Fringe Fragments - Part 1

In which I drone on about some shows I saw at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.....

First and foremost, let me preface this post by saying that I am not in any way shape or form a reviewer, but I did want to put down some thoughts on my experiences of this year's Fringe festival. And since I'm not a reviewer (and a relative newbie to the world of theatre), these thoughts are as likely to be about the weather, or how comfortable the seats are at a given venue, as they are about the performances I've seen.

Every Fringe show operates the infuriating practice of unreserved seating, so if you are seeing anything in one of the big rooms you have to queue outside at least 30 minutes before the scheduled start time if you want to secure a decent seat. Which, since it's Edinburgh, means standing outside in the rain for quite a large part of your day. And sometimes even during the show.... but more of that later.

Sarah Millican - Assembly Main Hall

Venue - This was my first visit to the Assembly Hall, and once I got over my initial amusement at seeing a bar set up in the courtyard of a building I know best as the venue for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, I had to admit it's a pretty decent venue for comedy (although I still prefer the now defunct Assembly Rooms on George Street). The space easily holds over 800 people without seeming overcrowded, the seats are very comfortable, and although a lot of them are side on to the stage this doesn't seem to matter in a show like this one. 

Show - Sarah has become a bit of a shining star of the British comedy scene over the past couple of years, thanks to numerous TV appearances on programmes such as Live At The Apollo. Anyone expecting similar fodder in her live routine, however, might just be in for a bit of a shock. While Sarah's schtick even on TV is to fool the audience into thinking she's demure before launching into some crude anecdotes about relationships. Freed from the constraints of broadcasting guidelines, this is something she pushes even further and I expect managed to shock quite a few people who only know her from her television work - a few words did draw audible gasps from the audience. 

The premise of this show is that everyone can be defined as either being cautious or a risk taker, and urged us all to pick whether we were dodgems (cautious), or bumper cars (risk takers), and announcing that we would be able to cement these choices with the now obligatory Fringe badges at the end of the show . In revealing her own anxieties, Sarah was somewhat upstaged by a revelation from a girl in the front row which gave us probably the best line of the night.

Overall, this was a solid hour of feelgood comedy, albeit with few outright belly laughs. And for the record, I'm a dodgem.

4/5

Simon Callow in Tuesdays at Tescos - Assembly Main Hall

Venue - Although this is exactly the same room as Sarah Millican is playing to, something didn't quite work with the side stalls here. Most of the action is projected forward, so some of the impact was lost when viewed side on. I did still get wet queuing outside, and the seats were still really comfortable though.

Show - As you might expect, Simon Callow was mesmerising as the transexual Pauline, bringing you completely into her world, feeling her pain at the constant rejection by her father. However, I must admit there were a couple of bits that jarred slightly (possibly because I'm not smart enough to get them). Although this was a solo show, there was a pianist onstage throughout playing fragments of songs on an out of tune piano, and at times Pauline even 'danced' along. I'm sure this was meant to be a metaphor for something, but to me it was just a distraction from the story Pauline was trying to tell.

4/5

Ruby Wax: Losing It - Udderbelly's Pasture

Venue - Where to start with this one..... Another long queue outside (although thankfully the rain stayed off for the duration), and doors didn't open until the scheduled show start time - meaning that proceedings were running about 10 minutes late, which can be a big issue in Edinburgh if you have another show to get to afterwards. Seats were ridiculously uncomfortable - I'm about 5'6" and was struggling for legroom, so goodness knows how bad it must have been for anyone taller. And just to finish things off, by virtue of the fact that this venue is an upturned inflatable cow, noise from outside was clearly audible inside, all of which may have coloured my opinion of the performance.

