Edinburgh Fringe
m posted in General moans on August 21st, 2006
Now, please don’t think that I’m trying to do credible or witty reviews, here. I’m just writing a summary of each gig I attended at this year’s fringe, so I remember something about them next time around. But you may or may not be interested in sharing my memory. Here;
| Tuesday | |
| 15:00 | Dan Willis - Radiohead - Edinburgh Comedy Room £5 |
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He meant well, but this was a pretty directionless show with very few laughs. The venue (the downstairs of a Scream pub) was almost completely empty, with the audience consisting of us, the next act, and Willis’s agent. The premise of the show was that he was going to tell the story of his life, with the help of a clipboard (containing some pictures) and bits of music. Desert Island Discs, but with swearing. He seemed a little disorganised, and was doing that Gorman/Wallace thing of whispery, wide-eyed delivery, which is endearing to a point. But it does remind you of how structured Wallace and Gorman are, and how ramshackle Willis is. He needs a stronger narrative throughout the show, in order to tie together his disparate anecdotes. Still, he gave us some Kinder Eggs for correctly answering some music-related questions. |
| 16:30 | The Swierdish Mind of Henrik Elmer - Edinburgh Comedy Room £6 |
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This was much better. Surreal comedy can so easily be unfunny, as the writer often mistakes a surreal situation for a funny one. Elmer, apparently Swedish, built his surreal tales up, setting jokes up (a la Harry Hill) with mildly amusing statements, and coming back to them to get the bigger laugh a bit later. As well as the “standard” stand-up, he read from a manuscript, which he presented as being a draft script for a television programme, which he wants to get commissioned. So he interspersed the stand-up with reading scenes from his TV programme, and asking the audience what they thought. It was hit and miss, but some of the stuff was very funny and original. He was quite a meek, charming bloke; self-deprecating, but clearly in possession of a sharp mind. And the idea of a TV series (though unlikely) is a very appealing one. Probably the best show we saw this year. |
| 19:50 | This is so not about the Simpsons - Assembly @George St £11 |
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The critics have said everything there is to say about this show. I know the title spells it out, but I wish it had been about the Simpsons. At the start, Shearer comes out and does a number of Simpsons voices, to loosen the crowd up and introduce the show. Then, through a series of unfunny, smug and dull songs, Shearer and Owen conspire to lose progressively more of the audience’s goodwill. Owen is clearly a talented musician, in a less kooky Tori Amos sort of way, but she has no sense of comic timing or delivery. For most of the show, it was Owen who was doing the comedy. Oh. The content concentrated largely on having a go at America; about the fakeness of L.A. and the stupidity of Bush. Shearer and Owen live in L.A. After a while, you want them to stop moaning and either leave L.A. or leave the room. It’s a shame, but if you expected any “Best in show”, “Spinal Tap”, ” A Mighty Wind” or “Waiting for Guffman” (was he in that one?) style quips, you won’t get them. It’s scripted, and it’s dour. |
| Wednesday | |
| 20:00 - 22:00 | Dylan Moran - Usher Hall £17.50 |
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Nice, pretty grand hall, on the Lothian Road near the centre of Edinburgh. It’s hard to argue that this show was really part of the fringe, considering it was nearly two hours long, had numbered seats and an interval. Still, Moran was very good for 50% of the time. It’s possible that either you find his formula entertaining, or you find it numbingly unfunny. I’ve always liked him, and I like the utterances he continues to mumble under the sound of the laughing audience. He chucks stuff away that most comedians would force the audience to savour. It makes for an almost languid style, through which he makes unspectacular observations and comments on modern life. He even makes the “I’ve become a father. Here are a load of becoming-a-father jokes” section pretty amusing. Where he went wrong, I thought, was in the second half. It consisted almost entirely of “Aren’t men and women different? I mean, we’re rubbish, aren’t we?” material, which a thousand lazy comedians have mined for decades. It forces you to compare the jokes to other comedians, instead of striding to the front and announcing some original thoughts. Shame. Still, a largely funny and very professional set. |
| 23:00 | DJ Danny Music Therapy - Pleasance Upstairs |
