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Vranch, branch, or French?
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The Comedy Store Players from London tied the viewers' minds in Gordian knots
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Their banter often slips into performance mode . — Photo: K. Murali Kumar
RICHARD VRANCH — what kind of a name is Vranch? Sounds like a man in a dentist's chair, his gums full of novocaine, trying to say "branch". Excuse the rude outburst, but prolonged contact with The Comedy Store Players from London has turned my grey cells psychedelic. Besides, I've got to get my own back on this guy.
Now where were we? Yes, Vranch. He whips out a mike and says before I can begin: "I hope you don't mind if we tape this." I say "okay" guardedly; comedians are not to be trusted. "They gave me this tape," he continues. Who's "they"? "The BBC." I make disbelieving noises. The other four Players strenuously assert that the Beeb will air the interview. Vranch points to the BBC sticker on the tape recorder in his lap, but I'm still not convinced. He asks: "Shall we start with a round of introductions?" He announces his own name into the mike, then sticks it rapidly into each face around the table, collecting names: Paul Merton, Suki Webster, Jim Sweeney, Lee Simpson, event manager Ajay Saldanha, and — well, it's my turn and I can't keep mum, can I?
Vranch shoots the first question at Saldanha, "records" his tongue-in-cheek reply, and says briskly: "That's all." Sweeney deadpans: "It's a very short show." I've been suckered, of course. I join in the laughter, saying weakly to myself: "But I knew it all along."
You can bet they hadn't planned this gag. Improv is what The Comedy Store Players specialise in — on stage, and sometimes, off it as well. When you talk to them as a group their banter often slips into performance mode.
Webster (to my question on how long she's been with the troupe): "How long? Let's see, '97? Oh, I've known them since I was born."
Merton: "We found her among the bulrushes." Sweeney: "We raised her as our own."
Merton has been with The Players practically since inception. He started his career as a stand-up comic in the '80s but found it tiresome doing the same thing over and over. "I much preferred this," he says of the scriptless, impromptu show that The Players pioneered. "I never got tired of it, and that's why I've been at it for 18 years. I do it for the fun of it; money is not the priority."
In Merton's case, money flows in through television; he's a well-known TV actor. "This is not the only job we do," says Vranch. Webster does "hand modelling", that is, her hands (long and narrow with tapering fingers) are used in ads. Sweeney starting writing four or five years ago; two of his plays were staged at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival. He finds writing a terrible pain. "For four hours you sit in the exact same position." He mimics a hunched and still figure, hands frozen on keys. "And then of course you start looking for things to clean. In psychology it's called displacement activity. I de-scaled the electric kettle once."
Improv might be more fun than writing or doing stuff on TV, but it was, and in some ways still is, ranked far below other forms of theatre.
Merton: "Theatre actors didn't trust us, and comedians didn't trust us."
Webster: "We're in between, you see."
Vranch: "It's a different flow of energy. Actors relate to each other on stage; stand-ups relate to the audience. We do both: we relate to the audience and to each other."
It's the connections they make in multiple directions that give the show such tremendous vitality. They pull each other's legs and they jibe at the audience. How do their brains supply those spur-of-the-moment lines? Merton says: "It's like a tickertape going through your mind." His hands mimic a constant and horizontally flowing stream of words. "I've had members of the audience coming up to me and saying, I loved that bit you did. And I don't remember a thing." Vranch chips in: "It's like a dream. It stays in the RAM but never stays in the hard disk." There are occasions when they dry up on stage, but it's momentary, and the others quickly step in. "It's good to have that happen once in a way," they say. "It reminds the audience that it's genuine, improvised."
The audience in Bangalore (the first Indian venue of the Players before they travel to Mumbai and Delhi) warms up to the five-member troupe instantly. They shout suggestions that shape the games The Players play, and hence, the show changes from day to day. For instance, there's a demented form of Twenty Questions (Two Hundred, more like) where a Player has to guess an unusual job that the crowd and the other Players have conceived together. On Wednesday, Simpson has to deduce that he cleans the elephant, named Tony Blair that belonged to Adolph Hitler, with a toothbrush on Valentine's Day. On Thursday, Merton is the man who stuffs currency notes of three-and-a-half-Euro denomination into a suitcase for the minister in charge of flea circuses.
Now if that doesn't tie your mind in Gordian knots, wait till you meet a transvestite psychiatrist, a physicist who's trying to break up with his chimpanzee, and a Tibetan expert who delivers a (duly interpreted) speech on yak-riding and monk-shaving. Get a taste of literature with "Midsummer Night's Roadkill" (driver who runs over Fido is visited by dog's demon on eve of wedding day), and Nabokov's undiscovered novel, "The Cheater", enacted as a musical. And go completely daft.
Vranch? Sounds like a Cuban trying to say the word "French".
C.K. MEENA
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