Show - This is Ruby's account of her battle with mental illness, and her desire to get people talking about mental health in an attempt to remove the stigma attached to it. As she says, one in four of us will suffer from some form of mental illness at some point, so why are we still afraid to talk about it openly? Since this is Ruby Wax there is a lot of humour here, some of which doesn't quite hit the mark and as a result prevented me connecting with the material as much as I would have liked. Like Tuesdays at Tescos, although this is billed as a solo show Ruby is actually sharing the stage with a pianist, and unfortunately the clearly scripted asides between the two jarred slightly in my view. This undercut an otherwise moving and brave - and ultimately uplifting - show, and although I was checking my watch for the final 20 minutes of the 80 minute running time (thanks mainly to being ridiculously uncomfortable in my seat), one I would definitely recommend seeing if you get the chance.

4/5

Shamelessly stolen blog post

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front of late due to a lack of anything interesting to say. That hasn't changed, but I did come across this on another blog and thought I'd give it a shot myself.  The premise is answering a series of questions on the last 10 things you saw at the theatre - for the sake of variety I'm not including repeat visits, otherwise half of my top ten would be made up of the same show....

List the last 10 things you saw at the theatre, most recent first.


1. Clybourne Park
2. Thrill Me
3. In A Forest Dark And Deep
4. Godspell
5. Frankenstein
6. Celebrity Autobiography
7. King Lear
8. Wicked
9. Love Never Dies
10. End Of The Rainbow

Who was the best performer in number 1?
Couldn't single any of them out, this was definitely an ensemble piece.

Why did you go to see number 2?
Glowing reviews from a friend. It more than lived up to my expectations, go and see it if you get the chance.

Can you remember a line/lyric from number 3 that you liked?
Don't remember the exact line, but I was quite tickled by a joke about U2.

What would you give number 4 out of ten?
Difficult to rate this fairly as it was an amateur production, but I'm going to go with 6.

Was there someone hot in number 5?
A couple....

What was number 6 about?
Not really about anything, other than ridiculing the crazy things some celebrities say in the autobiographies.

Who was your favourite actor in number 7?
Derek Jacobi. He had me mesmerised from the minute he opened his mouth.

What was your favourite bit in number 8?
Rachel Tucker's riffs at the end of No Good Deed

Would you see number 9 again?
Hahaha!

What was the worst thing about number 10?
That Tracie Bennett didn't win an Olivier for her performance

Which one was best?
Can't pick just one, but top 3 would be Frankenstein, Love Never Dies and End Of The Rainbow

Which one was worst?
Probably slightly unfair of me, but I'm going to have to say Godspell.

Did any make you cry?
Love Never Dies and End Of The Rainbow

Did any make you laugh?
Quite a few, but especially Clybourne Park and Celebrity Autobiography

Which roles would you like to play in any of them?
Too many to list....

Which one did you have the best seats for?
All of them were damn good seats, except King Lear.

Too old to share?

I got my first real taste of travel back in 1999 when, thanks to the generous donation of the cost of the airfare from my brother, I headed off to Australia for 6 weeks. As a poor, penniless graduate, my only accommodation option was hostels. For less than $20 a night, I got a place to kip between adventures. Sometimes it was even clean....

Radeka's Underground Hostel, Coober Pedy, 1999

Such was the success of this trip, and my ability to overlook sharing a smelly, noisy room with anything up to 10 other people, as well as multiple cockroaches and (on one memorable occasion) a lizard, I have continued to stay in hostels from time to time simply to make the money go further. And although you definitely get what you (don't) pay for, these have been some of the most memorable holidays I've had. I mean, who could forget a week of cold showers in Toronto in October, because there was an issue with the plumbing. Which also caused every sink in the building to regurgitate every time a tap was run, but it also had a bar with cheap booze, which more than made up for the water issues.

Melbourne Metro YHA, 2007

Last year, though, I had to rethink my view that a hostel bed is the best way to make the most of a long haul holiday. It all started out well enough. The Sydney Harbour YHA is quite possibly the best hostel I've stayed in. For $40 a night, I got an en-suite room that I only had to share with 3 other people. And to top it all off, I got this view thrown in:

Sydney Harbour YHA, 2010

Then I moved on to Melbourne, and things started to go wrong. The hostel wasn't quite as shiny and new (and clean) as Sydney, it was over a bar, and none of the rooms were en-suite. I could overlook the lack of shiny and new, but found myself struggling to deal with the noise from the bar, and with the shared bathrooms at the end of the corridor. Especially the noise from the bar. After two nights, I checked out early and moved to a hotel for my last night in Australia.

