Edinburgh Fringe

Until my trip up to Edinburgh with the family last week, I didn't really understand what the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was all about. I knew it as a stomping ground for up-and-coming comedians like Russel Kane and Daniel Sloss, and as a place for lesser-comedians to remain performing forever in front of tiny crowds, but I wasn't expecting the sheer abundance of energy, talent and diversity on show. It's not just comedians, not at all, in fact the best shows I saw were all leaning towards theatre, although humour is to be found in abundance.

Days are hectic - much more than the two full days we had there would have rapidly become too much - but so much fun. Most shows are an hour long, so it's possible to cram in five, or six if you're really well organised (not to mention tough), into a day. A good outline for the day is pick two things that really interest you, then spend the rest of the day spontaneously going to see whatever the endless leafleteers foist upon you. It might sound guaranteed to clog your day up with drivel, but such is the talent on show that the chances are you won't be too disappointed. There are bound to be bad shows, fortunately I only came across one awful one, but you will be surprised by the quality of the small companies.

Because I might as well, and because I've never reviews live performance before, I'm going to review the nine shows I saw.

The Spectacular Tales of Grinburrell - Southampton University Theatre Group

I'll freely admit, I only went to see this because my housemate is in it. However, after about fifteen minutes her presence was no longer the important thing: this is a really, really good show. It's a story about a theatre troupe, lead by the aging Mr. Grinburrell, a wheelchair-bound old man directing his last show, who has is performers act out a series of fairy tales, each of them wonderful in their own way, underpinned by the narrative of the performers themselves who fall in love, squabble, and compete for the role of troupe director.

It's energetic and charming, and the cast prove versatile in playing characters who in turn play other characters, something that always impresses me.  It's funny, engaging and at times quite poignant, and although it doesn't try to break new ground, Grinburrell is a whole-hearted success.


Damion Larkin - Cuddly Dreamer

My first spur-of-the-moment choice, and my trepidation wasn't eased as we made our way down increasingly dank flights of stone stairways into a room that felt like a dungeon. Damion Larkin is 42 years old, chubby, and his life has been on a steady decline since he was 19, and the entire show is based around those three facts. I'm not very good at revelling in other peoples' misery, so I found this show a bit of a struggle. He started by reeling of a litany of illnesses, injuries and problems that he suffers from - how many are genuine I don't know - and it only gets worse. Damion used to be a stockbroker which while boring, won him a good living, a Porsche and a beautiful girlfriend (to make sure we believed him he had a slideshow, a proper analogue one with actual slides, of said house, car and girlfriend), only to be made redundant, the big step in his decline.

There's self-depreciating humour, and then there's trying to turn a sob-story into comedy. It wasn't unfunny, but hearing a man declare that he wished he'd taken the decision to jump into the Tyne rather than end up where he is now is a bit much at 4pm on a Monday.

The Improvised Musical - No Shoes Theatre

Six actors, one hour, and absolutely no idea what they are going to be made to perform: that's the basis of this absolutely brilliant show. Before it starts, the audience is invited to give any random items they have to the cast to be used as props, to suggest names of songs, to suggest the name of the show, and to use flashback, spotlight and song cards at any point in the show, if it weren't already difficult enough.

It really is 100% improvised; the actors set no parameters themselves so there is no script, no pre-planned jokes, and no learnt song lyrics. It's astounding how good it is. For the performance I saw, they were challenged to make a song called 'Aaaaaaaa', basically just a strangled vowel sound, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in not having any idea how they could build that into a song. And yet they managed it; in one song about losing control of a spaceship (the play was titled My Rusty Spaceship) the chorus was crying out for direction, and just as the moment looked to have failed one girl reappropriated the 'aaaaaaa' into a shit we're going to crash! sound. The rest of the cast immediately caught up and began harmonising, and a moment of tension was just so wonderfully resolved the crowd immediately broke out into rapturous applause.

 There are of course bumps and imperfections, but frankly I think I'll give them that. Unless you have a heart of stone, the whole performance was so hard to fault. I can't recommend this enough, it was the best thing I saw at the festival, and going on reviews of the other shows, it seems like they somehow maintain this high level of quality.

Ali Cook - Pieces of Strange

Ali Cook's brand of magic is a modest one. None of the tricks were lavishly dressed up, or partiularly mind-blowing. However, it was solidly done, and he has a good rapport with the audience, but I was expecting something a bit more dramatic. The high-point for me was a trick that supposedly foiled Harry Houdini; he could, supposedly without movement, return a card inserted into the middle of the deck to the top. This he did, and I can't even hazard a guess at how. Then he turned the deck from blue-backed to red-, again without movement. Now, that was impressive.

