The Chocolate Ocelot's 2014 Fringe - Day Seven

Shambolic audio diary of the day's events here

and the trip home here

CJ Hooper's LJ of the day here

Like Logan 5, I have reached Last Day. My Fringeometer is flickering faster than Bagpuss and his friends waking up and so I take this brief lull on Friday night before my last show to record the day's events.



Shakespeare's Villains
Theatre
The California Shakespeare Ensemble
The Space on North Bridge

Definitely the theatrical highlight of my Fringe. A small cast on a small and scenery-free stage interweave the meaty bits from Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice, concentrating on the villainy. I can't praise or recommend their acting highly enough. I'm pretty much a Shakespeare pleb and much prefer West Side Story to R and J, Throne of Blood to Macbeth and Forbidden Planet to The Tempest, but this company made the meaning of every single part of the plots perfectly clear through intonation, expression and body language. And the swordfights in Romeo and Juliet looked (and sounded) lethal, with foils, fists and knees flashing inches from us in the front row. Go see.



We then split the party on this last day, so that everyone can scamper off in different directions to catch whatever show(s) that have caught their eye this week. I have a personal shortlist, comprised of things that look interesting on the flyers I've been handed on the street, shows I've been meaning to catch anyway but have thus far missed (i.e. Ellie Taylor's Elliementary, which I tried and failed to see twice thus far), shows that friends have recommended and shows featuring people who've done guest slots in gigs I've seen this week.


Surname and Surname
Comedy
Briony Redman and Paul Foxcroft
Counting House

Hurrah! I typed Counting House correctly for the first time this week! No naughty typos for me! Surname and Surname were recommended by various chums on the Facebook and I'm jolly glad they did and that I found the time to catch this second helping of last year's show. The show takes me once again to the poky little Loft at the Counting House, not so much a comedy venue as a Japanese army punishment for uncooperative British officers. Foxcroft and Redman put on a great tight sketch show. Literally tight given the tiny Loft - Paul whacks his head on the slopey ceiling at least three times. Really polished stuff. I loved Briony's capital cities songs and Paul's turgid sci-fi prose, which brought to mind shades of Garth Marenghi, not least because of his Matt Berry-like tones. Definitely worth watching.



Naked Evil
Theatre
Anders Wollstonecraft
The Frooty Goose

This powerful one man show gets us up close and personal in a series of intense monologues from writer/director/actor Wollstonecraft, in which he portrays some of History's most notorious murderers, serial killers and sociopaths whilst gradually disrobing down to his flesh. Starting quietly enough with Dr Harold Shipman giving a little bedside chat to a patient, he moves through Raoul Moat, both Krays and the Acid Bath Murderer in a series of increasingly strident vignettes. As the pile of discarded clothing grows ever larger at the small audience's feet, the tension grows, leading to a truly in-your-face climax from the naked source of evil itself. Forget your Guy Mastersons and your Pip Uttons - Anders Wollstonecraft is the master of one man theatre.



Jollyboat
Musical Comedy
Ed and Tommy Croft
Beat (another nondescript subterranean door opposite Underbelly)

I love the serendipity of the Fringe. If we hadn't seen a poster for Quantum Leap comedy improve show Oh Boy! yesterday, we wouldn't have switched shows and seen Ed Croft as the guest Sam Beckett, and I wouldn't have picked up a flyer for his own show Jollyboat. Which brings me to this secret pub chamber which must be almost under Chambers Street. Ed and brother Tommy put on a blistering hour of rock and pop comedy songs to the delight of all. My personal favourites are Rock 'n' Fucking Roll and Wednesday. At the end I want to make a donation (it's a free gig) and pick up a CD. I only have a £20 but I'm happy to slap it down in return for a great feel-good show.