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The first of our last-minute bookings, I quite fancied seeing DJ Danny because Danny Robbins has sounded like a nice fella when I’ve heard him on Jon Ronson’s radio programme. The show was billed as a world-saving demonstration of DJing, so I was curious to see how such a meek-sounding individual could adopt the persona of a superstar DJ. HOLLER. Well, I suppose he didn’t. He played the part of a teacher, who’s a DJ in his spare time. He was assisted by Mr. Watkins, the music teacher, who operated the laptop that was integral to the show. As well as the laptop, there was an mp3 mixing desk, a projector and a box full of musical instruments. The show relied heavily on audience participation, and involved an improvised re-working of Angels, with the words changed to solve the problem of an audience member (in this case, someone claimed to hate their gardener). He also played a few remixes and cut-ups, and got the audience to dance about, play the musical instruments and generally join in with everything. It was enjoyable, and he was immensely likeable, but it wasn’t exactly hilarious. Still, on balance, I liked it a lot. |
| Thursday | |
| 18:20 | Justin Edwards - Unaccompanied as I am - Pleasance Above (?) |
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Another late booking, we joined about 20 other people to watch Justin Edwards (fairly posh, large-framed cohort of Marcus Brigstocke) sitting on a stool and delivering comedy songs. Perhaps wisely, he had also prepared some accompanying video, which allowed him to sing duets, multi-part stories and, at one point, play a foul-mouthed, violent children’s cartoon called Beakus. One or two of the songs didn’t work particularly well, relying either on puns (which will only elicit the odd groan from the audience, rather than laughter) or pleasing (rather than funny) imagery. Others, however, were brilliant. He’s an awkward looking bloke, not entirely comfortable in his own skin, but he delivered a few Cowardesque whimsical ditties, some musical one-liners and a great tribute song to Paul Shane, which had previously been broadcast on Radio 2’s “The day the music died”. In fact, click here to hear the Radio 2 rendition.
It was an excellent early-evening show, with plenty to elevate it above the festival average. Not quite Otis Lee Crenshaw, perhaps, but the show included an excellent serenade, and I’ll gladly go and see him if he brings a new set of songs to the festival in ‘08. |
| 21:00 | Frankie Boyle - The Voice of Black America - Pleasance Courtyard - £10.50 |
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I’ve quite liked him on “Mock the week”, but I suppose there’s a limit to what the performers can do on that programme. I know it’s Edinburgh, but most comedians tend to acknowledge that a large proportion of their festival audience isn’t Scottish. Frankie Boyle didn’t. But it’s not really the Scottishness that spoiled his show, it was the complete lack of structure. His show consisted largely of unrelated one-liners and gags. He’d walk across the stage, deliver a gag, walk back again, do another gag. It felt a bit unsatisfying, in comparison to most of the other shows, where the performers clearly spent a lot of time building their set. During one part of the show, and for no apparent reason, Boyle donned a crown, stood in a spotlight and announced a bunch of things, which I think he’d uttered on Mock The Week. It seemed like an unimaginative way of getting the most value out of a limited set of material. Shame, because one or two of his jokes were very funny. Another problem was the venue; he was booked in the Pleasance’s biggest hall (Pleasance One) and barely managed to fill a third of it. Maybe by the end of the run, it’ll be full. He probably won’t deserve it, if it is. |
| 22:40 | Simon Amstell - Pleasance Dome - £9 |
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The venue had the feeling of a TV studio, in that it was dark, well laid out, and brightly lit. Amstell looked perfectly at home, then, even if he didn’t have a giggling sidekick to laugh at everything he said. Also, our side view of him revealed that he is so thin that he has no arse. The material was OK, and he was reasonably adept at delivering it. But there was nothing particularly funny about anything he said. He read out some reviews of his previous performances, which he claimed to have got from chortle.co.uk He claimed to have signed up for Chortle, under the assumed name of “Dan”. The obvious joke would be for him to then read out a glowing review, before revealing it’s written by someone called “Dan”. And yes, that’s what he did. Saving it for the last gag of the show, it left me feeling a bit underwhelmed by the whole experience. The rest of the set consisted partly of sub-Woody Allen Jewish stereotyping and some stuff about his gayness, which probably disappointed a fair contingent of the largely female audience. He was better on Popworld, though the goodwill he engenders from the audience may well prove useful as he develops his material into something more interesting/challenging. |
| 01:00 - 05:00 | Late N Live - Gilded Balloon |
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Compered by Russell Howard, this 3-act show took place in the new Gilded Balloon, on Bristo Square. Inside a rather elegant debating hall, a drunken audience took its place at the front tables, and eventually in the rows of seats going back through the hall. Late’n'live always seemed to be an opportunity for local drunks to come in and shout at comedians. This tradition seems to have been upheld, though none of the shouting took the form of offensive criticism of the acts - disappointing, considering the first act was bloody awful. The second act was Mark Watson, whose own show we failed to get tickets for, and he turned out to be worth sitting through the first bloke. Unfortunately, his act was hijacked by the audience, and he decided to go along with it. As a result, half of his allotted time was taken up with the audience telling him what they thought of various celebrities. When he slipped back into his own material, however, he was brilliant. Even if the fake Welsh accent is pretty dodgy. We left when he finished, so I don’t know what the third act was like. I’m told he was rubbish. |
