Each August, every theatre, church hall and pub back room in Edinburgh is handed over to the Edinburgh Fringe, the world’s largest festival. High drama, comedy, musicals, opera, the dreaded devised shows … we’ve got it all. It’s all very Marmite, you either love it or you hate it – many locals flee the city and make a mint hiring out their homes to performers and crew. Me, I adore it.
For more information, see the official website – and maybe visit us next year:
http://www.edfringe.com/
Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve seen so far this year. With 2,453 shows, I’ve only about 2,427 to go.
MUSICALS AND OPERA
COMEDY
JO CAULFIELD: CRUEL TO BE KIND
THE STAND III and IV (Venue 12)
Fringe veteran – and no, that doesn’t mean wrinkly, she’s actually a bit of a fox – Jo Caulfield is back to show the trendy young Turks how it’s done. Her theme is things that make her angry, and apart from programme-makers who favour said young Turks because both sides speak fluent Plummy, the list includes job-nabbing Sue Perkins and sick-making new couples.
There’s a corker of a section involving a chance encounter in HMV that spiralled out of control, tales of her ‘girly-girl’ pals, real-world/bitter fairy stories that had the audience hooting, and the joy of other people’s children. To be honest, there’s not that much anger, but there are a heck of a lot of laughs. If not for the fact that reviewers get in for free I’d say the end sequence, in which Caulfield has the audience help with research for an upcoming magazine article, is worth the price of admission.
As it is, you can decide for yourself should you go to see one of the most distinctive, wittiest voices on the comedy circuit.
MISSION OF FLOWERS
C AQUILA (VENUE 21)
PIONEERING airman Bill Lancaster saw himself as an adventurer. His family likely saw him as a heel. It’s one thing to have dreams of flying to glory in biplanes, quite another to dump your dependants to pursue them, having fallen under the spell of a society woman.
And it’s the seductive Jessie ‘Chubbie’ Miller who becomes the more famous half of the couple, after co-piloting a plane from England to Australia with Lancaster. Desperate to prove his worthiness/make some money/find fame, Lancaster embarks on ill-fated schemes, the last of which leads to the situation in which this play finds him …
. . . under a plane in the Sahara desert, with enough water to survive for a week or so. As the days pass, he tells us parts of his story, as we wonder if he’ll ever be rescued.
Leof Kingsford-Smith puts masses of energy into the role of Lancaster, bloodied by life but always believing that one day his ship – or biplane, rather – will come in. The script flashes between Lancaster addressing the audience with his story and writing a journal for Darling Chubbie and Darling Mother to read should he die. Often, Lancaster goes into character as Chubbie, or their friend Haydn, demonstrating that as rubbish a man as Lancaster likely was, they were worse.
And this is one of the main problems with Mission of Flowers – Lancaster is such a self-regarding, self-deluding, whingeing soul that it’s difficult to feel empathy for his plight; even he acknowledges he’s likely reaping what he sowed. And if he does get rescued, you know he’ll just mess up again. As for the ludicrously nicknamed Chubbie and toff Haydn, whatever bad things happens to them can’t come soon enough.
Not that this is the fault of Gerry Greenland’s script – Lancaster and co were real people and the logbook excerpts and court transcripts incorporated are the real thing. But perhaps reality could have been tweaked to make Lancaster a tad more likeable.
The other problem is the staging. I can live with the biplane that looks like a farmers’ market cheese stall, but the rapidfire shifting between narrative devices is awfully wearing. And the same piano line played dozens of times, whenever Lancaster pops back to his plane to write something, quickly descends from plaintive refrain to theatrical tinnitus.
We hear a shotgun something like five times, as Lancaster is haunted by a terrible incident, causing him to cornily cry out ‘Aah, the shotgun’ or somesuch.
At the end, a screen at the back of the stage details what became of Lancaster, but too darn quickly. I only just caught the coda, because I happened to be looking in that direction, but other members of the audience never managed to read it.
If you want to see some fine acting, and don’t mind a relentlessly depressing story told in a rhythmically repetitive manner, Mission of Flowers is for you. I suspect I’m simply the wrong audience.
COMEDY
ADAM HILLS MESS AROUND
Assembly @ Assembly Hall (VENUE 35)
IF YOU’VE ever seen Adam Hills you’ll know that funny as his stories are, the banter with the audience is often even better. The Aussie has heard this so many times over the years that this year he’s not brought a script – Mess Around is an hour of ad libbing.
