No forgotten card this morning, so we were able to get hold of the remaining tickets and find Bannamans to be early in the queue for Andrew Collins. I got interested in his work having read his biography of Billy Bragg and enjoy much of his DJ stuff. Most of all, I love the Collings & Herrin podcast, so I was interested to see what he had come up with for his first hour of stand-up. Secret Dancing was a smooth hour to a packed crowd. Nick and I both liked the rythmic description of walk along the streets on recycling day looking at the newspapers, and I enjoyed the secrets of the dance.
It was a good start to the day, and we decided to stay on for the next act but this turned out poor. The young woman interacting only with her PowerPoint, old jokes falling flat while the audience’s chairs got harder and closer together. We drank up and walked around the cobbled streets in search of some shelter from the rain, eventually drawn into the third and fourth free fringe shows of the day: Catriona Knox and Test Tube Comedy. Catriona did a character set, polished and assured and coped with some good natured drunken hecklers. This was the only time we witnessed a comic in these difficulties, and we were glad of it. Test Tube Comedy featured five stand-ups and a guitarist doing short sets. They were all good but the promised e-mailed information has yet to arrive, so I can’t say who they were. This is a shame because they were all good. Not so the toilets in the venue, black walled, freakily mirrored but virtually unlit, I was barely able to see where to - . Well, you get the picture.
The surprise (for us) hit of the festival came next in the form of Josie LongJosie Long. We found ourselves unintentionally and a little reluctantly and the front of the queue and ushered to front seats. We shouldn’t have been Josie’s demographic, and yet she effortlessly charmed us into her world where fathers can be chosen based on their deeds, political or breakfast based. The show worked its way up to an exploration of whether doing good things is enough to Be Honourable. It was cunning, clever stuff from a young woman in long shorts who wore her costume jacket home. After the show, we felt ridiculous asking her to sign a t-shirt for H (it was our original reason for getting tickets as H is a huge fan), but she was easy with it, her real persona little different from her stage one, a little posher of voice and more business-like, in a nice way. She seemed genuinely grateful that we had come to her show, and interested in what we thought of it.
Mission accomplished, we rushed to the other end of town, and to the back of the ginormous queue for Richard Herring’s Christ on a Bike held in a chandeliered theatre as opposed to last year’s cave. I’m extremely partial to his work, and this show doesn’t disappoint. It displays Herring’s writing strengths, irreverent, playful, searching, working in a dangerous topic and yet inoffensive to anyone who listens. The laughs left me breathless, and I look forward to seeing it again in its extended touring form, it’s a little squeezed into the hour at the moment jumping too quickly between sections. Still, my favourite comedian in socks and sandals riding an exercise bike under a chandalier is a joy that will live long in the memory.
The next day, sitting in the beer garden at the Pleasance, I read some reviews. Josie Long and Richard Herring’s shows were two of my favourites of the fringe, but they had each got miserable three stars. Josie’s reviewer seemed to miss the point entirely, mistaking lightness of touch for being lightweight, while Herring’s reviewer seemed to have given three stars on the basis that he had brought back an old show. In future, I'll never believe what I read. We saw Gutted: The Revengers Musical after Herring. It was Ok, but nothing special in my opinion, being as one dimensional as musicals go. Writing this a few days later, I can’t remember a single song, and surely I should. Those tickets were expensive.
It got rave reviews, naturally.
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