Imagine if you not only worked with the same four friends you met at university, but also shared a flat with them.

That nightmarish vision is real for the members of The Noise Next Door – but it is also essential to their craft as the five-strong improv group has to ensure they are always in sync with each other.

“It’s nice to get a bit of space sometimes,” admits Charlie Granville from the Shoreham-based group. “But we all get on so well. Being with each other makes it work.”

The Noise Next Door rose out of a group of student friends at the University Of Kent at Canterbury, where the members were studying a variety of drama-related subjects including directing, stand-up, film and contemporary performance.

The quintet, made up of former Brighton College students Charlie and Samuel Pacelli, with Thomas Livingstone, Thomas Houghton and Matthew Grant, has been working together professionally for about a year, following four years performing at uni.

“Initially we were a group of 13 to 14 members,” says Charlie. “Before we ended university five of us decided we wanted to work together and began to look at carrying on professionally.”

That first year has seen them play their first Edinburgh Festival Fringe, share bills with Harry Hill, Ed Byrne and Lucy Porter and perform in LA at the Fifth Annual Fracas! Improv Festival.

“There were some names from Hollywood there who taught us classes in improv,” says Charlie. “Will Ferrell films, and movies like Superbad all originated from improv.

A lot of places in America have improv sports, with a referee rather than a host.”

It is a world away from the UK’s first real taste of improv comedy, which came in the form of Channel Four’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? and made stars of Greg Proops, Tony Slattery and Clive Anderson.

“We are trying to move as far from Whose Line as we can,” says Charlie. “It was a huge influence, but we do our own games. We have about 150 different games and we play them according to the suggestions we get from the crowd.

“The show belongs to the audience, it is all about what the audience wants to do.”

Among the games is one where the group make up a boy band style song about an audience member’s likes and dislikes, as well as a game that involves the whole crowd.

The Noise Next Door is now working on their follow-up Edinburgh show – holding two four-hour rehearsals a week on top of their live shows – but there is plenty coming up between then and now.

They’re heading back to the US, to Indiana to perform and teach classes in improv and confidence building. And as well as their regular monthly night at The Brunswick in Hove, which is augmented by special guest comics, and appearances at The Ropetackle Centre in Shoreham, they are performing regularly at Monkey Business in Camden.

Over the next few months they also have bookings coming up at festivals in Oxford, Bath, Canterbury and the Brighton Festival Fringe.

That noise next door is becoming a deafening din.

Wednesday’s show at The Brunswick also features award-winning comics Broderick Chow, winner of the 2008 Stand Up And Coming competition, and 2006 Writers Guild best newcomer Simon Brodkin as lovable yob Lee Nelson.

  • Feb 21: Starts 8pm, tickets £7/£5. Call 07786 984900 Feb 25: Starts 8pm, tickets £8/£6. Call 01273 733984