So why did I struggle so much to deal with hostels when I've almost been evangelical in my praise of the joys of the budget experience? Is it that I'm getting too old for hostels? Is it even possible to be too old to stay in a hostel? I didn't think it was, having met plenty of 'older' travellers over the years, but it certainly seems to me now that I'm in my 30s I can't quite bring myself to overlook the small things that didn't seem to matter 10 years ago. 

Someone has suggested that, rather than being too old to stay in a hostel, I'm now too posh, too middle class to *do* budget travelling. But I don't think that's it. I have no issue with bunk beds, with sharing a room with strangers - I've met some really interesting people that way, and did so again last year - but now that I'm just that little bit older, the things I value on holiday have changed. I'm not a 20-something party animal whose only concern is somewhere to crash. I want to make the most of my holidays (and by that I mean I want to see and do as much as possible during the day), so my main priority is that the room is quiet enough to allow a decent night's sleep (actually my main priority is not sharing it with cockroaches and lizards, but that's not the sort of thing that gets mentioned on the hostel websites) I suspect I could even still deal with a shared bathroom, provided I still got a good 8 hours. Yes, if I'm being completely honest, I would prefer the luxury of a private room with flatscreen tv, turndown service and marble bathroom, but my budget doesn't quite stretch to this every night of every trip.

Kowloon Shangri-La, 2010

So until it does, I'll carry on going for the budget option, just as long as it's not above a bar..... or already occupied by a lizard.

NT Live

I've been intrigued by the National Theatre's production of Frankenstein since I first heard about it. Of course, by that point it was too late as the entire run had already long since sold out, and I don't have the opportunity (or desire) to queue outside the NT all night for day seats. 

Not to worry though, NT Live were going to broadcast two performances to selected cinemas in March. Sadly, even these sold out before I could book tickets, such is the popularity of the Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller double hander. And I'll be honest, the reason that it sold out before I booked was because I wasn't sure that it was worth shelling out £16.50 just to watch it on a screen. By the time I made up my mind that I had to see what the fuss was about, it was too late.

Thankfully, today the Glasgow Film Theatre was showing a recording of one of the screenings, with Miller as the Creature and Cumberbatch as Frankenstein, and this time I managed to get a ticket.

Obviously, watching from the distance of a cinema screen is not the same as watching live in a theatre. In the theatre you are free to focus on whichever part of the action you like - in these screenings, the decision of what you watch at any given moment is made for you by the director. So it's more than a little frustrating to be treated to a close up of one actor over another, thus depriving you of the chance to see the reactions of the other performers.  Or to be shown aerial views of the stage - this is not what the set was designed for, and these shots only served to emphasise that this was not the true theatrical experience.

All that can be forgiven, however, as the strength of the acting overcame any quibbles about camera angles. Both Miller and Cumberbatch were extraordinary, and I feel privileged to have witnessed their performances, albeit from a slight distance.  And the atmosphere in the GFT suggests that the majority of the audience felt the same way, even if they were slightly confused as to whether they should applaud the recording at the end.

Perhaps my only quibble would be that, for some reason, the NT didn't record the version with Cumberbatch as the Creature and Miller as Frankenstein, so I still need to try to sell one of my limbs to see it next time I'm in London.....

Are restricted view seats worth the risk?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the disadvantages of regional theatre is that you have to plan quite far in advance to be sure of getting tickets for some of the more popular productions. I discovered this to my cost when I failed to realise until about six weeks ago that the Donmar production of King Lear was heading to Glasgow's Theatre Royal last week.

By this point, the only tickets left were restricted view. I had a quick read of the descriptions of each of these seats - most of them were along the lines of 'pillar in front of seat obscures half of stage'. I eventually found one that didn't sound too bad. Apparently Q11 has a 'pillar two rows in front at edge of field of vision'. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but to me that suggests that I will probably be able to see this pillar out of the corner of my eye and it might require me to squint round it to see the edge of the stage....

