Show

Review

4th August

There were some highlights and the show had potential. It also had a packed and happy house, so it was enjoyable in some ways. At the very end, the sheer stage presence of Paul Pirie managed to reduce me to tears of laughter.

10th August

I could see what Richard was trying to achieve with this show. He was using a sort of Socratic logic to take ideas to their extremely logical, yet genuinely futile and absurd conclusion. The point? Well, in his mind, he was challenging preconceptions, possibly the audiences, possibly his own self-doubt. In reality, he was showing off and the audience only partially came along for the ride. The showman in him, couple with a huge number of years' experience as writer and performer, allowed him to gloss over the cracks in this show with a summary at the end. I would rather he'd produced something more entertaining.

Priorite a Gauche are a spoof French pop duo. They've been around for years and their part-french, largely-English brand of music and comedy is inspiring and well crafted. A lot of this show is not laugh-out-loud funny, but where it wasn't, it was extremely enjoyable in other ways. Musically, these guys create miracles with their combination of guitar, acoustic fretless bass and the occasional Ukulele.

I bought their CD and I would recommend their show.

In this show, removed from the seat of his lavatory, Mr Hovis (a.k.a. John Sparkes) regails us with ludicrous stories and crap old jokes. And we love it. We laugh as he sloshes his beer around and growls songs as us, and we squeal with delight as he tells scatalogical tells of his wife's anus. Incredibly good fun. I giggled for 20 minutes afterwards.

The show isn't all that great, but it was a welcome return for an old friend.

12th August

13th August

Mudfinger is the work of a diseased brain. That there were kids involved was simultaneously funny and scary. Luckily, the guy doing it appears to be more likely to get himself into a scrape than his audience. The children had the better of him from the off. His repetitive and dull material was stretched out to an hour and the only amusement came from his incompetence.

14th August

Spoof music duo Karl and Karl are the world's worst Techno Pop band. In truth they are two delightfully well constructed characters who hold an audience in the palm of their hand with their dark brand of comedy. The crowd were not making it easy for this pair, but the show still moved along at a cracking pace and broke through the reservations of the somewhat reticent Sunday afternoon audience. Absolutely cracking, and there's a lot more material than they used.

Perhaps a two hour theatrical piece next time?

17.45 - Gavin and Gavin - Colonic Irrigation for our Souls
**
Assembly Rooms

You would imagine that a sell-out show at the Assembly Rooms at a respectable time of day would be a good show in itself. The branding would suggest so. I had heard of the pair (I think I saw them flyering last year) but I didn't have any pre-conceptions.

The show was bordering on the awful, though it kept having these moments of genuine comedy as this pair of 30-something sisters slapped each other about and did their best at character comedy. In truth it was two amateurish performers pissing about. It had "vanity project" stamped all over it.

15th August

When the in-between song banter came around it was quintessentially British, slightly corny, and gentle fun. That's what these guys do and they do it well.

Some moments were hilarious - like the physical comedy of different players running round with open-tuned ukuleles to two players who needed the right instrument near them at the right moments. Other moments were just clever - like the reconstruction of the theme to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Perhaps their more intelligent arrangements, like 7 songs in one, or the slavonic dance version of Leaning on a Lamppost, were the highlights, but in truth, the whole show was a highlight.

16th August

This show had a professional gloss to it and was generally entertaining. The talented cast ripped through Shakespeare's text, relatively unedited, with occasional diversions into a modern-day musical number. There was no real pleasure in the interpolation of these songs into the piece, but it was harmless family fun and reasonably enjoyable.

17th August

I had heard enough about these guys to be excited about seeing them. Their performance was very strong, but the density of jokes was not. However, it was fun stuff and definitely within the spirit of the fringe.

The combination of virtuoso playing and excellent writing was enthralling and surprisingly touching in places. Add to this a touch of the slapstick and you have the perfect show.

19th August

A strange bit of banter with a deaf guy in the audience may or may not have been staged. However, with a combination of incomprehensible script, appalling performances, technical foul-ups, bad props (including a remote control flying saucer), the boys made the hour fly past very pleasantly.

The show was subtitled "an onslaught" and there's no better way to describe the effect of Mr Vine in full swing. Things were padded out a bit with songs, which served to give the audience a breather, more than anything else.

I was still laughing 30 minutes after the show ended. This happened with only one other show I saw this Fringe - Frank Hovis.