| Edinburgh Fringe 2006 | home |
Here is a list of shows seen and a review for each.
Saw 28 shows this year
Show |
Review |
11th August |
|
| 18.30 - Square Street *** Underbelly |
This show might loosely be termed a sketch show. In truth it is mother and daughter team Janey Godley and Ashley Storrie messing about a bit on stage. Some of the sketches were inherently funny and there were a couple of great jokes in what they used of the script. The rest of the time was devoted to seeing the pair of them relentlessly torture each other through the show. Both Janey and Ashley know how to be very naturally funny and we were drawn into their very surreal world. A harmless bit of fun with no political correctness. Excellent.
|
| 19.45 - Toby Hadoke: Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf **** Baby Belly |
Toby was on excellent form, combining two of the things he
loves the most: Doctor Who and making an audience understand his point of
view while having a damned good laugh. Rather than being the geek fest that
its title might suggest, this was a surprisingly touching and honest account
of one man's relationship with the world and, most importantly, his family.
|
12th August |
|
| 13.25 - The Butterfly Effect *** Meadow Bar |
Ian Fox found his niche in this show which combined story
telling and humour along with a lot of information about chaos theory.
Despite there being a small audience, Ian ran the show at a natural pace and
kept us engaged throughout. Strong aspects of this show included the natural way the material was structured and the way that humour sprang from the facts. A slightly disappointing feature was that the "monkey story" at the end was purely fictional; something factual and as complicated would have been more satisfying. A good debut show.
|
| 17.10 - Die Clatterschenkenfietermaus vs Malcolm and
Miriam *** Cafe Royal |
The only thing that these two pairs of characters had in
common was the performers responsible for bringing them to the stage.
Malcolm and Miriam are a pair of oddballs who are in love and feel the need
to lecture on their beliefs. Die Clatterschenkenfietermaus are an arrogant,
dark German techno band, who show their distaste for the audience with
style. Malcolm and Miriam are an excellent comic creation and their offbeat punchlines and sheer lunacy were received very well, even managing to hit shades of pathos on the way. However, as a single show, this did not quite sit together very well - there wasn't time to get enough of Die Clatterschenkenfietermaus, who could easily fill their own hour - and there didn't seem to be the need to have them both on the same bill. It was a marriage of convenience. Still, it proved a highly entertaining hour, leaving me wanting to see more.
|
| 20.10 - Janey Godley's Blog Live **** Underbelly |
Janey has the ability to tell any story and make it
incredibly funny. She has been blogging daily for the last few years, which
she started, as others have done before her, in order to break a case of
writer's block. With a huge wealth of experience and material to draw on,
this show felt improvised and was still exceedingly tightly held together
and funny. It may have been a "best of" album of stories from a blog, but it felt very natural and was not in the least bit contrived.
|
13th August |
|
| 13.20 - Soup *** Cafe Royal |
This was, in essence, a mess about. The cast of the show
were all performing in other shows at other parts of the fringe and offered
a showcase of various sketches and character acts that are within their
repertoire. It was linked together with a very charismatic and warm
performance from Jason Cooke, who paraded the catalogue of misfits and
oddballs in front of the audience in such a way as kept people interested,
even in cases where they weren't quite getting it. Some of the sketches and characters worked and some didn't. There was no doubt that this was a strong group of performers with the capability to pull off a wide range of material. The camp actor who wanted to turn his life into a musical was a definite highlight.
|
| 17.55 - Boy Meets Girl - The Oxford Revue ** Underbelly |
A student revue can be a work of high-energy high-comedy, or
it can be a lazily assembled collection of vaguely unfunny sketches which
are put on to satisfy the vanity of that student union's present in-crowd. Where this show was funny, it was well executed and quite funny. When it was not funny, it was plainly dull and pointless. With a ticket price of nearly £10, you have to wonder why anybody would bother going, when there are so many good shows available instead. However, the writing was not egregious, and the show was tightly woven together with something of a thread. The majority of the cast could even perform, though there were some horrible cases of overacting getting guffaws from about three people in the room, and silencing everyone else. It's a shame that the script was so dull, the crew had clearly put a lot of effort into turning it into a tight performance and they are all clearly worthy of something better.
|
14th August |
|
| 17.00 - Gamarjobat **** Gilded Balloon Teviot |
Unspoken comedy from two Japanese artists, this show was in
two parts. The first 20 minutes or so was something of a standard
street-performer mime comedy act. They managed to work the huge venue with
ease and create a perfectly executed set combining mime, conjuring and
interaction. With good humour and plenty of energy, they whipped the crowd
into a frenzy. Then they changed the mood completely and recreated, in the rest of their show, the Charlie Chaplin movie "City Limits". This proved to be both very funny and quite moving as they told the story, getting laughs with some of the staging and the way they had to simulate the camera-work of movie on stage. It was a surprise for a comedy show to go in this direction, but it was delightfully and universally communicated and the broad range of people in the audience enjoyed it thoroughly.