And it works. Or at least it did on the night I was there, as audience members provided rich fuel for his patented brand of incredulity. From a teenager who looks like like Justin Bieber to a woman with blue in her hair so her husband can find her in a car park, and Hills’ very own ‘stalker’, the endless variety proved mighty amusing.
When Hills began sending photos of young Jamie to Twitter – with the OK of his dad, a BBC comedy executive, funnily enough – to see who online followers thought he looked like, I wasn’t sure the show could take it. But the comic chattered away while tweeting and with replies such as ‘a cloned Corey Feldman’ it was very much a case of no worries. Back and forth tweeting with an audience member, Richard from Brighton, proved less than comedy dynamite, as we could have learned he worked in Sainsbury’s a lot quicker if he and Hills had just talked. The mere fact that tweeting is possible doesn’t make for hilarity, though someone else did save the day by contributing a nice line about Doritos.
The laughter came constantly, as Hills and audience members matched wits, though never in a point-scoring sense. The biggest moment of participation came as we all posed for a picture with stuffed toy Honker, who’s campaigning to raise cash for Edinburgh Sick Kids after a punter gave him (him!) to Hills a few nights ago. Sounds weird, I know, but hilarity ensued as Honker appeared in his new Irn Bru tee shirt, his head fell off and fan Polli began sewing it back on.
It’ll be interesting to see where Hills goes with next year’s show – I can’t see Twitter still fascinating so many people in 2011. Or perhaps he’ll do an entire show online. I do hope not – Hills is comedy sunshine and it’s rather nice to bask in his glow.

NICHOLAS PARSONS’ HAPPY HOUR
PLEASANCE COURTYARD (VENUE 33)
THE legend that is Nicholas Parsons is back for his tenth Fringe, interviewing Pleasance turns and giving them a chance to show a snippet of their act.
As an elder statesman of light entertainment, there’s nothing that can throw Parsons – well, if there is, it doesn’t include darker sexual practices involving ventriliquist’s dummies. Happily, the conversation with David Strassman and Chuck went over the heads of the younger members of the audience – the show is rated PG, in the Fringe Guide’s helpful new system – but the ever-dry Parsons was having a ball. Strassman did a fine job of selling his show, Strassman: Duality, a variation on the mad vent/sinister dummy theme, showing off the already creepy Chuck’s new animatronics. The best moment of the hour came as Strassman assured a little girl that Chuck wasn’t realllllly scary, before thrusting the doll, demonic-eyes burning red, towards her. I wonder if she’s slept since then.
The second guest was one Mr B, a cravat-obsessed, hip-hop Banjolele (SUBS, TRADEMARK, I BELIEVE) player appearing in Me, Me, Me. He sang a song about Surrey, though it was pretty much impossible to hear the words due to the loud fans – machines, not stalkers – around the Cabaret Bar. Much as I like to be cool, a working sound system would be marvellous … again and again, we couldn’t hear what Parsons was saying, and some punters gave in and had the fans besides them switched off. They died of heat exhaustion.
As with any Fringe chat show, the star rating is to some extent at the mercy of the guests, so it’s worth taking a punt on Parsons for a relaxed hour. But be ready to yell, ‘speak up’.
MUSIC
PINK SINATRA – SWING WITH A TWIST
HILL STREET THEATRE (VENUE 41)
OL’ BLUE eyes is back. Except he’s gone a distinct shade of pink. Scott Free enters the room in a sharp coral suit, complete with jaunty hat, and confounds expectations. Firstly, it’s not all hits from the Chairman of the Board – there’s My Way, Fly Me to the Moon, It Was a Very Good Year and a few others, but there are also songs made famous by Bobby Darin, The Beatles and Michael Buble.
And while the odd lyric is gender-flipped (‘It was a very good year/It was a very good year for blue-blooded boys’), this isn’t a Gay Show for Gay People Living in a Gay World – it’s a tuneful extravaganza for anyone who enjoys music with a Swing (pardon the expression) bent.
And Free – not his real name – isn’t camp. He’s twinkly, bit not effeminate in the least – more Pink Panther than Pink Pansy. He grins devilishly at boys and girls alike as he shows that whether it’s ballads or belters, he can sell it. There’s a lovely melodic quality to Free’s voice, a richness that warms the soul. And boy, can he belt out the showstoppers.