| Friday | |
| 14:50 - 16:00 | John Oliver & Andy Zaltzman Detonate 70 minutes of unbridled Afternoon - The Stand £8 |
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Ah. John Oliver got offered the prestigious role of a reporter on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show with Jon Stewart”. So he cleared off to the US, leaving Zaltzman to re-jig the show into a one-man standup routine. This makes the density of material and satirical comment even more impressive. There seemed to be barely a single line that hadn’t been deeply considered, re-drafted and compressed into an economical and effectively concentrated pellet of satire. Probably the most impressive performance of this year’s fringe, for me. Not necessarily the funniest (close, mind) but quite superb nevertheless. |
| 16:20 - 17:35 | Simon Munnery’s AGM - The Stand £8 |
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We thought we’d know how this show would go, having attended it 2 years ago. Then, Munnery spent the first half of the show delivering a selection of one-liners and short observations, some of them arythmically backed by a drum beat. There was then a short interval, in which the audience were invited to write “motions” for the meeting, which were read out in the second half, and voted on. Mine was adjudged the joint winner in 2004, so the pressure was on. Well, it wasn’t. Anyway, this year, the first half was taken up almost entirely by Munnery delivering a one-man playlet, based on Sherlock Holmes. It was enjoyable, without ever being hilarious. Very Radio 4, I think. There was then the break for motion-writing. After the break, he came out and did some stand-up, as well as reading (again backed by a drummer) from his book of thoughts, available from picturesonwalls.com
And then it was over. er… what about the motions we submitted? Well, Munnery invited the audience to come with him to the pub. So about 20-30 of us followed him out of the venue and about half a mile through some picturesque New Town alleys to the Star Bar. Unfortunately, being 5:45 on a Friday evening, it was rammed with people. So we left. I was later told that had we stayed, we would have heard the motions read out, as well as Munnery reciting my 2004 motion and saying that it still made him smile. Which was nice. |
| 22:30 | Rich Hall - Assembly Music Hall @ George St - £14 |
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We’ve seen Rich Hall enough times to know what we’re going to get whenever we see him. And even though he re-uses material for years, his new stuff is consistently funny and well delivered. It’s for that reason that we keep going back to see him, though there’s also the hope that he’ll bring out one or two Otis Lee Crenshaw songs, which he didn’t do on this occasion. The recent “terror” alerts played into his hands, really. He’s got a tonne of material that he’s amassed since September 2001, and he trotted it out with alacrity, despite the frequent interruptions of an increasingly annoying heckler. |
| 00:20 - 02:30 | The Free Beer Show - CowBarn, Bristo Square |
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This was bloody awful. Yes, we got a single free beer (well, I got two, due to a minor deception) but it was Foster’s, which is like drinking from a swimming pool after an infants’ school beginners’ lesson. It was another mixed show, with Mark Olver as the compere and 3 acts. Olver was dreadful, but we knew that would be the case - he’s the compere at Jesters comedy club in Bristol. The first act was largely useless and predictable, occasionally almost impersonating Bill Hicks. I don’t know what the other acts were like, because I chose to go outside to the convivial bars in Bristo Square, rather than sit through any more. I don’t think any of us made it to the third act, but we had time for a few drinks before the remarkably offensive stewards kicked everyone out of the square and onto the surrounding roads at 3am. |
Generally, I suppose it was a typical Edinburgh trip. That said, nothing really astounded me this year. But Henrik Elmer and Rich Hall were very funny, DJ Danny and Simon Munnery were very enjoyable, Justin Edwards and Andy Zaltzman were very impressive, and Harry Shearer was very disappointing. We drank too much, slept too little and walked too far. Hooray for Edinburgh.
August 21st, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Totally agree with this - especially about Mark Olver who must be boiled in oil soon.
Would add that Rhod Gilbert was very good too - a genuinely witty and well structured show (based around Gilbert completing a questionnaire before attempting entry to heaven) that made good use of the audiences’, albeit friendly, heckling. The lazy ‘its shit being Welsh’ schtick let him down slightly but its difficult to argue with a guy who claims to be from a made up Welsh town only to meet a person who claims to have actually been there. It is, after all, God’s country.