REVIEW: The Big Sing 2025- Musical Improv Festival Day 1

I’ve been attending the Big Sing Festival here in Barcelona, put on by the Barcelona Improv Group.  It’s a festival that features musical theatre improvisors from across Europe, groups and soloists, who create original musical theatre based on suggestions from the audience and other prompts.  You can read more about the festival at my Barcelona based blog The Barcelonalist.

The Big Sing is as much a social event and training event as anything else.  Improv groups come to train and learn, and this year, the workshops were sold out almost as soon as they opened up.  As I’ve talked to people at the festival, everyone has raved about the workshops, and the opportunity to learn and connect with other people doing similar work in different countries.

 

On this blog I am going to talk about the shows that I saw.  I will keep this page updated as I see and write about more shows within the festival.

(There are still tickets available for the shows, if you are reading in real time, visit the Barcelonalist link above for all the ticket links.)

Each night has a similar structure- a main stage show with three acts, and then at a different venue, a late night show.

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THE BIG SING- OPENING NIGHT PARTY JAM JUNE 25

The festival started off the night before the actual festival with an opening night party.  After about an hour of pre-show drinks and merriment, the party assembled in one of the theatres at BIG headquarters for a set of games and musical improv exercises that included the entire theatre singing backup vocals.  The evening was expertly led by one of the organizers Ella, who got a good majority of the crowd up to volunteer to play some musical theatre games.  Of course, at the opening party (and indeed the shows) are largely made up of festival and workshop goers, so I should not have been surprised by the huge turnout of audience volunteers ready and eager to get up and strut their stuff.

The ending song (which was supposed to be about Bad WiFi) turned into a powerhouse of a ballad, featuring a wide range of performers. It had a very hummable chorus. I’m including my video of that last song here. Be careful, it’s a little bit of a brain worm!

That ended the night, and was a harbinger of good things to come.

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THE BIG SING- DAY ONE

ACT ONE: IMPROVISED HAMILTON

The  first show was a showcase of performers from a workshop titled Improvised Hamilton.  Basically that class, taught by London Improvisor Will Naameh, taught students to replicate the rap -opera style of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton.  The showcase was split into two 8 minute or so musicals, one about a historical figure, and one about a fictional character.  The historical figure of our evening was Thomas Edison, and the fictional character was Santa Claus.

 

 

Each of the musicals had a similar structure- introduction of main character (played loosely to the tune of the first song in Hamilton, called Alexander Hamilton) A close friend was introduced (Tesla for Edison, the Tooth Fairy for Santa), and then we cut to years later they have a disagreement, and it ends with the death of the main character.

A bit reductionist of course, but that is what you can expect in a 10 minute musical.  The performances were all strong, especially considering that most of the performers were improvising in NOT their primary language.  And there were lots of great moments and nice stage pictures. It was a nice opening to the festival, although I quibble a bit with the decision to split the class to do two musicals that then followed the exact same format.  Would have liked to have seen a different format for the second musical.  But a small quibble- both shows were entertaining.

ACT TWO: PHYLLIDA- THE NEW ALBUM

The next act in the mainstage show was a British solo performer named Phil Lunn. Posing in drag as a one name pop star, Phyllida leads the audience to tell her what her previous hits were, what her diversionary problem was, and what her new song and genre that she was about.  Phyllida was clearly a pro, handling a disco song about rabbit breeding equally as well as a rock anthem about being spanked.   The finale was a country song

Here’s a video of one of her songs which is titled Midnight Finger, which was suggested by the audience as a title, and Phyllida cleverly made a song that tread the line between sexual and a sandwich.  Very well done, especially on the fly.

ACT THREE: THE BIG IMPROVISED MUSICAL

 

The third and final act of the mainstage show featured the hosts of the festival, BIG (Barcelona Improv Group, performing an improvised musical.  The structure of the musical was simple.  They solicited an object name from the audience (which turned out to be a grater) and then each of the 5 singing company members made a singing proposal- a song that explained their problem and how it related.  One of the actors wanted to push the grater far beyond cheese on pasta or cole slaw.  Another actor was the grater itself, getting excited about the possiblity of seeing some hot grating action.  A third actor saw it as the way to become greater than themselves, and it turned into a math lesson of sorts.  And so forth.

Over the course of the next 30 minutes, the cast developed each of the songs into full blown mini-musicals, with characters jumping in and out from the actors and sometimes having the plot of the original musical go sideways (For example, the hot grating action person ended up falling in love with a carrot who was doomed to die, because the family had decided to have salad.  But fortunately, other carrots stepped in and heroically sacrificed themselves for true love.

The show was great (pun intended!) , and there were some amazing moments both comic and sad.  One such was the end of the Grater Love Story (below)

All told this show was such a great example to this form of highly skilled improv.  The whole show also reminded me how important structure is to improv like this.  Having the musical song structures and story structures to come back to allows all of the improvisors to stay together.

Also a special shout out to the accompanist Joanna Kucharczyk who needs to stay on top of 5 or 6 things all at once.  She managed to do it so well.

THE LATE SHOW: TEA AND TOAST

The late show was at a different theatre, a new and exciting theatre in Poble Sec called The BCN Studio   It’s a downstairs studio with a small bar, and they have a plethora of events happening.  It’s also their first summer, and they have not 100 percent solved the air conditioning problem yet.  The lobby was sweltering hot, but the theatre was surprisingly cool.  The manager of the venue said that they are working on installing A/C in the theater, and I think that will make a big difference.

Tea and Toast is a British group from Brighton.  Their show was set up as a cowboy set, with a fake campfire and a bunch of cowhands sitting around and telling stories and singing songs.  The song titles and occasionally punchlines were provided by the audience pre-show.  They were accompanied by a guitarist, which made perfect sense, and the four performers all worked pretty well together.

There were a couple of moments that seemed ripe for turning into a song that did not develop (hey you can not catch EVERY ball)  but over all, their set was great, and their acting and singing were solid.

Here’s a sample called Gather To The Moon.