Part 3
Edinburgh notes
Fri 15th
Gilbert & Sullivan The Musical (Greenside); Literally G&S, from their meeting to G dying, set to G&S songs. Good. (One of the cast either is, or is a doppleganger of, a Beta Male who's also in The Big Sheep. Hardworking chaps, yer young comics.)
Soup (Voodoo Rooms, Free fringe); OK; interesting set up, where they got instructions from a tin, but not that exciting.
John-Luke Roberts (Voodoo Rooms, Free fringe); also in love. Alan the Button's aphorisms, new washing instructions (Wash in tears; wash optimistically; wash in uncharted waters; do not tumble-dry tumble-dryer) Insults on cards for audience; insulting an apple off someone's head; dead grandmother; Alan Bennett on the moon; PATRICIA ROUTLEDGE.
Lights, Camera, Improvise! (Underbelly Cowgate);,Mischief Theatre, who also did Play That Goes Wrong. An improvised film. This was abt dinosaurs being created in the basement of a museum. A silent character and ballet 60s street dance also sort of featured... a man on a date with a T. rex, an infrared room, and a universally mandated curator's jacket appeared. More Bechdel-ly than most actual disaster films. Good stuff.
Hide and Speak (Gilded Balloon Teviot); Howard Read w. cartoon characters, a chicken, RT Pigeon, LH, killing politicians, God's regrets. Fun.
Distraction Club w guest host Phil Nicol, (Voodoo Rooms). Decent audience in room too big. Liked Laurence Owen, Horse and Louis, Mr B (chap-hop) and Phil & the Distractions doing some Norwegian trip-hop abt a stalker.
Sat 16th
Really exhausting day- badly planned, with 6 gigs going New Town-Old Town-New Town-Old Town- West End-Old Town. Some very good stuff though.
Baroque Masterpieces (St Andrew's and St George's) A very good choir, an uplifting start to the day. It was raining as we went in and the sun came out at the line "And all the people rejoiced."
Spontaneous Shakespeare (Gilded Balloon Teviot, Wine Bar) A lot of fun. Included improvised Chaucer tale (of a bigamous victualler, based on an ancestor of an audience member) Play called "Overcast", set in Sicily, with an evil duke and a good magician living in the forest with his daughter. Did a recap of "the story so far" in the styles of Brecht, Wilde, Kate Tempest (repetitive music and chanting) and Aubert- lots of violence, shouting, running through audience overturning chairs- then threw a glass of water over person who suggested it. Act 2, Magician's daughter and evil duke fall in love, duke reforms, duke and magician turn out to be brothers but luckily the daughter turns out to be adopted.
Bright Club (Assembly George St) 5 academics doing stand-up about their research- 3 of them were pretty good. One about the sex vocalisations of baboons, one abt horse obesity, one about errors- tweet with #errordiary to help them build up a big database of natural mistakes!
Free Footlights. (Not the revue, but a showcase for their standup)- lots of perfectly acceptable comics. The only memorable ones were John Bailey, with a routine about being in a minority because of being young, and feminism, and the best whose name I now can't remember! Pierre... something Italian... [ETA: Novellie- he won the Amused Moose 2013] from S Africa by way of Isle of Man, who'd clearly written some Edinburgh-based stuff rather than pulling out the old material.
No Fit State Circus (Fountainbridge Brewery); very impressive but two hours of standing up to watch it was just too much!
Set List (Pleasance Ace Dome): Excellent. The concept is that the acts have no idea what prompts they're about to build a set around; how well will they cope? John Robins was very impressive at working prompts into a connected set; Nick Helms's despairing motormouth worked well as he fell apart a bit; Tony Law and Jason Byrne were funny in a more "I can't do this!" way. Byrne had an inflatable Big Ben with him for some reason...
Some videos.
Sun 18th
Best of Edinburgh Showcase(Pleasance Cabaret Bar) Hosted by John Robins- very likeable. A Hawaiian lady in the audience- his not being sure exactly where is was turned into a running gag abt how he needed to learn geography, and his surreptitious googling the state bird, fish etc; Mitch Benn said he bet Nebraska didn't had a state fish, and Robins found that it's the channel catfish.)
Harriet Kemsley: MOR material, but nice delivery, built well. Mitch Benn with some 37th Beatle stuff. Gravity Boots- loved that for a showcase show, they'd pick out as their best sketch something completely weird abt a couple of odd Swedish inventors, with things like a tube and a fox coat. "Rather than a duel to the death, she will simply think it is a herd of 40 to 45 foxes." Alfie Moore; fine. Ex-policemen- anecdote abt severed head.
Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen (Pleasance Cabaret Bar)- nifty, bits abt life, his mother, and getting a letter from Cohen. "Cohen reportedly slept with over 200 backing singers, and none of them ever regretted it. I have slept with no backing singers, and none of them have ever regretted it.")
Casual Violence, House of Nostril (Pleasance Beside): Good way to finish! Hadn't heard of Casual Violence, really liked it. The house of Nostril is a gothic/Mafia family given to taxidermy of its dead members, bamboozling chimney sweeps and a feud with the hydra-headed boss of Amnesty; the protag's three brothers all accidentally stabbed themselves. A bit of out=of-character stuff as one of them was very sweaty after a physical bit and the others decided to watch a drop fall before continuing. The scene-setting slideshow got depressed and gave up partway through. Very icky bit with an invisible goblin and dyslexia cream.
