Tag: Fringe

Savvy Secrets of Successful Mistresses – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Lisa Faith Philips paid for some of her education via stripping. That formed the basis of a previous show, and this one is about another form of using sexuality to make a living: being a mistress.

It's set up as a parody of self-help gurus – she's 'Dr Faith' with a one true way of doing things – but it grates, especially to a non-American ear. There are also far too many thwacks of a riding crop against the pop-up display too – it just gets boring.

The original songs, by the other person on the stage, Ellen Mandel, are fine enough but suffer in comparison to the classics that are also performed.

Interestingly, the 'savvy secrets' are very similar to the basic rules for sex work: "get your hands on the dough" is "get the money first" by another name. But while 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' is a great song, it's rubbish financial advice – the resale value of diamonds is scandalously low.

On the evening I went, I won the 'Scotland's next top mistress' award but although I left with a badge (which I have been delightedly wearing ever since) and plastic rose, I also left feeling that the show could have been a lot, lot better given the basic material there.

It's not funny enough as a parody, and it's not personal enough. Her previous show was about her, and it worked a lot better than this one.

2/5

On at 10:15pm in the Paradise at Augustines (venue 152) until the 10th.

Bad Girls: Misandry Madness Showcase – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

A variable bill of several female comics, plus one token man in at least some form of drag.

On the night I saw it, after some chat from compère Miss Androus, it was Sarah Cassidy (solo show immediately added to the 'definitely see' list), and Jane Walker (nicely self-deprecating humour) before Ian Miller in a bad wig ('women in Essex are so orange, going down on them counts as one of your five-a-day').

He was followed by So Ying Pang (at some point, she is going to stop looking so nervous when performing), and Liz Peters (solo show even more immediately added to the 'definitely see' list).

Your cast will vary, but two palpable hits meant I was happy to have gone.

3/5

On at 9pm at the George on The Bridge (venue 346) until the 23rd August.

The Horror! The Horror! The Final Curtain – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

This was an example of flyering working – one of the performers handing out the flyers convinced me to see it because of its overarching narrative. One of the quotes on the flyer calls it a 'A home-grown Little Shop of Horrors', but it's really closer to the film version of Cabaret in that what happens on the music hall stage setting reflects the characters' real lives.

To say much more would spoil it, but the songs by Jeffrey Mayhew (on stage playing the piano) are all good, and the jokes are either good or deliberately bad. What stops me rating this a bit higher is that, despite the way that it's staged, it's a bit too subtle. It would be good to see a longer version too.

3/5

On at 7:45pm at the Bedlam Theatre (venue 49) until the 24th August. (No show on the 17th.)

Andy J Wilson's Confessions Box – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

I've been playing 'anonymous confessions' at places like BiCon for over twenty years: everyone writes down something on a piece of paper, folds it up and adds to a pile of them. The pile is then mixed up, and everyone takes one and reads it. It often gets quite rude.

'Ooh, there's a show where someone reads out anonymous confessions sent in over the internet / written on the way in – what could possibly go wrong with that?'

Well, that it did is shown by how often Andy Wilson mentioned how the previous evening's performance had been much better. It may well have been: there were only about three confessions from this evening's performance, and one of those was in French. But surely there was enough material from his website? There probably was, but he wouldn't read most of it. He'd written them down, but not marked them, and couldn't find at least one he wanted to do.

Instead, we got a bit too much of his own material, some of which didn't go down too well possibly because of the other thing he kept mentioning: how much he'd had to drink that day.

The concept is great, the execution simply wasn't there this evening. Fortunately, it was free.

2/5

It's on at The George on the Bridge (venue 346) at 6:30pm, until 9th August.

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Quite a few of the shows I would have liked to see don't open until next week, and going for unknown material by unknown companies is a risk. So I started my time at the 2014 Fringe with something where I knew the material was better than 'good': Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The company is from a school in Hawai'i, would they be ok? I am delighted to say that the answer is that they're better, they're very good. There's a cast of 27 listed in the programme, which makes it just over 33p each for a £9 ticket.