Cry me a River: The Songs of Julie London
Music
Kerry Jo Hodgkin
Jazz Bar (next to C on Chambers Street)

Now, bear in mind that the extent of my Julie London knowledge is just one song. The titular river number, as performed by Julie in the classic 50s film The Girl Can't Help It. On the strength of this I have brought Herself and CJ along to the ominously named Jazz Bar to see Kerry Jo Hodgkin in action. The clue is very much in the name of the venue, but I have failed to appreciate the jazzosity of the show. Kerry Jo's singing I love (and almost nod off to), Malcolm MacFarlane's guitar work I enjoy (he captures the simple twanginess of Cry Me A River perfectly, but the Ocelot just cannot be doing with your jazz trumpet, I'm afraid. I'm just chilling and enjoying the smooth mellowness of the music and singing, when this bloody wailing horn cuts in like a cat being pulled through a garden hose. And everyone claps after he stops noodling away. The only trumpet bits I do like are when it sounds like he's doing a waa-waaah sound effect from an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. So in conclusion: two-thirds lovely, three thirds lovely only if the Spirit of Jazz is within you.



McNeil and Pamphilon Go 8-Bit!
Comedy
Steve Neil and Sam Pamphilon
Pleasance Dome (eventually. they started 40 odd minutes late due to technical issues, which I can believe)

How best to describe this? An interactive video game show with comedy guest stars, forfeits straight out of Shooting Stars and real audience participation? Like nothing else on the Fringe (well, apart from John Robertson's The Dark Room), the show divides to the audience into Team McNeil and Team Pamphilon and helpful helpers help us to log our smart phones in to the special 8-Bit server via WiFi, where we can register our nicknames and take part in the proceedings. A series of retro gaming rounds ensue, with guest comedians largely from the same Ditto Productions company, including the Beta Males and Jim Campbell, whilst Paul Foxcroft, who I've seen earlier in the day with Briony Redman, provides the commentary. Other guests include sweary Aussie Fringe veteran Brendon Burns doing a strange virtual reality helmet game (in which his actual glasses were the true losers) and WCW pro Colt Cabana (when they introduced him, I thought they said it was Torquemada) who later helped out with one of the forfeits, spinning Steve McNeil around and bodyslamming him Final Fight style after a successful PacMan forfeit involving half of the audience holding up mini cheddars for him to gobble. Top marks to Will from Clever Peter for devising the fiendish forfeits.  I admit I had the fear that I would be called upon to sit up on stage and contribute my skills to Mario Karts Double Dash or Bomber Man but I dodged that bullet. Had they needed a pilot for a game of Elite on a BBC Model B though, I'd have been all over it baby. In the final round, the entire audience got to take part in a game of Democracy Pong, via our smart phones, just nudging Team Pamphilon across the winning line. Go us! Awesome, brilliant fun.



Thus our Fringe ends. CJ and I claim our Team Pamphilon badges from the helpful helpers and file out into the Edinburgh night. One last nutella crepe from the nearby Gilded Balloon food area, and it's back to base.

Until next year. I'll keep it short next year. Promise.

The Chocolate Ocelot's 2014 Fringe - Day Five

Shambolic audio diary of the day's events here

CJ Hooper's LJ of the day here

Hump Day + 1, as we slide inexorably toward the rear end of this particular camel/holiday analogy.

Let me start by saying that I'm writing this up not on Day Five itself, nor even the next morning, but at 11:45 pm the day after. The ridiculously packed timetable of shows has once again done for my much-vaunted ambition to stick to a strict regime of writing up every morning. The combination of late night show followed by staying up even later to talk nonsense and play Weebl and Bob cartoons followed by getting up for an early show the next morning has finally taken its toll. This morning we had to tear out of the flat at 11:00 am to catch our first performance, so I just grabbed my faithful laptop, stowed it in my just as faithful rucksack and proceeded to lug it around For The Entire Day in the hope of finding a quiet hour somewhere with free WiFi to do some writing. Fool, fool, fool.

Once again I promise myself, and you dear reader, that next year I either see a whole bunch of shows or do a lot of writing. But not both. This way madness has lain. And like a victim of self-inflicted abuse or possibly David Lo-Pan, I keep coming back for more, year after year. I even brought a voice recorder to simply dictate record my show reviews on the hoof, but haven't quite gotten round to working out that whole 'turn sounds into written words' thing. Must work that out some time.

