SHOWSTOPPER! I Can See The Finish Line...

Pippa Evans

Talking to Ruth Bratt one day in our dressing room, as we ate custard buns from the Golden Gate Bakery, our new favourite sugar dealer, we decided it would have been a great idea to have some kind of science measurement for the mental effects of doing Showstopper for 10 weeks. I have laughed, I have cried - I have wanted to kill my fellow performers whilst putting them on my shoulders and parade them about the town to celebrate their brilliance. I have woken up at 3am worrying about lines I could have said and laughing at bits from the show the night before. A psychologist would have a field day.

It is week nine. I have been to Mars, twice. I have scattered my mother's ashes (and inhaled them) from a Norwegian mountain. I have tamed lions, I have been a nun, I have fixed cars and served custard. I have sung about being polite in Britain and how to defrost the fridge. I have loved so many partners, I have wept over their bodies, I have been married at least a dozen times. Every day I fear my brain is now empty. No longer will I be able to rhyme "love" with anything. I shan't be able to dance spontaneously to a Rocky Horror style number. I won't be able to think of a name for the other person in the scene. But we always do, because we are never on our own.

At times I have felt like a ghost - floating about the show, watching this weird thing we do. Since the very beginning of Showstopper, we wanted to create an improvised musical that feels like it belongs in the West End and as I watch, whilst floating above, my fellow Stoppers dancing a flamenco song about school dinners or the band seamlessly going from Gilbert and Sullivan to Rent, I know we've managed it - but I still don't know how. It seems magical; a team of magicians all waving their wands at the same time and combining their best spells to make a mega one.

We have one week left and then I shall be thrown back to the world of solo performance. I love doing my solo stuff, but it will be a U-turn of sorts. No buddies smiling at me as we figure out the universal mime for a Portaloo factory. No instant harmonies whilst interviewing Corgies for a newspaper article. Back to a set routine, the responsibility to entertain the room with just my thoughts and my guitar.

As I type this, I am reminded of that scene at the end of Labyrinth when Sarah is alone in her room and suddenly all her puppet pals appear in the mirror. And I imagine that is what I will think of, as I am driving from a gig in Crapsville-on-Sea back to London at 3am on a blustery December night. All the Stoppers in my rearview Mirror, doing the box step.?

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical runs at the Apollo Theatre until Saturday 28th November.