Edinburgh Finge, Days 3 and 4
Aug. 16th, 2010 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losThings What We Saw At The Edinburgh Fringe, Part 2:
Tuesday:
Western Theater for Slackers:
It might be really good to start with this morning show, which serves as an amusing survey/refresher course for the history of Western Theater, and then go on through a Fringe schedule dotted with Serious Theater armed with amusing-and-pertinent contextualization.
They love Brecht for some unfathomable reason, and insulted both Chekov and John Sessions (the first was bad, but the latter had Bonny Kate truly irked)--they TOO felt compelled to do a musical number despite slagging off musical numbers (again, they didn't really offer up a reason, just a sort of bland 'ha, we all hate them, but anyway'), which was somewhat unfortunate because they were not really singers. The stock character who was pretty much the Todd from Scrubs was a bit funny, and the cast was solid. The stilted half-references to feminism were unfunny, cardboard-cutout and yet kind of nonsensical. Those should probably be better written or dropped entirely. Still, it was generally clever and amusing.
Medea:
THIS WAS SO--I don't even know. Not 'because it defies articulation' so much as 'we didn't actually end up seeing it.' Despite having bought tickets. It turned out to be staged ON MARS, literally off the edge of the map (and an American High School Student production? I don't even know...), which someone might have warned us about before we bought tickets? Or we could have been more observant, one of the two. Anyway, Katy staged Medea FOR me on a street corner instead, and that was pretty funny, so largely I have had the Greek Tragedy Experience.
Now I Know My BBC:
I wasn't expecting to like this and was kind of going expressly because Katy wanted to see it. This is by Toby Haddock, the guy who does Moths Ate My doctor Who Scarf, which I'd convinced myself could only be embarrassingly not funny and that I was way too cool for. I also anticipated a sea of references I couldn't possibly get, but no, this was one of my favorite things of the entire festival. This was warm, wise, witty, generally lovely, and highly recommended. It's endearing without ever being toothless enough to earn the soupy sobriquet of 'feel-good comedy.' It's political without being a polemic--as frankly, undeniably political as a comedy act in praise of the BBC and advocating its preservation must inevitably be, without the hackneyed Unfocused Embarrassing Liberalism that sours later Margaret Cho. The subtle over-arching story of him and the girl he ends up marrying is unobtrusive!win.
Wednesday
Shakespeare for Breakfast:
This was rough, but as I think they do a whole series of these morning sketch shows based off several Shakespeare plays, perhaps we should judge them by something nearer to improv-standards. It was very energetic for its time in the morning and came with free coffee or tea and a croissant, occasioning an excellent joke re: croissant theft from a character in the skits and Bonny Kate and I's theft of Several More Uneaten Croissants at the end. Maybe it was six between us. Maybe it was. Don't judge, haters.
This contained some UK Telly references that escaped me, and more songs by people who aren't singers, but who ever thought you'd see Leer with SONGS?! Not. I. It was lovely morning entertainment and I'd totally do it again, especially to catch a recap of a different play.
Sherlock Holmes and the Sound of the Baskervilles:
With Now I Know My BBC and Hamlet! the Musical, this was possibly one of the best things on at the Fringe. The cast was large and the venue and production values microscopic, but Marple, Holmes, Watson and to some extent Lady Baskerville (whose part was a bit too dull to allow her as much scope) acted the crap out of this amateurish, funny, charming play, with a really VERY good script and some fun musical numbers (albeit with big PAUSES before the singing started--every. time.). The songs were appropriated from random other places, and sung with altered lyrics (Be Prepared from the Lion King, the Beatles Yesterday, and something from Gilbert and Sullivan's Gondoliers? (really? /Gondo-fucking-liers?/)), but it was rubbish in the grandest way.
Beatonna has some GREAT comics on The Many Adaptations of Watson. See here and here. This play featured Proper!Competent!Watson, Stupid!Watson AND a dash of Gay!Watson at the end (please insert own joke about that being where he likes to be found here (then make another re: insertion, if it is to your taste)). The small Holmes/Watson saved for last is so cute--as is Watson's Typewriter Dependency (the name for someone's new indie band).
