Fringe Owl's Pick of the Fringe

... but enough of my opinion on the Fringe, what did Fringe Owl think?

I found Hans Teuween edgy and brilliant but Fringe Owl didn't think he was edgy enough, and spent a long time afterwards talking about how there was a lack of owl-based material. To be honest he had this problem with a lot of comedians.

He disliked my other favourite acts of the Fringe - The Boy With Tape on His Face, Jeremy Lion, Terry Alderton and Daniel Kitson. He thought TBWTOHF was taking the mickey out of his toupee adhesive (yes, I have to let you know that the hair in the photo is not his hair, although he will HATE me for publishing that). He didn't like the crow puppet in Jeremy Lion, thinking that it was stealing his thunder. He spent a lot of the Terry Alderton gig wanting to poo on Terry's shiny head, but thankfully the low ceiling and the speed with which Alderton moves about the stage meant the wily comic remained unsoiled throughout. As for Kitson, we had the following conversation:

TH - "Fringe Owl, don't you think it's brilliant that a comedian noted for his whimsical semi-serious one man shows can return to the gladiatorial arena of stand-up with such brilliant effect, as witnessed by his laugh-out-loud compere-ing the Invisible Dot by the Sea gig?"

FO - "Sorry, I just zoned out there for a minute, what did you say?"

TH - "Never mind."

Fringe Owl also liked Doctor Brown, mostly because there was a lot of food thrown about, so he went in between the audiences legs, gorging himself on olives and bran flakes. "That is what comedy is all about," he said just after the gig, although within 30 minutes he was suffering from excruciating indigestion. Serves him right.

I went to see Frisky and Mannish twice, but Fringe Owl went three times, to try and steal the shiny beads off of Mannish's jacket. I told him he wasn't a magpie, but he responded with "Don't tell me what kind of bird I am," and left the flat without putting his hairpiece straight. I didn't bring it up again.

One afternoon Fringe Owl was still in bed after a very late night mousing, and I happened upon Pip Utton in the Pleasance courtyard. I told him I had really enjoyed the brief bit of his one-man Charles Dickens show I had seen when we shared the bill with him at Pick of the Fringe. I told him of my plans to do a sci-fi adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit ("Astro-Chuzzlewit") at next year's fringe and asked if he would like to cameo in it as the great author, just a few minutes to express his approval of the adaptation from beyond the grave and so on, and he said he'd love to.

(Unlike a lot of the stuff about the fictional owl with the hairpiece, the above is actually true).

Haven't got time to post the rest but Fringe Owl is going to lend a hand by sorting out the relevant hyperlinks to all the acts named above, while I clean the kitchen. Thanks Fringe Owl.

Edinburgh Festival 2010 - What I Saw

Here's my opinion on the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

First, Ovid's Metamorphoses, an earnest young production which got a couple of 5 star reviews. It transplanted the Greek pantheon to '40s/'50s Britain and told a few of the stories using innovative theatre techniques. Sirens backed up with sock puppets - A sex changing dance number with identically dressed Tiresias's swapping behind panels - Narcissus falling in love with his own cinematic image. All very clever clever.

Strict contrast with The Ballad of Backbone Joe, which Brian Logan seemed to disapprove of but couldn't help giving four stars. It's a Chandleresque tale about a small town boxer, played out by a crack Australian swamp rock band, Suitcase Royale, who break out of script either to take the piss out of each other or to play brilliant songs describing the action. Critics universally disliked the fact that these three constantly undermined their own story with semi-improvised interjections. They were missing the point. They were able to send themselves up and then hit you with an emotional uppercut the next second. It seemed like the emotional core of the play was as solid as the boneheaded boxer it had for a hero, and that the derivations just widened the scope of what you were seeing. Things began echoing through the different layers - the desperation of the characters rattled through the actor's improvisations, the black jokes infected the dark heart of the story. It was brilliant. It was criticised for being a mess but who said theatre should be tidy? I saw plenty of other productions - the Metamorphoses was one, Ernest and the Pale Moon was another - that were a lot tidier, but left me cold.

