Smokingboot

With a trio of one person shows in bijoux studios. The first was Five Mistakes That Changed History, which we expected to be some kind of satire; turned out to be a story-telling gig doing exactly what it said. We were treated to five little known stories out of history told by an enthusiastic nerd with slides, just perfect for an afternoon show. Genial, interesting, an easy 7/10.

Next was Heavenly Baba, a comedy show based on a man's childhood as an American Muslim, growing up with his eccentric father etc. Personally, I detest any show that leans hard on representation to justify it. I will never say that a show has merit because a [insert minority] person made it; smacks of condescension. Without qualification this was the best stand up comedy I have ever seen on stage. Yes, poignant, yes, authentic, principally extremely funny. Rated right up there between Shamilton and Fly You Fools: 9.6/10

Comedy Samurai followed on the same stage an hour and a half after HB. It was a much more standard stand up routine and though shrewd and excellently observed, suffered by comparison. My companions enjoyed it, I thought it was OK. 6.6 /10.

Time to go home then, making our way to the train station while folk tumbled out of pubs and venues, streets thronging. All that colour, all that music! Farewell Fringe, you've been amazing, but sometime in the next 48 hours I've got to sleep.

These past few days have been fun, we have laughed a lot courtesy of Friend and Friend's son and son's girlfriend visiting. Friend has been most excellent, son and son's girlfriend have been lovely, the Fringe has been cracking. It's in the heart that the sombre note sounds. We brought Ralik's ashes home the day before yesterday. When I allow myself to admit that it hurts I realise that actually everything hurts. Still, we can smile and do, think and and move. Fringing with Friends is very healing.

We have a few shows yet to see, but so far it's been pretty amazing. I want to list everything here, and realise I'm very tired. This might wake me up.

Frisky's Reshuffle
The story behind this was that Friend's family watched Frisky's videos for years. Friend had bought these tickets as a surprise for his son. It was an incredible show, the basic idea is that Frisky (Laura Corcoran) sings well known songs in styles suggested by the audience. Have you really lived until you've heard the Death Metal version of Like A Virgin? She has a phenomenal voice, interacted with the audience beautifully, left everyone feeling wonderful. I cannot imagine anything she could do to make this show better. 10/10.

Shamilton!
Improvised Hip Hop Musical based on a historical character of the audience's choosing. On our night it was Winnie The Pooh. Ridiculous, insane, magnificent, 9/10.


Fly You Fools!
Parody of the movie The Lord of the Rings and as such requires an audience familiar with the film for it to work. Given that, it's utterly brilliant and near damn perfect. No surprise that it's a break out success. 10/10.


Mythos Ragnarok
We've seen this before but our guests were new to it. Mythos Ragnarok retells Norse myths via the medium of wrestling. It's moved to a big top venue where the stage is a ring surrounded by three quarter seating, much better than proscenium arch for this show. They're wrestlers rather than actors so no oscars are likely, but given that proviso my only criticisms are that they need to sort out their mikes/sound system for individual one-liners, and some could use different techniques, for example the Midgard Serpent could have used fighting forms that include constriction. But maybe I'm getting a bit UFC. None of this mattered. We all loved it, the audience cheering, booing, shouting advice, leaping up and down in their seats. Fab Viking panto. 8.9/10

Shit-Faced Shakespeare
Saw this before though most of our guests had not. Last year it was Much Ado About Nothing, this year it was A Midsummer Nights Dream. The premis is that a truncated version of a Shakespeare play is put on, but with a twist; one of the actors has been drinking for the past four hours. The idea is to see 'how fast the wheels come off this thing,' to quote the compere from not only this years performance but last years too. And there lies the problem. A second viewing, even with a different play shows the formula and repetitions, and to add to it, in last years Much Ado, the actors tried (or pretented to try) to play it straight. Here it was all a bit crazy straight off the bat which dilutes the joke. Still, most loved it and it was well done, leaving me with the sense that it's a must-see but only once. 7.8/10

James Phelan 'The Man Who Was Magic.'
Nicely done though if he's going to do up close work needing a camera, an audience member helping him out is not the way. Also, and this is just a personal preference, card tricks bore me to bits. Yes, they are a magician's staple but I just switch off. Much more absorbing was the mind reading stuff. This was extremely impressive. JP swears he doesn't use stooges and as far as we can tell, that's true. Two members of our group got involved in his routine, and they are still completely baffled as to how he guessed their words and numbers. Interesting. 7.9/10

The Black Blues Brothers
A tumbling show full of charm, this Kenyan troupe was featured in Time Out and The Times, and for sure, I'd call them one to watch. Mistakes were made in the routine but the big seller was the energy and smiles, the amazing feelgood factor and sheer awe at some stunning acrobatics. Solid 8/10.

