The final show of the New Zealand Improv Festival, Bull Rush, arrives like a chaotic, joyful sprint through the imagination. Hosted by the irrepressibly energetic Georgia Pringle, the Tāmaki Makaurau-based ensemble, backed by Jamie Burgess on music and Campbell Wright on lights, the performance thrives on spontaneity and trust, closing the festival with the kind of communal energy that defines great improv.

Before the first scene even begins, Pringle’s charm fills the room. She sets a playful tone with a series of icebreakers that instantly loosens the crowd. The performers, Rebecca Mary Gwendolon, Vincent Andrew-Scannell, Milo Cawthorne, Catharine Yates, Alice Pearce and Brynley Stent, all join in with infectious enthusiasm, creating an atmosphere where audience participation feels not only encouraged but inherently natural. Within minutes, the audience is laughing with the energetic chaos on stage. 

The show’s structure is built around a series of loosely connected scenes and titles drawn from audience suggestions. The first, ‘Despearing Sally’ (intentionally misspelled), opens on a crying woman whose tears somehow feel both tragic and ridiculous. It sets the tone for a night that celebrates the poetry of nonsense. The next explores the tough absurdity of breaking up with your devoted but hasty boyfriend at the same time as he proposes.

Burgess’s live musical accompaniment elevates each scene, weaving tender guitar motifs and spontaneous songs into the narrative. His improvised score provides not only rhythm but emotional grounding, ensuring even the most ludicrous scenarios carry a sense of sincerity.

The cast’s physical and verbal inventiveness shines brightest in ‘Evil Jenga Stacking’, a high-stakes office satire that imagines employees at Warehouse Stationery defending their products with religious fervour. Lighting designer Campbell Wright plays a crucial role here, using dramatic cues to heighten the tension as towers of imaginary blocks are slowly stolen by intervening performers.

Moments of pure absurdity punctuate the evening. ‘Green Ave’ introduces a bizarre grocery shopper obsessed with beating a crazed Linda, an overzealous Halloween decorator, as they compete for suburban glory with a witch’s carcass and an inflatable Shrek costume as their centrepieces. The hilariously realistic line of “They’re going to f***ing Kmart!” becomes a crowd favourite.

There is a surreal detour through Narnia, a divine cameo in ‘The Great British Bake Off’, of the Voice of God helping to affect the judging of a “savoury fruitcake”, and a brutally funny bit about “Skittles give me the shits.”

The night’s strangest highlight, ‘A Pair of Raccoons Create an Art Gallery’, is pure comic genius. Two performers, crouched low, comment on the beauty of a woman smoking in the moonlight with the solemnity of museum curators. Moments like these demonstrated the troupe’s ability to turn nothing into something memorable, a testament to the quick-thinking synergy. The cast-created backwards urinal as an art piece, culminates in the final memorable line, “There is a woman…”

And then, as if by design, everything converges in a musical finale. Burgess strikes up a triumphant chord and the cast creates an awesome song, inviting the audience in an improvised anthem about how “GREAT” everyone feels. The entire theatre joins in — clapping, shouting and laughing through lyrics made up on the spot. It was messy, euphoric and is still echoing around my brain.

As the lights dim on the festival’s final performance, the audience rises to their feet, not just for the jokes but for the sheer generosity of spirit. Bull Rush didn’t aim to be polished or profound; it aimed to remind everyone in the room, performers and spectators alike, that creativity is best when it’s shared, unfiltered and a little bit unhinged.

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