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I saw 17 shows at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, which is slightly above average for me.
At Bedlam:
The Quest for the Divine Bottle: a tale of giants, monks and drunkenness, apparently based on the works of Rabelais. The standard "one character tells the story while the others act it out, taking on parts as required" gag. Entertainingly physical, and I liked the way they did the giants (actors standing on barrels, with others clustering about to move their "legs" when needed). The underlying message (it's sinful to shut yourself off monkishly from the world and your senses) struck me as rather trite, but then maybe I'd like it better if I knew more about Rabelais.
Galois de Gaulle: a biography of the (politically and scientifically) revolutionary mathematician Evariste Galois. Good stuff. By turns tragic and funny (I particularly liked the explanation of revolutionary history using sock puppets), and generally well-acted, though I wasn't entirely convinced by their portrayal of Galois as a snotty schoolboy and Cauchy as an authoritarian schoolmaster figure. They took the line that Galois' duel was staged by the anti-Royalist faction of which he was a member, as a spark with which to ignite the Revolution.
At C:
Xenu is loose! Cower puny humans as the Lord of the Galactic Federation prepares to rain atomic death once more upon your pitiful planet - The Musical!: a musical about the insanities of Scientology. What if they've got it all right, and Xenu awakes and tries to kill us all? Some great singing -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sebastienne in particular has a marvellous voice - a great costume for Xenu, and lots and lots of lasers, but overall I felt this was a decent attempt at staging a show that fundamentally wasn't up to much. There were a couple of good numbers ("Ron" and "Xenu is loose!", for instance) but nothing that really stood out. Also, while wormwood_pearl and I understood most of the references to Scientologist theology, a lot of the others in our group didn't seem to get it - while everything was explained, it was often explained very quickly.
Play on words: brilliant. Just brilliant. Two former members of a theatre company try to work out where it all went wrong via a sequence of flashbacks. The wordplay was constant, often with several threads of dialogue weaving in and out of each other at once, and (best of all) the denoument hinged on exactly the kind of word game that they'd been playing all along. Fantastic stuff. And they gave me a one-line part and allowed me to exit flyer their show :-)
The Prodigal Daughter: tale of child abuse and its consequences in the aftermath of the Korean War. Harrowing stuff, well-performed.
The Blues Brothers Banned: essentially a gig in a theatre, this was (as the name suggests) a Blues Brothers tribute band. They didn't just confine themselves to blues, though, playing such things as Mustang Sally and the Scrubs theme tune. A fantastic night out.
Fight workshop: a fight workshop with Felicity Steel from The Prodigal Daughter, who was a member of the Australian Society of Fight Choreographers (or some such). No previous knowledge required, but I learned a lot - for instance how to hit people with chairs, baseball bats, etc, and a different approach to using eye contact. And Flic was brilliant when she demonstrated stuff with us.
At Augustines:
Little Shop of Horrors: a version of the musical, with some added stuff involving the Men in Black. Some good singing, especially from Audrey 2, who was just wonderful. I liked the way they did the plant - green costume and lighting, and a change from sitting to standing to show the growth, rather than elaborate props.
This is an Insult to Beckett and Fo: Waiting for Godot and Accidental Death of an Anarchist compressed down to 20 minutes each and made even weirder. Occasionally fun, but overall I can't say I was too impressed.
Comedy and Cake: lighthearted sketch show with free tea and cake. Can't help feeling that I've seen the cast before somewhere... and did I mention the free cake?
At Rocket venues:
Bouncy Castle Macbeth: exactly what it says on the tin - Macbeth on a bouncy castle. Great concept, but IMHO they didn't do enough with it - you can't do high tragedy on a bouncy castle, and the joke that all the props and set were inflatable didn't last for an hour and a half. That said, the final fight scene between Macbeth and Macduff (where Macbeth abandoned his balloon sword for an inflatable tyrannosaur called Mr Bumpy) was hilarious.
Different Kettle of Fish: sketch revue show by Durham University's alternative comedy troupe, WitTank. I'd been meaning to see them for a couple of years on the strength of the company name alone, and I wasn't disappointed. Mostly very funny, though a couple of sketches weren't quite up to scratch, and they relied a bit too much on the talents of the shouty one who looked like Ron Weasley. And the meerkat sketch provided an object lesson inf how funny corpsing can be to the audience.
At the Pleasance:
TimeTripppers!: Another dose of surrealist comedy from Trippplicate, the crew behind 13 O'Clock and The Receptionists. Excellent, obviously, but I don't think it was quite up to the standards of their previous work. Or maybe I've just seen it too many times now. I do hope not.
