By Lucy C. Budzynska
On the sunny public holiday Monday, myself and our kid reviewer, Auggie – aged 6, made our way to The Lark in Gluttony for the South Australian premiere of Story Soup. Performed by Melbourne based, Playhouse Pantomimes, the 60-minute improv production promised to deliver a hilarious, brand-new, improvised musical pantomime on the spot.
The premise of the show is for the audience to help create a fairytale based on random ideas thrown at the cast. To this end, the performance began with the five-person team of improvisers inviting suggestions for a location, object, hobby and name for their story to be built upon. We ended up in Hollywood, with an old pair of undies, a hobby of being on the toilet, and a main character called, Bobby Bob Shoes – not sure if you can tell, but there were quite a few young boys in the audience on this afternoon.
At this point I was thinking “how will they be able to take these things and create an almost hour long performance?”, but the talented and funny cast were able to keep the show moving along with many laughs from the audience.
In the end, our fairytale was the tale of Bobby Bob Shoes and the problem of not having enough toilets to clean, with his solution being to put more toilets around Hollywood for him to then be able to clean. But lurking around the corner were our villains, who were poos wanting to take over Hollywood and rule the city by giving everyone laxative containing biscuits.
Luckily, our poo villains were captured by Bobby Bob Shoes and Mr. Hollywood, saving the city from being taken over by poo. All the while, Bobby Bob Shoes created a lucrative toilet cleaning business through the implementation of 500,000 new toilets in Hollywood for Bobby to clean. Boy, were there a lot of toilet jokes.
Our 6-year-old reviewer thought it was all a bit silly, but given the smile she was trying to hide the entire time, I knew she really thought the whole thing was quite a bit of fun. Would I want to sit through another hour-long show about poo? Absolutely not. But would I go see Playhouse Pantomimes again? Yes, but only if they promised to stay far away from all things poo.
Story Soup has finished its season for this Adelaide Fringe but, if you and your family love improv, definitely keep them in mind for next year!
Rating: Three stars
For more information, visit: adelaidefringe.com.au
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