Edinburgh Fringe Day 18 - Just for Lolz

(I am aware this is very very late and we are way past Day 18 of the Fringe, for which I humbly apologise...)

Although I'm not trying to fish for sympathy (....OK, yes I am. I can sense I'm probably not getting much after waxing lyrical about the amazing-ness of the Fringe...), this month has not been an easy one. In between all the shows I've been writing about, I have of course been co-editing EFR - and to be honest it's been as stressful as it has been fun. So I figured I need a good laugh every now and then to make the crises fade away. And the Fringe isn't short on comedy shows, although not all of them necessarily manage to provide "a good laugh". So, once again, here's a snapshot of my comedic experiences at the Fringe so far (the ones I witnessed on stage. Not the ones which involve me trying to be cool in front of actors, or going up and down in a hotel lift trying to find a show, or carrying a rucksack packed with whole chickens back to the house. Although I will admit all these things are pretty laughable in their own way.)

Anyway. First up, the Edinburgh Revue - comfortably at home in their own city, right? Well, maybe if they'd been allowed a better venue. The Banshee Labyrinth is not exactly designed for sketch comedy, and quite honestly the background music they play in that place is terrifying, and didn't wash away my initial concern at the name of the building I'd decided to venture into. Yet the Revue don't deserve a scary venue - they really do seem like lovely people and had a lot of fun with their show, throwing themselves into the silliness. As always, some sketches worked better than others, but they started strong with a quick and hilarious history of Edinburgh; with a series of tableaux representing everything from war and rebellion to Harry Potter and Greyfriars Bobby, they had me giggling from the off - a good sign. Beyond this, Adam Todd was consistently strong and I particularly enjoyed his portrayal of Hamlet at the job centre. The gameshow in which a couple have to 'prove their love' also guarantees a lot of laughs throughout, and didn't weaken or lose focus as some other sketches sadly did. Clarisse Loughrey and Katia Kvinge particularly shone in a wide variety of roles, but the whole troupe were likeable purely on the basis of their own enjoyment and enthusiasm. The venue leaves very little space for movement and no option for blackouts between sketches, but in general the Revue worked with these limitations with success. Sometimes the odd awkward laugh-less moment punctuated the fun, and the show is rather rough around the edges. But overall, a relaxed and enjoyable show.

Moving from the back room of the blood-curdling Banshee Labyrinth (it wasn't that bad - I just like alliteration) to the Pleasance Courtyard, and a prize of £2500. Or should that be £25,000? Or maybe £2.5 million? With Mark Watson in charge of proceedings, who knows? Yes, the Chortle Student Comedy Awards 2012. Six pounds for a night of eight of the best up-and-coming comedians, plus Mark Watson - definitely not a bad deal! And I got plenty of laughs for my money. Footlights stalwart Pierre Novellie was flying the flag for Cambridge and got the evening off to a great start: I'd heard a lot of the material before, but that didn't stop me enjoying it immensely and giggling away at his parodying of bio-yoghurt adverts and affectionate mockery of the Isle of Man. Elsewhere Kwame Asante, Hari Sriskantha and David Elms all tickled my funny bone, and huge credit should go to Jonny Pelham for having the audience in full-on hysterics for a good few minutes simply with the words "She died". One act, Johnny F Monotone (aka Sebastian Bloomfield) quite honestly left me baffled rather than amused, but I'll accept that it simply wasn't my kind of humour, and it seemed that others around me enjoyed the set. In the end it was Kwame Asante who took the big prize and - putting aside my Cantabrigian loyalty - I was pretty satisfied by that result: he's clearly a brilliantly talented comedian and a seemed a gracious and humbled victor. Hopefully we'll be seeing much more of this lot in the years to come, and I'll be a bit smug to say I saw and rated them all before they hit the bigtime.