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/187905.html. Comment here or there.
Fri 15th
Gilbert & Sullivan The Musical (Greenside); Literally G&S, from their meeting to G dying, set to G&S songs. Good. (One of the cast either is, or is a doppleganger of, a Beta Male who's also in The Big Sheep. Hardworking chaps, yer young comics.)
Soup (Voodoo Rooms, Free fringe); OK; interesting set up, where they got instructions from a tin, but not that exciting.
John-Luke Roberts (Voodoo Rooms, Free fringe); also in love. Alan the Button's aphorisms, new washing instructions (Wash in tears; wash optimistically; wash in uncharted waters; do not tumble-dry tumble-dryer) Insults on cards for audience; insulting an apple off someone's head; dead grandmother; Alan Bennett on the moon; PATRICIA ROUTLEDGE.
Lights, Camera, Improvise! (Underbelly Cowgate);,Mischief Theatre, who also did Play That Goes Wrong. An improvised film. This was abt dinosaurs being created in the basement of a museum. A silent character and ballet 60s street dance also sort of featured... a man on a date with a T. rex, an infrared room, and a universally mandated curator's jacket appeared. More Bechdel-ly than most actual disaster films. Good stuff.
Hide and Speak (Gilded Balloon Teviot); Howard Read w. cartoon characters, a chicken, RT Pigeon, LH, killing politicians, God's regrets. Fun.
Distraction Club w guest host Phil Nicol, (Voodoo Rooms). Decent audience in room too big. Liked Laurence Owen, Horse and Louis, Mr B (chap-hop) and Phil & the Distractions doing some Norwegian trip-hop abt a stalker.
Sat 16th
Really exhausting day- badly planned, with 6 gigs going New Town-Old Town-New Town-Old Town- West End-Old Town. Some very good stuff though.
Baroque Masterpieces (St Andrew's and St George's) A very good choir, an uplifting start to the day. It was raining as we went in and the sun came out at the line "And all the people rejoiced."
Spontaneous Shakespeare (Gilded Balloon Teviot, Wine Bar) A lot of fun. Included improvised Chaucer tale (of a bigamous victualler, based on an ancestor of an audience member) Play called "Overcast", set in Sicily, with an evil duke and a good magician living in the forest with his daughter. Did a recap of "the story so far" in the styles of Brecht, Wilde, Kate Tempest (repetitive music and chanting) and Aubert- lots of violence, shouting, running through audience overturning chairs- then threw a glass of water over person who suggested it. Act 2, Magician's daughter and evil duke fall in love, duke reforms, duke and magician turn out to be brothers but luckily the daughter turns out to be adopted.
Bright Club (Assembly George St) 5 academics doing stand-up about their research- 3 of them were pretty good. One about the sex vocalisations of baboons, one abt horse obesity, one about errors- tweet with #errordiary to help them build up a big database of natural mistakes!
Free Footlights. (Not the revue, but a showcase for their standup)- lots of perfectly acceptable comics. The only memorable ones were John Bailey, with a routine about being in a minority because of being young, and feminism, and the best whose name I now can't remember! Pierre... something Italian... [ETA: Novellie- he won the Amused Moose 2013] from S Africa by way of Isle of Man, who'd clearly written some Edinburgh-based stuff rather than pulling out the old material.
No Fit State Circus (Fountainbridge Brewery); very impressive but two hours of standing up to watch it was just too much!
Set List (Pleasance Ace Dome): Excellent. The concept is that the acts have no idea what prompts they're about to build a set around; how well will they cope? John Robins was very impressive at working prompts into a connected set; Nick Helms's despairing motormouth worked well as he fell apart a bit; Tony Law and Jason Byrne were funny in a more "I can't do this!" way. Byrne had an inflatable Big Ben with him for some reason...
Some videos.
Sun 18th
Best of Edinburgh Showcase(Pleasance Cabaret Bar) Hosted by John Robins- very likeable. A Hawaiian lady in the audience- his not being sure exactly where is was turned into a running gag abt how he needed to learn geography, and his surreptitious googling the state bird, fish etc; Mitch Benn said he bet Nebraska didn't had a state fish, and Robins found that it's the channel catfish.)
Harriet Kemsley: MOR material, but nice delivery, built well. Mitch Benn with some 37th Beatle stuff. Gravity Boots- loved that for a showcase show, they'd pick out as their best sketch something completely weird abt a couple of odd Swedish inventors, with things like a tube and a fox coat. "Rather than a duel to the death, she will simply think it is a herd of 40 to 45 foxes." Alfie Moore; fine. Ex-policemen- anecdote abt severed head.
Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen (Pleasance Cabaret Bar)- nifty, bits abt life, his mother, and getting a letter from Cohen. "Cohen reportedly slept with over 200 backing singers, and none of them ever regretted it. I have slept with no backing singers, and none of them have ever regretted it.")
Casual Violence, House of Nostril (Pleasance Beside): Good way to finish! Hadn't heard of Casual Violence, really liked it. The house of Nostril is a gothic/Mafia family given to taxidermy of its dead members, bamboozling chimney sweeps and a feud with the hydra-headed boss of Amnesty; the protag's three brothers all accidentally stabbed themselves. A bit of out=of-character stuff as one of them was very sweaty after a physical bit and the others decided to watch a drop fall before continuing. The scene-setting slideshow got depressed and gave up partway through. Very icky bit with an invisible goblin and dyslexia cream.
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/187905.html. Comment here or there.