Enough flapping. Here's what we saw:



The Seussification of Midsummer Night's Dream
Theatre
Red Bonnet Productions
The Space on North Bridge

This pretty much does what it says on the tin, with great enthusiasm. An all-female cast of young performers renders the Shakespearean play in Dr Seuss style rhymes, led by Narrator #1 and Narrator #2. Bright costumes and snappy, witty lines. My only gripe is with Shakespeare's plot, not the production itself - that whole Pyramus and Thisbe play with a play thing? It's a bit of an anticlimax after all the cool fairy farce love potion stuff, Will. Just sayin'. I like the comedy wall though. And for extra fun, after we've applauded at the end, they do it all over again at high speed. And then even faster and backwards. Oh, and there's a fun Hunger Games shout-out when one of the characters dies. Enchanting. See what I did there?



Birdwatchers' Wives
Theatre
Caroline Smith
Summerhall

I love saying I'm going to see something at Summerhall. Makes me think I'm in Game of Thrones. But instead of cool dragons, they have a green orang-utan in the courtyard for some reason. Anyway...
Birdwatchers' Wives may be one of the odder shows on at the Fringe, taking place in a dark, steep-seated chamber that looks like it's been used for Victorian dissection demonstrations. We are greeted by the arresting sight of Rita Grebe - a seven-foot birdwoman in a vast ballgown bedecked with feathers. In her Germanic accent, Rita tells us about Twitchers and Robin Strokers and the bird identification method JIZZ, while video sequences keep us abreast of the strange world of avian singing contest BirdOrff and Rita's rivalry with her nemesis Maggie Grebe. She is ably assisted by her chickwoman Grouse who does a lot of the hard work in the show's most sinister episode, as Rita, hunched over her offspring in a single spotlight, forcefeeds her slice after slice of bread, slowly, ever so slowly. Beautifully weird.



Oh Boy!
Comedy
The Maydays
Cowgatehead (kind of opposite Underbelly)

No, this isn't a Buddy Holly story thing. We were are Cowgatehead to see Comedy Death, with comedians talking about dying on stage, but we cravenly switched to Oh Boy! when we saw from the poster that it's a tribute to the Quantum Leap TV series. The format is that a small female cast, plus a 'guest Sam Beckett' from elsewhere on the Fringe, takes a year and a title suggested by the audience and then improvs a Quantum Leap story. Being true geeks of a certain age, this is catnip to us, and we join in on the intro Surprisingly, we are not the geekiest members of the audience though - a guy beside us knows all the real episode titles. Freak. The ensuing story, of Sam playing an English schoolboy with a murderous mother, is somewhat patchy in parts (I think perhaps the woman playing hologram buddy Al could have done more to steer the plot along a more satisfying course), but it is improv after all. A fun and clever idea, with Ed Croft from Jollyboat (I think) making for a charming guest Sam.



The Monkey Queen
Physical Theatre
Shaolin Ladyboys
The Frooty Goose

Back for their third year, the lovely Shaolin Ladyboys this time present their own interpretation of the classic Chinese story Journey to the West, following the priest Tripitaka and magical spirit friends on a quest to recover some lost scrolls. Genderflipping the characters, we get the Monkey Queen, Ladypig and Sandra, though paradoxically Tripitaka is still nominally male. Both beautiful and exceedingly skilled in martial arts, the company put on a dazzling hour of swordfights, punching through bricks and lipsynching to disco anthems. A must see.



Pussy Panic
Cabaret
Dandy Darkly
CC Blooms (a big pub up on Leith Walk)

A bit further north than we've ventured thus far, I've insisted we come to see Dandy Darkly based purely on a brief glimpse of him sauntering up the Royal Mile last year. Dandy is a whitefaced confection of fabulous faggotry, a dandified diva in ruffles, ribbons and top-hat fascinator. What follows is an hour of dark tales celebrating womanhood in various guises. With great rhythm and a voice like the Hooded Claw's camper cousin, Dandy exposes us to a girl with a Fanny of Holding, how the blood goddess Madonna stole skeleton king Michael Jackson's mojo, and a beautiful love story between two gorgeous lesbians in a retirement home. Like Tales of the City bitten by a radioactive Alan Moore. Fabulous.



