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My third Monday in Edinburgh. Wow. That makes it sound pretty impressive. There will be another Monday here in what seems like a few centuries' time and yet also an impending short term date with the end of my stay.
However, this was not a day for musing over how long I had left of my holiday/running-away-to-the-circus-adventure. I was in Edinburgh to see shows and I had shows I wanted to see. My urge to fill my stomach with food was in full swing, as was my urge to walk around Edinburgh's city centre. I think I may have balanced the two, but I'll undoubtedly find out for sure when I hit the scales back in Newcastle. I recall eating more than one sticky cake on this fateful day and I also recall achieving personal records for crossing own, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
After lunching on Sainsbury's finest healthy food, including a fruit salad, I walked along to the Pleasance to see which evening shows had sold out. I wanted to see Nina Conti, but she was a sell out. With my recently bought notepad, and a copy of "Fest", I hot footed it from the Pleasance to Princes Street to the Princes Street Starbucks. Princes Street is a hotbed of human traffic, which I found somewhat obstructive of my reasonably sized frame. You can't really barge people out of your way, but I thought I'd create a zone into which people didn't want to intrude. I did this by swatting my newspaper back and forth like a combination of a blind man's white stick and a fly swat. At some points on my journey this seemed discouragement enough. At other points, I was obstructed. Crossing town at this pace is not much fun and I managed to resist upsetting or otherwise confusing other people on the route, but it was stressful.
At Starbucks with a granola bar and an icy drink, I plotted my show plan for the day (which I followed until it proved too difficult) and started jotting notes for a cool two man show in which two people sit down to write a musical, but get trapped in their own musical by a bizarre gypsy curse. The only way out is to write the whole musical and a suitable ending. It seems like it could be a really fun comedy show to do. But that's another story.
My first show was to be the Great Big Comedy Picnic at The Pod. While buying the ticket I also bought a ticket for Daniel Kitson's show, surprised that it had not sold out. After the comedy picnic, I had approximately 30 minutes to get back across town to the Pleasance to see the next show. Edinburgh is a three dimensional city and mastering its access is sometimes a matter of knowing how streets naturally join others and sometimes a matter of finding some direct routes in three dimensional space to get from one altitude and location to another efficiently. To get from the West end of Princes Street to the East end of the (lower) Cowgate, one of the effective tools to use is the Castle Terrace Car Park. Entering this building and dropping down its staircase is like a gateway to a new dimension... well, it's a convenient shortcut.
I arrived at the Pleasance in time to buy a ticket for The Trap and enjoy the show. I then had 15 minutes to get back onto the Royal Mile and reach its western end for the next show - A Chorus Line. I also needed to buy a ticket. I had also been provided with a bottle of Grolsch by the nice people of The Trap. How I made the journey I'm not sure. I used by Edinburgh route finding tricks to maximum advantage and I ploughed up the hill of the Royal Mile with alacrity. Perhaps my crowning glory was the way I dealt with the crowd, basically making space, slipping into corners and generally scaring people with cries of "Excuse me", "Sorry", "Must get through", "I'm in a rush" and so on. It worked. I arrived in time to buy my ticket, leave my bottle of Grolsch at reception and find a seat for the show.
Afterwards, I had slightly longer to return to The Pod, which was, at least, at a similar end of town - albeit at a different altitude and accessible by a rather circuitous route. Collecting my bottle of Grolsch from the box office, I set off to skirt the castle. The post show post-mortem of A Chorus Line was shared with three random school girls who were pretending to be older and wiser while walking down the hill to get a lift from one of their mums. I duly pretended not to notice this.
At The Pod, I had to hand over my lucky bottle of Grolsch to their box office staff for collection after the show. This I did, knowing it would come back to me - it was, after all, my lucky bottle of Grolsch - so unlike those unlucky bottles people are selling. After Daniel Kitson's show, I'd planned to zoom over to see a show at the Assembly Rooms. Sadly my rushing hours were over. Mr Kitson overran by a few seconds, and I got chatting to someone outside the show and could not see how I could make up the 5 minutes we'd spent. I reclaimed my Grolsch and headed back to C Main to see if there was anyone I knew in the bar. Obviously I couldn't take my bottled beer with me, so I deposited it with the box office - this was becoming a habit.
I sat musing over a different bottled beer and was soon joined by someone I'd met previously. The rest of the evening was spent in conversation and in transit between various venues with this person, who introduced me to some of the after-show behind-the-scenes Edinburgh bits I should probably have sought out myself. The evening ended with me somewhere near the Pleasance Dome wondering whether to collect my beer. I went back for my beer and walked home. It was so late that the temptation to buy deep fried potatoes was not even an option.
Quite some sort of day.
Show: The Great Big Comedy Picnic
Performed by: Various
When: 17:30
Where: The Pod
Cost: £7
Ian Fox as MC, Lou Saffire, Joe Bulger, Jonathan Paylor, Jo Dakin and Seymour Mace were on the bill. Some seemed more fazed than others by the scale of what they were doing. The audience were not too large, but I think we all had a good time. I laughed heartily, but then I always do!
Show: The Trap
Performed by: The Trap
When: 19:00
Where: Pleasance Hut
Cost: £8.50
Masterful. Combinations of various types of sketch, some reminiscent of Monty Python. Others just well executed visual or musical gags which required timing. The warm-up-man who did a series of well known old-school jokes to the William Tell overture (and made them rhyme) was a personal favourite.
I was singled out of the audience in the classic "I'm not going to pick on you" routine, which then took a funny twist as the "So, what do you do" bit of performer/audience member, turned into a Who wants to be a millionaire style quiz. I won... the bottle of Grolsch. See?
I never know how to react when I'm picked in an audience. A part of me wants to steal focus, but I can't do that. Equally I can't be the scared, nervous fool because it doesn't scare or unnerve me to be in the spotlight. I think I managed to play along enough and throw in a few surprises for the performer along the way.
Show: A Chorus Line
Performed by: Deep Blue Theatre
When: 20:15
Where: C too
Cost: £9.50
I'd never seen this show before. It's not really a musical. It has musical moments, but it's more of a play with a soundtrack. I say this because I couldn't fault it as a show - it's too well established and well loved, but I couldn't agree with it as an example of classic musical theatre. It's a nice study about the way chorus lines are chosen, and how there's always a story behind even the humblest of faces in the back row.
It was reasonably well executed with a few exceedingly charismatic performances. One or two moments were weaker than others, but I enjoyed the show. I'm not going to take it to pieces.
Show: A Made Up Story
Performed by: Daniel Kitson
When: 22:30
Where: The Pod
Cost: £11
Not a sell out. Not even close. Not stand-up. Not even close. Not really an example of anything I'd seen before.
This was funny. It felt like a sort of Dave Gorman show where someone had simply made up the characters and interconnected events. Perhaps I was just hearing similarities in Daniel Kitson's and Dave Gorman's accents.
I found it to be carefully crafted, exceedingly funny, nicely creative and a joy to watch. Daniel Kitson's reaction to his own success is interesting. He doesn't choose to stay around and wait for the audience applause, nor does he do things to appeal to his fans for the sake of pleasing them's sake. Instead, he chooses to craft something interesting and entertaining and leave it at that. Perhaps he worries about what happens when you start to play to the crowd... perhaps he's right to.
Spent £36, saw 4 shows. At the day's end:
Total shows seen: 49
Total shows performed: 7
Total spent: £326
04 August 2003
Ashley Frieze