But despite his talent and technique, Free’s happy to let the audience sing along, on the likes of Bad, Bad Leroy Brown and New York, New York. And the finale was something none of the audience will forget for a long time – it certainly sent us back into the wet streets with massive grins on our faces.
Some of the publicity for Pink Sinatra wrongly states the show is three hours, something that will likely put many people off when there are so many shows to see in so little time. In fact, this show of standards in which the standard is high is the standard one-hour. But by the end you’ll be wishing it was three hours. When I was 46, it was a very good show …
MUSICALS AND OPERA
PUTTING IT TOGETHER BY SONDHEIM
AUGUSTINE’S (VENUE 152)
OK, Stephen Sondheim virgins, this is the show for you. Forget the lazy claims that the work of the greatest living composer of musicals is ‘difficult’, with few hummable tunes. Unless it’s lowest common denominator to the point of nursery rhyme, any song is going to take a few hearings before you can sing along.
And it’s not as if there’s any reason to sing along if this revue is your introduction to Sondheim – there’s a wonderful ensemble present to put the songs across as God – er, sorry, Sondheim, intended. Because he’s very particular about how the songs are sung, and not every singer can cope with the complex wordplay, the internal rhymes and, vitally, the level of acting required.
For Sondheim compositions aren’t interchangeable; you couldn’t easily swap a love song from, say, ‘Sweeney Todd’ for one from ‘Sunday in the Park With George’. They’re specific to show, character, scene. You can drop them into a revue, as happens here, but without getting the emotion right along with the technique, the songs suffer.
This production of Putting it Together, a show devised by Sondheim and Julia McKenzie, gets things very right indeed. The set-up is an urban cocktail party, the type of event at which the various emotions demonstrated could easily manifest. The five-strong cast – Adam Woodhouse, Gayle Telfer-Stevens, Gregor Firth, Veronica Horta and Brock Yurich* – are word and pitch perfect as they deliver, without benefit of mics, some of musical theatre’s greatest numbers. Songs like ‘Ladies Who Lunch’, ‘Pretty Women’, ‘Being Alive’, ‘Rich and Happy’, ‘Could I Leave You?’ … some are funny, some are clever, some are insightful, some are gorgeous, often they’re all four.
There isn’t a duff moment, but favourite ones include ‘Everybody Ought To Have a Maid’ presented, for a change, as a boy/girl duet, and ‘Buddy’s Blues’ given real comic pizzazz by Yurich. And Telfer-Stevens deserves kudos, and a stiff drink, for pulling off the super-speed ‘Getting Married Today’.
The band, led by Neil Somerville, are full partners in the evening, providing not simply accompaniment, but magic.
So yes, Sondheim virgins, slap down a few quid for this show and take a risk. Sondheim fans know it’s no risk at all.
* Sadly, I couldn’t find a pic specific to the production, so here’s a general shot of Brock Yurich. There are many more online …
O’Hanlon came across as a thoroughly likeable blend of Dave Allen and Terry Wogan, and to be fair, the audience lapped up his Oirish charm. He only had to make a sideways reference to his role as Dougal on Father Ted to get a big round of applause. But O’Hanlon is fiercely intelligent and could surely come up with sharper material than he presents here.
COMEDY
SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCK PUPPET THEATRE – ON THE TELLY

COMEDY
DARRIN ROSE – WHAT’S POT POURRI?
COMEDY
MARC SALEM’S MIND GAMES
ASSEMBLY @ PRINCES STREET GARDENS (VENUE 52)
LAST time Marc Salem was at the Fringe we’d never heard of Derren Brown. While the brilliant Brown has captured the wider public’s imagination, when it comes to dazzling with stage ‘mindreading’, Salem remains at the top of his game.
He can tell audience members where they’ve been recently, how they felt about the trip, what went wrong or right. He can predict every detail in a spy story devised by a series of strangers. He can tell you the random three-figure number a friend of a punter, miles away, is going to think of.
It seems like magic, but Salem claims no powers. As a trained psychologist – like TV’s Mentalist he’s a consultant with American law enforcement agencies – he’s using decades of familiarity with body language, verbal and non verbal tells, to read people, maybe even feed us unconscious cues so we come up with the information he’s written down in advance. There’s likely a bit of misdirection to boot.
