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14
Sept
Why Paul Merton and Suki Webster love making it up as they go along
Paul Merton and Suki Webster would love to tell you what will happen when they come to Harrogate Theatre next month, but they’re making it up as they go along.
The duo are probably the UK’s most famous improv experts – that’s improvisational comedy. Staples of The Comedy Store, familiar faces on television, and devoted motorhome travellers, the duo like making people laugh just without the limitations of a script.
Instead, they’ll rock up, ask the audience for suggestions and then perform comedy playlets with a team that includes Mike McShane. If you’ve ever seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? on Channel 4 (a show that’s ripe for revival), then you’ll be familiar with the format. Silly ideas, silly performances, and seeing what happens.
It’s magic to watch, even more so if the performers start corpsing (laughing when they shouldn’t) as more and more absurd situations crop up.
The couple married in 2009 and, naturally, live together. Surely this brings up a problem for them? After all, what happens on tour stays on tour.
Ever the joker, Paul quips: “No, not really, Suki’s got a very poor memory … ‘What? Who are you? Actually, who am I?’ I have to keep giving her cards to remember.”
It’s affectionate teasing that makes Suki laugh before he continues:
It’s great fun: we travel around, we’ve got Mike McShane with us, and on each show we have an extra guest. It’s a family sort of situation; it’s a social thing, and it feels great. But … we’re not of an age where we’d be getting up to any sort of mischief anyway.
Suki Webster and Paul Merton.
Putting it delicately, Paul is now 69, and is of the age where he could be starring in a Last of the Summer Wine revival. Surely he could be ripping out a hotel bathtub and wheeling it down the streets?
“It’s funny you should say that,” he deadpans, playing along with the train of thought, “We do live at the top of a hill, and I’ve been eyeing the bath for quite some time. I think if I put some wheels on there I could probably get to 30mph.”
That makes a change from the couple’s shows, where they tour Britain in a motorhome. Do they eye up potential locations when they are touring?
“Oh, we should do, shouldn’t we?” Suki says to Paul. “We often turn up not long before the soundcheck, and we don’t get to look around places. When we do, it’s an absolute delight to go and wander around a town or city you don’t know.”
Paul has a particular reason for loving the motorhome life:
You might arrive at a campsite in the dark, 9 o’clock at night or something; the next morning you wake up and look out of the window, and there’s a mountain range in the distance, or deer in the next field.
The attraction of the motorhome is very obvious when you do it, as your holiday starts as soon as you get into it. You don’t have to worry about changing money or queueing up at airports and security, your plane being delayed and all that sort of stuff.
When we were doing the motorhome series, I’d never been to the New Forest or the Lake District. There are many areas of beauty on this island of ours.
The unpredictable nature of improv and the buzz it generates
Improv, by its very nature, means no two shows will ever be the same. With its unpredictability, do the couple ever come off stage from some shows thinking they’ve played a blinder?
Suki says they have a real buzz after a show that has gone really well:
You come off stage, and you can’t get to sleep for a couple of hours as it’s been really good fun. Every show goes really well, but sometimes you have a particular one where you think, ‘Wow, I was really on form tonight’. If you’re not on form, everyone else is, which is why they’re always great shows and it’s always a great buzz.
Paul admits that one tour, back in 1999, left him with that feeling of deja vu towards the end of the run, having performed the same show night after night. Improv is never like that.
Once they’ve given audiences a couple of warm-up gags, they bring on the players, and from that point on, neither the comics nor the audience members know what will happen next. Not even the games they play will be the same from one show to the next, so in theory someone could go to every performance (in a motorhome) and see something completely different.
Paul says:
It’s always a feeling of excitement and great joy.
We never had a bad show, as the moment something is not working, which it inevitably will, you can change it. You can walk off stage, on stage, ask for another suggestion … you’ve got one eye on the stage and one eye and ear on the audience and hearing how it’s going.
You’re constantly like spinning plates, ensuring they don’t fall down and, when they are wobbling, you can come in and give it an extra spin.
