I have seen and reviewed countless improv shows over the years and they are always unpredictable – which of course is the point. So for those not attracted to doing the same thing night after night, I guess it’s inevitable that a format called Swingers would show up. (Unpredictable yet inevitable – is that an oxymoron?)

Five couples plus one singleton make up the team of players. From Wellington, operator Mary Little on lights and muso Matt Hutton on keys are a couple, which leaves four acting couples (so to speak): Liz Butler & Ben Jardine (NYC), Eleanor Stankiewicz & Marcel Blanch-de Wilt (Melbourne), Nina Hogg & Austin Harrison (Wellington), Franziska Maciej and Phill Spear (New Plymouth). Plus Christine Covode (NYC).

Ben introduces the concept by holding a bowl, asking us to jingle our keys, explaining what happens at Swingers’ Parties and attempting to describe this show as “Sort of coital improv with love.” His partner Liz opts for, “A consensual form of non-monogamy.” “It’s a metaphor,” says Christine.

Raucous introductions and entrances of the rest of the players ensue.* It takes a few minutes for one or two of them to get the pitch of the room, and maybe for us to tune into them, so some of what’s being said initially is lost – end-of-sentence drop-outs, mostly. But it all comes right eventually. Meanwhile we get to know how long each couple has been together.

Prompted by one-word offers from the audience, and launched by kisses, each couple in turn launches into an improv. While their ease with working together is apparent, few scenarios gain much traction before others interrupt, but squids, unicorns and a first date at a carnival make brief impressions, as does a roving crone rattling coins.

Now the partner-swapping starts, although these brief scenarios also attract other players too – which somewhat reduces the impact of the big group improv the format seems designed to build up to. What is impressive is the alacrity with which the players pick up on the nature of the game they’re into – like the segues into songs.

Again the scenarios are brief. We get pizzas “always big in New York”, “‘Fuck you’ is the New York ‘hallelujah’”, a $1000 apple kebab, a husband sprung as roulette table, a lettuce-eating competition in Gore, a professor in a submarine – “This is not a Titan”, a TV soap called Die Hard and Away, how to solve a weasel problem …  

Nothing gets established well enough to build into anything but everyone’s having fun. Even so, I find myself thinking that, while lots of improv shows involve groups that are very familiar with each other, the annual Improv Festival always brings relative strangers together, so I’m not sure what the big deal is with this ‘Swingers’ idea.

Then it hits me. Everyone in this show has a short concentration span. No sooner are they into one relationship than they want to know if there’s another one on offer. When they see others having fun, they want a slice of it too. And isn’t that what Swingers is all about?

There are some call-backs in the final phase, of things that were left dangling, which may be said to fit the metaphor. But is it a spectator sport? Maybe for some. Others may prefer to be drawn into something less superficial and more satisfying. And hey, in a festival like this, there’s always plenty more on offer. (Is that also oxymoronic – or just ironic?)

*(Why is it that whenever someone announces a new player or guest to bring them on stage or set, their voice becomes so strangled that the name being shouted is invariably unintelligible? It’s standard practice on TV shows too – e.g. The Graham Norton Show.)

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