Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Sweet Venues, Apex Hotel – until 28 August
5*****
On our journey up the Royal Mile we were handed a flyer in the shape of a TARDIS advertising the show. My son was immediately interested, being a massive Whovian and so we got tickets and attended the show all within the space of half an hour – and what a fabulous decision we had made.
Improvisation is always a risk, there must be a level of trust with the actors in order for it all to work and thankfully Any Suggestions Doctor worked extremely well. The team of Doctors consisted of Lewis Dunn, Harry Whittaker, James Gamblin, Charles Deane, Matthew Stallworthy and Louise Jones. We cheered to chose the Doctor of the day and Louise won
The audience were asked to make suggestions to where the story was set with Russia and the Jungle winning. The name of the story was drawn from a hat from suggestions made by the audience whilst in the queue to get in. The random title was “The new Doctor is Stalin”
With music from Alex, the titles began, the TARDIS whirled across the stage and we were there. The Doctor was in disguise as Miss Smith a History teacher who spent a lot of time in her “stationery cupboard”. School boy Brian (Gamblin) got dragged along on an adventure when he needed to know about Soviet Russia for a test set by Mr Johnson (Whittaker). Meanwhile in the Congo, Jeffrey (Dunn) and Trevor (Whittaker) had crash landed their plane, the only two survivors, on the way to Magaluf. They were found in the jungle by Boris (Deane) who took them back to the camp as hostages where they were guarded by The Nightguard (Stallworthy). After Jeffrey escapes and goes down the gold mine he lets out a hideous scream and Trevor panics.
The Doctor is found by Boris who mistakes her for Stalin, taking her and Brian back to the camp where they learn from Trevor about Jeffrey. The Nightguard is revealed to be a robot who is trying to destroy the gold mine to destroy all the gold under orders from the Cybermen.
The Doctor, of course, saves the day; Brian passes his History test and all ends well. And all of this was thought up in the space of minutes.
You of course will see a totally different show and you will be as thoroughly entertained as we were. Well worth a visit if you like Doctor Who and comedy.