by Ed Fortune

Comedy is hard. Good comedy is even harder and normally relies on years of experience, clever scripting and solid talent. This is why improv comedy is so much fun when it works; there’s no prep, there’s no script, just talent on the stage. Competition for improv comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe is fierce; there are a lot of these shows every year.

STARBURST got to see a preview of Film Club: An Improvised Comedy, and the show started out with three men on the stage who did the usual thing of asking the audience for prompts. The crew settled on some superhero movies, which, given how large that genre is, you’d expect it would be ripe for parody and some improvised comedy magic.

Sadly this was not to be. The show was a little flat, with the three performers lacking any real synergy or anything truly special. 

First day of the fringe nerves aside, the chemistry was simply not there. Good improv requires a little bit of give and take from each member of the team and a desire to run with an idea. Instead, the humour was a little stilted, relying a little bit much on implied violence and heist movie cliches than any actual jokes. Each individual performer seemed to be bringing as much as they could to the stage, but the humour just didn’t happen. Sometimes improv just doesn’t work.

We could see a lot of potential here. Actor and improviser Michael Kunze seemed especially on the ball and able to run with silly ideas, and their performance was the highlight of the show. Alas, a comedic sense of timing and quick wit was not enough to save a series of skits that kept dipping into darker subject matter. The prompts were okay, and superhero movies can be quite dark, but the crew simply weren’t able to elevate the matter into something truly chuckle-worthy.

Film Club: An Improvised Comedy has a lot of promise, and it’s well placed in the schedule for Just The Tonic Caves venue, so it may be worth a bit of a gamble if you have the time.