At Baby Belly:
Rebecca Drysdale - One Woman in Pieces: Not least because I was in a foul mood at the start, this one-woman show took a while to warm up. The idea was that by seeing someone in lots of different situations, you build up a more accurate picture of them: in practice, this meant a sequence of monologues and songs that on the surface had nothing to do with each other, and it took me a while to get it (plus the monologues were mostly a lot better than the music bits). But once it did, I loved it, and by the end I had a huge smile on my face. Interesting, also, to hear her experiences on the different receptions she's had in the US and the UK: for instance, her September 11th material is still apparently taboo in the US (and particularly New York, obviously), whereas in the UK it's no problem. This rather undermined the following bit about "You laughed at rape! You laughed at jokes about Hitler in front of a gay Jew! And yet I can't make jokes about 9/11?". Go and see this woman if you can.
At Sweet ECA:
The Physicists: In a madhouse, a man who thinks he's Albert Einstein has just killed his nurse. Oddly enough, a man who thinks he's Isaac Newton killed his nurse in the same madhouse not three months ago... I won't give away the twist, but let's say that it was an interesting take on the ethics of scientific discovery. Good central performances (particularly from the other physicist, Mobius), but some of the supporting characters were a bit wooden.
At some random hotel way out in the middle of nowhere:
Not the Crystal Maze: improv comedy loosely based on the TV show The Crystal Maze by Cambridge University's improv group, ICE (performing here as Triple Point Comedy). Very funny, and I'd be saying that even if they weren't my friends.
At random pubs way out in the middle of nowhere:
The Doctor Who comedy gig: a charity gig to raise money for David Tennant's mum's cancer hospice. A load of comedians came out to tell their best Doctor Who-related material, about half of which went completely over my head. Mitch Benn and Toby Hadoke (of Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf fame) were particularly good. They raised over £1200, though I think the guy who paid £110 for an autographed David Tennant action figure might have had a rather nasty moment the next morning...
Jay Foreman: comic songs from the guy who wrote the "Moon Chavs" song with whichbuffalo_gill has been regaling us for the last year. Nice to hear that song in context, and to hear the words (and not just the choruses) to some of his other songs, like The Procrastinator and Stealing Food. Free, and highly recommended. And check out his website.
I think that's it...
At Bedlam:
The Quest for the Divine Bottle: a tale of giants, monks and drunkenness, apparently based on the works of Rabelais. The standard "one character tells the story while the others act it out, taking on parts as required" gag. Entertainingly physical, and I liked the way they did the giants (actors standing on barrels, with others clustering about to move their "legs" when needed). The underlying message (it's sinful to shut yourself off monkishly from the world and your senses) struck me as rather trite, but then maybe I'd like it better if I knew more about Rabelais.
Galois de Gaulle: a biography of the (politically and scientifically) revolutionary mathematician Evariste Galois. Good stuff. By turns tragic and funny (I particularly liked the explanation of revolutionary history using sock puppets), and generally well-acted, though I wasn't entirely convinced by their portrayal of Galois as a snotty schoolboy and Cauchy as an authoritarian schoolmaster figure. They took the line that Galois' duel was staged by the anti-Royalist faction of which he was a member, as a spark with which to ignite the Revolution.
At C:
Xenu is loose! Cower puny humans as the Lord of the Galactic Federation prepares to rain atomic death once more upon your pitiful planet - The Musical!: a musical about the insanities of Scientology. What if they've got it all right, and Xenu awakes and tries to kill us all? Some great singing -
sebastienne in particular has a marvellous voice - a great costume for Xenu, and lots and lots of lasers, but overall I felt this was a decent attempt at staging a show that fundamentally wasn't up to much. There were a couple of good numbers ("Ron" and "Xenu is loose!", for instance) but nothing that really stood out. Also, while wormwood_pearl and I understood most of the references to Scientologist theology, a lot of the others in our group didn't seem to get it - while everything was explained, it was often explained very quickly.Play on words: brilliant. Just brilliant. Two former members of a theatre company try to work out where it all went wrong via a sequence of flashbacks. The wordplay was constant, often with several threads of dialogue weaving in and out of each other at once, and (best of all) the denoument hinged on exactly the kind of word game that they'd been playing all along. Fantastic stuff. And they gave me a one-line part and allowed me to exit flyer their show :-)
The Prodigal Daughter: tale of child abuse and its consequences in the aftermath of the Korean War. Harrowing stuff, well-performed.
The Blues Brothers Banned: essentially a gig in a theatre, this was (as the name suggests) a Blues Brothers tribute band. They didn't just confine themselves to blues, though, playing such things as Mustang Sally and the Scrubs theme tune. A fantastic night out.
