This review taken
from HermAphrodite #10.
WEDNESDAY
1st
When I created our week’s schedule (‘if we
see this show can we then fit in that one, or has it not opened by that date???’)
prior to Edinburgh arrival, I only concentrated on the evenings. On the comedy.
As I don’t need reviews to tell me who’s funny; when it comes to stand-up I
don’t need assistance (ahahaha…). Which is lucky, as we were up for preview
week.
Choosing much else – beyond the comedy –
before we got there & without the help of the programme would be foolish,
I’d decided; though when it came to it, the three line blurb each show merits
is rarely as all-encompassingly descriptive as it needs to be. (Thus my
original consideration of using the ‘Eeny Meeny Miny Mo’ technique was proven
not to be so laughable as first appears.) Ignoring the flyerers (as most do –
despite Avalon Matthew’s best efforts), our revised Fringe Festival
FillInTheScheduleGaps timetable was based on the following arbitrary choices:
-
Is the
title good?
-
Does
it cost (us) a small amount of money?
-
Are
there key-words of excitement in its description?
-
It
doesn’t include puppets does it?
On such
reasoning as this, our shows were chosen. As is particularly evidenced by our
first production of the week…
‘Sexing Alan
Titchmarsh’
Pleasance Over The
Road
13:45-14:45
Sex, murder, Satanism, and pot plants. AND a
photo of Charlie Dimmock onstage. What more can a Fringe audience ask…?
A two-man multiple-character play, set in a
quiet rural Town Hall, with shades of ‘Brief Encounter’ and several mentions of
Ilkley, ‘Sexing Alan Titchmarsh’ takes a gardening-question-time broadcast as the basis for its descent into gentle
farce. (“Like Alan Bennet… if he was obsessed with geraniums and succubi… on
acid!”) As you 
might imagine from the title, it does
contain some salacious humour – references to purple-headed flaky plants abound,
for example, and Alan has the ‘ch’ repeatedly left out of his surname. There’s
also a goat priestess, a police raid, and some rather nasty secateurs (though
those elements are less obvious from the title). The most worrying aspect for
me, however, was the note-taking man on the 2nd row – who was
repeatedly & sympathetically referred to as a man with “plumbing” problems
(and therefore in desperate need of plastic matting), before being arrested for
cannabis-possession – later I was reassured he was not a journalist about to
crucify the production, but its director. A man who can, at the very least,
leave Edinburgh at the end of August, happy in the knowledge that I don’t think
I’ve ever laughed so much at a man taking a flat-cap off… AND then putting it
back on again.
There were
a lot of people at this year’s Festival, who weren’t here. (Obviously. There IS
more to this train of thought.) There were a lot of people at this year’s 
Festival, who weren’t here, despite
your expecting them to be. Like Al Murray, Bill Bailey, The Boosh, Jason
Freeman, Stewart Lee… Or Dave Gorman, doing more’n just a big-giant-head
one-off guest appearance for Ross Noble. Or The League Against Tedium, with an
actual show of his own, rather’n bits with John Hegley and the occasional
drunken set in a mixed-bag night. Or (a THREE dimensional) Lee Mack available
with his own show, rather’n as one of several guests in others’. Or (the
alarmingly newly shorn) Ed Byrne, up for more than one night (unless he is
actually a comedy-carrot-incentive to be dangled for the Amnesty Show on the 13th).
Not that the talent we had wasn’t talented. Or that I need any more shows that
started at around nine o’clock that couldn’t be scheduled around each other.
But it would have made more sense if they were there. Things would have been in
alignment. The world would have been set to rights. And all that…
‘Bill And Ted’s Excellent Musical Adventure’
Pleasance Courtyard
16:05-17:05
Such a good idea, this. For if you are loath
to scramble for an audience with one of ten other productions of the same
Shakespeare/Berkoff/Mamet/Pinter/Godber production, adapt/reinvent something
beloved of your target audience (20-somethings-a-go-go). That’s the basis of
Supergirly’s shows – reworking pop tunes to their comedic advantage. The
crammed-down-to-a-half-hour and re-done-as-an-opera versions of ‘Star Wars’ are
operating on the same premise. And so it is with Bill & Ted: The Musical.