The staging is very simple, and not everyone amongst the main characters is quite as audible as the others, but that's about the main criticism I have, and because the venue's seating is on three sides, they're sometimes singing while facing away from you (I'd recommend sitting in the middle section).

The 1h45m really did not seem anything like as long. Because of the emphasis on the lyrics, Sondheim can be a hard choice, but I only noticed one small slight fluff.

Congratulations to everyone involved: this is one of the best school productions I have ever seen, and there are going to be a lot of 'professional' companies doing shows that are not nearly as good as this at the Fringe. Very definitely recommended.

4/5

It's on at theSpace on Niddry St (Venue 9) at 11:10 until the 7th August 2014. See it.

Magick and Mayhem – Jermyn Street Theatre

I noticed this being advertised after seeing The Sideshow of Wonders (cv), and was wondering about whether to see it, especially after the huge disappointment of Dial L... I'm glad I did.

First up at this performance was George Parker from Amsterdam doing some close up magic and enjoying the 'wa-huh?!?' looks on the faces of the two volunteers sitting next to him. I was in the front row, almost as close, and his opening cut/rejoined rope work was perfect. I could just spot what was really happening to the 'lucky' card in one card routine in particular, but it was still very good.

The main event is Jay Fortune and his somewhat warped sense of humour. Again, I can see how he does some of it – if you start with five things to choose from and a volunteer to assist, it does not matter who picks two of them for the other to pick which one to take away, you'll always get the final card you want provided you pick on the last round – but not all. (I wonder if he has fifty two old packs of cards under the table for one…) In any case, the presentation is very good if you can take jokes about death and abuse.

An excellent end to a mixed evening.

4/5

Dial L for Latch-Key – Etcetera Theatre

The worst professional production I've seen was of a play called On the Playing Fields of Her Rejection at the Drill Hall early in 1996. The flyer was fabulous, promising mix of lesbianism, astronomy and gardening. The reality was tedious, biting the carpet bad. At one point, the play featured a solar eclipse and, when the stage lights went out, there was nervous applause from those who thought that, at last, it was over. No, and there was no interval for people to leave during either. So they were openly leaving in the middle of scenes. Come the real end, I remember at least some of the cast looking suitably embarrassed. (Amusingly, the director still has it as a proud point on her CV, even if it is noticeable she doesn't appear to have ever directed anything else.)

Why do much on that play? Because this one is not much better. Again, the publicity was great:

We tried to dial M for Murder. But instead, we accidentally dialed L for Latch-Key…
A plotting husband who strongly resembles Ray Milland…
A framed wife as eleganced out as Grace Kelly…
An Inspector straight out of Monty Python…
Hitchcock would be spinning in his grave, if he weren’t suiting up for his cameo.

The idea of spoofing Hitchcock's films is great. (See Mel Brook's film High Anxiety, for example.) But here what is supposed to be a mash-up of his greatest hits is merely messy. Film titles clunk when dropped and, a couple of sniggers aside, it's simply not funny. In the penultimate words of the piece, "it's just stupid". It's also very short at just over half an hour. Normally that's a bad thing, especially at the price, but here it's more of a relief.

1/5

The Side Show of Wonders – Jermyn Street Theatre

Richard Leigh runs a series of magic shows here, this one is a family show during the February school half-term holidays.

It starts before the advertised time with a warm up of side show games, balloon modelling etc. All good fun and the children in the audience were joining in happily.

The show itself is based around fairground attractions and for its audience works very well. You have probably seen most of the things before, but probably not so close up (it's a small space) or presented with so much genuine enjoyment – they were delighted when four of the children wanted to pay a pound to see the Man Eating Chicken!

