By Umer Nangiana
The laughter-packed May, with a bunch of internationally acclaimed stand-up comedians descending in the city, is about to get even more amusing. Bringing their smash-hit improvisational comedy show ‘Whose Line is it anyway?’, four British comedians Stephen Frost, Steve Steen, Andy Smart, Ian Coppinger and guest star Irish comic Joe Rooney are all set to enthrall the Doha audience with their spontaneous impulsive jokes.
The entertainment rollercoaster takes centre-stage at Grand Hyatt Doha on May 13 with this special performance of the show at Al Silia Ballroom. “The show will be almost three-hour long and the guests will be able to purchase tickets at the gate of the ballroom besides booking online. The cost of the ticket at the gate is QR150,” a hotel official told Community.
‘Whose line is it anyway?’ was originally a British radio programme that aired in the US as a TV series that lasted eight seasons. The show consists of a panel of four performers who create characters, scenes and songs on the spot, in the style of short-form improvisation games. The four comedians Andy Smart, Stephen Frost, Steven Steen and Ian Coppinger with their guest star will arrive from England with no script. It is the audience that will guide on their sketches and comic dramas. It will all happen right in front of the audience.
It is improvisation that makes this format of live comedy shows different from stand-up comedies where the performer finds it hard to improvise. Stephen Frost, born in 1955, also known as Steve Frost, is an English comedian who is known for his work in the 1980s with Mark Arden as part of the double act The Oblivion Boys on Saturday Live.
Veterans of the alternative comedy scene, he and Arden appeared in The Young Ones, and later had their own TV series Lazarus and Dingwall on BBC2. They played the lead roles in the 1987 revival of Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Piccadilly Theatre. Without Arden, Frost has appeared on Radio 4’s Just a Minute, and the improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Steve Steen, born 1954, is best known for his improvisation partnership with Jim Sweeney. The pair met at Clapham College and joined a theatre club in 1972. The two then wrote and starred in a show which parodied much of the other shows being held in London that year. They then formed their own theatre company and wrote and toured productions around the UK for the rest of the 1970s. The two have worked together as writers, guest comics, support acts and improvisers ever since, although Steen has done his share of straight acting, including a part in the movie version of BBC sitcom Porridge in 1979.
Sweeney was recruited as a solo performer thereafter for Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but Steen was soon summoned for the Channel 4 improvisation show, and was a runaway success in his six episodes. He also guested on Have I Got News for You in 1992.
Andy Smart, born 1959, is a comedian, actor, and TV panel show participant.
He has been performing as a guest with The Comedy Store Players for 13 years now and a permanent member since 1995. Before joining the Players he was one half of the Vicious Boys with Angelo Abela. Together they won the 1984 Time Out Street Entertainer Award. Andy currently improvises on stage every Wednesday and Sunday at The Comedy Store, London.
Joe Rooney, born 1963, is an Irish actor and comedian . His best-known acting role at home and abroad is that of Father Damo in the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted. He features in one episode, series two’s The Old Grey Whistle Theft. More recently, Rooney has had a starring role in the RTÉ television comedy, Killinaskully, in which he plays Timmy Higgins.
Other acting roles include Fergus Scully, a roving reporter who speaks in pidgin English and Irish, on a TG4 sketch show. In 1997, he appeared with Paul Tylak in Messrs Tylak and Rooney, a twelve-episode TV3 comedy travel series.
LAUGHTER INC: The four comedians will be spontaneous with no script.