Even the very idea sounds entertaining. Gladdeningly, the entire show proved 
to be.
They’d kept the heart of the film, and then
just nipped & tucked at it. There were a few changes, obviously, for budget
‘n’ time constraints. The telephone box became a mobile phone (which they
accidentally smashed after around a minute). A scene with Hitler and Freud was
added. The sliding Napoleon water-park section was cut entirely. Death was
brought in, in Dorothy of Oz shoes, for a ‘Bogus Journey’ part and a shiny
shiny party. And there were far more dance routines and songs than I remember
from the film. (Naturally. This being a musical.) Most were a giggle-wreathed
vision – nothing can top the marching bread-stick joys of Napoleon’s number –
but Joan of Arc’s solo seemed extraneous… and frankly irritating, there being
no background boys as Playboy bunnies to distract from her note-wobbling
Mariah. But Rufus was exactly as he should have been. Genghis Kahn had an
impressively wobbly hat. And the spirit of Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted
Theodore Logan (arms slack goofy happiness) remained. Of course, there’s also
that it featured the best use of baguettes at the Fringe. For which they
deserve some sort of award all their own.
The
ice-cream seller in the Pleasance Courtyard had four flavours of ice-cream.
Only the Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate were print-out labelled. The fourth,
a fudge ‘n’ honey concoction was not. The unlabelled one was ‘Pooh Bear’. (On
the grounds of honey-inclusion. No bears were harmed in the making of the
ice-cream.) When we later passed the
ice-cream van, its vendor had taken my suggestion to heart, and had written out
a label himself for the flavour. That should stop him having to say the word
‘Pooh’ to every curious customer. And it ought to go some way towards
countering the public’s ‘hilarious’ accusations of it being ice-cream flavoured
to excrement, for the entirety of August.
Chris Addison – ‘Port Out, Starboard Home’
(N.B. NO RIFF RAFF)
Pleasance Courtyard
19:45-20:45
Panama-hatted, white-linen-suited ‘n’
sensibly braced-up, with a hat-stand AND JACKET-HANGER onstage for
respectability’s sake, as he makes his appearance you might indeed believe
Chris Addison was the ‘middle-class ponce’ he’s cast as by his press. But,
belt-less, the braces are probably a sensible idea. Besides, this is a
Comedy Festival. (And if dressing like this raises a few laughs AND gets him a
Merchant Ivory audition, double-whammy, so be it…) The posters might have
stipulated No Riff Raff (“as though anyone’s 
gonna look at that and go ‘ooooh, that
counts me out…”), but at least the turn-out onstage is a dapper one. And his
comedy – bad link impending, mind yourselves – is just as beautifully arranged.
It is something of a compliment in his direction that he was chosen to kick off
our week’s comedy – I knew Chris’d be great first show, first night. And he
was. Taking as his compass heading ‘Britain, And How We Fare Abroad’, various
subjects were navigated through, including cute little Cornish nationalists,
tourist’s teddy-bear police-men, and our cultural heritage of nasty B&B’s.
There were helpful chapter titles available for those with decent eyesight, and
a very large map as very large distraction, thus ensuring no-one found
themselves lost amongst his cheery meanderings. In the end, Chris had come to
various conclusions – that it would be easier for the rest of the world to
become more British than it would for us to acclimatise to them, that
Australians have a fairly open radio policy on swearing (“nothing more extreme
than motherf***er, it is a breakfast show…”), and that the Pleasance
Upstairs is the hottest room in the world. Ah, but it was all most congenial,
and terribly entertaining. And yes, I did find myself struggling to hold back
the tears of helpless laughter so glibly promised by The Sunday Times. A joy to
behold. Particularly in the summer-boating attire…
Latecomers
are admitted to the Preview shows. (While there’s a warning on the tickets from
around the 5th onwards that you’ll be barred for such slothfulness –
in VERY bold type – for the earlier four days there’s just a cautionary note to
think of the neighbours – the homeless??? – when you’re 
leaving a venue, and do so quietly.)
