The award-winning West End comedy Austentatious, where an all-star cast improvise a Jane Austen novel from an audience title.
Austentatious comes to The Alexandra Theatre on Saturday 28 November, bringing its West End comedy to Birmingham as part of a strictly limited tour. The premise is as simple as it sounds: the cast improvise a brand-new Jane Austen novel on the spot, based entirely on a title suggested by the audience. They perform it in period costume with live musical accompaniment, so you're watching a whole story being built from scratch in front of you.
Because it's improvised, the show changes every night. The title comes from the crowd, and from there the cast build the characters, the plot, and the dialogue in real time. It's a revolving cast drawn from a stable of award-winning TV and radio performers, and the line-up for this run includes Cariad Lloyd (QI, Inside No. 9, Griefcast, The Witchfinder), Joseph Morpurgo (Radio 4, Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee), Rachel Parris (The Mash Report, Live at the Apollo), and Graham Dickson (After Life, The Witchfinder). Since the cast rotates, you'll get a different combination of performers and a different story each time.
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It's playing at The Alexandra Theatre, known around here as 'The Alex', one of Birmingham's oldest and best-loved venues. It opened on 27 May 1901 on Suffolk Queensway in the city centre and seats around 1,350 across the stalls, dress circle and upper circle, making it one of the largest touring theatres in the Midlands. It's a receiving house rather than a producing one, so it spends the year hosting West End touring productions like this one. The show is on Saturday 28 November at The Alex, on Suffolk Queensway, Birmingham B5 4DS.