Some of the tricks went slightly wrong (the bottom blade on the guillotine showed when lifting up the blade after the demo run – think of a vegetable beginning with C 🙂 – and the blind was thrown a little too high for the transformation trick) but it really does not matter: everyone enjoyed themselves.

Apparently, it will be back during at least some other school holidays. Recommended.

4/5

Company – Southwark Playhouse

Ah, the real Sondheim. For my money, this is one of his five best musicals, and thus better than anything most composers will ever do.

I've seen two professional productions before. The first was the Donmar Warehouse's excellent 1995 revival, starring Adrian Lester. The second was two years ago in the tiny Union Theatre, also excellent. So this one had something to live up to.

The setting is minimalist and it's not clear when its set. Bobby has a Mac laptop and an iPhone (including snorting off it at one point) and the music on the radio or at the disco is modern, but the camera used in one scene is a 1970s/80s 35mm one and the costumes – bearing in mind that I think that, with clothes, fashion is something that happens to someone else – look to be from the same period.

Despite the programme apparently claiming 'present day', I'm guessing it's still supposed to be the earlier period, because there is a scene where one character smokes – indoors! – despite being banned in New York clubs since 2003. I had forgotten that bit, but there was a warning on the auditorium door about this. I groaned to myself, then sat as low down as possible. Fortunately, the character's partner failed to get their lighter to work! Yes! It even works better that way in terms of the scene: he's failing to provide what she wants and she's too drunk to do it herself. Make this an official change to the piece!

Two problems do remain. All of Bobby's girlfriends are noticeably not as good singing as the wives he is friends with, but again, you can say this enhances the piece. One of those showing them how it should be done is Siobhan McCarthy's Joanne (albeit the youngest Joanne I've seen outside student productions) who I saw last year in a fringe revival of the tragically badly promoted Drowsy Chaperone.

The second will be cured if and when this gets a transfer. For some reason, despite this being a small space, everyone is miked. Sometimes, as with Bobby, this is stupidly apparent visually – it looks like he's got a pendant on his forehead! Similarly, you hear the band over a speaker system. But combine the sound design with the 'underneath the arches' shape of the space, and it sounds painful at times, especially with loud or high pitched sounds. I don't know if the sound balance should be better or if the whole thing is just a bad decision, but in a different space, it will sound better.

Apart from that, it's wonderful from beginning to end. Not necessarily better than the other two productions, but still one to be highly recommended.

5/5

The Overcoat – Brockley Jack Studio

Despite living two minutes away for over a decade, it was only late last year that I first went to the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, blush. This was the second visit. The run had sold out, so an extra performance was added on the last day…

The Nikolai Gogol short story The Overcoat is adapted from is a classic of Russian literature. Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, an aging clerk copying endless documents in some St Petersburg government department, is bullied because of his threadbare coat. The tailor refuses to patch it again so, with the help of a bonus, a brand new coat is ordered. When he's dressed in the replacement, everyone treats Akaky very differently.. until it is stolen after a party for him (or was the party for the coat?) leading to his death.

Chris Bearne as the hero does both the bullied and newly confident Akaky very well within the limitations of the production, but those are substantial. A story about the way people are judged by their possessions and their jobs has stayed relevant for over a century, but this is largely missed, with too much of it set 'pre coat'. It does feel nicely Russian though.

Akaky's return as a ghost is also miswritten. The original story ends with the ghost visiting, and terrifying, a high ranking official who had refused to help recover the coat (and also had enjoyed terrifying the office Akaky worked in). The ghost leaves with the official's coat and is never seen again. Instead a second ghost starts haunting the city, looking like one of the people who had stolen Akaky's coat.

Here, Akaky's ghost turns up, smokes – productions should post 'contains smoking' warnings, especially in small spaces like this – and makes the lights go out. The end. Hmmm. Given the pace of the script, it was more of a relief than a fright.

Another oddity is that it was advertised as being 75 minutes long, but despite starting eight minutes late, it still finished 'on time'. Did something get cut? If so, it was the wrong bits.

2/5