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Twenty two films, at least seven of which I thought were great. It was also interesting to see that two were filmed very close to where I used to live in London: Balotelli Postman in Brockley and Smell Investigators in Peckham.
Particularly good for a wet afternoon going between two shows.
On at 4:45pm at Pivo (venue 24, and really on Calton Road rather than Leith St) until the 9th August.
When Oh Boy! finished, it was in the middle of a thunderstorm outside so any plans to leave the building got cancelled. Fortunately, the venue has six performance spaces, what's on?
Mae is a young Canadian bisexual / lesbian woman (she's had both boyfriends and girlfriends in the past, and is currently in a relationship with another woman, but says she is beyond "labels", so I'm going to say 'bisexual'…) Interestingly, this probably had the biggest audience of anything I saw at the Fringe this year and only Magic and Tea With An Evil Genius filled a higher proportion of the available seats. Was this because she's got a popular YouTube 'channel'?
The show is a 'work in progress' which meant that this afternoon, it was a mix of stories about her family (particularly her mother's odd announcements), some name-dropping, and some audience suggestions. I missed the chance to join in with the latter, but others had put some short phrases on pieces of paper and she drew out some of those out of a bucket and talked about them.
It's all fine stuff, but I did leave wondering why this had a bigger audience than shows I think are much better.
On at 3:30pm at Cowgatehead room 4 – not room 1 as on the flyer – (venue 32) until the 24th August. No show on Wednesdays.
Quantum Leap was a TV series of the late 80s / early 90s. Each episode saw Dr Sam Beckett appear in someone else's place at some point in the past, work out WTF was going on, and then attempt to change what was happening for the better. He would be aided by Admiral Al Calavicci – who only he could see – who was in turn helped by the computer Ziggy saying things like 'there is a 99% chance that this series has incredibly dodgy science'.
Here, it's been turned into a improv show by The Maydays, four women including the wonderful Liz Peters. To get the 'I don't know what's going on' aspect spot on, a guest star plays Sam and the audience-suggested theme of the show is kept from him. On the day I saw it, the guest hadn't realised that only he could see Al which added to the fun. Oh boy.
Overall, there's a 100% chance that it's considerably better than the TV show was…
On at 2:30pm at Cowgatehead room 6 (venue 32) until the 24th August. No shows on Mondays.
Gráinne Maguire hosts a panel show based on news and what counts as 'news' – three guests each propose one current story as the most important one this week.
So on the one I saw, it had Jay Foreman proposing… erm, I can't remember exactly which political story it was – the independence debate I think, while Luke Benson wanted the Commonwealth Games, and Luke Toulson suggested a proposed football transfer involving Tottenham Hotspur (he's been doomed to be a Spurs fan ever since seeing Chas and Dave on Blue Peter aged five). A show like this depends on the material and I may just have been unlucky here. What makes me think that I wasn't is that the add-ons to this format, like an imaginary letter to an agony aunt from someone in the news, are ok but not particularly special.
It's a great idea, but it's not quite there yet.
On at 1:15pm at Viva Mexico (venue 274) until the 23rd August.
In comparison with previous Fringe visits, I hadn't seen many plays and this – an adaptation of the Aristophanes' classic play, first performed in 411 BCE, of women going on a sex strike to end the Peloponnesian War – sounded interesting.
The original's large cast has been reduced to two women playing multiple parts, and the action set in 4014. It is also the men who are the ones who are about to stop having sex with their partners, because women run things, including fighting a long-running war.
Alas, the adaptation's language wasn't very good and the performances were much more suited to the Shakespearian monologues they are also doing for another show. Had I had more time in Edinburgh, I'd have happily seen that, but I walked out of this after about five minutes.
On at noon at George Next Door (venue 430) until the 12th August.
One of the six comedians at Pandamonium was Daphna Baram, who is a leftie Israeli ex-human rights lawyer, ex-journalist, and heart attack patient.