Sadly, seat Q11 has a pillar directly in front of it, obscuring part of the stage about a third of the way in from house right. So not quite on the edge of my field of vision, but right in the blimmin' middle of it!

So it was with some trepidation that I sat down and waited for the action to start. To my surprise, the pillar wasn't as much of an issue as I feared it might be. Obviously, this being Shakespeare the majority of the 'action' was people standing around talking (and doing it very well I might add). It also turned out that the area of stage that was obscured was roughly the width of a Jacobi*, so even when characters were doing more than just pontificating I didn't miss much.

The only real drawback was that my tired eyes struggled slightly with the effort involved in focussing on the stage rather than the pillar, and by the end I was physically exhausted - as well as emotionally drained by the brilliance of the subject matter and performances I had just witnessed.

For this performance then, the restricted view seat was definitely worth it - £24 to see a production of this calibre seems like a real bargain. However, I think this is probably down to the nature of the play itself - this seat would have been a real issue for a performance that was a little more action packed, even at a considerably reduced price. As such I really feel that Ambassador Theatres need to amend the description of this seat on their website. I would certainly hesitate before booking a restricted view in future, even though it worked in my favour on this occasion.

*official measurement.

A few confessions

Since it's Sunday, there are a few things I should probably get off my chest. Firstly, I'm not a huge fan of Phantom of the Opera - I only saw it for the first time and it left me a little cold. Not that I would say I disliked it, but it simply didn't move me in any way.

I also wouldn't call myself a huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Don't get me wrong, I think some of his work is ok. I quite like Joseph and Evita and have a real soft spot for Gethsemane from Jesus Christ, but when you factor in the trauma of Cats, let's just say he and I have a few issues.

So perhaps understandably, I wasn't in any particular rush to see Love Never Dies. Then at the beginning of February, I decided to use a pre-planned trip to visit a friend in London to go and see the original cast before they all move on.

And quite frankly, I was shocked. Shocked that my pre-conceptions were so completely wrong. I loved it. The score was beautiful, surprising in places, the staging stunning, and the performances sublime. Yes, maybe if I had gone to see it before the December re-writes I wouldn't have been so impressed, but there are still a few elements that don't quite work and yet the overall effect is magnificent. Now if they could just tackle the overuse of projections to move the story along (and of the motif sung by Gustave throughout), and maybe develop Meg Giry's character a little more so her actions at the end don't feel like they've come out of the blue, then the whole thing would be pretty much perfect.

Even with these small flaws, this is a very very good piece of musical theatre that, to my mind at least, demands repeat viewing. At least that's my excuse for yesterday, which brings me to my final confession.....

As soon as I got back from my weekend in the big smoke, I decided I really had to see Love Never Dies again with the original cast. Being short on holidays (not to mention cash), the only option was a day trip. Hence I found myself spending most of yesterday on a train just to spend 2.5 hours in a theatre. And it was worth every minute.

Town Mouse vs Country Mouse

I've always thought of myself as being the proverbial country mouse. I need to be able to see green open spaces, need to know that the Highlands are only a half hour drive away. Yes, I like spending time in cities (most of my holidays are city breaks) but I've always maintained that I could never live in one.

Lately, though, I've been wondering whether that's strictly true. I loved London so much when I was there last summer that it was a wrench leaving. Sure, that's probably because I was living in an apartment worth about £750,000, which was walking distance to work and only 20 minutes from the West End.

But I honestly think it might be more than that. I also found myself wishing I lived in Sydney and Melbourne when I was on holiday there last year. All three cities are huge, bustling and culturally vibrant, and I want to be a part of that. I know some people find cities this size impersonal, but I love the fact I can lose myself in a crowd, be completely anonymous for a while. And I just can't do that here. Edinburgh and Glasgow are nice, but ultimately no bigger than small towns - there's always a risk that I'll bump into someone I know. Not that that's a bad thing, just that sometimes it's nice to know that I can escape for a while.

