Geesebumps

Come in close: I have a tale to tell. Illuminated only by the torch glaring ‘neath my chin, my eyes blaze. The campfire crackles as the icy wind whips through the trees, carrying with it the secrets we hissed in the night. Blinding, the full moon rises behind the hilly horizon, crested with wisps of mist as a faint howl resounds in the distance. As fear shudders down your spine, the howl sounds again, closer this time. The beast grows hungrier.

Don’t you just love scary stories?

The narrator spinning tonight’s chilling yarn is one R. L. Stine, played by Malcolm Morrison, the director of this Goosebumps-inspired New Zealand Fringe Festival improv show. The beast in question? Stay tuned, reader.

Geesebumps kicks off when Morrison and a team of players from Outfox Improv – Tristram Domican, Guanny Liu-Prosee, Dianne Pulham, and Jem Palmer – ask the audience to call out something that evokes nostalgia from the 90s. Before I know it, I’ve yelled “Tamagotchi!” My suggestion is accepted and a famished and sinister handheld digital pet comes beeping into life.

The show takes the inherent unpredictability of improvised theatre to the next level, modelling itself off the Goosebumps choose-your-own-adventure spinoff Give Yourself Goosebumps and its iconic tagline ‘Reader beware… you choose the scare’. Tech plays a huge and brilliant part, with operator and producer Elliott Lam creating and projecting slides on the fly that determine the action. One such example is, typed in melty, monstrous font, the scenario:

The new Tamagotchi starts singing. Do you:
A) Tell it to shush
B) Join in the singing
C) Give it to the ants

My highlight is when Morrison decides we’ve chosen the wrong scare and instructs the cast to repeat the scene until he’s satisfied with the outcome. My next favourite moment is when Domican ominously intones “nom nom nom” as the Tamagotchi. As to whether our beasty is sated in the end… drum roll please… the episode is cleverly titled Tamagotcha.

Geesebumps: where improv and innovations swarm into one heaving anthill of silly, spooky nostalgia.