A review of Any Suggestions, Doctor? The Improvised Doctor Who Parody, Fringe 2022

I enjoyed Any Suggestions, Doctor? The Improvised Doctor Who Parody by ASDImprov, but your experience will be different. It’s a different show each night.

A giant blue d6 is rolled to determine who among the improv troupe gets to be the Doctor; while you queue in Potterrow to get in, you have the chance to suggest the show’s name, and at the start, the audience shouts are harvested for a setting.

We had the Sauerkraut Incident that occurred during Woodstock.

The Sauerkraut Incident

I enjoyed the show, though my long Fringe going is getting to me, and I sometimes feel tired. That’s the thing with improv, sometimes it clicks, and you’re in hysterics or awe, and sometimes the quick wits on stage are in the process of getting there.

It’s mid-week on a slow week in the Fringe; I think we had a smaller than usual crowd, but the vibe was good, and while I was low on stamina, ASD was not!

I enjoyed our Doctor. She was very Doctor in nature with a quirky yet contemporary look and a fondness for getting distracted by giving pick-me-up speeches that didn’t quite go anywhere.

The wicked witch of Sauerkraut commerce was a highlight too.

However, what was the absolute height of my W-shaped enthusiasm for the show came right at the end when it all came together perfectly.

We’d established early that people eating Sauerkraut were loosing their memory, including some historically accurate figures who made some memorable appearances (such as the farmer who owned the land).

One of the celebs that the improv actors could remember at Woodstock was Cilla Black. I’m surely not the only audience member to think of the TV show Blind Date for Cilla Black before thinking of her as a singer. However, we were also reassured that Cill Black really was at Woodstock.

We still got to make a whole sketch joke about Cilla Black, who had also had her memory wiped and forgotten her song, running her encounter with the Doctor as if it was a Blind Date show; from behind the curtain and running through some of her trademark catch-phrases.

Another improv actor took the role of Tom Jones at Woodstock, we’re told, and sang a little. Undoubtedly, one of the show’s strengths was the live and absolutely Doctor Who-perfect music.

We met the baddies – The Silence – and they’re a good villain for any Doctor Who episode about memory loss. Suppose you didn’t know enough about Doctor Who to recognise the Silence or understand the jokes about turning away from them only to forget you’d seen them. In that case, I suspect Sauerkraut Incident was baffling and nonsense to you.

I wondered if all the plot strands would go anywhere when they suddenly merged wonderfully. Cilla Black used her Blind Date curtain to hide The Silence, thus saving the Woodstock audience from looking at the alien and protecting their memories.

That was an epiphany, not a planned thing, and it was brilliant.

Overall

You must enjoy improv and be a Doctor Who fan to get the most from Any Suggestions, Doctor? I suspect if you don’t score highly in both categories, then this particular improv show will be a stretch too far for you.

Are you both? Take advantage of this KingDome located, nicely timed, comfortable and talented show. Buy those tickets. I also suspect ‘parody’ is used for legal reasons. This isn’t a show that pokes mean fun at Doctor Who, just the occasional fan joke.