Fringe preview week: Day 2

Second day of the Fringe, woohoo. Due to mild hangovers and a late night last night, plus me having a meeting tomorrow morning, we decided to make Thursday low key. No alcohol passed our lips, and we were home by midnight. Still good Fringing.

Me and E slept late, had a good catch up chat, and ate some toasties. We then headed into town to meet H after which we saw 5 shows:

Fringe show #6: The Silky Pair: Happy to help
Silky Pair have set up a pop up Fringe shop and want to sell you sketches and songs, but they are forced to give them away for free. A couple of good sketches (a hip hop style song and a fitness video) but overall a little bit 'forced' or perhaps over-acted. Nice girls though, likeable, I was quite happy to watch it.
Rating: 3*

Fringe show #7: Lights! Camera! Improvise!
A young improv group who put together a film in front of your eyes. They were fairly amusing and quite physical with it, which made it good to look at. What sets it apart a bit is that one guy narrates the thing, so he pauses it, does a few rewinds to see bits again, and shows some DVD extras. Ours was a Kung Fu film set in a school. Not a genre I'm interested in, or I might have liked it more.
Rating: 3*

Fringe show #8: Claudia O'Doherty - The Telescope
This was great, quite different. A character comedy, a sort of surreal play about a comedian who wants to give up comedy and puts together an anti-comedy theatre piece for her last Fringe appearance. But the theatre piece falls apart and she has to make the best of it. What I love about stuff like this is that the multi-level aspect of the 'play within the play' reveals a lot about the lead character and all her amusing neuroses. Its ok to say that, she's not real :o) Afterwards, I was telling E that is she liked that she'd like one I saw last year which was a presentation about soil erosion. I found out later that it was the same girl that did the soil erosion one. Oh yeah, I'm good.
Rating: 3.5*

Fringe show #9: Danny Buckler: The Phantom
Aw, what a lovely guy, I wish he was my friend, I want to tell my friends to date him. Is what I think, and what he hates that girls say. Always in the friend zone. This wasn't all cliché though, in fact not at all. Danny kinda thinks he is the Phantom of the Opera, or at least life imitates art. Not entirely literally, he doesn't actually live in a sewer and act all stalky but he is a campy thesp and he does have some troubles with the laydees. This was an extremely likeable narrative and by the end we were all rooting for him, very good. And he got H on stage and sung to her, hehe.
Rating: 4*

Fringe show #10: Paul Ricketts: Ironic Infinity
10.30pm is a difficult slot, we should know better. We tell ourselves not to bother. But we still did. Well it was free. There was something weird about this guy's routine, something old skool that didn't quite gel. He wasn't Jim Davidson or anything, but it wasn't very narrative or innovative. I'm sure he's a nice guy, and he had a good hat. Half way through he forgot his routine and used his notes after that. He made too much of a big thing of it and got himself flustered. He could have built it in and got away with it, but it threw off what was already a mediocre act. As a consequence he offered us all free tickets for a show later in the run, but I couldn't be bothered with seeing it again. This guy got H on stage too, which was a less beautiful moment than the last one.
Rating: 2*

Mrs Cyclops recommends:

- Danny Buckler: The Phantom
- Claudia O'Doherty - The Telescope

Fringe stats:

- Total shows: 10
- Total cost: £7
- Average cost per show: £0.70