Archive for August 13th, 2009
Plato’s Fringe
The choice of shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, not to mention the countless events going on at the same time as part of the other festivals, is overwhelming enough to induce a Buridan’s ass style paralysis in anyone. Even armed with a full set of reviews and recommendations, the sheer scale of the enterprise means that you are depressingly likely to miss at least ten or twenty ‘unmissable’ shows.
Indeed, for many first-time Fringegoers, the quest for these Platonic shows – undiscovered gems of theatre and comedy lurking in some 20-seater venue unnoticed by critics – can frustrate their enjoyment of the shows they do see.
When I visit the Scottish capital for my annual dose of culture, laughter and drinking overpriced beer in cramped cellars, I now tend to to visit with a very stringent set of expectations, to avoid exactly this problem. I visit at the beginning of the Festival, in preview week, to minimise financial discomfort, and I take full advantage of every free ticket and chance to jump the queue (including this year’s excellent Friends of the Fringe priority hut).
And crucially, I accept that of the 20-odd shows I’m likely to fit in, the ones I will enjoy most are likely to be those I already know are going to be good… along with everyone else at the Fringe.
This year, those shows were Daniel Kitson’s standup at The Stand, his theatre show ‘The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church’ at the Traverse, Hoipolloi’s Hugh Hughes in… 360 at the Pleasance, the Penny Dreadfuls in The Never Man, Analogue’s Beachy Head and The Hotel (directed by the Fringe’s genius loci, Mark Watson). These are all very solid recommendations, but then they were always going to be. The only returning act I couldn’t get that enthused about this year was NIE’s My Life With The Dogs, which seemed like a very insubstantial trailer for the far more affecting and entertaining trilogy of European stories which ran from 2005-7.
What made this year’s Festival such a particular delight, however, was that with the exception of the slightly depressing show bought up by the Footlights this year (they are never as good as I think they should be), every single show I saw was genuinely great.
From solid if mildly unoriginal shows like political drama Party and BBC3-before-you-know-it sketch show Clever Peter, to people I really should have heard of like You Need Me, whose superb Certain Dark Things is my theatre pick of the Festival, and the adapted BBC radio play Success Story, most of these are undoubtedly going to find the audiences they deserve.
There are two particular shows, however, that I really feel deserve audiences they may never receive, either because they’re in odd venues or becaues they’re simply not going to receive the constant critical attention that a Fringe show requires to succeed (I may do a post on the role twitter etc might play at some point in the future).
The first of these is CoolFun, on at 12.30 pm at the White Horse on the Royal Mile. If your motivator for heading to Edinburgh is to find the ‘next big thing’ in stand-up, you could do worse than heading down to this Free Fringe event (which means it costs nothing), which features four extremely talented young stand-ups – Nish Kumar, Ed Gamble, Tom Neenan and Jez Scharf – three of whom are also appearing in Mark Watson’s ensemble piece The Hotel.
A mix of straight, confident observational stand-up, poetry and song, it’s hard to imagine a better Fringe deal than this for free. When I attended, on the first day, they played to a full house – though I got the impression a number of those present were related to the performers. If there is any justice, the rest of their run will be just as well attended.
When I saw Funny, at 6pm at 7 Holyrood, on the other hand, I was one of about ten people in the audience. Although woefully mis-described in the Fringe brochure, Funny is an excellent combination of subtle, sharp political satire, comedy, stagecraft and balls-out acting. The peice takes its central conceit as the (apparently) true story that US interrogators looked into stand up comedy techniques as a way to ‘break’ prisoners during interrogation. Following one such intelligence specialist, his comedian mentor and his more traditional colleague, the play takes us through some bitingly relevant yet timeless discussions, presenting them in a mix of excellent dialogue and extended comic sequences (there’s a version of the Aristocrats joke which may be worth the price of admission alone).
While it has its flaws (I found the ending a little lacking, and the comedian character could have been more convincing as a funnyman), this was a fantastic demonstration of what the Fringe can do with a small space, a clever script and a dedicated cast.