Reasons to Kill Yourself
Comedy
Andrew Lawrence
Assembly Rooms

I chose this because I thought we ought to see one well-established solo stand-up show, among all the showcase gigs we've seen as part of the Free Fringe (Joe Bains, Licence to laugh, take a bow). Andrew Lawrence jumped out at me (not literally, that would have been terrifying) from the programme because he does have a bit of an unusual face. He's said as much himself, so I only feel a bit uncomfortable saying that. Plus there's some good clips of him on YouTube. He launches into some great rant routines, barely pausing for breath as he unleashes a stream of inventive which brings Bill Hicks to mind. But it's clear that he's not enjoying himself, neither this gig or the festival as a whole, reminding us several times that he's playing a much smaller venue this year than in better times. A gag that doesn't get much of a giggle serves only to earn the audience his disdain, though I honestly couldn't make out the gabbled punchline and suspect I wasn't alone. His increasing disenchantment with the comedy business and his rancour at lesser lights getting all the breaks ceases to be funny around the 45-minute mark, and the set ends with him more or less announcing his retirement. A downbeat ending to an uncomfortable hour.



We then spend quite some time in the Mitre pub on the Royal Mile, catching some live music. Practically every pub on this stretch, just as down on Grassmarket, has live music playing in the evening. Usually a couple of fellas with guitars knocking out some old rock or folk. The pair playing in the Mitre don't disappoint. I just wish I could remember their names now. I shall have to quiz Herself when she has her wits about her.
UPDATE: She says they're called Pictism. They are good. Look them up.



Ironbark Pumpkin and the Quest for the Lost Pudding Quaich of Ecclefechan
Comedy
Mulholland and Whitley (Ed and Patrick, or possibly Patrick and Ed)
Free Sisters (which is, like, the Three Sisters but free)

We go to see this because a) we have a free slot at the end of the day, b) it's free and c) they have the longest title in the programme. We venture into the deepest reaches of the Three Sisters and find a broom cupboard called the Staff Room filled with 8 chairs and two young men, one of whom (Ed or possibly Patrick) proceeds to entertain us with his cool looking blue trombone (which may be called Lucy) as we shout out various theme tunes for him. The actual Ironbark show itself eventually follows after some setting up, and the two chaps put on a silly (in the best sense of the word) tale of questing for a cake tin. Or something. It's not very clear, and very much a work in progress by the chaps' own admission, but we end it all off with a rousing rendition of Jerusalem, which I'm sure the residents of the Three Sisters were only too grateful for.



And then to bed. Eventually.



And now to bed for me too. In the present. This is getting confusing.

The Chocolate Ocelot's 2014 Fringe - Day Four

Shambolic audio diary of the day's events here

CJ Hooper's LJ of the day here

Hump day! No, that's not rude. I mean we're already halfway through our week here. Boo and very much hiss.

Herself wants us to go out for breakfast this morning, so again with the highly compressed summary of the day's events.

By crikey I'm tired. I thank Allfather Odin's wisdom that I decided to forego fashionable footwear for the comfortable sporting trainer whilst here. But even so, me pods are aching something frightful so they are.



Once Upon A Nightmare
Theatre
Box Step Productions
The Counting House (you have no idea how many times I've fatally mistyped one of those words this week)

Excellent stuff from last year's Death Ship 666 people, telling the story of what happens to the young heroes of a children's adventure after they return from misty magic land Somnia. Like TV's Once Upon A Time with dollops of Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, this is a child friendly adventure with gags for all, lightning costume changes (I'm thinking of Wendy to Amastris particularly) and a terrifying comic relief in the form of Sackface (who sounded distressingly like Old Greg from the Mighty Boosh). A good musical number in the middle and jolly good fun all round.



Bum, that was too long - better slim these down....



10 Films With My Dad
Comedy
Adrian Goatley I think
Somewhere over by Princes Street

Forgive me, Adrian Goatley I think, I wimped out of the trek across town for your show, though I'm sure it was excellent. The mind was willing but the flesh, oh the feeble flesh.



Instead, we had lunch in a frightfully hot Turkish cafe opposite the BBC festival place that we've never been arsed to visit and then CJ and I went to Forbidden Planet. I bought issues 2, 4 and 5 of Marvel's Original Sin event. The mind was weak too.



The Haunting of Lopham House
Comedy
Tom Neenan
A bunker under the Pleasance

Well performed one-man ghost story spoofing The Woman In Black and various MR James efforts. Tom Neenan works his clever wordplay into nearly every line of a tale about a chap investigating strange deaths and spooky phenomena in and around the titular house in 1910 Norfolk (I think). The sound effects genuinely made me jump. Splendid stuff.



