Review – Spontaneous Broadway

Spontaneous Broadway has been a long time Fringe favourite, and it’s easy to see why. The conceit is brilliant: the audience submit song titles, and from them the cast improvise a musical on stage. It’s panicky, messy and infinitely entertaining theatre, as the audacious and talented cast manage the feat with aplomb.

Rik Brown was the star of Sunday’s show, taking the audience submission “I Left My Dentures In Your Back Pocket” and whipping it up into the musical Retire-Mental, a tale of a love-triangle in a retirement village. (My Ex is From Texas, the brainchild of Gillian Cosgriff, was a close runner-up with the audience for her twangy rendition of “I Still Miss You But My Aim’s Getting Better.”) The enduring strength of this show is in the quality talent that they source for it: Scott Brennan is a familiar face from skitHOUSE, but everyone who takes the stage deserves to be up there. Including John Thorn, of course: as the show’s pianist he can take a direction to play “mournful sea-shanty” and do something sensible with it.

Brennan long ago found the formula for sell-out entertainment, and they’ve maintained the quality to ensure the show is worth coming back to year after year.