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bloggerblagger · 7 years

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82) Obession. Futility. Joy. (Late summer notes from home and abroad.)

Sitting in a café in a village called Lisle near Perigourd in the Dordogne.

Probably sounds a lot better than it is. The weather has been awful and is still very iffy. As I write I am listening to ‘Talksport’ through my laptop - I am only in this particular café because it has ‘weefee’ as they say ici. I am glued to Jim White on transfer deadline day. Only football victims will understand why. It would be impossible for any sane person to imagine a bigger waste of the diminishing time I have left. (No, nothing to get alarmed about. Just a general observation about the eventually inevitable.)

Apparently the Ox has gone to Liverpool for sixty thousand a week more than he was offered at the Emirates. (Don’t know who the Ox is? Or think that the Emirates are somewhere near the Persian gulf? Count yourself lucky.)

It always make me smile grimly when gaziliionaire footballer salaries are talked about in terms of ‘wages’ of so much a week. I have a vision of one of those cashier’s offices they used to have in offices and factories where, every week, staff queued up to collect their money which was dispensed in small, top-pocket-shaped manilla envelopes through a tiny sliding window. I see hundreds of thousands of pounds stuffed into a suitcase size version of one of those, being squeezed through by some old gorgon who barks out, ‘Mbappe! Sign here.’

Time wasting, continued.

Last week,as keen readers of my Facebook page will know, I was up in Edinburgh for the Fringe. (Not sure that ‘keen’ is really the word. Very bitter that I am not getting the number of likes that I deserve. I’m taking it personally.)

I started off by writing potted reviews of the first few shows I’d seen, and pasting them on Facebook. As I suffer - or masochistically enjoy - take your pick - from a mild but very definite case of OCD, I was then compelled by my inner demons to finish as I’d started. So I reviewed them all - each day’s reviews getting a little less potted than the last.

Regardless of the degree of potting, writing these reviews was a pretty pointless exercise, as it was the last week of the fringe. Even if someone was daft enough to take any notice of what I thought, how much use could they be when all the final curtains were about to come down? (Not content with that, I have now taken pointlessness to whole a new level by reproducing all these reviews a few paragraphs below, a week after the Fringe finished.)

Purpose discovered.

However what would most definitely not be pointless would be going to the Edinburgh fringe next year. This was the second year I have been and I have to report that it is a better mood improver than any amount of Prozac. If you need a swift uptake of serotonin, go north young man/woman/non binary whatever.

Wait. I need to qualify that. It could equally be a terrible downer if you fancied yourself as a comedian, actor, dancer, singer, magician, acrobat or any other kind of performer. For, at the Edinburgh fringe, the bar is set dizzyingly high.

I was told that during the four weeks of the festival there are three thousand - THREE THOUSAND!!! - different shows to see, and if the twenty three that I saw were anything to go by, about 80% are three star good or better, and about 15-20%, five star stunning. The competition must be terrifying.

You will probably never have heard of the vast majority of performers and given how few opportunities there are for them to make it to the big-time - however talented, you’d still need a supersized slice of luck - chances are you never will again. But in that in no way diminishes their genius, just the opportunity to appreciate it.

Best in show.

Of all the many delights that I witnessed, there is just one that I will single out. ‘Butt Kapinski’ is the persona adopted by an American comic called Deanna Fleyscher, and Butt is a Sam Spade-ish private eye with a sort of bendy desk-lamp sticking out of the back of his mac and over his invisible trilby. It is the only light source in the show and the key prop in setting the scene of an impromptu film noir, the cast of which is Butt and everyone in the audience. If that doesn’t sound barmy enough, all the men in the audience are cast as women and the women as men.

Oh and Butt’s voice is another thing; sort of wildly exaggerated Noo Yoyick mixed up with a childish lisp. Why? I haven’t a clue. Why was any of it funny? I really couldn`t say. I am someone who normally likes his comedy to make sense, to be able to trace the path of the gag, and understand the lateral jump that allows two and two to make five. Butt Kapinski is anything but that. Yet I found it as LOL as LOL gets and l was not alone. Pythonesque? Possibly but not quite. Milliganesque? In a way, I suppose. Perhaps more Marty Feldman with shades of Stanley Unwin, You have to be my age to get those references but any age will get Butt Kapinski. I really hope Deanna Fleysher is one of the happy few who does manage to break through.

