If you’re attending a show called CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, it almost goes without saying that a character has been murdered – it’s hardly the spoiler of the century. That didn’t stop the audience at Wilton’s Music Hall from mock gasping in ‘horror’ (inverted commas mine) when the murder was announced. It was a very willing crowd, which always helps, and while some improv groups claim murder mysteries are amongst the hardest genres to improvise, this cast revels and specialises in them. I suppose the only way to really be sure that every show is different would be to attend more than one performance (at least one improvisation theatre company has extended such an invitation to London reviewers before, to prove the point).
I am, mind you, sufficiently satisfied, given the sheer amount of audience interactions and the manner in contributions were incorporated into the show, that it is highly unlikely that the exact same narrative will play out ever again. Such is the dedication to keeping the audience involved – we were, at the performance I attended, a group of ‘three hundred detectives’ that after all was said and done, the audience then became a mass jury, determining by majority vote who did it.
The cast are evidently adept at not only responding to audience heckles but turning them around with a punchy comeback that left the audience cheering and applauding. As I understand it, there are other people in the company (there are ten headshots on a page on the company’s website called ‘The Cast’), although this being the tenth anniversary performance, all the original team is in place. It is a slick and well-oiled machine. They pick up on one another’s cues and mannerisms (even) faster than most improv groups, and there are fewer interruptions by whoever it is that needs to bring back proceedings into some sort of focus before they get completely unhinged.
There seemed to be just as many people who hadn’t seen this company before as those who had – I fell into the former category, although as Sarah Kempton pointed out, perhaps everyone just hollered for both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. There was, for the most part, consistency in the storyline, and where there wasn’t, it was pointed out – the audience had a long opportunity to do this in a ‘line-up’, where each murder suspect was subjected to questions from the floor, one by one. It was closer to The Graham Norton Show than intense questioning in a custody suite. No matter. Over and done with in an hour, whoever thought murder mysteries could be so hilarious?
Review by Chris Omaweng
No one knows who the killer is, not even the cast!
Following multiple five-star sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe, CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation returns with another rip-roaring crime comedy made up entirely on the spot.
Who? What? How? The choice is yours in this fully improvised, witty and absurd murder mystery where the audience creates the crime.
Cast and co-creators: Lee Apsey, Steve Bond, James Cann, Danielle Downey, Sarah Kempton, Nicola Lucey
CSI: CRIME SCENE IMPROVISATION
Presented by Chandeliers Theatre Company
Wilton’s Music Hall, 12 July 2024
Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2 to 25 August 2024
