Catch 23 is a competitive improv night, so you might expect that a team arriving 'fresh' from a 33 hour improvathon would be at a disadvantage. Oh no: because, despite having to ask for a time-out during one of their scenes - an attempt at a two person La Ronde, ambitious in the circumstances - as one of them (Sally Hodgkiss) had no idea what the hell was going on, and seemed to nearly be in tears, the audience were so, so behind the superhuman effort involved in anything they did. The chances of any of their scenes scoring lower than the maximum five were slim. 'Taco Taco' were even entertaining during other people's sets, with Jonathan Monkhouse apparently teetering between the verges of hysteria and sleep on his seat. At one point, he arrived on stage to be rendered helpless by the rhyming of 'croquet' with 'okay'. 'It's not a punchline', he self-reprimanded.
This sense of hysteria also flowed from Brendan Murphy as the judge, not passing judgement on the scenes exactly, but using them as jumping off points for gags in the character of a comic who is hosting a gig he doesn't quite understand, except insofar that it is a place for him to make gags. Murphy's one liners walked the fine line between deliberately cheesy and cleverly constructed, unfolding puzzle - my favourite being one about an imaginary picnic - all delivered with a lightly unhinged enthusiasm.
The most technically inventive of the night's teams won, though - The Nose, who finished with an impressively atmospheric three-stage quest that involved an audience member - suggesting that, perhaps, Murphy's guiding hand in the scores was not as arbitrary as it seemed.
Below is an explanation of the rules. And here is the website.
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