The Post Show

How has no one done this before now? An improvised post-show discussion. The format’s inspired: recognisable, structured and ripe for ridicule.

Of course, we haven’t actually seen the show under discussion and the actors haven’t actually performed it. It’s only through our questions—Could you just explain the half-hour section in Spanish? How did you manage to piss off both Christians and Satanists?—and their fanciful answers, that the full horror of what’s just occurred onstage becomes apparent.

We enter just in time to catch the tail-end of the final scene: a bafflement of backstories, unseen characters and established conventions. Tonight, it’s Prodigal Father: a six-hour tale of two brothers, their comatose mum, abusive dad and a physical theatre "safe space". Also, it seems: raft merchants, yoga instructors and, er, a demon mother.

Yet, brilliantly, the three members of "Shallow Scream Ensemble Theatre Collective" justify every element with that laughable luvvie indulgence. Whatever you throw at them—dance sequences, deus ex machina—they’ll defend the decision to the hilt, convinced of their own genius.

As so often with improv, though, you wish The Beserker Group were stricter with their resorts to surrealism. The more plausible the play, the better the comic bullseye.

However, The Post Show is only semi-improvised. Here and there, it swerves into scripted sketch territory and, while that can be amusing on its own terms, it does confuse the form. Moments you thought improvised turn out to be plot points and, for all the laughs, you leave feeling duped.