The Chocolate Ocelot's 2015 Fringe: Day Three

Monday 10th August 2015

Up with the lark. A fairly late-rising lark. Probably a lark that's been out late trilling and tralalalaing with its mates until all hours and now feels a little fragile.

Time for some Proper Culchure, so armed with a Transport for Edinburgh app (Herself) and a 17-year old city map (yours truly), we say hello to the public bus system and make our way over the Water of Leith to Dean Village.

M C Escher exhibition

Modern Art Gallery

Not a Neil Diamond lyric

Hands, drawing hands
MC Escher in the house
Flat lizard, real lizard, flat lizard
Impossible stairs and Möbius ants
Not a Dutch DJ after all
Nice beard though
Felt queasy walking downstairs after.


Oh, and the gallery cafe, while as stupidly expensive as its counterpart at the National Museum, does a moderately better cup of tea and an infinitely superior shortbread. In your face, National Museum of Scotland.

Trans Scripts

Pleasance

Six actors relate the experiences of real-life transwomen (why no transmen?) from America, Australia and Britain. Written by Paul Lucas.

Each life story is told in fragments, with each performer just doing a few lines at the time, while the others recline. It's very nicely choreographed.

Pretty sure most of the actors are trans themselves. Transactors?

Not sure I like the word trans. It's just a prefix. The grammar nazi in me dislikes it for its incompleteness.

Everyone's tale was different. Some had a fairly easy transition, some continue to suffer. Some are ballsy fighters, some are wounded and suicidal. For some the face and boobs are all important to everyday life as a woman, for others it's all about the vagina. Some want to disappear and go stealth, some are proud to own their differentness out loud. Everyone's got a different path and a different destination. Or none at all.

All in all a good show. I guess it's kind of Vagina Monologuesy. Vaginal Monological?

Spoke to actress Jay Knowles in the Pleasance courtyard afterwards. Mutual complementing of eyelashes and nails. She so pretty though; felt kinda daggy next to her.

Blam!

Pleasance Grand

While Herself and CJ went off for some magic with Colin Cloud: Kills, I joined the throng for this physical tour-de-force.

All a bit Jacques Lecoq

Time for mime
Four office drones let loose their inner child
A desktop Die Hard
A water-cooler romance
Avengers meets Magic Mike
I left wanting to hurdle a partition

Lazy Susan: Double Act

Pleasance Dome

Good to see the one who looks a bit like Scully and the one looks a bit like Rosanna Arquette for a second year. Lots of silly faces and funny voices. And eating of carrots.

Wasn't sure if the two characters in one of the sketches were South African or Australian though.
They should go far, but I'd hate to see their act ruined by being given a BBC vehicle with proper costume and a full supporting cast. Much of their charm, like a lot of character sketch shows that I like, is down to it being just them and a box full of crap wigs.

Josh Widdicombe joined the queue for the show just after I described him to Herself as the love child of Boris Johnson and Ron Perlman. Perhaps I've discovered a new super-power: Remarkable Comedian Summoning.

The Story Beast

Pleasance


Now, I put John Henry Falle's rough slouching Story Beast down as a must see a long time back after seeing him at McNeil and Pamphilon Go 8-Bit earlier this year (a description of their show may be found here). I urge you to seek out his All The Kings And Queens Of England on YouTube post-haste.

He had me at 'the reign of the Shadow Men'.

Last night's show included a splendid semi-Saxon rendition of Beowulf, some Welsh mythlore that had CJ all of a twitter, an examination of the dire consequences of a literal Teddy Bear's Picnic, and - surrounded by a teeny tiny dollies all over the stage floor, a murder mystery that might best be described as The Doom That Came To Toytown.

Literary references and copious perspiration abound.

The last 10 minutes contain an unexpected bonus of which I shall speak no more.

Fin

And so to bed.
Well actually, and so to the last episode of Daredevil, accompanied by biscuits and champagne.