes were the most fluid of the entire show. Nell Mooney was a Nimble Mover; her great physicality enhanced the show’s farcical elements. And the Musical Director, Duncan Walsh-Atkins’s performance on keyboard, was seamless. He was so good, I didn’t notice him at all, and yet without him the show would not have gone on.  But could it be sustained? That was the real endurance test for both the talent and the audience. In my opinion, both were hard-pressed.

McCann’s character, the unnamed Impresario, who literally wrote the ‘book’ alongside the action as it emerged before us, steered his HGV of a show with great finesse and sensitivity. He had to work quite hard to keep the story flowing and with sufficient intelligence, because the cast managed to dumb it down at every turn.  I don’t think they were trying to dumb it down, it just kept going that way, and at times the cast seemed unable to make it do anything else. McCann’s line about a scene in the first act being a ‘battle between the unnecessary and the profound’ summed it up: there were some great one liners; some truly lovely musical moments; and, believe-it-or-not, believable characters. But did it work? Not really.

The big question is: Is Showstoppers’ extemporised musical a real musical, another genre entirely, or is it a hybrid of a musical and something else? I wasn’t sure while I was watching it. I was too conscious of the scaffolding surrounding this piece of theatrical architecture to buy into it 100%. I felt bad that I could see right through to the show’s skeleton at its weak points. I wished that my wondering ‘how do they do it?, and ‘do they have a colour-by-number formula that they work to?’ and all these other superfluous questions running through my mind throughout Act I would stop.  The paradox for me was that by Act II I was feeling much better, fully engaged, joining in, and driving myself insane with glee! I was determined to enjoy it, so I did. I am still compelled to review this show with a strong line of enquiry.

All this said, they have definitely got something. The performers are talented, sharp and witty, on top of their game, knowledgeable of their genre and of their art and craft, and work extremely well together. It’s experimental, it’s a lot of fun, and it’s an experience. Their results chart is bound to have extreme highs and lows. But their costumes (more like uniforms, all dressed in standard issue black and red), the sets (a few moveable walls with attached seats, painted black and red to match), and the props, were quite shabby.  I was ‘comped’ to see the show and review it;  I’m not sure I would have been happy had I spent £15 to see it.

Elephants Eh? What can I say? How about, so bad it was good? How about, totally ridiculous, somewhat pretentious, yet overwhelmingly enjoyable? Surely the final test of a good musical is whether the audience goes out singing the tunes? And I did! I really did!

Have you noticed that this review is peppered with questions?

Here’s the last one: - Collectively the concept and the cast are extremely ambitious and equally brave to take on this challenge night after night.  I told you how I felt after last night’s show; to quote one of the drama students sitting behind me, ‘This was not one of their best.’  I wonder how the performers felt?

Catch The Showstoppers at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 2 – 25 August.