Knightmare Live: Level 2
Comedy
The Knightmare Live guys
Pleasance

Hurrah for Knightmare Live! The return of Tregard of Dunshelm, Lord Fear, Binki the goblin and the rest. Granitas (or Olgarth) seems to have got an upgrade this year, and the dragon (spoilers!) was so good it got a massive whoop of applause. Again mixing actual Knightmare-style TV gameplay with a plot steered by the two excellent leads Paul Flannery and Tom Bell with great chemistry, they and we revel in the near panto-like atmosphere, as we cheer satchels and being in a room. My handy dandy Fringe map in its lovely cardboard bogroll tube make a guest appearance as a prop (photo to follow), which affords me the excuse to nip backstage afterward and say hello to Tom Bell. Lovely chaps.



This Shit Just Got Reel
Dance
The Clootie Dumplings
The Frooty Goose

And entertaining hour of combined filthy comedy and highland dance from the lively performers of the Clootie Dumplings, students at the Strathclyde College of Proctology. I especially enjoyed their Gay Gordons whilst carrying out a routine prostate examination. A show that will haunt me for some time.



Extreme Humans
Comedy
The Lazy Susans
Pleasance That (a portakabin round the side)

Quickfire sketches from two very talented performers, this show fills a gap in our schedule left by the much-missed Dog Eared Collective. Interleaved character situations and running gags that call back to each other, suggesting a shared universe. Excellent quick costume changes (and moustache drawing) and well observed characters in performers of such youth. Would love to see more of them and pray that they achieve success without being fed into the production line of BBC3 comedy.



The Dark Room
Comedy
John Robertson
Underbelly, oh stinky crowded Underbelly

Totally different format to everything else we've seen, John Robertson blacks out the room and moves about us as a disembodied face, as one by one, members of the audience take their chances in the Dark Room. Based on the old text adventures of the 80s and 90s, the player is presented with limited choices which lead either to nowhere, verbal abuse or Death. Or all three. By the end of the show, we are all chanting along with the opening lines of the game, You awake to find yourself in a dark room. Nostalgic and crowd-pleasing. A cult exercise in futility.



Marcel Lucont Is
Comedy
Alexis Dubus
Pleasance Dome (that big student union building with the comedy muriel inside in previous years)

Accomplished observations and mild arrogance from France's most laid back raconteur. I genuinely felt my blood pressure lower during the performance. Which is a good thing, I mean. Marcel takes his time, makes us enjoy the pauses and the silence, and methodically works his way through a glass or two of wine as he treats us to poetry and extracts from his autobiography Moi. A bit of Q and A at the end which is a bit of a gamble as it depends on just the right Qs to A, but a most polished show. Make sure you don't get stuck behind Americans with large heads like we did.



Licence To Laugh
Comedy
Joe Bain, Various
The White horse down the bottom of the Royal Mile

A very late show for us, as we catch up with CJ to see him headlining a stand-up showcase hour hosted by Joe Bain. Herself and I must first apologise to Joe again for accidentally accepting an invitation to take part in one of his earlier shows - oh the perils of a Facebook invite. The show is a mixed bag of monsters, to quote the 1975 Dr Who Monster Book, with highlights for me being a young chap called Rodders, who had quite a way about him, and Mr CJ himself, making the deaf swearing/Alan Bennett/sexual harassment comedy subgenre his very own :)



And so to bed, after dragging a hyper CJ past the comedy bus in the Three Sisters courtyard, where he fancied squeezing in a 1:30am slot. Herself suggested that the two cop cars that had just pulled up outside did not bode well for the quality of the audience.


8 shows tomorrow. Feck.

The Chocolate Ocelot's 2014 Fringe - Day Three

Shambolic audio diary of the day's events here

CJ Hooper's LJ of the day here

It's Day Three! Which can only mean it's time for my annual Oh bugger what's the time what do you mean we're going out to our first show in half an hour I've got a blog to write bugger bugger post. This is in no way linked to the unusually late night chez Ocelot, entertaining friends with a few glasses of wines and some witty banter. To draw a discrete veil over the proceedings, I shall refrain from naming exactly who was totally wankered last night, in case their wife back home reads this, after walking their dog Dakota. Suffice to say, the tut was talked, the world was put to rights, and it all ended up with us watching rude songs on YouTube, courtesy of the Socks and K*nt and the Gang (I can't even bring myself to type out the comedy version of the word).