And yes, Edinburgh and Glasgow pride themselves on having a lot going on culturally, but generally this is confined to specific festivals throughout the year so advance planning is always needed. You can't just wake up one Saturday and decide to go to the theatre, as chances are whatever it is you want to see sold out weeks or months in advance.

Then there's sport, shopping, sightseeing, (slightly) better weather, and I suspect that even I would take years to get bored. All of which makes this country mouse think that a move to London is an incredibly good idea.

But then reality sets in. I can enjoy the odd break in London (and other cities), and all the culture central Scotland has to offer because I'm not spending over £1000 a month on rent. I don't have to spend several hours a day crammed into a tin can like a sardine just to get to and from work (Scotrail ain't great, but they're not quite that bad), and I don't get kept awake all night by the constant wail of sirens.

So for now, this little country mouse is quite content to enjoy the best of all worlds and to carry on visiting her town mouse friends from time to time. For now....

Why I love theatre

I said this might start slowly, and that seems to be proving right. What to write about....?

They say write about what you know. Right now what I know is theatre. Or more specifically, musical theatre (although I am trying to broaden my horizons and gradually giving some non-musical performances a go). And when I say 'know', what I really mean is 'quickly becoming obsessed with'.  I love that I can lose myself completely in another world, another world that is being created right then and there in front of me, and is subtly different to every other performance.  And that buzz is addictive.

So yes. theatre is becoming a bit of a passion, but truth be told I've always been a fan of musicals, and for that I really should thank the PTA of my local primary school. My mum was a member of the PTA, and they happened to hold meetings on the same night as my dad played piano for the local amateur dramatic society. The only solution was for the 8 year old me to tag along to rehearsals where I was designated the official page turner for their production of Oliver.  I was hooked, and to this day I can still sing along to every word of that show.

Glossing over the utterly baffling experience of being taken to see a touring production of Cats in 1980something, I had to make do with these amateur musicals for the next 10 years. Then in 1996 I saw the show that changed everything. A friend and I were on our first solo trip to London and had splashed out on the cheapest tickets we could find for Les Miserables. Even from 3000 feet up in the balcony (seriously, the Palace Theatre has the steepest, highest balcony I've ever seen) this show was something special. I was in love.

I may have been in love, but I was also a 19 year old student and an aspiring music journalist, so obviously I was way too cool to ever admit that I loved musicals. On top of this, any spare cash I had was spent going to gigs and festivals so theatre-going was restricted to the occasional touring production in Edinburgh (Les Mis and Miss Saigon being deemed just about cool enough to get away with). And obviously, while on holiday in New York it would have been rude not to head for Broadway and Chicago seemed an acceptable choice for two gals about town.

All of this changed about 18 months ago, when my mum's 65th birthday provided a good excuse for a quick theatre break in London. Since we couldn't decide what to see, we ended up at a different show every night - Les Mis (again, natch), Oliver (meh), and La Cage Aux Folles (just fabulous, dahling) - and a passion was re-awakened.

Thanks to some encouragement from a friend (and the fact I'm no longer a poor student), I have discovered over the past year that London is close enough for a weekend break - not to mention the fact that it's completely ok to go to the theatre on your own if no one else is around.  I was also lucky enough to get the chance to spend 5 weeks in London on expenses last summer (I know, I have a hard life), which gave me the chance to see just about everything I wanted to see... sometimes more than once!

The trouble with theatre, though, is that there is always something new to see, someone new playing the lead in your favourite show.... as my bank account will attest, being a theatre fan is an expensive business.... but that's a post for another day :-)

Soooo....

So I'm finally giving blogging a try. No doubt my concerns / excuses for not doing it before now are the same as everyone else who has ever thought about whether they should create a blog. Do I have anything interesting to say? I really don't think I do, but if nothing else this little venture will get me writing again for the first time in over 10 years. 10 years? Wow, that'll be why I'm rusty. Bear with me, this could take a while to get going....