Avocado Presents: An Improvised Play – 21Soho, London

In 21Soho’s Green Room, Avocado Improv ditch prompts and gimmicks for a looser, funnier approach to improvised theatre.

An Improvised Play

Walking into 21Soho I had the sense it was going to be a good evening. The upstairs cocktail bar is stylish. The Green Room downstairs is compact and informal, with its own bar and just enough of that shabby-cool basement energy to make you feel in on something. I was here for Avocado Improv, a troupe performing an improvised play – a format I’ll admit I’ve been sceptical about. Previous encounters with longform improv have left me thinking that the obligation to wrangle audience prompts into something resembling narrative tends to stretch jokes past breaking point. Avocado’s model is different. No prompts, no audience suggestions, no props or costumes. Just two performers (Hamza and Jake) who trust each other and their instincts.

The evening unfolded in two halves (shows vary between one and half a dozen scenes depending on vibes). The first was a briefer sketch circling around art, bowling balls, and questionable pick-up lines. A bit of fun, more a palate cleanser than a main course, but already giving a sense of Avocado’s style. The second formed the bulk of the show: an extended back-and-forth between an uncle and his nephew in a tattoo parlour, a scenario riddled with safeguarding issues and family tensions. On paper it sounds unworkable. In performance it became gloriously awkward, the comedy drawn as much from pauses and reactions as from the dialogue itself. It had that rare quality in improv where the performers don’t seem afraid of letting things get strange, and are all the funnier for it.

What Improv Should Be

That looseness is Avocado’s strength. Without prompts, props or gimmicks, the performance feels like watching two friends chase each other’s ideas into unexpected corners. Characters appear, mutate, vanish, plots shimmer into being and dissolve just as quickly. The skill lies in knowing when to let a scene collapse rather than flogging it to death, and Hamza and Jake have that instinct down. It gives the show a lightness of touch. The improvised play doesn’t strain for coherence but still lands.

What also makes it work is tone. The humour is daft, sometimes absurd, but never cheap or cruel. Callbacks drop in like happy accidents rather than calculated devices, and every so often a loose thread gets tugged into something resembling a storyline. The intimate basement space adds to that feeling: a room where the performers are co-conspirators a few feet away rather than distant figures on a stage.

I left thinking this is what improv should be: unplanned, generous, funny, and brief enough to leave you wanting more. A shared high wire act rather than a laboured attempt at three act storyline or an exercise in dragging audience suggestions into punchlines. I laughed a lot, and that in itself is reason enough to recommend catching Avocado Improv at 21Soho. Preferably with a drink from that corner bar in hand.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Avocado Presents: An Improvised Play is on monthly at 21Soho, now booking through to December 2025. More info and tickets here.