The one thing you can normally expect from a show by ex-Edinburgh Comedy Award Winner Adam Riches? Audience participation so involved that you suspect victims come away thinking: ‘God, I should’ve just volunteered as a groupie and had done with it.’
So no surprises that he stands on the door of the auditorium as the audience files into this comic play about an ageing high-school sports coach, variously handing crowd members flags to wave, yelling ‘Go Centaurs!’ or air-sparring with punters, chuckling: ‘Show me what you got, son!’
Plot-wise, it’s a bit like a homage to 1980s high school sports flick ‘Teen Wolf’ (a retiring high school coach needs something special to help his useless team win the Yakult Cup: they get a new player who can turn into a wolf). Couple of key differences, though: rather than basketball, they play ‘Volfsball’ (actually a real sport invented a couple of years ago – but for the purpose of this show, imagine basketball). Also I’m fairly sure that ‘Teen Wolf’ didn’t feature characters with names like ‘Duane Frenulum’. Or positions called ‘Vas Deferens’ or ‘Left Areola’. Or any genitalia references, really.
It’s very funny: full of self-satirising touches (a character called ‘Yet To Be Cast’ played by a mannequin, new player Willy Wolf introduced as ‘a’ rather than ‘the’ Teen Wolf ‘for legal reasons’). The dialogue is laugh-out-loud sharp, too. When the Coach’s daughter takes a shine to the teen wolf? ‘I like you, Wolf. Is that a crime?’; ‘Not after my next birthday, it isn’t.’
But the real highlight? The finale: wherein you realise the key difference between a pre-recorded sports film and a live incarnation is that here the actors actually have to get the ball into the net – and Riches pulls no punches in milking comedy from it. And then ends on a piece of audience participation. Obviously. This is an Adam Riches show, after all.