A cast of improv specialists will take to the stage at Northampton’s Royal & Derngate to create a new musical every night from 25 February until 5 March 2022.
Premiering as part of the Royal & Derngate’s Made in Northampton 2021/2022 season, innovative theatre company Improbable’s An Improbable Musical will play the Royal ahead of a tour in the autumn.
Directed by the co-artistic director of Improbable, Lee Simpson, with associate director Angela Clerkin, the cast includes Josie Lawrence (Whose Line Is It Anyway; Good Omens, Amazon/BBC; The King and I, London Palladium), Janet Etuk (Satyagraha, English National Opera), Niall Ashdown (Tristan and Yseult, Kneehigh), Ruth Bratt (Showstopper! The Improvised Musical) and Adam Courting (Extreme Improv). They will be joined by musicians Max Gittings on flute, Joley Cragg on percussion and Juliet Colyer on cello.
The creative team for the production also includes E Mallin Parry, musical devisor and director Christopher Ash and puppet designer and director Aya Nakamura. Both Ash and Nakamura will also be part of the cast.
Lighting design is by Colin Grenfell, sound design is by Oscar Thompson with movement direction by Pauline Mayers.
Describing the production, Simpson said: “Improv has come of age. There are very successful make-it-up-as-you-go-along shows. Most often they take a genre we know and love and give us their improvised version. The best of these are brilliant. We love them.
“An Improbable Musical is a little bit different. Because the ‘frame’ for the show is not a genre, it’s just what is in the theatre: a skeletal tower of stairs, puppets, musicians, actors and the audience. This is theatre made out of listening: performers and musicians listen to each other, to the audience, to the dreams swirling around the auditorium and from that they find the next moment of the show. A bit more listening in the world is worth a try, right?”
The production has been developed as part of a five-year project with Royal & Derngate leading a national consortium of partners to support 150 artists in nurturing the creation of new musical theatre.
Over the last five years with the support of the Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence fund, the consortium which also includes China Plate, Improbable Mercury Musical Developments, Musical Theatre Network, Perfect Pitch and Scottish Opera has developed original new musicals including April De Angelis and Lucy Rivers’ critically acclaimed Gin Craze! which premiered at Royal & Derngate in July 2021.
Angela Thomas
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