Knight Knight
Controversy! This show was loved by most of us and detested by one. It's comedy based around a knight's love for his horse, and I thought it was excellent. Anyone who enjoyed The Fast Show might well appreciate the comedy of repetition shown here. But for those who don't, as the dissenter said, 'it's just lazy writing.' This production was a time filler between two shows previously booked, so we had to leave 10 minutes before the end. We told this to the door staff and sat at the back to cause least disturbance when we left. But I am going to go back and finish it because it was easily the most surprising and fresh take I saw this year. R tells me he would sooner poke both his eyes eyes out with a spoon than sit through it again. Eh, he's wrong and I'll go by myself. I can't give Knight Knight a rating til I've seen the whole thing, but I'm already inclined towards the upper 8s.

Space Hippo
If only there had been controversy around this, but alas, it was given a universal thumbs down by our group, with one of our friends falling asleep half way through it, and another giving it 2/10, lowest score for any show we've seen together. Space Hippo is a shadow puppet show, based around the premis of a hippo being shot into space. It's got really great ideas in it surrounded by a lot of sag, far too long. Of all the shows we have seen, it's the only one in which I checked the time. There's a great half hour here somewhere but it needs an editor of metal to chop and shape it into a proper show. I give it one extra point for the unique creation it could be. 5/10.

We couldn't do a damn thing on Sunday. I turned into an old lady with a purring cat cuddled in my arms. We were all very tired. I still am. But friend was charmed enough with the Fringe to want to stay a day longer, so Monday was our last foray.

Shake It Up Shakespeare gave us an improv creation based on taking names, lines, and ideas from the audience and turning them into a Shakespearean play on the spot with iambic pentameter and all. The venue was a small and distinctly non soundproof stage with a bare raised platform and no wings. Six performers waited, three on each side, and just ploughed in to create and perform. This of necessity meant there were longeurs and fumblings now and then, but these were few. Mainly the results were fun precisely because they were raw. Comparisons to Murder She Didn't Write were inevitable. That production was bigger, much more controlled and therefore much more polished, different rather than better. It was possible to watch both without feeling one was treading old ground. Everything was fresh.

Then there was The Last Gun, a personal favourite of mine this year. The Last Gun is described as a 'Comedy Fest Award-nominated sketch-comedy mockumentary [...] Saddle up for a surreal ride through a definitely real film that no one seems to remember ...' But there's so much more to it. Five minutes in I wasn't sure. 10 minutes in I was captivated. The word 'surreal' gets used too often as code for stuff that gets laughed at in uncertainty. This is surreal but not trying to baffle us into approval. It's creative, clever, warm, engaged with the audience, and extremely funny. We loved it. I'll look out for more of Will BF's stuff if I can.

Milton Jones in Ha!Milton was interesting. We started this Fringe with a show about old style stand up comedians who focused on crafted jokes with punchlines and here he was delivering one-liners, a routine generally based on the stuff that's made him such a hit on Mock The Week, i.e clever puns and word work. He was OK, not laugh out loud but OK. Compared to the other shows he seemed a bit tired. I wondered if an hour of his particular style was just too much, but then right at the end he asked the audience to suggest a couple of subjects and they did. His responses to these were fast thinking and bright, much more so than his scripted material. Had he done an hour of these, he would have set the Fringe on fire.

Our guest has gone home this morning, and I am exhausted. We've had a great time, and theoretically there are a couple of shows I would like to go see, but...eh, no. How this can be when all I've done is wander the city with chums in search of entertainment? Time for a long bath and sleep.

Let's say that yesterday was our Physical Arts day at the Fringe. It was memorable.

The first thing we watched was in the Udderbelly, an enormous marquee shaped like an upside down purple cow. Incredibly, its positioning in George Square is discreetly hidden by, er, some trees and the rest of George Square. I still have no idea how that works but it does. It was the perfect venue for Barbaren Barbies, A Wild Woman Circus, which hails from Berlin. This is a surreal circus skills act with a lot of buffoonery*, or, to quote B 'wtf was that?' R christened it Monty Python's Flying Women. We all loved the circus skills - a revelation for me as I thought watching two Cirque du Soleil nights had used up my lifetime's big top tolerance - but I had a small caveat; a couple of the sketches could be tightened. Watching it I thought it was a show in development. Turns out I was totally wrong, the Wild Woman Circus has been on tour for a couple of years though this is their first time at the Fringe.

