The Crew

Welcome to The Crew, one of Australia’s longest-running and most successful impro groups. To browse the site, follow the links above, or read on below for the latest news.

You can book The Crew for your next function by contacting Bandshop on 03 9500 1999.

To subscribe to our mailing list, visit the contact page.

While The Crew takes a bit of a break, many of its members are involved in the Melbourne Fringe Festival; check out the shows listed below:

• Ben McKenzie, Dan Walmsley and Karin Muiznieks star in their own improvised music show, Set List, for three shows only, Saturday afternoons at the Old Council Chambers, Trades Hall - that’s September 27, October 4 and October 11. Andy McClelland will also make a guest appearance.
• The Hounds - Rob Lloyd, Adam McKenzie and Tegan Higginbotham - return with their third show, The Last Bucket of Water. Opens this Friday, September 26, and runs Tuesday to Sunday at the Rehearsal Room, North Melbourne Town Hall, until October 11.
• Karin Muiznieks also stars in a return season of her Comedy Festival smash hit musical, Give My Regards to Broady at the New Ballroom, Trades Hall, from October 7 to 12.
• Andy McClelland performs an updated version of his classic hit Andrew McClelland’s Somewhat Accurate History Of Pirates (1550-2017) in the Main Theatre of the Lithuanian Club for two nights only - this Friday and Saturday, September 26 and 27.
• Ben Lomas and Evan Jones, two thirds of the Department of Humour Services, present their new show, 10 Steps to Deportation, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from September 26 to October 11.
• Ben McKenzie, Andy McClelland, Karin Muiznieks and Dan Walmsley will be among the performers for the 2008 AFL Season Review hosted by Nick Caddaye and Yianni Agislau at Trades Hall on Tuesday, September 30.

Enjoy the Festival, and look out for more Crew news in November!

This Sunday, September 14, will be our last Impro Sundae for a while - we’re going into a cocoon while Trades Hall is filled with Fringe Festival festivities, and won’t be emerging, beautiful and majestic like the Monarch butterfly, until November at the earliest. So if you’ve been meaning to come down and check out our unique brand of improvised comedy, and haven’t got around to it, well, now’s the time!

The line-up includes Ben McKenzie, Dan Walmsley, Vanessa Bennett, Matt Elsbury, Benne Harrison and Karin Muiznieks - and with such talent in the house, it’d be almost criminal not to stump up for a Musical Odyssey…

And it’ll be improtacular!

Tickets at the door - $15 full price, $10 concession or group of 6 or more.

Being an improviser is much like being an athlete: you train and train and train and yet it all comes down to those precious few moments you’re in the public eye. And, like the Olympians in Beijing, the players of The Crew don’t really know what to expect when they step up to play. Of course, they’re all on the same team, so if one gets a gold, so does everyone else!

Providing more entertainment than the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this week are Evan Jones, Craig Fenney, Nigel Walton, Adam McKenzie, Brian Hurley and Dan Walmsley. Plus, we’re very excited to have Rob Lloyd as our Olympic official MC, freshly returned from two weeks with the Loose Moose impro theatre company in Canada! Who knows what kind of influence those crazy Canucks may have had over him? Just because we’ve won more gold medals than them doesn’t mean they don’t have things to teach us…

Tickets $15/$10 at the door or you can book online at comedyattrades.com.au.

The horses of the world celebrated their birthday on Friday, and I have to wonder: is it like Christmas for them? Have horses assembled a body of lore to explain the additional affection and attention they receive from their human benefactors on this one day a year?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that if someone wanted to find out, all they’d have to do is give us the right suggestion for this week’s Impro Sundae at the Bella Union! Ben McKenzie hosts this week, giving sugar cubes and salt licks to those thoroughbred impro stars Ian Messig, Vanessa Bennett, Matt Elsbury, Andy McClelland, Brian Hurley and Karin Muiznieks.

Tickets are $15/$10 at the door, or you want to make sure you get a seat you can buy them online at the Comedy @ Trades web site.

In the worlds before impro, primal order reigned…but elemental forces caused an egg to hatch, and…something about a phoenix… The point is, the nature of impro is…irrepressible!

Which is just another way of saying we have no way of knowing what will happen when we get up on that stage, but no doubt we will receive more sage wisdom on par with what we learned last time, wisdom that could have come from the mouth of Buddha himself… Did you know you can increase your street cred by playing parcheesi? Or that you shouldn’t travel to the seventh century if you don’t like being…well, let’s just say no-one should travel to the seventh century.

Only the chaos of improvisation could provide such nuggets of wisdom, and for our second show at the Bella Union, our pilgrims on the path to enlightenment are Evan Jones, Dan Walmsley, Matt Elsbury, Adam McKenzie, Benne Harrison and musician Karin Muiznieks, and their journey to the west will be guided by host Ben McKenzie.

Tickets $15/$10 at the door.

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