(no subject)
A month since I was in Edinburgh, you say? Tra-la.
Sunday (a very good day)
Ben Target
The queue management was part of the gig, with somebody dragged off to find a lemon, without which we couldn't start.
A really sweet, fun one. We all had to mime helping Target bake a cake- including the lemon-fetching chap, who flung him a selection of mimed fruits ("whoever heard of watermelon icing?") until the requested lemon was finally accepted. Bits about his father, who baked his own bricks to build a house, and the audience's youthful dreams (written on small bits of paper) mixed with getting the audience to hold hands, carefully taping foam to the ceiling and then pogoing, eating a terrifyingly large number of crackers, and quite a long period of time just leaning on the wall looking sexy (which was very funny). Also a very beautiful and balletic squeaking of a toy pig, and asking the audience to fling shoes at him.
The Grandees- BaBoom
Longform sketches- three in the hour. A search for the ultimate noise leads to the centre of the Earth; a group of teachers get fired, and try to rewrite history by traveling to another dimension (ultimately destroying everything by accident. Includes a horribly sexy bit of being carried through a wormhole by a worm); a little girl rather like Annie is abducted by an owl, and finds a friend who lives in a compost heap (the evil owls end up eating raw popcorn and being exploded.) All very bendy and physical. (I liked one of the men dancing/changing costume onstage to cover for the others changing backstage). Fun, inventive. Bits of audience interaction but mostly fourth wall is there.
Dan Schreiber
A pleasant hour. More or less about having an adult realization that he was a geek, and having a great time meeting geeky people like a neanderthal bone expert. Also bits about being unconfident and "bad with girls" (one date was ruined when the girl got an email from Commander Hadfield on the space station...), and about liking conspiracy theories and cryptozoology. (I have werewolf curfew, Nessie moving to Australia which I can't quite remember what they were about.) Listen to the QI podcasts, he's on there.
Lights, Cameras, Improvise
An apocalyptic sci-fi film, The End of the Orphangae- two orphans, a fostor mother and aan absent-minded inventor fight german cyborgs (with song-and-dance number about sacrificing the sun). The inventor is obsessed with chalk, and knows how everything works because he invented it (yes, everything. Like doors.) The cyborgs destroy things in foolishly expensive ways specifically to upset people- turning a beloved tree to matchsticks- and say it was worth every penny (flashback to them saving up the pennies). In the end the children team up w. one of the parents ((who had gone to find a mcguffin) to defeat the cyborgs. As with the one I saw last yr, rather more logical plot and definitely more Bechdel passing than many actual disaster films!
ACMS (attendance one of three)
Two-thirds empty- very odd, not sure if it was being in the yurt, or only being an hour, or moving their times around? Never seen it other than sold out before.
Luke wound himself up in the mike-cord and pretended to be a mike (twice- the second time he managed to get a smooch off Thom). An interpretive dance of all of Harry Potter in seven minutes, someone doing dozens of one-liners all about the soul of a poet (I picked up Seamus Heaney's shoe repairs- sole of a poet) getting more and more stretched- mole, roll, foal, girasole, control. A translating-foreign-language sketch but actually based on someone speaking Norwegian (translated by Eleanor Morton). A live dancing sunflower- singalong! Someone doing the Fringe in ten minutes. Arthur and Arthur- Arthur Smith with a penguin that records and plays back what you say to it (complete with audience laughter). J-L and Thom then did a version of this. ("I" "am" "an" "alcoholic".)
J-L: He's processing.
Thom: ... Noun.
Audience: Breadbin.
(New permitted heckle!)
Set List
Very good acts. Josie Long looked fairly effortless for Salem witch self-affirmation. John Bishop was good, observational improv! Marcel Lucont wove all his prompts together beautifully, starting with "too formal sex notice"- a notice on the car after dogging- then all the prompts were quite sexy as well. Axis of Awesome improv'd songs- Companion Cocoon as Devo, Clowncane as Metallica. Greg proops was highlight! Did several very quickly by miming them. Reasonable werewolf ("Look, I'll just bite a bit of you"), crucifixion apology card.
