Improv from the Crypt, the Cambridge Impronauts’ latest venture, is a night of comic improvisation which aims to perform a unique horror story on each night of their run at the Corpus Playroom.

The opening moments of the evening are crucial, as the group has to establish the basic details of the tale of woe they are about to embark on for the show. They ask the audience for the details of the setting, starting with naming favourite horror genres, films, authors or plays. Suggestions last night ranged from Ridley Scott’s Alien to Cinderella, as the audience played along with the comic possibilities of the performance.

The group takes the ideas and lets their imagination run away with them, setting the story in the first public baths in Victorian England and making hilarious quips related to Victorian stiff upper lips and gender roles. The various accents of the evening were hilariously rendered, from posh English to American drawls. The scene where an Impronaut invents a character who speaks with a Yorkshire accent, only to find his daughter starts speaking with a Liverpudlian accent, leads to the self-conscious quip: “Hello adoptive Liverpool child”.

The group are comically self-conscious throughout, often commenting on the making of a scene, or giggling when a fellow Impronaut claps, leading to a change of scene or a flashback, and causing the actors on stage to improvise comic and often implausible scenarios. They succeed in keeping the action moving forward by knowing when to cut and change the scenes. Also, the story is remarkably layered, with one main plot and three subplots, resulting in well-developed characters.

The quips, the cohesive flow of the story, and the Impronauts’ intelligent sensitivity to one another, all made for a refreshing night of occasionally surreal and bizarre comedy.