You haven’t even sat down yet and they’re already singing about you.

That’s how Acaprov begins. As we walked in and found our seats in a packed little Shoreditch venue, the troupe were already on stage improvising about the audience arriving. Jackets coming off. People finding their seat. That awkward shuffle down the row. It was playful, observant, and instantly disarming. Before the show had officially started, we were already part of it.

For the uninitiated, Acaprov is exactly what it sounds like – a cappella improv. The first half is built around games and audience interaction, all underscored by vocal harmonies, beatboxing, and musical riffs created on the spot. The second half? A fully improvised a cappella musical.

Now, improv can be wildly hit and miss. That’s just the nature of it. Some games soar, some fizzle, some are clever but not laugh-out-loud funny. The first half definitely had that natural variation. A few bits were sharper than others. But even when something didn’t quite land, the energy never dipped. You could feel the trust in the room.

The games themselves ranged widely. One involved taking an audience member’s name and turning it into a sort of earworm ringtone – repetition, rhythm, harmonies built around a single word. It sounds simple, but the musicality was impressive.

Others leaned more into classic improv structures: scenes that could be frozen and restarted in a completely different direction, a frantic rhyme game in the style of the Beastie Boys, and a sketch where an audience volunteer controlled exactly when performers had to switch between speaking and singing.

There were also the knowingly cheeky formats – the inevitable “Sex With Me” comparison game got a run-out – alongside a particularly enjoyable sketch that jumped rapidly between television genres as if someone were aggressively flicking through channels: weather reports, true crime, romance drama, and back again.

What makes this section work isn’t just the formats themselves but the way the performers listen to each other. Good improv lives or dies on collaboration, and the cast here clearly trust each other. Ideas are picked up, twisted, expanded and occasionally rescued mid-flight by someone else. When something lands, they heighten it. When something doesn’t, someone pivots and the show moves on.

The first half finished with the cast asking a couple in the audience how they met and turning their story into an improvised love song, complete with the audience providing backing vocals. Slightly ridiculous, very charming, and a neat bridge into the second half.

Then came the part that, for me, really showed what they can do.

The long-form piece is a fully improvised musical built from a handful of audience suggestions. They only ask for a couple of prompts to get started – a setting and, most importantly, a title.

Once the room had settled on a construction site as the location, suggestions came in for the name of the musical. I’m pleased to report that the one they chose came from me: Building Bridges. If this becomes a West End smash, I will of course be claiming royalties.

From there the team quickly found a narrative and ran with it.

What emerged was a joyous, slightly bonkers musical set in Clacton about bringing communities together through dance. At one point it became, gloriously, a sort of Full Monty in Clacton situation – complete with a full-blown musical number about it, essentially a song entitled The Full Monty in Clacton. No actual stripping, sadly or thankfully depending on your taste, but the spirit was very much there.

The multilingual element added something genuinely special. Three of the performers are Spanish speakers, and that naturally fed into the narrative. The show wove together English and Spanish communities in Clacton, with whole chunks of song performed in Spanish and translated within the scene. It never felt forced. It felt like an authentic part of who they are. Even though they all speak fluent English, choosing to incorporate their own language gave the story texture and warmth.

Musically, they’re strong. The harmonies are tight, the beatboxing grounds everything beautifully, and the background vocal work gives the sound a real sense of scale. In a small room with no band and no instruments, they manage to make it feel surprisingly full.

Director Lisa Lynn clearly holds the space without dominating it. You can tell she’s steering, but she never bosses. When a scene needed an extra dynamic, she would slip into it and add a new layer rather than wrestle control. It feels like leadership through support rather than ego.

And it is a team. You can sense different levels of experience, sure, but it doesn’t matter. No one has to be the finished article. They are there for each other. That sense of ensemble is what makes good improv great.

Worth mentioning too that the evening doesn’t end when the curtain falls. Acaprov Karaoke takes over afterwards. The stage stays up, the room stays buzzing, and they’ll happily jump in as your backing singers. It turns what could have been a tidy ending into a proper night out.

Interestingly, while the improvised musical was my highlight, the people I was with preferred the games in the first half. Which probably says it all – there really is something here for everyone.

Is every single moment gold? No. That’s not how improv works. Some ideas fly, some wobble, some disappear entirely. But that’s also part of the fun. What matters is that the whole evening is genuinely, consistently funny. Not forced, not desperate for a punchline, but the kind of laughter that comes from watching quick minds catch ideas in mid-air and turn them into something unexpected.

By the end you’ve watched a group of performers take a handful of audience suggestions, invent a musical world out of thin air, and somehow make it feel effortless – which is the real trick of good improv.

Build the trust. Build the story. Build the music.

And if, on this occasion, they happened to build a few bridges along the way… well, I’m happy to take a little credit for the planning permission.

Acaprov is currently performing on the second Friday of every month, at Shoreditch Balls.

Book your tickets now at jokepit.com

For latest news and events, visit their website acaprov.com

Words by Nick Barr

Photography by Acaprov and Rodrigo Simas Photography