Showstopper Productions and Seabright Productions present

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical

Winner – Mervyn Stutter’s Spirit Of The Fringe Award 2009
Nominee – Best Production & Judges' Award – MTM Awards 2009

As well as its regular London dates, this show is available for touring and festivals.

Showstopper! is entirely improvised: a brand new musical is created at each performance. A writer has just one hour to create a hit show to impress his producer. Stuck for ideas, he takes audience suggestions for a title, storylines and musical styles that they’d like to see in the show.

The Showstoppers then create a musical from scratch based around that structure. Utterly unpredictable, frequently side-splittingly funny, packed with drama and featuring dazzling dance routines and catchy melodies, Showstopper! leaves delighted audiences singing all the way home.

Following sell-out runs at the Edinburgh fringe in 2008 and 2009, and nine months of sell-out Monday nights at the Kings Head over the 2008/9 season, Showstopper! returns to London this Autumn to play 30 dates at the Kings Head Theatre, as well as touring the UK. It is also due to be heard on BBC Radio 4 early in 2011 for a six-part series.

YouTube clip

What the papers say...

***** Five Star Reviews from all these publications: Time Out, The Independent On Sunday, Whatsonstage.com, The Scotsman, British Theatre Guide, Edinburgh Evening News, Three Weeks, Fringe Review, FringeGuru.com.

**** Four Star Reviews from these publications: Financial Times, The Telegraph, One4Review.

‘Astonishing! ... Showstopper! has everything you could want from a blockbuster musical. It just happens to be made up on the spot.'
Metro

‘Achingly funny. The hugely talented team make improvisation look easy, astounding the large audience. Worth seeing again and again.’
Time Out – Critics’ Choice

‘For sheer madcappery, refreshingly wholesome, good-natured musical slapstick, The Sticking Place's musical high-wire act is hard to beat.’
Independent On Sunday

‘These hideously talented regulars are pushing improv in new directions. Go marvel.’
Daily Telegraph

'Jaw-dropping! All the big-hit mega-musicals inspire an audience to want to see them more than once. And I'd see Showstopper! again tomorrow.'
The Times

‘If you admired the Comedy Store Players for their ability to think on their feet, this bunch do it with the same verve and flair, but set to music. I was left open-mouthed … The act's success lies in the invention and skill of a cast who seem to be able to turn their brains and voices to any subject and musical style. I can honestly say that I'd opt for this show's wild, inventive energy over The Sound of Music any day.’
Lyn Gardner – The Guardian

‘Fast becoming a Fringe institution. To witness them launching into a big production number and somehow coordinate on-the-fly lyrics and refrains is awe-inspiring – and often very very funny. This is ensemble work in the most daring sense of the word. I can happily declare it to be ever fresh and inventive, even more so on repeat viewing.’
***** Whatsonstage.com

‘An awesomely talented cast. Don’t miss seeing Showstopper! You really mustn't.'
Kate Copstick – The Scotsman

'I sat weeping with joy and laughter - and the audience reacted as if it was the first night of Gypsy - hilarious entertainment by the brilliant Showstoppers.'
Michael Coveney - Whatsonstage.com

'Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is one of the most glorious of small shows. An amazing band of actors and a band - sax, clarinet and piano - each night creates a completely new musical, led by suggestions from the audience. The night I went, someone mysteriously proposed "Nick Clegg" as a setting, but we opted for the Grand Canyon; as a title, "Deep!" was voted down in favour of "Don't Look Down". A romantic adventure story - the clarinet gurgles away as the crew shoot the rapids - is put together on the spot, or hoof, with occasional scary directorial interventions: this scene should be done with reference to Hitchcock; the next number to be performed in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan. A Mamma Mia! final chorus was gorgeous, but cleverer still was a raft-building sequence performed in Bernstein-style: "We're building a raft" (hunched shoulders and finger clickings), "Putting it together!" ("Pow!") "piece by piece" (leaping across the half-built raft with arms outstretched). Showstopper! simply shouldn't stop.'
Susannah Clapp, The Observer