If you've got a sweet tooth for witnessing the unadulterated thrill of organised chaos live on stage, then 'Baby Wants Candy' at Adelaide Fringe Festival 2019 is the show for you.
The hugely popular, improvised musical comedy takes improv and adlib to the extreme as the cast create an entire musical – including songs and choreographed dances – on-the-spot based on the suggestions of audience members.
How else would shows with names like 'Kanye West Side Story', 'Mary Poppins Has Ebola' and 'How The Backstreet Boys Won The Civil War' ever see the stage-light of day?
For Director Al Samuels, throwing a cast of experienced musical theatre professionals at the mercy of a belligerent audience is what it's all about.
“This sounds so cornball but that is actually what is such an allure,” Al says, “not just for the audience that gets to see a new show every night but also for the actors. It is really exciting and it is very addictive in a way.”
Without a script or even a general idea of what they'll be performing on any evening, Al says the format of the show offers its ensemble members a unique acting challenge.
“If you like the scripted show you're doing, well, God forbid you don’t like it because doing that show for months can get to be a drag,” he says.
“If you like the [scripted] material you're doing, there are moments as an actor you can find that are wonderful or new discoveries that you make, but in improv – as long as it's going well – it's so joyful because those discoveries happen literally every second.”
Al says that more than once the cast has been thrown some pretty questionable titles that have become one-night, smash-hit productions. “The titles they come up with are just insane, they're crazy and really fun,” he says.
“When the audience vote for them, what's nice is that they feel some ownership over it; they don't want to see a bad show but they do like throwing us for a loop, so you know when 'Fiddle Me On The Roof' gets voted on, we'll see how well these guys can navigate that,” he laughs.
The entirely unscripted and improvised nature of the 'Baby Wants Candy' productions means the cast don't rehearse or prepare as they would for a more conventional production.
Instead, much like a professional sports team, they run drills that prepare them for the multitude of situations they may face that evening, along with extensive cultural, social and political research to stay up-to-date on current issues.
“There's a woman called Pauline [Hanson], she does that thing: 'I don’t like it',” Al says in a perfectly terrible Australian accent.
“Last year our production team would drill us on things like: 'okay, this is Pauline Hanson, this is what she sounds like'; so we do our homework. Part of the fun too is hearing us do our Australian accents, and the audience just die [laughing].”
As well as 'Baby Wants Candy', Al is also responsible for 'Thrones! The Musical Parody', which also shows at Adelaide Fringe in 2019.
“The 'Thrones' musical is one of my most enjoyable shows I've ever done,” Al says. “It's really fun and it does have an improv feel to it even though it is almost entirely scripted.
“It's purposely told from the point-of-view of a person who has never seen the show before. We play six friends a-la-kind-of-like the TV show 'Friends', but not exactly. We all come round to cheer up my character's sister who's gone through a divorce. We're ostensibly there to cheer her up but she has the best TV and we're really there to watch 'Game Of Thrones'.”