He’s even more impressive when he hobbles himself, taping 50p pieces to his eyes, donning a blindfold and turning his back before identifying items offered up by audience members. Some of the moments are truly astonishing, and made all the more entertaining by Salem’s warm wit.
Whatever is going on in this thoroughly entertaining hour, Salem’s tricks are more impressive than ‘actual’ magic – they take a lot more skill.
COMEDY
CARL BARRON
ASSEMBLY @ ASSEMBLY HALL (VENUE 35)
BY THE time you’ve been kept waiting in the rain, shushed down corridors and near-frogmarched into seats in the searingly hot hall by the Assembly staff, you’re needing a laugh.
Happily, Carl Barron has brought plenty from Australia, with some very sharp observational comedy. It’s all firmly rooted in Barron’s own view of the world, which I’d characterise as ‘perplexed’. He’s puzzled by the things people say, bemused by the things they do … he’s even weirded out by how happy a wee twirl on his heels make him. Growing up, there’s the things his parents said, as opposed to what they meant; the weird kid in class; the nuns …. it’s all familiar areas for humour, but not all comics can put it across as well as Barron. He even finds comedy in flip flops (which, in passing, he admitted wearing with socks; the Assembly audience was far too polite to snicker).
Barron is as dry as Australia’s deserts, putting well-tested material across with the skill that’s seen him win numerous awards. He’s even funnier when he goes off script, ordering one girl to the proper exit as she galumphed down the stairs in search of a toilet, and teasing her pals as they called her the ‘most loveliest, most beautifulled gir-rul ever’. He wasn’t being mean, just allowing the punters to enter more directly into his comedy world.
And he does a stonkingly good French accent as he describes a trip to Paris. He also points out why being a comic gets you nowhere with airport authorities… The hour passes quickly, with Barron demonstrating that he’s as good at physical comedy as he is at verbal.
This is Barron’s first visit to the Fringe – let’s hope it’s not his last.
FELICITY WARD READS FROM THE BOOK OF MORON
GILDED BALLOON (VENUE 14)
COMING on stage looking like a cross between Joyce Grenfell and Katharine Hepburn, all aristocratic features, pipe and tweed trews, Felicity Ward quickly won me over. Convincing an audience she’s the most self-deprecating woman in the world, while addressing us with huge confidence isn’t easy; but the Australian managed it with her latest Fringe show.
I nearly wrote ‘event’ – that’s what it felt like as Ward made us feel like we were in her private gang, and privileged to hear the close-to-the-bone stories she’d brought. While her show last year was character comedy, the only character Ward was taking the mickey out of this time was herself. She’s the moron of the show’s title.
It’s heard to agree, as with everything she said, every move she made on a stage full of deliberately rubbish props, Ward’s brilliance shone through. But that didn’t stop me relishing the stories, which covered such areas as being a rubbish turn at a Bar Mitzvah and failing to have a decent coping mechanism for IBS.
There was very little ‘reading’ from the embossed – and blank – Book, just the first few lines of the story. Then Ward would wander the stage, narrating her mini comic-dramas, interrupting herself constantly to pass on another embarrassing tale, or to engage with the audience.
This is one of the funniest shows I’ve seen this year, by one of the freshest comic minds around. If Ward is a moron, would someone please lower my IQ?
TIME VINE – THE JOKE-AMOTIVE
PLEASANCE COURTYARD (VENUE 33)
ONCE a-pun a time, Tim Vine had Edinburgh audiences gagging with a show made up entirely of wordplay. He’s back again, to show just how many jokes you can pack into an hour. While there’s still plenty of cracking, cringe-making bits of punnery, this show also has plenty of more random material – daft songs, random one-liners, an astoundingly good mini opera centred on a whining carpet square …
Vine looks the business in a stationmaster’s jacket, opening with a few railway puns and never letting up. The audience barely has a chance to catch its breath before each new joke comes along. For maximum laughs, never ask a neighbour if you miss a joke; you’re only going to lose out on the next three. You have to get the rhythm of the Joke-amotive, which takes some training.
And there’s no let-up on the quickfire gags when Vine riffs off the audience – he’s on stage, enjoying himself hugely and he couldn’t misplace his mojo if he tried. If you like smart humour that’s both big and silly, a Vine time is guranteed.
