Tag: 2021

OK, last afternoon for me at the 2021 Fringe, with tickets booked for later on and in the evening, what do I want to see? There were two options, and this was the one I picked. Partly because it wasn't in the main edfringe.com site, not many other people did.

First up was Sam Rhodes. His material was mixed. The best one was a joke about forming a band called Scone that would only play 1970s songs by The Jam, Cream and Bread.. but would just spend all day arguing about the order in which they should be played. But there was another reappearance of the Chic Murray joke about a woman being a "redhead. No hair, just a red head" from.. the 1950s? There were also a couple of musical bits and I liked the Boss RC-505 he used for those rather more than the rest of his act.

After another short guest spot from Mia(?), it was time for Fiona.

"Fiona Clift .. performs 30 characters in 30 minutes" said the blurb.

Tick. If you asked me who was the most talented person I saw at the Fringe, Fiona would absolutely be a contender. (What with the guest spots it was actually 40 in 25.) It turns out that I've seen her puppetry skills too.

"Politicians, TV personalities, and some people from real life get all muddled up in character comedy mayhem."

Ah. What we actually get reminds me of spoof impressionists: 'I'm Frank Spencer.. ooh, Betty. I'm Tommy Cooper.. just like that!' etc etc. Virtually all of them are stand-alone impressions – I think there were two invented characters. The number is reached, but there's not much of any particular one, and there's no interaction between them.

The other problem is a cultural one. In the 1970s, the dominance of TV – all three channels of it! – meant there was a shared set of personalities that 'everyone' knew. Not any more. One impersonation is of a named woman with a 'poshcast' – a podcast for rich people's problems. It was probably spot on (see the talent) but I suspect most of the audience had never heard of her. Even in politics (the "Tory twats" section) while I've heard of Oliver Dowden, the number of people who could recognise him is very, very low.

So while I'd rush to see her again, please let it be with better material. Either have some invented characters with some depth (how Steve Coogan won his Perrier) or have fewer impressions done with more laughs.

2/5 for the show 5/5 for Fiona's talent though

The blurb was good:

"The motive: gold. The target: the Bank of England. The mission: to pull off the ultimate heist. The show: James Bond meets Oceans 11 gone bankrupt in this farcical comedy that is Mission Imposs- …wait, that's not right. The farcical comedy that is The Bank Job… Yeah… That’s right… You can edit that bit out right? (Epic heist music plays in the background)."

The blurb was the only thing that was good.

Like quite a few shows this year, it's in a semi-open tent. Unlike many of the others, it's near a major road – Nicolson Street is also the A7. Unlike nearly all of the others, no-one on the stage is mic'd. So not only are they competing with the traffic noise (including emergency vehicle sirens), if someone just outside the space is being chatty, then you hear more of that than of them if you're not seated at the front. I was not seated at the front.

The stage is also low (50cm says the official specifications), the seating is not raked, and some of the cast are not tall. All of the cast spend some time seated or lying down. The result is that unless you are at the very front, you may well only be able to see a fraction of the cast on stage at any given point.

I could forgive the technical failings if the actual material had been any good. Sadly, it is not. I have seen better plotted and funnier shows devised by a bunch of schoolkids. It aspires to be a farcical Bond / Oceans 11 / Mission Impossible, but it doesn't even get to be as good as 'mediocre'.

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I bought my ticket in advance of it opening: the blurb is great. A look at their FB page says over 500 people also did that. This year, you can't buy tickets on the door at virtually all of the venues, so I suspect nearly everyone got theirs from edfringe.com.

Among the features of that site is the ability to leave a review. Foolishly, I did not check those before going – this year, you can get a refund if you can't go for Covid-19 related reasons. (If you bought tickets to this, caught Covid-19 and got a refund, consider yourselves lucky.)

I wrote mine without seeing the others. Having done so, I looked: there were about seven others going 'AVOID' for the reasons I've given and also three going 'best show ever!1!'.

I struggle to believe those three were genuinely independent: the show's been a hit in terms of seats sold. The space has just over 150 seats, and on the day I saw it, at least 120 had bums on them. Literally no-one was reacting in that way to it – I got louder laughs from people near me when there was a line about an "unfamiliar sound" when I muttered "yeah, laughter" to myself than they ever did.

Shockingly, later that day all of the reviews vanished when Aireborne Theatre had them hidden. Shame. Shame. Shame.

1/5 – I have seen worse, but not this year.