Fight workshop: a fight workshop with Felicity Steel from The Prodigal Daughter, who was a member of the Australian Society of Fight Choreographers (or some such). No previous knowledge required, but I learned a lot - for instance how to hit people with chairs, baseball bats, etc, and a different approach to using eye contact. And Flic was brilliant when she demonstrated stuff with us.
At Augustines:
Little Shop of Horrors: a version of the musical, with some added stuff involving the Men in Black. Some good singing, especially from Audrey 2, who was just wonderful. I liked the way they did the plant - green costume and lighting, and a change from sitting to standing to show the growth, rather than elaborate props.
This is an Insult to Beckett and Fo: Waiting for Godot and Accidental Death of an Anarchist compressed down to 20 minutes each and made even weirder. Occasionally fun, but overall I can't say I was too impressed.
Comedy and Cake: lighthearted sketch show with free tea and cake. Can't help feeling that I've seen the cast before somewhere... and did I mention the free cake?
At Rocket venues:
Bouncy Castle Macbeth: exactly what it says on the tin - Macbeth on a bouncy castle. Great concept, but IMHO they didn't do enough with it - you can't do high tragedy on a bouncy castle, and the joke that all the props and set were inflatable didn't last for an hour and a half. That said, the final fight scene between Macbeth and Macduff (where Macbeth abandoned his balloon sword for an inflatable tyrannosaur called Mr Bumpy) was hilarious.
Different Kettle of Fish: sketch revue show by Durham University's alternative comedy troupe, WitTank. I'd been meaning to see them for a couple of years on the strength of the company name alone, and I wasn't disappointed. Mostly very funny, though a couple of sketches weren't quite up to scratch, and they relied a bit too much on the talents of the shouty one who looked like Ron Weasley. And the meerkat sketch provided an object lesson inf how funny corpsing can be to the audience.
At the Pleasance:
TimeTripppers!: Another dose of surrealist comedy from Trippplicate, the crew behind 13 O'Clock and The Receptionists. Excellent, obviously, but I don't think it was quite up to the standards of their previous work. Or maybe I've just seen it too many times now. I do hope not.
At Baby Belly:
Rebecca Drysdale - One Woman in Pieces: Not least because I was in a foul mood at the start, this one-woman show took a while to warm up. The idea was that by seeing someone in lots of different situations, you build up a more accurate picture of them: in practice, this meant a sequence of monologues and songs that on the surface had nothing to do with each other, and it took me a while to get it (plus the monologues were mostly a lot better than the music bits). But once it did, I loved it, and by the end I had a huge smile on my face. Interesting, also, to hear her experiences on the different receptions she's had in the US and the UK: for instance, her September 11th material is still apparently taboo in the US (and particularly New York, obviously), whereas in the UK it's no problem. This rather undermined the following bit about "You laughed at rape! You laughed at jokes about Hitler in front of a gay Jew! And yet I can't make jokes about 9/11?". Go and see this woman if you can.
At Sweet ECA:
The Physicists: In a madhouse, a man who thinks he's Albert Einstein has just killed his nurse. Oddly enough, a man who thinks he's Isaac Newton killed his nurse in the same madhouse not three months ago... I won't give away the twist, but let's say that it was an interesting take on the ethics of scientific discovery. Good central performances (particularly from the other physicist, Mobius), but some of the supporting characters were a bit wooden.
At some random hotel way out in the middle of nowhere:
Not the Crystal Maze: improv comedy loosely based on the TV show The Crystal Maze by Cambridge University's improv group, ICE (performing here as Triple Point Comedy). Very funny, and I'd be saying that even if they weren't my friends.
At random pubs way out in the middle of nowhere:
The Doctor Who comedy gig: a charity gig to raise money for David Tennant's mum's cancer hospice. A load of comedians came out to tell their best Doctor Who-related material, about half of which went completely over my head. Mitch Benn and Toby Hadoke (of Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf fame) were particularly good. They raised over £1200, though I think the guy who paid £110 for an autographed David Tennant action figure might have had a rather nasty moment the next morning...
Jay Foreman: comic songs from the guy who wrote the "Moon Chavs" song with which
buffalo_gill has been regaling us for the last year. Nice to hear that song in context, and to hear the words (and not just the choruses) to some of his other songs, like The Procrastinator and Stealing Food. Free, and highly recommended. And check out his website.I think that's it...
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Also, I still have your sunglasses - what should I do with them? Post them?
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Sunglasses - if you think you can pack them up so they won't get broken in the post, please send them to me. I'll email you my address. Actually, there should be a parcel containing my suit jacket heading up this way from Cambridge at some point, so you could include them in that.
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