Many audiences will be familiar with Mike McShane, as he was part of the original Whose Line Is It Anyway? team, making people laugh with his Canadian wit. Paul says that because they have worked together so long, they know they are on the same wavelength, which in turn helps the improv, as they can work together to make a scene as funny as possible.
Paul explains:
We’ve never had a moment where, after the show, someone says, ‘Why were you doing that?’ because we are very supportive of each other. One of the key things in improvisation is listening, being able to hear what’s being said to you.
Some people who aren’t used to being on stage with other people aren’t so good at that. They can sometimes ignore what you’re saying, and that becomes tricky. We don’t tend to have those people, but we have a large group of people from other improv groups who come in and perform with us, and it’s great fun.
Listening well? Does that extend to Paul and Suki’s home life?
The comics are immediately joking with each other. “No, no, Suki’s got a really annoying voice,” Paul quips, while Suki retorts, “I try to ignore him, don’t listen to his advice or opinion. There’s no point … on stage I have to, but off stage, no.”
Clearly, they are comfortable enough with each other to tease each other so affectionately.
With decades of experience, the pair feel they are continually improving.
Suki explains:
Like any skill or craft, you plateau for a bit and then you keep going, keep pushing and then get a bit better again. Then you might plateau again, and then you keep going and put your focus on a slightly different area, and that area improves.
It’s never a single trajectory, but hopefully if you keep working at it and exercising new muscles, they get stronger.
Paul doesn’t want the Improv team to become complacent and think that they have set a new standard. Instead, the focus is on constantly pushing themselves to deliver. “It doesn’t matter what last night’s show was, because this is tonight,” he says. “If you were doing a stand-up show or a play you might be tempted to think that you know the lines and go through what you normally do. You can’t do that with improvisation because as soon as you think, ‘Oh this is easy’ and you start thinking about what you do instead of doing it then the thing will fall apart.”
The many talents of Suki Webster
Away from the stage, Suki is an accomplished writer and director, and enjoys being able to slip in and out of the different roles, with the improv bringing joy because of its spontaneity and imperfections.
“With writing, you get to go back and keep honing it and correcting it in a way you can’t with live improvisation,” she continues. “They are both fun to do; I probably enjoy the improv slightly more. I very much like being around other people. Writing on my own? I don’t like the loneliness of it, but they’re both great things to keep working on.”
Paul picks up the theme, feeling that writing has its own science and art to it, as it allows joke writers to fiddle with it over subsequent performances. Improvisation, on the other hand, “you don’t need to ask somebody’s permission to do it. You just think of an idea, a joke, and you say it.
The pair will be performing at Harrogate Theatre.
You don’t need to write it on a piece of paper and send it to somebody who may or may not read comedy well.
That’s what a lot of people are now discovering with YouTube. They can do stuff to camera without it being commissioned or whatever. (With improv) that’s what we’ve been doing for 40-odd years now, and what I find the great joy of it is that you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission, it’s just and the public – no middleman.
Why should people pay money to go and see Paul Merton, Suki Webster and their friends in a very unique improv show? Paul immediately cracks: “Because we don’t do it for free”.
More seriously, he says it will be unlike a stand-up or theatre show. Instead, audiences will be included by asking for their suggestions.
“If someone suggests a line of dialogue and it gets a big laugh, they can say, ‘Oh, I was part of the show’. That’s something that Suki encourages as she wants it to feel inclusive.”
And Suki is also quick to joke. At least, we think she’s joking: “How could you possibly want to miss out on the love god that is Paul Merton?”
She continues:
We seem to be living in a world where we’re increasingly on our screens and increasingly working from home and isolated. Actually being together with a large number of people – several hundred people – in a room, laughing, is such a great thing to do. It is such a touchpoint of our humanity and our community. Why wouldn’t you want to go?
You couldn’t make it up. Except they do. Every night with much laughter.
Paul Merton and Suki Webster’s Improv Show will be at the Harrogate Theatre in Garrick Buildings, Oxford Street, from 7.30pm on Friday, 2 October.
Tickets cost £29, or £116 for a box seating four, with a £2.75 order fee. The minimum age is 15.
For more details, or to book, call the box office on 01423 502116 or visit the Harrogate Theatre website here.
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