Many of the comic contrivances centred on Vine’s wacky box of props, only one of which he hasn’t thought of a gag for yet, a massive piece of bacon. And there I thought he was a big old ham …
KIT AND THE WIDOW: OILING UP
STAGE BY STAGE EDINBURGH ACADEMY (VENUE 70)
IT’S great to take a punt at a Fringe show you know nothing about. You might hate it, but you could come across the next biggish thing.
But there’s also a lot to be said for the guaranteed crowd pleaser.
And Kit and the Widow’s crowd is always very pleased. Not in a self-satisfied way, just a thoroughly entertained one. For singer Kit Hesketh-Harvey and pianist Richard Sisson have been at the musical cabaret thing awhile. Thirty years, in fact (check your attic, someone has the portrait). And every year they come to the Fringe with a show chock full of satirical songs and easy banter. Some of the tunes are pastiches, many are entirely original, some are old, some are new. All are gems.
This year, subjects include the BP oil spill, the coalition, an African bestiary, Nandos, speed cameras, the banning of bullfighting and people who like Sondheim (oi, that’s me!).
I referred to Kit as the singer and the Widow as the pianist, but that’s understating it rather. Kit’s voice is marvelously adaptable, the Widow’s playing wouldn’t shame a concert hall, and both chaps have a fine comic touch. Talented, charming, dapper, they’re teddy bears with bite, able to create a rapport with their audience in about eight seconds flat and even find a rhyme for ‘orange’.
Oiling Up! – I guess the title refers to the public school relationship of Cameron and Clegg – is an hour of easy pleasure that Kit and the Widow have worked darn hard to create. Go, and enjoy a sure thing.
And if you still fancy a punt at new talent, Kit’s chanson-singing daughter, Gus, is putting on a free show at the Academy, twice nightly …
CAROLINE RHEA
GILDED BALLOON TEVIOT (VENUE14)
IF YOU know Caroline Rhea at all, you’re probably about 30 and a onetime viewer of US teen sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch, in which Rhea played twinkly Aunt Hilda.
It turns out Rhea is magic in real life, able to turn a hall-ful of curious Sabrina fans into Rhea-boosters. For Rhea isn’t one of those American TV stars who come to the Fringe and expected to be lauded simply for getting off the plane. First of all, she’s Canadian, giving her an immediate affinity with Scottish audiences. As she says, she’s as pasty as any of us, and she can do a cracking accent, having been taught by Scots transplant Mrs Ewing.
Then there’s the fact that she’s not tied to a script; too many times I’ve seen US comics rely on notes. There’s none of that here; Rhea has subjects she aims to cover – her dating experiences, baby daughter, excitable orangutans, being upstaged by a cat puppet that looks like a rabbit in a wig – but she’s all over the place. In the best sense … she banters with the audience, goes off on tangents, stops to show us a terrifying corset she’s wearing (unnecessarily, she’s gorgeous), but always Rhea snaps back to give us the rest of her story. It’s safe to say that after this show you’ll never look at The Sound of Music in the same way again.
Rhea’s whip smart, immensely likeable and if this proves to be her only Fringe visit I’ll be grateful I saw her, but terribly disappointed.
And in something of a family affair, Rhea is supported by her fella, Costaki Economopoulos, a big name on the US comedy scene. It’s easy to see why. He’s confident without being cocky, funny without being foul-mouthed. He’s a little political, a little slice of life, and a lot funny. I can’t for the world imagine why he’s not putting on a show of his own, but I’m not complaining – his 12 or so minutes were a bonus, added onto Rhea’s hour, and every minute was a joy.
Am tired just reading them!
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Your Fringe is bigger than the NYC Fringe?
Well okay, if you say so. But at least Damn Yankees isn't little-known over here.
So there.
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If I say so? Nearly 2500 individual shows – not peformances, productions – versus NYC's couple of hundred companies (that's from their own website)? It's the biggest in the world, no contest. Adelaide comes next, and NYC? No idea … but I don't just make this stuff up.
As for Damn Yankees, I love it myself but I've never met anyone else in the UK who's even seen it. In the context of a show claiming to be celebrating the biggest Hollywood musicals, I stand by 'little-known'.
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