Reviewing ImprovBoston’s long-form improvisation performance piece Musical! the Musical is a little bit like reviewing a smoke ring: Before you can fully admire it, it’s disappeared, and you will never get another one quite the same. But after all, the core pleasure of great improv–and you will see a good deal of great improv in this show–is the sheer delight that comes from invention on the fly.
This is how Musical! the Musical works: One of the performers, acting as a kind of emcee, asks the audience for a story suggestion based on a movie, piece of literature, fairy tale, dinner table gossip–whatever comes to hand and mind. Then a few notes of music are plunked on the piano, again by an audience member, and this becomes the theme for the opening overture.
Out of these minimal materials, the cast improvises a full-length, two-act musical in modern Broadway style. (Previous incarnations have included Godfather! the Musical and Edward Scissorhands! the Musical.) And all this is done without a hint of a safety net–no scripts, no sheet music, no choreographer, no Regis Philbin-style lifelines–which, incidentally, saves on overhead and keeps the ticket prices reasonable.
What issues forth is 90 minutes of fun and frolic, never dull, and occasionally spiked with brilliance and jaw-dropping amazement. I happened to catch Ghostbusters! the Musical, which featured a lament (“Science Is Work, It Isn’t Fun,” in which one singer rhymed “leeches” with “creatures” without batting an eyelash), a hard-rock song by an EPA administrator (“Don’t Mess With The EPA”), a tender ballad about loss and longing (“Nothing Is Left”), a bluesy seduction number (“How Long You Been Bustin’?”), an anthem about catching ghosts (“Ghost Portal,” with the immortal “No time to chortle,”), and a final anthem as the Busters triumph and everyone realizes that their deepest desires were “Always Here.”
