Showstopper! is an improvised musical of fast thinking comedians and off-the-cuff tunes

The premise of Showstopper! seems almost impossible to pull off. Each night an improv comedy troupe creates a brand new musical from scratch, taking audience suggestions for settings, plot points and style.

But they’ve been pulling it off for more than 11 years and 1,000 shows, spawning such spontaneous one-offs as Sinky Boots (set aboard a sunken submarine) and Stiff (a love story set in a funeral parlour). Press night saw the audience vote split between setting our transient musical in Wormwood Scrubs or Nashville. When we settled on the latter, it was just seconds before we were dropped into the first number, a catchy hoedown with the snappy chorus “If These Walls Could Dance”. What followed was a remarkably coherent musical about LGBT rights in Tennessee, in the style of Hamilton, Come From Away and My Fair Lady.

Producer Dylan Emery chaperones the plot and parses the audience’s suggestions, occasionally cutting into scenes to keep things on course, but it’s when the show is at its shakiest that the phenomenally fast thinking performers are at their most entertaining. Pippa Evans’ mangled deep south pronunciation of “garage” became the night’s best running gag.

You had to be there. Showstopper! is theatre magic, and tremendous fun.