Seen by Natalia at Edinburgh Festival Fringe on the 11th of August 2024

3 stars – an entertaining improvised comedy hour with varying levels of performance

A 60-minute longform improv show is a tough task to master even for a very well-versed ensemble of some of the funniest quick-thinkers who can read just about any room. With three heroes, a dungeon but no dragons, Mistakes Were Made provided great entertainment for fans (and haters/ those indifferent) towards role-play games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Instead of the classic improv rule of audience suggesting a word to get the story going, anyone watching could roll the dice and by the resulting number add a prompt to the scene (such as a character has to start talking in a different accent/ someone remembers they left the oven on).

Throughout the four separate scenes with a Wizard, a Barbarian and a number of other characters coming and going, the energy remained high and the jokes were mostly, well, rolling. There was a rather noticeable discrepancy between the performers’ skills and willingness to participate, which the more active ones sometimes picked on. Repetition and referencing things from previous scenes, a classic tool in comedy, generated laughs pretty successfully. And while it may have at weaker times looked like a school performance, given the difficulty of the exercise, every decent improvised joke is a great one, really.

2nd July – 17th August; 5.05 pm

Running time: 50 minutes

Venue: TheSpace – Surgeons Hall, Stephenson Theatre

Tickets and Info: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/mistakes-were-made-haunted-hospital 

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