IT'S REVIEW TIME, ISN'T IT?
This is the time of year when world, dog, and dog's granny are all looking back at the preceding twelve months and attempting to crowbar some sense of order and narrative on to their own randomised lives and the mixed up storyline that is humanity. And this isn't one of those. It is, however, a review, even if a little on the late side.
Last year I posted a list of my favourite ten shows from the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe. I did so about four weeks after my city had sighed it's relief at the annual ending of the world's largest arts festival. Sufficient time had passed to give me some perspective on what I'd seen, near enough for it still to have some sense of relevance.
This year I had, really, intended to do the same. But (insert your own choice of lame, half-arsed excuse here) and that's why it didn't get done at the time. However, never let it be said I don't deliver eventually, despite my Adamsesque attitude to deadlines. Better late than never? Probably not, but here it is anyway.
As with last year's effort, I present these in no particular order. We managed to see sixty shows in little more than three weeks, and trying to reduce that to a favoured ten was hard enough without trying to pretend that one was better than another. I'll start with the acts who made this list last year. There were six we saw again, three are back here this time, and I'll begin with the same man I did last September.
Cuckooed is a one man drama telling a tale of treachery, espionage, and the exercise of naked power. It shows Britain's largest arms manufacturer, BAE, spying on a small group of activists who are trying to bring said company's disdain for human rights to the attention of a wider world. The cuckoo in question is an old friend of most of the activists who has been bribed into betraying his fellows. The one man telling the tale is, of course, Mark Thomas. Which means that the show is slick, the narrative compelling and fast paced, the emotions often raw, and frequently hysterically funny. Particularly mention has to be made of the staging, which sees various talking heads pop out of filing cabinets on screens to give their side of the story. Very effective. Thomas is an astonishing stage presence and never fails to be both informative and hilarious.
Jennifer Williams was one of my favourite discoveries of 2013 and she was back again with another one woman performance (assisted, in the background, by her brother providing music and sound) and another quirky story to tell. The Cold Clear Elsewhere is based on factual events and tells of Grace, an Australian war bride, who married a British sailor, and eventually sailed half way across the world to start a new life with a man she could, by then, hardly remember. With a few props Jennifer creates several scenes in differing places and times, her acting skills well up to playing a wide variety of characters along the way, yet never leaving the audience in doubt about who they were watching, or where, or when. By the end it was hard to believe that an hour had passed, so absorbed had I been in the action. It was a shame that this was probably the smallest audience I was part of all month, only just breaking double figures, and I hope she can find her way into a more central venue next year.
And finally, in my repeat trio, Mr Aidan Goatley. Once again he performed 10 Films With My Dad, and my comments of last year still stand on second viewing. There was also 11 Films to Happiness (there may be a theme here....) which was equally entertaining, silly, charming, funny and simply enjoyable. Aidan is just such a lovely, lovely man that it's hard to imagine him not being fun to watch.
In "10 Films" Mr G has roped in a few of his mates to help with some of the cinematic sequences in his show, and we went to see one of said mates doing his own stand-up thing. Oft times there can be a sense of disappointment at seeing a comedian live after seeing him or her on the telly. This man had been on Mock the Week, but I wasn't going to hold that against him. Romesh Ranganathan is Funny. You know the kind of comedy where you come out unable to repeat a single joke and barely remember what it was all about, except that your chest hurts because there was hardly a second when you weren't laughing? The sort of comedy where you have to remind yourself to keep breathing? That's Mr R.
Oh, and he helped make my night, albeit indirectly. He asked me if I thought I was a good husband. I suggested I wasn't the person to judge and that he ask Barbara sat next to me, so she was requested to give me marks out of ten. And there am I thinking "Maybe a five? A six would be good....". And she say "Eight and half". Eight and a bloody half!! I'm still not sure what I've done to deserve anything that good, but I'm not about to forget it (or remind her when it seems 'appropriate').
Another stand up comedian, of sorts. An American in a weird, scarlet, bulbous onesie who worked his audience into the act. If you don't like participation then this wasn't for you. It was teasing, testing, terrifying, timeless. If at times it verged too far towards the simplistics of the Self Help 'Industry' it fully redeemed itself with the opportunities it provided for thought and the sheer funniness of the words and actions on stage. The show is called Red Bastard and I will say no more, for it is something you have to experience to understand. Would I go back? Maybe....