I don't know what her sample stand-up is like – we never got that far – but her main show is very good. I particularly liked the section on being an editor of a paper during the Second Palestinian Intifada, and how awful suicide bombings are for the paper. Why? Because when you send a dozen journalists out to interview the victims' families, the story is always the same: only wonderful people full of potential are victims of terrorism.
Recommended. And her accent isn't as bad as she claims either.
On at 8:30pm at the Cowgatehead room 3 (venue 32) until the 16th August.
After Liz Peters, I noticed that the next thing on in that room, Democracy is Broken with Russ Mulligan, looked interesting. After checking email etc, there was still about 10 minutes to go, so I had a wander around the space looking at posters etc. What's that happening in that room…?
'Ooooh!' say the six people talking in there, 'an audience!!' and they beg me to come in. I explain that I am going to see something else that's starting in a few minutes. 'OK, can we sing you a couple of songs?' If they want to, fine, but after getting on stage, they then spend the next few minutes discussing what to sing while one of them (who I later know is Daphna Baram) taps her watch saying, 'He's got to go, he's got to go…'
So I leave without the song and go back next door. Where there's me plus three others and they'd been paid to flyer the show and were only there to see what the thing they'd been promoting was actually like. The combination of the small audience plus not feeling up to it meant that Russ cancelled that performance, so I return to the six who are still there.
'Ooooh!' they say again, and this time, a couple of songs were sung. Afterwards, I say that this is not the worst thing I have seen at the Fringe this year, so they invite me up on stage to tell them about it, at which point Daphna posts this on Instagram:
After that, three of them talk about their worst ever gig (one was 'gonged off' a show within about ten seconds – from what they said about their act then, I'm surprised it took that long – and still had to pay over a hundred pounds to stay in that city overnight) and we all leave reasonably happy, even if I didn't put anything in the collection bucket.
The show was 'Pandamonium' (the MC, Rory McAlpine has a toy panda), and I'm sure it's usually less chaotic than this 🙂
It's on at 7:15pm at Cowgatehead space 4 (venue 32) until the 25th August (no show on the 13th). It's also on in Edinburgh throughout the year.
Liz Peters was one of the people at the Misandry Madness Showcase I had seen earlier and immediately wanted to see more of. She'd done some stand-up comedy there, and it turned out that is a relatively small part of her full show.
It also turned out to be very, very good. On the afternoon I saw it, the show almost started with two of us in the audience, but there were soon more through the doors and some of them went to get friends.
The show is a mix of songs and games as well as the stand-up (or sit down) comedy. You can see some of the songs on her lizpeters.com website, but you'll miss her ability to improvise a song on the spot. Lots of fun and definitely recommended.
On at 6:15pm at space 5 at Cowgatehead (venue 32) until 24th August. See it.
Kate Smurthwaite again, and again I didn't realise I'd seen her before at this Fringe. This time, I have even less of an excuse as the flyer has this on one side and The Evolution.. on the other. Ahem.
This one's a continuation of the 'News at Kate' political shows, the title coming from the incomprehensible Twitter hashtag used by people who didn't like her 'highbrow leftie atheist feminist' comments on the BBC's Question Time.
Subjects covered include some easy targets (how bad the Daily Mail Online is) and some edgier material (she is a spokesperson for Abortion Rights UK, and delightfully describes herself as pro-abortion rather than pro-choice). Again, her passion for the material comes across extremely well, and you'll doubtless learn something here too. Also definitely recommended.
On at 5pm at Viva Mexico (venue 274) until the 23rd August (not the 12th).
Rosie Wilby was at York University in the early 90s and joined the women's collective which produced the student feminist paper, Matrix. Rediscovering her collection of the early issues over twenty years later, she wondered what had happened to the other women…
The show is a mix of her personal history (haircuts, sexuality and activism) and the search for the other members, and it's not a spoiler to say that many of them have changed quite a bit. One good surprise is that the work continues with current students producing Matrix Reloaded named as a tribute to their work rather than the awful film sequel.
On at the Voodoo Rooms (venue 68) until the 24th August (not the 11th).