A brief note about Ernest and the Pale Moon - I got tickets thinking it was the one with the puppets, and it wasn't. Disappointed. Although that James Seager (head of company, lead actor & director) gets about a bit, judging by his CV.

To get all the serious stuff out of the way - I also went to see the Gospel at Colonus and Sin Sangre as part of the main festival. The Gospel was a revival of a legendary 1985 musical version of the Greek tragedy in which the role of Oedipus was played by the Blind Boys of Alabama and Morgan Freeman in turn. However, this revival was a bit like that other 1985 musical - the Blues Brothers - being remade as Blues Brothers 2000. It seemed to have got twice as long, twice as pointless, and twice as tacky. Still a great production, but not as good as the original, (video recordings exist but they are very rare).

I fell asleep quite soon after Sin Sangre started, and it was just like having a intermittent, badly scripted and tedious dream about the Spanish Civil War. I don't care how clever the mixture of theatre and cinema projection was. It was boring, and the seats in the big theatres of Edinburgh are comfy with lots of legroom. The Republicans of polite attention were overrun by the Nationalist Armies of slumber. Siento mucho herir tus sentimientos... zzzzzzzzz.

A fitting end to the serious stuff, I also saw Bane 2 - the sequel to last year's one man film noir parody, also playing this year. I liked it a lot, and there's not much else to say apart from the fact that Joe Bone (actor's real name, or another wilfully noirish tribute?) must be making decent money, selling out two shows a day with two one-man shows. The critics may wax lyrical about the creative inventiveness of one man doing everything himself, but on the tight margins of the Fringe it makes financial sense.

Onto the comedy. Ah comedy - the theatrical dustbin of life, where a thousand ideas, trends and characters are picked over and melted down for scrap, a deceptively simple premise - make people laugh - i.e. not excusable just to chase the elusive beast the serious performers are after.

First: stand-up. Saw Jason Byrne. Gleefully inhabits that most fruitful part of comedic territory - growing up, family embarassments - that helped make Peter Kay so loved. We need comedians to make us aware of the passage of time, i.e: brilliant routine in which he described to young people in the audience what it was like when you had to get your photos developed and wait to see them. Realised that I was no longer in the bracket of 'young people' as he did so.

Greg Davies, was also very good - no surprise, considering he got 5 stars from everyone. He is like a pleasant mash-up of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson - as a conoisseur of the gurn, I recognise those type of faces from old episodes of Bottom and its good to see them aired again.

Gary Delaney - storms clubs around the country with his killer set of very rude and inappropriate one-liners. Like Tim Vine's evil alter ego. I was sold on his marketing, which contained a 'no whimsy' logo, but after the umpteenth sexual crime had been encapsulated in a neat turn of phrase, I was left slightly longing for a nice long story about crumpets and jam.

Talking of long story - the most incredible set I saw was that performed by Paul Foot at the late night comedy showcase Spank. He launched into a long story called 'Love on the Eurostar', in which a carpet-fitter saves up to take an accountant to Brussels for a dirty weekend. There are not jokes as such, but Foot dwells brilliantly on the incongruousness of passing details, and so expertly inhabits the persona of the angst-ridden carpet-fitter that it is completely gripping.

Not so for the man in the audience that night who kept on shouting 'crack a joke', and 'you're not funny!' Paul countered with remarks to the effect that he knew it was odd, that he was well enough known as an odd comic for people who didn't like it to avoid it, that 'Love on the Eurostar' was one of his more commercial and accessible pieces, and that the man should be happy he hadn't spent 40 minutes talking about shirehorses, as he did in his full length show. Eventually it ended with the interlocuter being escorted out, Paul remarking as he did that 'a boil had been lanced from the face of this gig', and continuing to the hilarious and tragic denouement of 'Love on the Eurostar', not before a mid-gig standing ovation.