So, straight on with the reviews, for today only rendered in bite-sized nibbles:



Breakfast with Shakespeare
Theatre I guess
No idea
Also no idea

As this was on at like ten in the morning and I had a blog to write, this was one for CJ and Herself only. It was apparently funny, with various Shakespearean characters all bumping into each other. I am told it was both funny and well acted. Plus there were croissants and coffee on offer for breakfast. Herself gives it 9/10.



Lunch with the Literati
Literature or something. Spoken word maybe
Some literary types
Some club in a quite square near the Ghllie Dhu

Never went to this. Another one for Herself and CJ, the artsy fartsy scamps. People talking about Robert Burns. Food may have been on offer. I imagine there was lots of unintelligible Burnsese spoken and great chieftains' o' puddin' clans praised. I sat outside on the steps waiting for them and munching on a stalectable day old cheese sandwich. Herself gives it 6/10.



The Hound of the Buskervilles
Musical
Walsall Dramaturge Collective
The Frooty Goose

Entertaining musical update of the classic Holmes tale, built around a walking tour of the Edinburgh streets around the Frooty Goose. The rapping dog was a particular highlight. 8/10.



Antiquithon
Theatre
Les Femmes a Barbe
Institut Francais d'Ecosse

Brilliant half-hour macabre visit to a cabinet of curiosities, tucked away on Randolph Crescent, away from the main Fringe action but well worth the walk. A dispossessed Romanian sister and brother take us through a slightly randomised selection of their grandfather's prized oddities - dwarf skeletons, mummified crocodile babies, spider-rabbits, that sort of thing. Doesn't outstay its welcome, ends brilliantly. Go. 10/10



Potted Sherlock
Kids
Dan and Jeff
Pleasance

No idea. It was cancelled due to an 'incident'. Gave us a chance to get food at the Potting Shed on Potterow though. 0/10. Well done again though to the Fringe office for the auto-refund a couple of hours later.



Alternotive a Capella
Song
Oxford Alternotives
C

Good songs, nice choreography. Some of the solo lead voices drowned out by the backing singers. I prefer it when they adapt well known pop songs to a capella (i.e. I didn't recognise some of the slower ones or the ones made popular in the last 5 years). The beat box chap was especially good. 6/10

Canterbury Tales Remixed
Comedy (I'd have said Song)
Baba Brinkman
Under Belly Cowbarn

One man plus his mate on the mixing desk retelling three of the classic tales, Eminem style. Brilliant. Reminded me of Mitch Benn's Macbeth. Education with a beat. Not so bothered about the scratchy mixy interlude, but I imagine American Brinkman needed to give his throat a rest from rapping solidly for half an hour. Bought his CD. 8/10

The Generation of Z
Theatre
Royale Productions
Assembly George Theatre (mainly the underground car park)

Fantastic interactive zombie apocalypse experience from New Zealand. Dark, spooky, firearms, body parts, swearing. Awesome performances from all the actors - grunts, zoms and civilians alike. Also splendid aerobic exercise at the end. Too many people in the audience though for the peril to feel real - too much queueing when we should have been running for our lives. I got to do a bit at one point, being on comms with the other squad, though I really wanted to go on a scavenging run with mohawked Private Moose. Awesome stuff. Go Moose! Go Frosty! Lots of fun photo ops at the end. 11/10



Lord of the Dance Settee
Comedy
Richard Herring
Assembly George Theatre

Feel good stuff from Ocelot favourite Herring. Lighter material than in previous years with no especial theme, unless you go with his suggestions of inertia vs mobility :) There are sombreros and dancing around on a settee. Mr Herring is looking fitter than he has in years. Well done to him. 8/10



Then stayed up late. So late.

The Chocolate Ocelot's 2014 Fringe - Day One

Shambolic audio diary of the day's events here

CJ Hooper's LJ of the day here

Hello! How are you? You alright? No, yeah, I'm good. Been up to much? Yeah? Cool, cool. Anyway, back on me.

Greetings once again from Edinburgh, the Athens of the North, where thousands of performers and tens of thousands of punters from all over the world have gathered for the annual Fringe festival. For the month of August the city's conference centres, student union buildings and back rooms of pubs are transformed into venues for comedy, theatre, music and all sorts of other entertaining activities, as well as expressive dance installations.