Another chance to spot the rising stars came at the Footlights Free Show: I've been twice now (the beauty of the Free Fringe) and if you've been paying attention you might have read what I wrote about it the other day.... My second visit repeated some of the same acts as my first, but also some new ones. Again, I'd seen a lot of Ahir Shah's set before in Cambridge so probably didn't appreciate it as much as the rest of the crowd, but it went down well. For me the show was made by headliner Nish Kumar, who definitely deserves the label of "rising star" which TimeOut gave to him. His quips and anecdotes lifted my spirits from the symptoms of Fringe fatigue, and sent me back out into the sunshine with a broad grin on my face. Frequent performers at the Footlights' show are the three-man sketch troupe of Rory & Tim (yes, three man...) who are also well worth a watch - details, in another shameless plug, are here: http://edfringereview.com/r/UCDeIuJAT4ScYD6pXDx6yg

I'd definitely recommend them if you've got a free hour; but of course, all my comments on this comedy may be totally different to your own thoughts. This was obvious from the reviews which emerged of this year's offering from the Oxford Revue, 'Prattle Royale'. Now, I really wanted to like this show. I really did, and I went in there putting all my latent distrust of Oxford aside (sorry, it's the Cambridge in me...) and prepared to have a good time. Yet the show really struggled to make me laugh - my review here justifies why: http://edfringereview.com/r/UBkdvLdcRSqP1ieWXDx6yg. However, another certain high profile reviewing body gave the show five stars, raving about its hilarity. Were we at the same show? Had they drastically rewritten the script? Was one of us blind or deaf? Or - most likely - doesn't this just show the subjectivity that is inherent to reviewing, and particularly reviewing comedy: a sense of humour is such a particularly personal trait that it's even harder to provide the opinion of the masses than usual. I don't think this devalues the opinions of our critics in any way: I still firmly believe that critics do a fantastic job in providing feedback for shows and audience and creating conversation and debate about cultural events and performances. Yet performers who are unhappy with a bad review should always remember that there is probably someone in the audience who totally disagreed and was loving it. It just happens this wasn't the person whose job is it to publicly publish their opinion.

As a final note for today, I have a confession to make: I've become an Austentatious-aholic. After my fourth visit to the show, I haven't yet tired of it - the funniest thing I've seen here, without a doubt.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 12 - Variety is the spice of the Fringe

There are far far far too many shows on at the Fringe to talk in detail about everything I’ve seen – Austentatious became an exception, because…well, read the review and you’ll understand – so this is a quick-march-review-spectacular through my last few days of theatregoing. I have truly experienced the variety of the Fringe recently, from puppets to Footlights, from drag queens and burlesque to Mozart, from packed-out theatres to the back room of a tiny pub.

I’ll start with the burlesque. It was really an accident that I ended up at Briefs, a troupe of male burlesque performers from Australia. We set out to see Showstoppers, the improvised musical (by the way, we did see it another night – it is INCREDIBLE and I still can’t believe they improvised the whole thing) but, on finding it was sold out, took a punt on this “beef-caked and disorderly” Antipodean show on the advice of a charming man at the Underbelly box office. I don’t regret it – Briefs was one of the most hilarious evenings I’ve ever been witness to. Unfortunately I don’t have a record of cast names anywhere, but our brilliant compère not only had a range of fabulous outfits, but also kept the audience laughing throughout the show with a combination of camp flamboyance and wickedly blunt humour. The acts ranged from hilarious – a truly bizarre lapdance – to stunningly impressive, notably the aerial silks and rope routines. Not for the faint-hearted, but also don’t be put off by the ‘burlesque’ tagline if it makes you nervous: there really is very little here that is gratuitous or would make anyone uncomfortable. Rather it is an evening of impressive circus/cabaret/vaudeville acts combined with brashness, occasional crudeness, flamboyance and straightforward hilarity.

At the other end of the spectrum, one lunchtime I made my way down to The White Horse on Cannongate to see Dating George Orwell, a one-woman performance playing as part of the Free Fringe. This show really epitomised the charm and hidden delights of the Free Fringe; ushered through the tiny pub into a small, cosy back room – more English country pub than theatre venue – I was at first slightly perturbed by the intimacy of the venue – was this just going to be horrendously awkward? In fact, I very much enjoyed the show that followed. Kelly Jones (as lonely bookworm and birthday girl Pauline Duffy) is in turn adorable, pitiable, funny and perplexing as she relates her coming-of-age years and the combination of her love of literature with her sexual awakening. A strange concept perhaps, but utterly and surprisingly entertaining.

