I had seen Mr. Zaltzman on television, was vaguely aware he was a big cricket fan and he was part of the popular podcast The Bugle (memo to self - listen to more podcasts). He's been around for quite a while and I was looking forward to seeing him.
The theme of the show is, literally, "satirist for hire" - he had solicited ideas via email and on his blog for suggestions of topics to satirise. As the audience was gathering he also wandered up to the gathering folks asking for topics - the first few folks he asked offered fairly predictable responses, Donald Trump, Brexit, and he then asked me; my mind went blank as I had been trying to think up something different and so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "The portrayal of female characters in video games". To his credit he laughed and replied, "Not my field of expertise but I'll give it a go."
The trick I'm beginning to see repeated in these improvised shows is to have plenty of prepared material, styles, props or whatever, then work the audience suggestions into the pre-prepared and rehearsed structures - hugely difficult of course and requires immense talent, skill, quick-thinking, sharpness, quick wits (all traits that I totally lack) and rehearsal. I suspect the old adage of practice, practice and more practice is highly relevant to all comedy but especially improv.
I'll cut to the summary - Mr. Z was brilliant. He was highly entertaining, very funny and immensely engaging. His Trump and Brexit material was excellent - using a diary he read to us extracts of what he had thought at the time of the Brexit vote and the election of Trump; needless to say he was unimpressed and communicated so in a very funny way. He did pick up my video-game suggestion and managed to come up with a Grand Theft Auto joke. He also worked cricket (it was the first day of the England/West Indies Test match and he explained that missing it was a very special torture - I sympathised) into a very tortuous metaphor for life, which I greatly appreciated. Plenty of other stuff.
His show only started this week so many people might not know he's playing. His show is definitely worth your time, and as it starts at 1500 it's pretty easy to fit into a schedule (note to programme schedulers - please stop scheduling every second show to start between 1800 and 2000).
On leaving the Stand I was feeling quite buoyant. Two good shows to start the day with three more to go - perhaps my mid-Fringe blues were passing.
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