Byron and Shelley: A Romantics Comedy
Lake Geneva, Summer 1816: A brilliant, glamorous, scandalous group come together. Rumour and speculation is rife amongst the locals. Many know the literary products of those days – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’s The Vampyre, both the result of a ghost-story writing contest – but the details of the holiday remain hidden until now. This completely improvised play reveals what probably definitely happened at the Villa Diodati.
Jim Grant – Lord Byron
Jim Grant has been performing improv with the Oxford Imps since their foundation in 2003. He has performed with them at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 2004-2008; at the Providence Improv Festival and in Nashville, Tennessee (2006, 2008); and was part of their team when they won Eggheads on BBC2 in 2009. He was their director from 2004-2006. He also did improv in Hrasnica, Bosnia through Oxford Aid to the Balkans in 2006. Previously he performed with The Improv Show in Kingston, Canada, and St Malachy’s Pavonine improv team in the Canadian Improv Games. He performed in the Oxford Revue in 2004. He is a DPhil student in Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford, and a Lecturer in Philosophy at The Queen’s College, Oxford.
Andy Murray – Percy Shelley
Andy also cut his teeth in the Oxford Imps, performing in over eighty shows in Oxford between 2005 and 2008, and touring with them to Cambridge, Edinburgh, and the USA. He directed them in 2008 and still enjoys performing with them occasionally. He enjoys stand-up and sketch comedy, most recently the first Gelastic Band show ‘Correctness Gone Mad’, which he co-wrote and starred in along with Craig. While at Oxford, he also wrote for student newspapers and was a founding member of the editorial team for ‘The Oxymoron’, a new satirical publication in Oxford. He is currently acting in a new independent comedy film, ‘I Am A Great Man’, works full-time as one of the researchers for the BBC programme QI, and part-time for Private Eye magazine.
Joseph Morpurgo – John Polidori
Joseph has been performing improvised comedy since 2007 with The Oxford Imps, and has improvised to crowds in the United States, the Netherlands, London and, most recently, Wychwood Festival 2009. He also directed the Imps throughout 2008/09, and presided over their Fringe Sell-Out show at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has also performed with ‘F**k Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Improvised Musical’ at Truck Festival 2008 (‘Best Side Show’ – The Observer). In 2009, he directed and appeared in the total sell-out ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’, an improvised 1950s radio play, at The Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford. He has also been a cast member in numerous sketch shows, notably ‘The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud’ (2008) and ‘Correctness Gone Mad’ (2009). As winner of the 1999 Dame Alice Owens’ School Poetry Reading Competition title, his poetic credentials are untouchable. Joseph is in his final year studying English at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Craig Holmes – Maurice the Boatman
Craig began his comedy career as a student in the Oxford Imps in January 2005. He has performed in over 80 Imps shows in Oxford, and still performs with them regularly. He has performed in Edinburgh with the group in 2005 and 2009. In March 2008 he organised and performed in No Fixed Abode, a 12-hour long improv marathon, and hopes to repeat this event in the near future. For two years ran Oxford’s ‘Ministry of Mirth’, a stand-up night for new acts.
Craig has become increasingly interested in more ambitious improvised comedy shows, and hopes to bring long-form improv to greater prominence in the same way that the Oxford Imps have done with the short-form variety. Craig co-wrote and starred in ‘Correctness Gone Mad’ in January 2009. He is currently working on new material for his next show. In an ideal world, he would do this for a living (instead, he is an economist).
Tom Greeves – Director
Tom Greeves has been a stand-up comedian since January 2006, performing throughout England and at the Edinburgh Festival. A former Shadow Cabinet adviser and speechwriter for Sebastian Coe and Boris Johnson, he is currently starring in a feature film to be broadcast later this year. Byron and Shelley: A Romantics Comedy is his first directing credit.
