Liverpool improv group Impropriety took to the stage of the Kazimier last night for the inaugural presentation of their newly formed group. Familiar faces were certainly present on stage and in the audience with the event’s programme highlighting the inclusion of many members of the 2008 minute improv marathon and student improv group Purple Circle into a cast which numbered some 20 performers.

For Liverpool residents who have not been to the Kazimier, it is certainly well worth a visit. Nestled in Wolstenholme Square next to the Nation night club, Jorge Pardo’s colourful sculpture ‘Penelope’ and opposite the Pleasure Rooms strip bar, it is a venue run by The Arts Organisation, a group dedicated to artistic squatting of sorts, “enabling the legal occupation of disused spaces” as they express it on the Property Solutions section of their website. You will know them, probably, as the folk who run the TAO Gallery on Slater Street and the very well known Mello Mello.

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Bringing a fantastically irreverant look at the West End to the West End, Jest End doesn’t miss a beat from start to finish. Having watched previews of the show online I knew Jest End was slick, taking well known West End numbers and replacing lyrics with a series of fast paced, tongue in cheek romps through musical theatre past and present.

Combining well choreographed chorus numbers with wonderfully witty solo performances the show doesn’t take any prisoners, unashamedly taking the mick out of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cameron Mackintosh and just about everyone who has taken a part in a West End musical, or written one.

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Familiar to those I have worked with at C venues over the past couple of years, Belt Up are an an experimental theatre company hailing from York who have recently been making quite the impression at the Fringe. Their adaptation of Kafka’s Trial was one of two sell out shows that were staged at the Fringe this year, moving the group from their previous Red Room venue at C central into a found space in the fire wrecked C soco.

The back arch at Southwark Playhouse plays host to the piece for the next three weeks and again gives the piece a fantastic backdrop of urban decay. Just a few metres away from the trains rumbling over head the lighting design can only be described as spectacular, moving the audience from one end of the space to another, constantly creating new environments and revealing what sometimes feels like an endlessly large space. It really is a fantastic environment to showcase the work, adapted by and starring Dominic Allen.

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