Roll up, roll up.

I have a suspicion that she may be back next year at Edinburgh, because lots of these artistes travel from one Festival to another. There is a worldwide circuit apparently - Adelaide in Feb/March is another considered to be up there with the best. A little far but a lot warmer than Edinburgh.

Yes, the weather is ordinary at best, and the streets are packed - the population is said to double during the Fringe - but Edinburgh is a magnificent city, and worth a visit in its own right. Not that you will see that much of it, if you go for the Fringe. You’ll be dashing from play to comedian to magician to dancers to improv to musicians to acrobats and back again.

Do yourself a favour. Next year, skip the beach for a week and try a bit of funbathing in Edinburgh instead.

Five point three days at the Fringe 2017. Twenty four reviews of shows it’s too late for you to see. Plus a thrilling personal highpoint midway through Thursday that had nothing to do with anything I saw. (Skip the rest by all means but do not miss that bit.)

Tuesday.

Arrived in Edinburgh about 6pm on Monday night to see stuff from last week at the Fringe. So far seen 5 shows. If you too are up in Edinburgh, here, for what they are worth, are my potted crits. (Just my opinions - I claim nothing more.)

TWO shows get 5 stars from me and are very highly recommended. ‘Woke’ a one woman drama with the magnetic, totally convincing Apphia Campell. And the astonishing ‘Butt Kapinski’, comedy as you have never, ever seen it. (At least I hadn’t.) Completely crackers but captivating. I give 4 stars to Kai Humphreys a charming Geordie comedian with a refreshing angle on the world. And a measly 2.5 stars to Tiff Stevenson, who has been well reviewed and had some good material but she took aim at what I thought were some pretty easy targets and her relenless de-ermination to ge down with the people by omi-ing every T really eed me off. Finally a black hole to 'Would You Adam and Eve It.’ Enough said.

Four more to see tomorrow.

Wednesday.

Today saw 4 more shows.

1. 'Tutu’ - see photo - all male French comedy ballet troupe. By turns breathtakingly brilliant (the dancing) and completely incomprehensible (the comedy). But I have been to enough Club Med shows to know that what passes for humour en France est très bloody étrange. 4 stars.

2. Gavin Webster, my second Geordie comic of the week. Playing in a tiny space which wasn’t full which was a great pity because this guy deserves an audience. Great delivery and lots of good stuff with one really clever running gag that alone made it money well spent. Very nearly 5 stars and certainly 4 and a bit.

3. 'The Joni Mitchell Story’. A young woman with a beautiful voice and a dowdy dress and lank hair and no make-up and bunions on her bare feet sings Joni Mitchell songs whilst a male voice-over whining in best Estuary tells us the strange story of Joni’s early life as accompanying slides are shown above the stage. Great songs well sung, interesting tidbits, effortless - as in no effort made - presentation. I feel a bit guilty saying this because she seemed very pleasant, but honestly, music apart, it was so half arsed. Average audience age about 170. 2.5 stars.

4. 'We are Ian’. Using dance and mime and a video backdrop (and a lot of neo-gurning) three twenty something girls tell the true life tale of a Mancunian dj called Ian living through the halcyon (apparently) House Music days of 1989. (Ancient history to them and much too late for me to relate to the story.) It was as odd as it sounds and I started off wanting to hate it as I was three time as old (literally) as 95% of the audience. But in the end I was forced to admit they had something and the audience absolutely loved it, just about all bar one - me - finishing up dancing manically on stage. 4 stars.

Thursday.

Seven - SEVEN - shows today!

1. A man sits on stage completely naked playing with his dick which he refers to as his pussy. No idea what he was on about, nor when he started prancing about giving incomprehensible little monologues as a bitter Glaswegian husband and wife (both parts) and a prancing old queen, in between further sessions of dick handling. The audience nervously tittered occasionally though I doubt they had any idea what they were laughing about. Was it art? Or was it pretentious shit?I went for the latter and left after 20 minutes. Show was called ‘This is Not Culturally Significant’ - and the title was the one thing you couldn’t argue with. No stars but another Black Hole. (Of the astronomical metaphorical variety. Happily I didn’t to stay long enough to see if the audience were ever exposed to the literally anatomical kind.)