Away from the stand up, but sticking with comedy, Austentatious is certainly an act you easily view several times, for every performance is different. Six actors improvise a comedy drama based on title suggestions from the audience, all in the style of Jane Austen. That could so easily go wrong, but these guys all know each other so well, and have such a great sense of timing, that the result is laughter making throughout (sometimes for the cast as much as the audience, the corpsing serving to make the performance even funnier). I'll be back.
Another comedy drama, Spilt Decision, but scripted this time. Partly in verse, which highlighted the unreality of the action and the satirical intent. The characters portray a drunken husband, a domineering wife and a non-combatant marriage counsellor. The battle lines are clearly drawn and the script, written by local comedian Keir McAllister, wears it's heart proudly on it's sleeve. With the sharp end of that heart pointing strongly towards a Yes vote in the then upcoming Scottish Independence Referendum. I can't tell you what it would have been like for a neutral, or even a No supporter, but they were preaching to the utterly converted in me and I enjoyed it hugely.
Three to go, and I'm going to cheat a wee bit. This event was advertised in the Fringe programme, but was also selling tickets as an independent theatre event. It was also held outside Edinburgh, in adjoining Musselburgh, so I'm stretching the definition a bit. This was a last minute decision too. We'd had tickets to see James Rhodes (one day, one day), but illness had forced him to cancel at short notice. Was there a music gig that would replace it? Cue mad phone calls to get tickets and we were off to the far East (Lothian) that evening.
It's been a few years since I last saw Blazin' Fiddles and the line up had changed considerably, but the format remains the same. A rhythm section of guitar and keyboard, and four of Scotland's best fiddle players up front. Some fabulous music, some terrible jokes and a lot of silliness. Best of all, sheer energy coming off the stage and infecting the watching crowd. The line up kept changing, with solos and duos and trios, and then the full band again. There was virtuosity and sheer bloody joy out there. Impossible to leave without a grin.
Even more of a cheat for this one, for two reasons. The event was in the International Festival itself, not the Fringe. And it was actually three events, but as an experience deserves to be treated as one. You may have read about (or even seen) the James plays. Three new works, each based on the lives of the first three kings of Scotland called James. We saw all three in the one day, enjoying the sense of continuity and overriding narrative that opportunity provided. All three made powerful individual statements, with James 1 the most complete as a drama, 2 it's slightly weaker cousin, and 3 falling somewhere in between. The presentation of 3 in a more modern setting took some getting used to, and the first half was more 2 than 1 in dialogue quality. But the second half saw Sofie Grabol, of Killing fame, deliver an astonishingly powerful and commanding performance which demanded that Scots and Scotland take a good hard look at themselves. Historic, important, unforgettable.
And finally. Not necessarily the funniest, or cleverest, or most dramatic show I saw, but perhaps the most memorable. Have you ever heard of Tourettes Hero? If not then shame on you, because you should. Jess Thom has tourettes, which makes her say Biscuit rather more often than you'd hear it said after spending a day in McVities. Penguins and hedgehogs feature on a regular basis. And she hits her chest a lot. All of this is, of course, involuntary and a by-product of her condition. A much misunderstood condition and Jess has made it her role in life to dispel the myths and encourage understanding as much as one person can. And she's very, very good at it. So much so that she created a stage show to show to anyone who cared to come along to see what tourettes involved, how it affected her life, and just what an instinctively funny person she is.
The show was called Backstage in Biscuit Land and in it Jess, aided by an excellent actress also named Jess, tells us what having tourettes is like for her and those involved in her life, how the wider world sometimes reacts and what that feels like for her. All the while making the whole explanation wildly entertaining. Unpredictably so for all concerned because, as she explains at the start, her condition makes her incapable of sticking to a script, and some of the unplanned outbursts are even funnier than the original lines. (Plus, at the show we were at, she had a couple of friends with tourettes in the audience, and one of them added some great punch lines of his own!) Simply lovely.
And that's it, out of my system at last. Still not sure how I've been forced to leave out Jo Caulfield, Chris Coltrane, The Nualas, Bruce Fummey....
Maybe next year I'll be back to doing this in September?
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