I can't massively recommend this one; it was good without being consistently amazing; it was funny without being uproarious, but the overriding feeling was one of mild apathy.

You Last Breath - Curious Directives

Your Last Breath is a clever piece of serious theatre, there are no laughs here, tightly plotted with a storyline that flits between four interconnected storylines spanning 140 years that all centre on the icy Norwegian landscape. It's something like a theatrical David Mitchell novel in that respect. There's the English cartographer from 1896, charged with mapping the frozen reaches of Norway; there's the girl in 2011 who travels to Norway to bury her recently deceased father's ashes; in 2034 there's the young scientist who has perfected the process of deeply cooling a human body for medical reasons; and there's the downhill skier around who the story is hung, plunged into a river in a skiiing accident in 1991 she was nearly frozen to death, but miraculously made a full recovery.

The pacing is very well controlled, with none of the strands outstaying its welcome at any point, but nor do any feel under-developed. The skiier gets the least screen-time (what's the theatre version of screen time?) by far and isn't a narrative as such, but underpins the other storylines, popping up in the background occasionally, representing though dance the path of the downhill skier. All the actors are either very good or excellent, with the cartographer and Norwegian guide to our intrepid Englishwoman being the standout performers.

It was set design, props and music that elevate this show into really-rather-good territory. The music, performed live by an unseen musician, took the shape a melody intrinsically Norwegian (apparently) and varied it according to setting and timeline. Projections on to the back wall were also astutely planned, but best of all was a physical representation of the longitude and latitude lines that the cartographer would be using to plot his map; several strands were strung across the stage and were manipulated to form mountains and rivers, before being incorporated in a dance. They all felt like good ideas, and they helped the narrative without ever feeling gimmicky.

Nick Helm - Dream A Dream

GOOD AFTERNOON COCKSUCKERS!



...AND GENTLEMEN,

LET'S FUCK THIS PUPPY! LET'S KICK THIS IN THE DIIIICCCKKKKKKK!

Not the subtlest of starts, then. As far as I know, this is an entirely new brand of humour. Helm doesn't seem to have any jokes (though bizarrely he won the Best Joke award. I don't even remember heard that one(sorry for linking to the Daily Mail)), he just loudly berates his audience until they start laughing. Or walk out, as two people did. I found myself laughing out of fear. He has the mannerisms of a rock-star, all hoarse, raspy delivery through a loud sound-system, and had us fist-pumping along to a motivational song or something.

Once things simmered down a bit, he was actually less entertaining. There was an okay songs, and he made a very uncomfortable man lie on a mattress for half the show, eventually stripping down to his y-fronts and snuggling up with the unfortunate audience member. It was a small mattress, and Helm was very sweaty by this point. Probably the best part of his act was his two down-trodden backing musicians, who took the mountains of shit flung at them with cowed dignity.

With a good deal of largely forgettable material, this is an average show at best.

Theseus Is Dead - The Effort

Theseus Is Dead is the worst thing I've ever seen. Stuck with nothing to do at 6pm on our last day, we take a risk and get punched really hard in the part of the brain marked 'boredom'. It's got a good title, the flyer made it sound somewhat interesting, and it kept us warm for an hour. The positives stop there.

The plot has something to do with the rumoured death of Theseus, and the fallout that such an event caused, but it was incomprehensible. The entire cast spent the whole time in this increasingly unsettling state of hysteria; every line was delivered as if in the middle of a catastrophic nervous breakdown. They didn't calm down for the entire hour; I can't imagine how the characters could live constantly so highly-strung. The dialogue was the standard archaic babble. It aims for the highest heights but has absolutely no substance behind it. Many sentences sound cleverly worded, but make no mistake, it was always an unremarkable sentiment smothered in layer-upon-layer of fossilised bullshit.

I'm unfamiliar with Greek theatre, it may be at times excellent, but this does its reputation absolutely no good whatsoever.

The Pajama Men

What a show to end my stay on. I don't really know how to describe this. Two guys, dressed in pyjamas (pajamas - another new Americianism to annoy me) act out bizarre scenarios involving fantastical characters and anthropomorphic animals. These are two guys absolutely confident in their routine, it's so odd, and yet so brilliant. The two frequently started laughing during a sketch as if they couldn't themselves believe the ridiculousness of their show.

Look them up on YouTube. Bit of a lame way to end this post, but I don't know what to about them, other than that they are just sublimely entertaining.