COMEDY: @FAimprov (The Free Association, COG ARTSpace, November 16)

The Free Association is an improv night that takes place in a rather lovely, intimate little space (the COG ARTSpace) above a rather larger pub (the De Beauvoir Arms) that's slightly too far away for comfort from Tube stations in the pouring rain. Inside the Arms, hurried and damp, I spot a patron sporting that fatal combination of moustache, beret, and the loathsome disposition of the artistically aloof; but let's not tar the whole establishment with his hipster brush.

Back to the point.

FA is an umbrella term for a supertroupe comprised of Austentatious's Graham Dickson (also the MC and co-founder, sweeping around in an outsized but self-deprecating stage persona) and Joseph Morpurgo, Max and Ivan, Nell Mooney, Jessica Ransom, and Freya Parker (also of Bleak Mouse AND Lazy Susan, who pulls double duty tonight). For now, they run and perform nights every other Sunday, with a planned increase to every Sunday in 2015, along with the introduction of long-form improv classes from January (info on those can be found here - they're pretty affordable as these things go).

Bleak Mouse is the first act, and set their scene verbally off the trigger of an audience suggestion ('stapler'), describing where the characters are and what surrounds them on stage. I'd never seen it done this way before, but it's a great way of cutting out the exposition in establishing set-up, and gets the ball rolling quickly (Free Association, up next, do it in roughly the same style, with each member of the cast sweeping across the stage with suggestions - 'here's a big mirror', 'a spinning globe sits over here with country names scratched out', etc). I had also never seen Bleak Mouse before, and they were a great surprise, slipping between many enjoyable scenes and even managing to make a riff about racism in the Famous Five seem fresh. The best moment was a demented, but oddly plausible, look inside the home of a hot dog-obsessed killer CFO. The fact that everyone on stage utterly committed to being in that house - especially the detective ('there's hot dogs everywhere') - was what sold it.

The FA are up next, a slicker and more individually flamboyant proposition than their opening act, but not by miles - a compliment to BM, especially considering their position on the bill. They begin by asking the audience to nominate one of their number, then the cast throw out descriptions of who this person is and where they are. Here, Max Olesker squints into the lights as an absurdly rich level of detail is suggested about him and his surroundings (Glastonbury lanyards, that globe, a relative in need of attention). Still, the ensuing scenes motor off in ways you can't see coming, and that proves to be a constant delight. Joseph Morpurgo hit a particularly rich seam of Coldplay gags along the way, and integrated the sound of a passing ambulance into the action before the audience fully realised what was going on. (Or before I what realised what was going on, anyway.)

The spine of the scenes ended up being not the character introduced at the start, but a Manuel-type figure named Boris (Ivan Gonzalez) who got by on the skin of his fraudulent CV, and wound up establishing world peace. Also memorable was Dickson's riff on Michael Buerk, who would 'do anything once, as long as I can do it again' (or words to that effect), and the memorable notion of sensual funerals.

The second half was given over to Cariad (Lloyd) and Paul (Foxcroft). I've seen them twice, and the only common ground are moments of vulnerability, a nostalgia for cosier times, and the fact that it's bloody funny. Here, the vulnerability - a kind of beauty, really - comes when a blind date results in one party painting the other as they truly see them. The finale is a remarkably theatrical affair, with the lights going out just as Lloyd reaches for her falling son, who had been goaded by an imaginary monkey friend to leap to his death from a lofty window. Lloyd also played the monkey, although the impersonation seemed to start out as a chimney sweep (or a human, at least), before some turn in the conversation resulted in the change.

Their show starts with a string of monologues based on a word from the audience, which then switch into banter about cultural snobbery - and loosely inspire the scenes that follow. (I think that's an Armando.) The banter underscores the ease of their long-established on-stage relationship, and the relaxed readiness of the whole affair. Lloyd sports a Twin Peaks T-shirt with what looks like a visible sales tag and, apparently due to some confusion over timings, the cellist from their accompanying musical ensemble arrives well into the performance. I don't believe that kind of humanity can be faked - not like on long-running comedy tours when things 'go wrong' but, hey! we're soldiering on folks, just for you - and that level of natural chaos is a significant part of their charm, such as the heart-in-mouth moment when Foxcroft, apparently suffering from a neck injury, seems to nearly buckle when helping Lloyd through an imaginary window. (The stage is small - that ambulance might have been required.) Improv is entertaining partly because it's a highwire act that could go hideously wrong at any time, and this just makes it moreso.

If you watch them for a while - not too long, really - you start to get the impression that Foxcroft enjoys setting things up to put Lloyd on the back foot. One of his scene-setting mimes goes on so long (cooking, possibly?) that she ends up jumping in with 'I'm pregnant', which is such a game-changing piece of information that it doesn't really matter what the hell he is doing. Foxcroft also appears to delight in trying to make her corpse, which he nearly seems to manage during a scene in which he's pretending to have never seen a film. (Later, he has never read a book, or eaten an apple.)

Their greatest moments, though, are the emotional pivots they perform with such comfort. Scenes grab you by the heartstrings and then, as the emotion subsides and the next laugh hits, it hits all the heavier because you care. It makes you feel, and those feelings change as the show evolves into whatever the hell it ends up being. To do that reliably, in improv, and really make it sing? Wow.

As for the night in general, if the Free Association can keep up anything close to this level of booking quality, it looks destined to be a night worth catching on regular basis. This evening sold out, as did the opening night in October, so it's worth buying tickets in advance.

(Further reading: see Lloyd's excellent BBC3 sketch show pilot here.)