2. Not a show but a game called 'Werewolves’, in which twenty people take part under the aegis of a ringmaster with a silvery beard and a voice so quiet I might almost have thought I was a bit mutton jeff. (I am.) The idea is that the villagers have to kill off the werewolves and vice versa. Lots of fun. 4 stars.

Just been asked for my senior’s ID at the box office! Yesss! GET IN!!!

3. A comic and a chef called George Egg cooks breakfast lunch, and dinner using DIY tools from his shed.You even get to sample the food at the end. Ingenious and jolly. 4 stars and a bit of an extra star because George comes from Brighton.

4. ’Notflix’. Six young women make an impromptu musical out of a non-musical film title that they have picked from a hat filled with suggestions from the audience. The title they got was ‘Wardogs’ which was about big biz and oil and the CIA in the Iraq war. Not promising material but they made a decent if not dazzling fist of it. 3 stars.

5.’Ben Hart’ is a magician who left me seriously impressed. At one point he took rings from three different people in the audience and rubbed them until they interlinked. How on earth was that possible unless they were trick rings that were swapped for the originals - and back again when he separated them - or the audience members were plants? Neither seemed likely but what other explanation could there be? I love a good magic show. Who doesn’t? (Well, I suppose some people don’t.) Four stars comfortably.

6. Sarah Kendall, an Aussie comedian - I presume comedienne is no longer PC - produced a cleverly structured hour which had a bit more depth and tad more polish than your average turn. She touched on some tricky family issues and some quite profound ones and smoothly managed the tonal changes required as she went from outright gag making to being thought provoking. Very nearly 5 stars.

7. Denim is a 5 person drag act. I have never quite understood the appeal of drag - Danny La Rue never did it for me. Quite liked La Cage Aux Folles but that was about it. And, in the era of LGBTQ etc when the closet door is so wide open, I wonder whether the outrageousness of drag is really necessary? Is there that much to be outraged about? Notwithstanding all that, they were brilliant singers and performers and gave rousing renditions of a lot old favourites of the ‘I will survive’ variety. 4 stars.

Friday.

Five more shows.

Should have seen ‘Trashed’ first, a play that had been highly recommended to me but for which I contrived to be 6 minutes late, and was consequently refused admission. They kept me out but kept my money. Fuck them.

1. 'Not for Prophet’ a stand-up routine by half Pakistani, half Bangladeshi, ex-banker and lapsed Muslim, Eshaan Akbaar, who had a winning, easy charm but too few really good jokes to be worth more than 3 of my hard to earned stars

2. ‘These Trees the Autumn Leaves Alone’. First of two shows with blokes with long curly red hair and beards. This one was a 'story telling’, or so Curly Ginge no.1 explained. This seems to be some sort of new (or really, I suppose, a revival of a very old) niche art form in which someone reads and semi-acts out a story they have written. A sort of prose version of performance poetry. I started off wanting to hate it, not least because his occasional and rather pointless musical accompanists, a smug male guitarist and a simpering woman singer, were each, at the outset, the subjects of a declaration of love from Curly Ginge no.1, delivered without any noticeable irony. On top of that he was barefoot. However, I have to say that in the end my entirely understandable prejudices - not against red hair by the way, I am absolutely not gingerist - were overcome by the charm of his story. Three and a bit stars.

3. 'Double Feature’. Two comedians or possibly actors called Andy Gray and Grant Stott, who are apparently well known in Scotland but not to me, perform a rather stagey show in which they are supposed to be tradesmen of some sort - they wear overalls, that’s the clue - working in an old cinema being converted into flats. Having often come to this cinema when they were childhood friends they reminisce about the old days and act out passages from famous films they once saw. No, it doesn’t sound like a very good idea and it wasn’t. Not even two stars.