Oxford Review:
Of all the shows we saw, I suppose one had to be worst. This was free, but even so, in retrospect, I wouldn't have gone. Not because it was a choice between this and other shows--though obviously, that too--if it had been Oxford Review vs. sitting at home doing nothing--truly nothing--I might've opted for the wall-starring. I kept waiting for it to pick up and Become funny, but a series of awkward stale statements about Northerners and some ill-considered, under-baked political remarks later, still nothing. I had 'jokes' there for both of those, but I edited it out, because that didn't seem quite the right term for the Verbal Happenings I experienced.
It's not that humor can't be political, topical, cutting--but those jokes should be justified by saying something, anything, fresh or especially true? You can't just flag up Domestic Abuse and wait for a thin pity chuckle. When your Hipster Irony is so vague as to disappear into a light mist, your remarks are no longer comedic undermining of classism, they're just instances of classism. And not even specifically amusing classism at that?
I think what makes a lot of comics great is self-consciousness--whether it looks easy or whether its pained neuroticism is part of the humor, I think good comedy is serious shit, often the product of a rigorous examination of the material and delivery. Is this joke offensive? If so, is this funny enough that it's worth doing despite possibly offending people? Does it, bottom line, work? Does it make any sense? Is it funny? It didn't seem like any of them thought much about anything--how will this play, is this good enough to ask people to sit through, or (for people who weren't us with our special coupon) to pay to see? Is this new, is this interesting, is this going to catch any one's attention and further my career? Shit, anything. The skits seemed generally unfocused--throwing out a dozen lines to see if anything caught. A few of them were decentish actors, capable of delivering material, maybe, but ultimately they didn't have any to deliver.
I wondered if I was judging them harshly because it IS Oxford, and I might be inferring a smug complacency where none existed because I expect both high quality of them and for them to potentially be a bit up themselves. But I've had time to think, and I think I've decoupled those biases from my dislike of this show, which can stand alone and be liked or loathed on its own (de)merits.
The Footlights are this troupe's rather famously good Cambridge equivalent, but I wonder whether, as a uni group, they'd have been similarly sort of painful. However this felt rather worse than a random session of the UIowa sketch/improv group, and one would think this Review would be culled from the year's BEST and most successful skits. If this is the cream, what the fuck does the rest of the crop look like?
Tuesday:
Western Theater for Slackers:
It might be really good to start with this morning show, which serves as an amusing survey/refresher course for the history of Western Theater, and then go on through a Fringe schedule dotted with Serious Theater armed with amusing-and-pertinent contextualization.
They love Brecht for some unfathomable reason, and insulted both Chekov and John Sessions (the first was bad, but the latter had Bonny Kate truly irked)--they TOO felt compelled to do a musical number despite slagging off musical numbers (again, they didn't really offer up a reason, just a sort of bland 'ha, we all hate them, but anyway'), which was somewhat unfortunate because they were not really singers. The stock character who was pretty much the Todd from Scrubs was a bit funny, and the cast was solid. The stilted half-references to feminism were unfunny, cardboard-cutout and yet kind of nonsensical. Those should probably be better written or dropped entirely. Still, it was generally clever and amusing.
Medea:
THIS WAS SO--I don't even know. Not 'because it defies articulation' so much as 'we didn't actually end up seeing it.' Despite having bought tickets. It turned out to be staged ON MARS, literally off the edge of the map (and an American High School Student production? I don't even know...), which someone might have warned us about before we bought tickets? Or we could have been more observant, one of the two. Anyway, Katy staged Medea FOR me on a street corner instead, and that was pretty funny, so largely I have had the Greek Tragedy Experience.
Now I Know My BBC:
I wasn't expecting to like this and was kind of going expressly because Katy wanted to see it. This is by Toby Haddock, the guy who does Moths Ate My doctor Who Scarf, which I'd convinced myself could only be embarrassingly not funny and that I was way too cool for. I also anticipated a sea of references I couldn't possibly get, but no, this was one of my favorite things of the entire festival. This was warm, wise, witty, generally lovely, and highly recommended. It's endearing without ever being toothless enough to earn the soupy sobriquet of 'feel-good comedy.' It's political without being a polemic--as frankly, undeniably political as a comedy act in praise of the BBC and advocating its preservation must inevitably be, without the hackneyed Unfocused Embarrassing Liberalism that sours later Margaret Cho. The subtle over-arching story of him and the girl he ends up marrying is unobtrusive!win.
