If you saw the title ‘Improv RPG Presents: Call of Cthulhu’ and thought, “I am the perfect audience for this,” you’re probably right, and the only other thing you need to know about the show is that it’s ridiculously entertaining and you should probably buy tickets now.

If, however, the title leaves you thinking “I understood some of those words, but together they make no sense”, I shall explain.

‘Improv’ simply means that they’re making it up as they go along, with some input from the audience. An RPG is a role-playing game such as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), itself a form of improv. Call of Cthulhu is another popular RPG, but one based not on the works of Tolkien and his innumerable imitators, but on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, an incredibly influential (and disturbingly racist) horror writer who created an entire mythology of evil Elder Gods, their minions and cultists.

The best known is Cthulhu, a towering octopus-headed being who fortunately spends his time asleep in sunken R’lyeh. A glimpse of Cthulhu, the non-Euclidean geometry of the “nightmare corpse-city” R’lyeh, or even some of the equally unpronounceable lesser evils sprung from Lovecraft’s imagination, is enough to drive a person mad.

Played straight, a game of Call of Cthulhu is like being in a well-made horror movie. Perhaps wisely, while the show is set in a haunted radio station, the Improv RPG team has adapted the disturbing insanity-inducing aspects of a Call of Cthulhu game into randomized challenges for their talented performers, compelling them to spontaneously speak in rhyming couplets, lipograms, or other comedic forms. The result is hilarious, a sort of “Thank the Elder Gods You’re Here.”

Beyond that, I can’t tell you exactly what to expect because the story continues over three nights, each of which is guaranteed to be different. But even if you’ve never read any Lovecraft, you can certainly expect to be entertained.