‘Showstopper! The Improvised Musical’ has extended its run at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End into 2024 starting on 22nd January. This follows a record-breaking run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where they were in the Top 5 best reviewed comedy shows (out of nearly 2,000) and named Playbill’s Pick of the Fringe.
The show is spontaneous musical comedy at its finest, it is the first ever long-form improv show to have a full West End run and to be nominated and win an Olivier Award! Completely improvised and genuinely entirely different every night.
For those that haven’t yet experienced the live phenomenon that is ‘Showstopper! The Improvised Musical’, it is a fully-realised musical created live on the spot from audience suggestions. The cast transform audience suggestions of setting, genre and style with ingenious storylines and hilarious characters. The audience also name that night’s show, which is added to The Showstoppers’ archive. From Lin Manuel Miranda to Stephen Sondheim, via a school, Ancient Egypt or a mattress shop – if the audience can suggest it, The Showstoppers will perform it. It’s hugely funny to watch.
The group are long running, well known and renowned for their improvisation work. Most cast members have also received acclaim in their own right. The Showstoppers have been working on the show since 2008, exploring how to improvise in increasingly esoteric styles, musical, dance, straight theatre, and film genres to name but a few.
They regularly run improvisation workshops and courses for beginners and professionals and have a successful podcast – The Showstopper! Podcast.
The show has been at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the past 14 years and has a reputation as a ‘Must See’ show. It had an 8-week run at London’s Other Palace in early 2019 and went on to play monthly at the Lyric Theatre in London’s West End. In the Autumn of 2015, it became the first longform improv show to have a full run in the West End at the Apollo Theatre.