That's enough of the bollocksy scene-setting. If you want that sort of idiot's guide you can tune in (though who tunes in these days?) to a late night BBC2 arts show with that long-faced Scottish woman (I'm going to assume she's a Kirsty). Suffice to say, Herself and I are again staying here for a week, cramming in as many shows as we can, with the usual mix of shows big and small, good and 'brave'.

And as before, I've stupidly committed myself to writing our adventures up every day, devoting a couple of hours each morning sitting on the bed with my laptop trying to give you an informative but entertaining, nay infotaining (enterformative sounds vaguely invasive) picture of life at the Fringe and shows and performers we've seen. In years gone by, I've spent far too long each day on this task, painfully adding in links to production websites, fact-checking performer names and scrupulously going over each comment for inadvertent (and sometimes just maliciously vertent) slurs, to avoid needless cruelty. This has proven (rhymes with woven, like the legal term, though it might be just proved. Oh, whatever) in the past to be a massive drain on my time and strain on my lower back (I'm hunched over my laptop on the bed), so for this year, I'm just going to bang out a few observations and knee-jerk reactions on the spot, then frantically rewrite the bugger later on and hope nobody notices. It will also be riddled with typos, I can promise you.

A quick note on our party this year: where once we were two, we are now three. We are joined by up and coming comedy performer person CJ Hooper; the Huggy to our Starsky and Hutch, the Barbara to our Bruce and Dick, the Poochie to our Itchy and Scratchy. He'll be doing various slots around the festival during our stay, affording us an exciting insight into the world of the jobbing stand-up cum musical impro poet type person on the Free Fringe. As and when, I'll be putting in a link to his side of the story here like a comedy version of Rashomon.

And as ever we'll be catching up with our fellow Fringers Dr Foot and his heterosexual Fringemate Mitch, playing phone-tag and comparing notes on shows.

Enough with the intros; on with the reviews.

Ah, no, not quite just yet. A short word on the Fringers' Survival Kit. This year, our levels of obsessive preparedness have been honed to an even greater degree. Once again we have the t-shirts printed with our timetable of shows, and handy laminated quick reference cards dangling stylishly (though with distressingly sharp corners) from our waistbands. But this year I have added an invaluable extra item to the kit: a daily map of the city with arrows directing us from venue to venue, stored with a sturdy tube in my backpack. You can imagine the envious stares of others as they stand in the middle of Chambers Street unable to remember where Venue 45 is amongst the cramped map covered in tiny numbers on the back page of the official Fringe programme (which, I might add, has rubbishly incomplete grid references around the edge. Unlike mine, which is better). Oh, and we also have laminated ID badges on lanyards bearing the word PUNTER (Herself) and BLOGGER (me). We are quite the sight.

Ok now, now, on with the reviews.

Casting the Runes

Theatre

Box Tale Soup

The Space on the Mile

Two person (and one big spooky puppet) adaptation of the MR James classic (and not one of his rubbish, disappointing vaguely scary ghost stories). The one with the bloke who gets cursed by a black magician with the magic slip of paper and (in the fillum) the excellent monster at the end. Minimal props (a door, some suitcases, some papers), stylised costumes with 

(Sorry, brief pause there to stretch the legs - been sitting cross-legged on the bed for too long. Ow.)

strips of text sewn in, and some music. Excellent acting from both performers, and very effective puppet work of the terrifying man-size Karswell in his black trilby and piercing blue eyes. His expression did remind me of the disapproving Sam the Eagle. The scene shifts were accompanied by odd little song and percussion numbers which felt slightly out of the genre, almost folky, but that's a minor thing. Oh, and there's some clever little bits of stage magic; sleight of hand and trick props like a spooky drawing of a dark figure menacing the hero and a door handle moving on its own. It's all jolly good stuff.

Bond!