Wednesday
Shakespeare for Breakfast:
This was rough, but as I think they do a whole series of these morning sketch shows based off several Shakespeare plays, perhaps we should judge them by something nearer to improv-standards. It was very energetic for its time in the morning and came with free coffee or tea and a croissant, occasioning an excellent joke re: croissant theft from a character in the skits and Bonny Kate and I's theft of Several More Uneaten Croissants at the end. Maybe it was six between us. Maybe it was. Don't judge, haters.
This contained some UK Telly references that escaped me, and more songs by people who aren't singers, but who ever thought you'd see Leer with SONGS?! Not. I. It was lovely morning entertainment and I'd totally do it again, especially to catch a recap of a different play.
Sherlock Holmes and the Sound of the Baskervilles:
With Now I Know My BBC and Hamlet! the Musical, this was possibly one of the best things on at the Fringe. The cast was large and the venue and production values microscopic, but Marple, Holmes, Watson and to some extent Lady Baskerville (whose part was a bit too dull to allow her as much scope) acted the crap out of this amateurish, funny, charming play, with a really VERY good script and some fun musical numbers (albeit with big PAUSES before the singing started--every. time.). The songs were appropriated from random other places, and sung with altered lyrics (Be Prepared from the Lion King, the Beatles Yesterday, and something from Gilbert and Sullivan's Gondoliers? (really? /Gondo-fucking-liers?/)), but it was rubbish in the grandest way.
Beatonna has some GREAT comics on The Many Adaptations of Watson. See here and here. This play featured Proper!Competent!Watson, Stupid!Watson AND a dash of Gay!Watson at the end (please insert own joke about that being where he likes to be found here (then make another re: insertion, if it is to your taste)). The small Holmes/Watson saved for last is so cute--as is Watson's Typewriter Dependency (the name for someone's new indie band).
Oxford Review:
Of all the shows we saw, I suppose one had to be worst. This was free, but even so, in retrospect, I wouldn't have gone. Not because it was a choice between this and other shows--though obviously, that too--if it had been Oxford Review vs. sitting at home doing nothing--truly nothing--I might've opted for the wall-starring. I kept waiting for it to pick up and Become funny, but a series of awkward stale statements about Northerners and some ill-considered, under-baked political remarks later, still nothing. I had 'jokes' there for both of those, but I edited it out, because that didn't seem quite the right term for the Verbal Happenings I experienced.
It's not that humor can't be political, topical, cutting--but those jokes should be justified by saying something, anything, fresh or especially true? You can't just flag up Domestic Abuse and wait for a thin pity chuckle. When your Hipster Irony is so vague as to disappear into a light mist, your remarks are no longer comedic undermining of classism, they're just instances of classism. And not even specifically amusing classism at that?
I think what makes a lot of comics great is self-consciousness--whether it looks easy or whether its pained neuroticism is part of the humor, I think good comedy is serious shit, often the product of a rigorous examination of the material and delivery. Is this joke offensive? If so, is this funny enough that it's worth doing despite possibly offending people? Does it, bottom line, work? Does it make any sense? Is it funny? It didn't seem like any of them thought much about anything--how will this play, is this good enough to ask people to sit through, or (for people who weren't us with our special coupon) to pay to see? Is this new, is this interesting, is this going to catch any one's attention and further my career? Shit, anything. The skits seemed generally unfocused--throwing out a dozen lines to see if anything caught. A few of them were decentish actors, capable of delivering material, maybe, but ultimately they didn't have any to deliver.
I wondered if I was judging them harshly because it IS Oxford, and I might be inferring a smug complacency where none existed because I expect both high quality of them and for them to potentially be a bit up themselves. But I've had time to think, and I think I've decoupled those biases from my dislike of this show, which can stand alone and be liked or loathed on its own (de)merits.
The Footlights are this troupe's rather famously good Cambridge equivalent, but I wonder whether, as a uni group, they'd have been similarly sort of painful. However this felt rather worse than a random session of the UIowa sketch/improv group, and one would think this Review would be culled from the year's BEST and most successful skits. If this is the cream, what the fuck does the rest of the crop look like?