|
15th August |
|
| 10.45 - Sister Mary's Singalong West End Musicals *** Gilded Balloon |
This was a nice throwaway show from Sister Mary, actually
played by a man. The family-friendly tone meant that the compact audience
were able to throw away all inhibitions and pretend to be as young as the
average age - about 9. We sang our way as a group through various Disney
songs and Rodgers and Hammerstein numbers, while Sister Mary and her
accompanist kept us amused with virtually no innuendo. Singing "Under The Sea" while creating an aquatic tableaux was a definite one-off.
|
| 14.40 - Falling For Grace *** Cafe Royal |
The strong cast and strong writing underpinning this play
made for a gripping hour's performance. There are undiscovered treasures
within the script, still, and there is a lot of people talking, rather than
doing anything, but the audience followed these characters on their journey
into the male psyche.
|
| 17.15 - The Lies We Told *** Sweet ECA |
A well drilled performance, with a talented cast made this a
fairly engaging 50 minutes or so. The small audience were fairly confused by
the script, which threatened to make no sense for much of the time, nearly
came to a conclusion, and then ended abruptly just before one could work out
whether it did.
|
16th August |
|
| 12.45 - Honk *** C Main |
The Royal Holloway theatre company staged this witty
children's story with a flexible cast, able to breathe life into a variety
of farmyard animals. When this was good, it was truly excellent, but it was
let down by some individual singing performances and by the tone of some of
the ensemble numbers.
|
| 16.55 - Pulp Boy **** Baby Belly |
Terry Saunders decided to write a story about a boy and tell
it at the Fringe. However, while he was writing the story, his own life was
changing his viewpoint on how the story should turn out. This was a
fascinating insight into the mind of a writer and how he relates to his own
character. With compelling story telling and a light touch, this was a very
gripping hour.
|
| 18.30 - Putting It Together **** C Main |
You have to be either brave, talented or stupid to tackle
Sondheim on the Fringe. This group were the first two, and they managed to
pull of the Sondheim "Best of" musical/revue with aplomb. Some individual
performances let the side down, and the technical complexity of the show was
also a barrier to a smooth first night, but this was a strong cast with good
direction doing a grand job.
|
| 21.30 - Tim Minchin - So Rock **** Gilded Balloon |
Tim Minchin is an excellent musical comedian with good
stand-up skills. Behind a piano, or accordion, or even the mimed instruments
he "used" in the show, he is at the top of his game, with thought-provoking
songs that never stray far from the belly laugh, and occasionally surprise
you with a burst of pure feeling. However, in the stand-up style inserts between songs, Minchin's appeal drops a notch. He is simply not as strong a stand-up as he is a musical performer, and some of his material borders on the pedestrian. He never drops below funny, nor does he indulge lazy writing. Including a reprise of last year's Canvas Bags song, and with an off beat love song as an encore, this was inspired comedy that is worth buying on CD and repeatedly listening to.
|
| 00.00 - The Honourable Men Of Art **** The Stand |
A simple enough set-up. Take some comedians, including Alun
Cochrun, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver, add an MC in the form of Daniel
Kitson, include a web-based element - like the fact that John Oliver was
coming by webcam from the US, and then add some audience/act banter from
Kitson which ultimately involved the looking up of the word
Zugzwang. It made for an
informal and very entertaining late night comedy selection.
|
17th August |
|
| 11.00 - Bouncy Castle Hamlet *** Rocket Venues |
There's no doubt that this was the best example of a
performance of its type, because it is undoubtedly the ONLY example of a
full staging of a Shakespeare play with a bouncy castle as the set. The
cast, on the whole, managed to pull off this shaky premise, with various
foul ups and ad-libs adding to the amusement. The majority of the larger
props were also inflatables, and Hamlet's father was a sex doll. The performance ambled along and, in places, made very little sense. Although some of the mess-ups were probably staged, perhaps it was over ambitious to expect an audience to enjoy all two hours of this spectacle. Still, it was an impressive tour de force and an enjoyable Fringe experience.
|
| 17.50 - Comics Die In Hot Cars *** Meadow Bar |
More of a documentary than a comic show, Kev Shepherd
presented a series of video clips taken from various car journeys on the way
to and back from gigs. It was a good insight into the attitude of the
off-duty comedian, if such a being can be said to exist. Perhaps it
sacrificed laughs for accuracy in places. Awkwardly shoe-horned into the middle of the performance, one of the featured in-car comedians did a 5 minute set. This didn't sit easily with the rest of the piece and the audience found it difficult to change gear to and from the more lecture-based material surrounding it. Overall, a good use of a Fringe stage.
|
| 19.40 - Sue Perkins Pleasance Above |
|
| 22.35 - Jim Jeffries Underbelly |
|
18th August |
|
| 12.30 - Up Script Creek Underbelly |
|
| 17.30 - Charred and Dangerous Underbelly |
|
| 20.00 - Back To The Futon Underbelly |
|
| 21.15 - Pat Monahan Underbelly |
|
| 23.10 - Winston Churchill Was Jack The Ripper Underbelly |
|
19th August |
|
| 12.00 - Pappy's Fun Club Canon's Gait |
|
| 18.50 - Doom Riders Assembly Rooms |
|
| 23.45 - The Late Show The Stand |
24 August 2006
Ashley Frieze