4. 'Letters to Morrisey’. Started off wanting to hate this too - default position of card-carrying curmudgeons comme moi - but beardy Curly Ginge no.2 (Gary McNair) gives an electrifying performance in a one man play about a boy with teenage angst and a heavily weighing secret who feels that only Morrisey (lead singer of eighties Indie band, the Smiths, if you didn’t know*) will understand. Four stars and almost five. (*Don’t be too embarrassed if you didn’t. I barely did and certainly couldn’t name a single one of their waxings.)

5.’Siblings’. Had I known more about these two girls (not quite as young as they look in the pic) I would have wanted to hate this too - bloody privileged showbiz kids grrrr - but I have only just discovered on the internet that they are Maddy and Marina Bye, real life sisters, which I would never have guessed as they look nothing like each other, and, more to the point, turn out to be Ruby Wax’s daughters. Not knowing that at the time, and as neither had curly hair and a beard, I was prepared to give them the benefit off the doubt. But even if I had been my usual misanthropic self, I would have been easily won over. They put on a completely barmy sort of sketch show, some of which made sense and was hilarious and some of which made none but which still kept the audience in fits because they radiated such good humour and effervescence. Two stars to each of them. (For the benefit of anyone under forty, get your calculator out and you’ll find that makes four.)

Saturday.

Went to twenty one shows earlier in the week - in four full days and one evening only. (Well, walked out of two, but I walked into twenty one.) Three more today, although one of them is not actually in the fringe. So that’ll be 24 in all!

1.‘Borders’. A harrowing, thought provoking, cleverly worked two handed play about the world of the refugee, unflinchingly and unsentimentally told both from the point of view of the refugee and the people behind the camera lens through which the refugee’s story is brought to us. I thought it was gripping and unsettling and I shower five stars at least upon it. However, i should say that I am possibly biased. Its author, Henry Naylor, a former comedian who, with his comedy partner of the time, once had a BBC radio show, 'Parsons and Naylor’, is someone I have thought of as a friend since he featured in a series of commercials that I *helmed for Direct Line about 200 years ago. (*Never used the word 'helmed’ before but I keep hearing it in film reviews and I rather like thinking of myself as ‘helming’ something. Sounds rather dashing, a bit Jack Aubrey.) Last year, by the way, another of Henry’s plays called ‘Angel’ played to rave reviews - and not just mine - at Edinburgh, and is finally coming to London in the very near future. if you haven’t seen it, look out for it.

2. Cirkopolis. After my conscience had been given a right old prod by ‘Borders’ it was off to the circus. Well almost. Against a dazzling, constantly evolving projected backdrop, French Canadian dance, juggling and acrobatic troupe 'Cirque Éloize’ gave a fantastic demonstration of breathtaking, body bending, gravity defying, ooh-and-aah provoking trickery and dare-devilry in a show loosely themed around Fritz Laing’s legendary silent film,’Metropolis’. All sorts of gravity defying feats but the act that really did my head in was the chap with the diabolo. (See the illustration if you, like me, didn’t know that a diabolo is called a diabolo.) Such whirling, catching, pirouetting, juggling as you have never seen. Unless you’ve seen him of course. Five stars.

3. Finally, the long slow climb to the very top and 32nd row (officially designated row FF. That’s FF as in For Fucks sake, how much further?) Up and up we climbed to the summit of the monster three sided stadium set into the side of the steep granite hill (or whatever it is) that Edinburgh Castle is built upon, there to see - along with 8,799 others - the Edinburgh Tattoo. Easy to be sniffy and cynical about it, and nobody does cynicism with more sniffiness than your reviewer, and yes, there is something faintly comical about military marching bands constantly evolving into new and ever more pointless formations as they play - columns that become circles which become windmills and then back into lines, but why? (A sort of mass group dressage but without horses.) Despite all that, and the Scottish dancing - curiously I am sure there was just one bloke amongst about sixty girls - and the corny voice over (Ken Bruce?) booming through the speakers and the guest dancers from India to mark the 70th anniversary of independence - where were the Pakistanis you might well ask? - and the nippy mid-August chill, I did, in the end, buy into it. It is a staggering feat of organisation and the music - particularly the drumming - is impressive. And when the lone piper stood way up on the castle parapet to play the final piece, I found it really quite moving. If you are going to Edinburgh you have to go. Five stars.

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