I would like to state for the record that I did not intend to pursue Chris Grace around Bristol.

I was researching my review for his solo show ‘Sardines,’ absent-mindedly wondering why he happened to be in Bristol, and discovered he was here for a few days – performing ‘Sardines,’ but also teaching a musical theatre improv workshop and performing with ‘This Is Your Musical,’ one of the Bristol Improv Theatre’s in-house troupes. The BIT very kindly offered me a press ticket, and armed with a multipack of Snickers and a pack of pens I headed up there after work.

I’d never seen musical improv before, as a poorly-timed cold stopped me from seeing Showstoppers when they visited Bristol, and I was excited to see it with such a veteran of the sport as Grace. We begin with that improv staple, audience suggestions, this time based on a prompt of ‘An Interesting Thing That’s Happened To You in The Last 2 Weeks’ – which we ball up and throw into a hat held by compere Anna Kemp. After looking through a few options, the audience votes for their favourite, a musician who cycled into a cloud of flying ants on his way to the show.

And just like that, we’re off. Pianist Ian Towers keeps up a jaunty tinkle as the improvisers – Grace, Anna Kemp, Maria Peters and Alice Hancock-Parr – set things up with a merry first song, ‘Everyone Getting in The Tyre Car,’ as they lash together four space-worked bicycles to go on their trip to the theatre. The fact of the original suggestion being about someone on their way to an improv show sets the stage for an amusingly self-referential musical, with Kemp and Grace especially making frequent meta jokes (‘It’s different every night!’) This is also used as an exasperated refrain by Peter’s neglected daughter character, whose mother and father have been lying about the former’s cancer to avoid attending their her improv shows.

What I found most impressive – and true to the best scripted musicals – was the variety of songs that the performers did, with great accompaniment by Towers. They all have great voices – Hancock-Parr especially, who has a brilliantly jazzy one – and they’re all given moments to shine. An early duet between the lacking parents is great fun; there’s a great one again later as their lies are accidentally uncovered by the mother’s passing oncologist (Grace.) It feels like I have to mention him specifically; while his presence has almost certainly contributed to the packed theatre, he fits right in with the troupe. The worst improvisers – and the least fun to watch – are those who can’t help but make themselves the centre of every scene, and Grace is an excellent and understated team player as befits his considerable experience, sticking out only because of his endearingly meta references to his nationality and race. There’s an enjoyably surreal subplot as a flying ant (Grace) gets his friends to re-enact Hamlet to prove a point (‘Yes ant!’) to his mother, and another in which he and Peters play a lovelorn pair of colleagues in local government. The show closes out beautifully with a song that accidentally but wonderfully references the ethos of Grace’s solo show the previous night (‘Keep on making art, even if no one likes it!’)

After the interval, the night takes on an after-party vibe as the improvisers play out songs from musicals we didn’t see based on talking to the audience, including a story of a couple who met in a student flat in Paris and a cat whose eyeball has been ruptured, which gets an absolutely fantastic solo treatment by Hancock-Parr.

I left incredibly impressed by the troupe’s skill and ability; it was certainly a case of the improv nirvana where many of the phrases were so well-crafted and witty it was hard to believe they were being made up on the spot, let alone rhyming and integrated into songs. It was relentlessly good fun and even without a big guest star, This Is Your Musical is a winner.