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/195738.html. Comment here or there.
Sunday (a very good day)
Ben Target
The queue management was part of the gig, with somebody dragged off to find a lemon, without which we couldn't start.
A really sweet, fun one. We all had to mime helping Target bake a cake- including the lemon-fetching chap, who flung him a selection of mimed fruits ("whoever heard of watermelon icing?") until the requested lemon was finally accepted. Bits about his father, who baked his own bricks to build a house, and the audience's youthful dreams (written on small bits of paper) mixed with getting the audience to hold hands, carefully taping foam to the ceiling and then pogoing, eating a terrifyingly large number of crackers, and quite a long period of time just leaning on the wall looking sexy (which was very funny). Also a very beautiful and balletic squeaking of a toy pig, and asking the audience to fling shoes at him.
The Grandees- BaBoom
Longform sketches- three in the hour. A search for the ultimate noise leads to the centre of the Earth; a group of teachers get fired, and try to rewrite history by traveling to another dimension (ultimately destroying everything by accident. Includes a horribly sexy bit of being carried through a wormhole by a worm); a little girl rather like Annie is abducted by an owl, and finds a friend who lives in a compost heap (the evil owls end up eating raw popcorn and being exploded.) All very bendy and physical. (I liked one of the men dancing/changing costume onstage to cover for the others changing backstage). Fun, inventive. Bits of audience interaction but mostly fourth wall is there.
Dan Schreiber
A pleasant hour. More or less about having an adult realization that he was a geek, and having a great time meeting geeky people like a neanderthal bone expert. Also bits about being unconfident and "bad with girls" (one date was ruined when the girl got an email from Commander Hadfield on the space station...), and about liking conspiracy theories and cryptozoology. (I have werewolf curfew, Nessie moving to Australia which I can't quite remember what they were about.) Listen to the QI podcasts, he's on there.
Lights, Cameras, Improvise
An apocalyptic sci-fi film, The End of the Orphangae- two orphans, a fostor mother and aan absent-minded inventor fight german cyborgs (with song-and-dance number about sacrificing the sun). The inventor is obsessed with chalk, and knows how everything works because he invented it (yes, everything. Like doors.) The cyborgs destroy things in foolishly expensive ways specifically to upset people- turning a beloved tree to matchsticks- and say it was worth every penny (flashback to them saving up the pennies). In the end the children team up w. one of the parents ((who had gone to find a mcguffin) to defeat the cyborgs. As with the one I saw last yr, rather more logical plot and definitely more Bechdel passing than many actual disaster films!
ACMS (attendance one of three)
Two-thirds empty- very odd, not sure if it was being in the yurt, or only being an hour, or moving their times around? Never seen it other than sold out before.
Luke wound himself up in the mike-cord and pretended to be a mike (twice- the second time he managed to get a smooch off Thom). An interpretive dance of all of Harry Potter in seven minutes, someone doing dozens of one-liners all about the soul of a poet (I picked up Seamus Heaney's shoe repairs- sole of a poet) getting more and more stretched- mole, roll, foal, girasole, control. A translating-foreign-language sketch but actually based on someone speaking Norwegian (translated by Eleanor Morton). A live dancing sunflower- singalong! Someone doing the Fringe in ten minutes. Arthur and Arthur- Arthur Smith with a penguin that records and plays back what you say to it (complete with audience laughter). J-L and Thom then did a version of this. ("I" "am" "an" "alcoholic".)
J-L: He's processing.
Thom: ... Noun.
Audience: Breadbin.
(New permitted heckle!)
Set List
Very good acts. Josie Long looked fairly effortless for Salem witch self-affirmation. John Bishop was good, observational improv! Marcel Lucont wove all his prompts together beautifully, starting with "too formal sex notice"- a notice on the car after dogging- then all the prompts were quite sexy as well. Axis of Awesome improv'd songs- Companion Cocoon as Devo, Clowncane as Metallica. Greg proops was highlight! Did several very quickly by miming them. Reasonable werewolf ("Look, I'll just bite a bit of you"), crucifixion apology card.
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/195738.html. Comment here or there.