Elsewhere: the Footlights’ daily stand-up show is a cheap (in fact, free if you’re stingy and don’t donate anything at the end…) alternative to their tour show. In fact, having seen these performers on many occasions, I feel that the strength of this year’s Footlights lies in stand-up rather than sketches, so here is a great opportunity to see some of their best alongside some guests. My favourite new discovery from this show was the exquisitely rib-tickling musical comedy of Emerald Paston who closed the show and sent me on my way giggling appreciatively. For something more traditional, a modernised version of Mozart’s The Impresario finished yesterday (sorry, I meant to write this up sooner…) at Paradise in Augustine’s but was well worth a watch: even if you’re not into opera, you can’t help but be impressed by this über-talented cast. If you didn’t go, you missed out.

However my biggest MUST-SEE (capitalised because I can’t emphasise enough how much you should see it) is now The Girl With No Heart at Bedlam Theatre. I can’t thank the programmers of Bedlam enough this year, as their whole schedule for the festival is incredible, but this show in particular really is sensationally beautiful. I can’t sum it up in a couple of lines, so I’ll leave that review for another time…

Edinburgh Fringe Day 1 - Scottish Accents, Getting Lost, The Royal Mile, and 'I Am, I Am'

So, after a train journey of immense excitement and rising panic, I've arrived at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe! I'm a Fringe virgin so these next few posts are as much about reviewing my Fringe experience - and shamelessly promoting the website I'm working for, edfringereview.com (plug no. 1) - as reviewing the shows I see here.

The first evening brought immediate problems. Now, I have a very good friend who is Scottish. I've been to Scotland before. I figured I could handle the accent. Oh no. A phone call from a Tesco delivery man ranked in difficulty levels approximately equally with one of my finals. Confusion ensued. Luckily, confusion was solved mainly through me pretending to understand what he was saying, adding the odd "Yes" and "Sure" into the conversation and then guessing afterwards what we'd actually been talking about. This is not meant disrespectfully in any way - I'm 100% sure it was my own incompetence - but it was hardly an encouraging start to a month in Scotland.

Meanwhile, it turns out one day trip to Edinburgh at the age of 8 is definitely not enough to enable me to know my way around. My first trip into the city centre the following day therefore brought another milestone: the first time I got lost in Edinburgh. I still don't know where The Voodoo Rooms are, but I had "fun" negotiating roadworks and dead-ends and alleys that lead nowhere... (Seriously, where ARE they?! If anyone knows, please let me know!) Another good start. The 'magic' of the Fringe had so far eluded me; up to this point I'd failed to understand the natives, failed to find one venue, found another whose entire system had crashed five minutes into the festival, and generally got pretty hot and bothered and unprofessional-looking.

But then... then I finally emerged onto the Royal Mile. And Toto, we were not in Kansas any more. We were in bizarre, absurd, heavenly theatre land. All niggling problems aside, I'm in love with the Fringe already. A magician swallowing a balloon, a girl group singing Lady Gaga, a couple of drag queens tottering past in stacked high heels, a pair of Victorian gentlemen giving me a flyer... even some free sweets! Not to mention the more traditional shows like As You Like It or Bugsy Malone. This is my kind of thing - I'm already dreading the day I have to leave.

And so my Fringe adventure kicked off for real. After an afternoon of flyer-collecting and e-mailing (So. Many. Emails.), the night brought around my first taste of a show. I was familiar with the comedy of I Am, I Am stars Lowell Belfield and Harry Michell from their work with the Cambridge Footlights, but this was my first taste of their musical comedy. The two performers worked perfectly as a duo, harmonious in both their singing and their not-at-all staged (ahem) conversation between numbers. Playing on awkward social situations with girls and traumatic school experiences is perhaps not an original or difficult line of comedy, but these guys brought their own fresh sense of fun, wit, charm and occasional grossness to the material. The performance wasn't without its faults - you could tell this was a preview - but the audience lapped it up and even the unsuccessful moments were dealt with in a funny and unembarrassed way. Lowell melted the audience's hearts by milking his "adorable" qualities, but it was Harry Michell who gave me my own personal serenade - however "platonically" it was intended. Ah well, I still felt special. The song of the night for me however was their ditty based around puns on London Tube stops, which had the whole audience in fits of giggles.

So, the improv was sharp, the patter with the audience was charming, the atmosphere was fun: and we forgave them for all the small mistakes. The boys were unaware they were carrying the pressure of setting the standard for me as far as Fringe productions go - but if I'm going on this show, I'm going to have a great Fringe!

And so I go back to the emails....