Theatre

Company Gavin Robertson

Zoo

Unofficial parody of James Bond by the excellent Gavin Robertson. Another of his one-man shows spoofing a well-loved genre, following on from his hits like Thunderbirds FAB, Fantastical Voyage (my favourite) and Spittoon. His skills at mime remain undiminished, needing only three simple metal door frames as props to create an office, a motorcycle and the classic 'Bond shoots the screen' shot. His spoof of an archetypal musical Bond title sequence, with ladies dancing provocatively and guns going off, is spot on, synching his choreography to the music perfectly. You could argue that the plot is a bit patchy here and there and the laughs a little thin, but this is affectionate pastiche perhaps, rather than outright parody. There are rather too many shower scenes (though he does do a good lady in shower) and a couple of bits like the matchbox car chase could be much shorter but I always have time for Mr Robertson's physical work - nobody else can mime a villain picking his way through a web of lasers quite like him.

The Merchant of Venice - In Space!
Theatre
Walsall Dramaturge Collective
The Frooty Goose

It wouldn't be the Fringe without several lazy Shakespeare reskins, and this production sadly fits the bill perfectly. Transplanting the action from 16th century Italy to the terraformed asteroid Venice-3 in the year 2169, and decking the cast out in cheap shiny 'spacesuits', is little substitute for witty dialogue and crisp acting, both of which are missing from this comedy-cum-tragedy.

And the casting of Shylock as a money-grubbing Ferengi is both anti-Semitic and an insult to those two greats of theatre - Shakespeare and Roddenberry. Avoid.

One Dissection

Music

Some guys who didn't turn up

C Nova

Well. We sat patiently in one of the C venues (one of the multi-level rotunda buildings that Edinburgh seems to have an embarrassment of) for a good 15 minutes past the start time of the medical a capella group before summoning the nerve to ask an official person (i.e. a student in a C t-shirt and headset) if we'd missed the show. No, they said, it's been cancelled. Why, asks I. They just didn't show up, says the official person. 

Well. And tch. You just can't rely on singing doctors these days. Honestly. I like to think they had a medical emergency which required a close harmony rendition of Life on Mars.

On the plus side, the Fringe office were already on the case and refunded our tickets without me even having to ask. I got a nice email and phone message from a nice (I'm assuming she's nice. She gave me my money back, which is nice in my book) woman called Katie.

Also on the plusser side, this gave us a chance to catch up with CJ 

(sorry, another break to see CJ off - he's off to do a morning podcast. It's all very showbiz)

after his first gig down at the Blind Poet, accompanied by his guitar Marjorie (who I like to think is named after the Fry and Laurie character). Over pizza and falafel at that triangular wedge of a cafe by Wee Bobby's statue, we exchange notes and convince him to come on down with us to the Gilded Balloon for our last show of the day.

Voices in your Head

Comedy

Deborah Frances-White

Gilded Balloon

Once more unto the Billiard Room dear friends, once more. Why are so many of the Gilded Balloons shows we see over the years in this room? I think it must love us. I am brave and sit us in the first row, as I've seen the show before and know that there's no unpleasant audience interaction awaiting. Or as Deborah (the Voice) herself puts it, 'I'm not going to mock you for having a job'. She actually comes out on stage this time round (last time she really was just a disembodied voice on the speaker system) and spends a good 10 minutes priming the audience with props, personal items and mass audio cues (chanting 'Mother') with which to disturb and wrong-foot tonight's participants.

As with last year, it's really good show - I'd describe it as 'directed improv'. So none of your lazy 'give us a genre, a household item and hopefully a really brilliant funny situation' requests for the audience - the Voice directs each of the four performers through little improvised scenes: a silkworm who's lived too long (Sara Pascoe), a murderous bird (Andre Vincent), a violent toothfairy (Jonny Lennard) and a woman at a nightclub (Milo McCabe). 

Herself and CJ have been appointed as proper wranglers for a brain in a jar, and CJ presents it to Mr Vincent with understated aplomb. Good brainporting. Milo McCabe has an excellent moustache and splendid 40's trousers. He looks like a younger Jean Dujardin.

And we're done for Day One.

All that remains is to shout down the phone at Dr Foot and effect a surprisingly successful rendezvous with him and Mitch in the no-man's land between the Gilded Balloon and Assembly. We swap notes (they recommend reliable standards Frank Skinner and Richard Herring), CJ spots some of his fabulous showbiz pals on the street for a chinwag, and Herself and I pass judgement on the hordes of ridiculous young ladies tottering past in vertiginous heels and several metres of naked leg. Ah, Edinburgh on a Saturday night.