Happily for everyone else concerned, most ushers propel such tardy folk into
the empty front row. Some even leave it reserved for such an eventuality. Which
is their neat little revenge for such rudeness…
Colin Murphy
Pleasance Courtyard
21:00-22:00
Colin Murphy. Who I want to describe as a thoroughly
amiable Irish chappie, the sort of bloke you’d happily fall in with a pub and
let rule the conversation – because he was – but that does seem to do him a
disservice. As he was also far more. Including professional. Even with the
breezy cheery stage presence, and constant appearance that he’s just chatting
with us – he makes it (This Stand-Up Malarkey) seem very easy. Most strikingly
though, his set proved the first time I’ve seen a man tackle the ladies’
euphemisms for menstruation – my own personal ‘ugh-favourite’ is Surfing The
Crimson Tide (particularly as Hollywood named the Sean Connery U-boat film
after it… “oh no Captain, a ‘Crimson Tide’…”), while Murphy wishes to eradicate
‘Having The Painters In’ (for the ‘eeuw’ factor) and ‘My Granny’s Coming To
Visit’ (as it’s liable to cause unnecessary confusion). He’s also very funny on
the subject of peat. And how often do you get the both topics covered in an
hour? Eh? Eh?
And then from the hottest room at the
Pleasance Courtyard, to a far cooler one at The C Theatre. Which is a proper
‘theatre’. Thhhay-aart-er. As it has:
a)
attractive
stone floor patterns
b)
art
on some walls
c)
leg-room
d)
red
velvet flock wallpaper
e)
staff
who know what productions are on where (and how to get there)
That the
sex of its toilets’ users were only designated through blue-tacked paper-signs,
though, is just asking for trouble. (They’re too easy to swap around, see. With
‘hilarious results’.)
‘From Ibiza To The Norfolk Broads’
C Theatre, Chambers Street
23:00-00:35
‘Martin has problems’
reads the programme blurb. ‘A dysfunctional family, an illness nobody
understands. Escape is a fantasy world where Bowie is God.’ Sounds good,
doesn’t it? Intriguing. Impactive. Interesting. And all that. My 
preconceptions were of a “powerful drama
for Bowie lovers” nature; it was the title that had really dragged me (and
therefore Elly) to the theatre. So as I sit ‘n’ settle and note the soundtrack
and matching set – three 70’s Bowie posters hanging above a grey bed – I’m
happy. And then the play starts, And I realise I’m the only one here with a
cheery disposition (and even that swiftly dissipates). For while it is
incredibly well acted, and tightly played out, the subject matter of ‘From
Ibiza…’ is fiendishly depressing – abuse, anorexia, self-mutilation,
schizophrenia, suicide. One after the other a new secret or uncomfortable
plot-twist are piled onto us, relentlessly, suffocatingly. (And so on…) Thanks
to the cast, it never strayed into mawkish soap-opera, and instead managed to
be just powerful… and fiendishly depressing. I wasn’t necessarily expecting
comedy, as such, but an hour and a half where the only relief comes in hearing
Rob Newman as the voice of the Thin White Duke himself (and even then it wasn’t
strictly intended as a moment of humour, more psthos)… it’s a bit much really.
And I kept having to fight the urge to get up and hug the lead character, as he
crumples before us. An emotional cleansing it was (colonic irrigation of the
soul, an expulsion of all within); very cathartic. As, you could argue so well,
the ‘theatre’ should be. Particularly in the end, when Martin comes alive to
dance, and you can see the passion and life that Bowie gives him flooding his
body… But if you want a slice of jollity, I’d recommend you do ‘Late & Live’
at the Gilded Balloon – there will be pain, but jokes to balance it, and
(probably) less dance routines…
Last revised: 14/08/01