Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Fringe Benefits

"Jihad--The Musical"
"Macbath on a Bouncy Castle"
"Dickens--Unplugged"
"Tony! The Blair Musical"
"A (Gay Disabled Transexual) Love Story Told to a Ticket Inspector at Alton Towers"

Well it's five days in and I'm taking a morning off shows to come up for air. If you locked yourself away with an espresso machine filled with LSD you still couldn't come up with show titles to match those appearing at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. With your potential audience being bombarded at every corner you need something, well, dramatic to grab their attention. Shock tactics a go go.

So far I've seen stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, physical theatre, acrobatics, one-woman shows, off-beat obscure films and one show involving a french troup who played with home-made instruments for an hour. Basically I'm in heaven.

Best stuff so far--
Maeve Higgins (stand up)****,
Rebecca Drysdale (American lesbian sketch comedy)****,
Traces (acrobatic theatre--cirque de soleil style) ***** (Why can't all modern dance be this entertaining?)
Dai -Enough (One Woman Show set in Tel Aviv cafe moments before a suicide bomber strikes)****

Still to come--Andrew Maxwell, Dickens Unplugged and much more.... I might move here.

As for tales from A & E at Edinburgh's hospitals...well buy me a pint and I might tell you all the gory details.

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