Chokeslam was a quick choice to fill a gap in the day. This was in the Crate which is pretty much two portacabins nailed together, a perfect venue for this intimate one-woman piece. Written by Tegan Verheul, it's about the history of pro-wrestling and the age of attitude, as well as some issues of her own, or to put it in her own words:

'Chokeslam started as a drama school assignment when I was at RCSSD in 2022. We were told to write a monologue about something we're passionate about, so I picked wrestling. [...] People need to know what 'kayfabe' means and why The Undertaker and Mankind's iconic Hell in a Cell match at King of the Ring 1998 is actually a deeply moving piece of performance art that touches on some universal truths. Then I wove in some awkward personal stuff about a devastating breakup because I'm a narcissist.'

She can write, she can perform, she's funny, she's exuberant, she's poignant,Chokeslam is very successful. It was telling that we were still discussing it at 1 am this morning.

Then came Mythos; Ragnarok, the show we were doomed to miss a couple of years back when Mallorys Camera came to visit. That night the lighting rig broke pre-show and the audience were kept waiting on the stairs for so long that time was ticking away for the last train. We had to decamp and after getting a bit mucked about by front of house, I wrote one of the most umbrage-heavy letters of my life demanding refunds. It was the kind of letter to push a Guardianista headlong into those deep wells of guilt found at the bottom of every pint glass in a student union bar. We got the cash back, no problem.

This time Mythos Ragnarok was held in the Gordon Aikman theatre, a very different venue where it turns out that Norse myths are actively enhanced if told through the medium of professional wrestling. Thanks to Tegan I was able to identify an actual chokeslam when I saw one but mostly I spent my time cheering, booing, and oohing as bodies hit the mat. Not always the greatest acting or wrestling but definitely immense fun, my kind of panto, something I could watch every year.


*I would say 'clowning' but that gives an impression of oversized boots and flowers that squirt water. Whatever this was, it was not that.

Stand ups:

Mark Thomas: brilliant though like most political comedians,possibly too topical to age well. Proper close-to-the-audience comedy club, also proper angry comedy.

Reginald D Hunter: slower, more measured, good though a bit of filler (I hate shaggy dog stories) very good value.

Rich Hall: excellent always, odd start, but gets into his stride, same stage as Reginald. Probably the best in terms of material.

Shows:

The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart (see separate entry)

We Were Promised Honey
This was the most perfectly put together show I saw, perfect performance, perfect marriage of venue with material, consummate story telling with a deeply involved and participating audience. With my neutral hat on, I would say this is the best all round piece of theatre I have seen in many years, but for me, loving folklore based stuff, Prudentia's right beside it.

Famous Puppet Death Scenes
I wouldn't dare create any expectations at all for this, except to say that it was very good at being what it was. I loved it. (https://vimeo.com/270138652)

Eulogy
Another show that is best not described (turns out I am not really reviewing anything after all) you're in a shipping container in the dark. The rest is better kept quiet, macabre in its cleverness. Or, as Mallory'_Camera described it, 'that was wild!'

Hamlet with Ian McKellen
Hmm. Ok, so this was more a ballet/contemporary dance with Hamlet's major speeches thrown in, as IM gamely wandered around the stage close to and occasionally draped over handsome young men. It was our most expensive ticket at the Fringe and, as a way to pull people back after Covid, a generous gesture on the part of its star. But the trouble is, gratitude aside, it could be better. I enjoyed the show,but it had faults, the main one being what appeared to be what seemed like a brain freeze on the part of the director when realising he had the great thesp and a whole bunch of dancers with which to create something. There was dancing and declaiming. And there we leave it.

The Tragedy of MacBeth
Physical theatre. My companions loved it, I, well, I could be talked into not hating it. There were some things that really worked, the smell of stale wine at the banquet, the psychotic fool, the dreaminess of it. But I am literary and verbal and for me, MacBeth is not quite MacBeth without the text. Still, this is the point of the Fringe, to take what's known and turn it around. It certainly did that.

Things worth avoiding
A man whipping a potato called Hamish next to the National Gallery.

Things I wished we had gone to see
A play about Gaugin written by the keenest,sweetest playright ever.

Overall verdict?
Love my friend for providing me with the reason to stop worrying at my PC! And also, love the Fringe, glad it's back!