Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh
Diary
Thursday 9th
If it's August, I must be in Edinburgh,
or planning to go there, or wishing I was still there. For the moment
at least, I'm there. What follows is an inevitably haphazard set of
jottings about what I will do and see – not really a set of proper
reviews, more whatever themes happen to crop up. Expect it to read a
little like something you get in the broadsheets when arts
correspondents are dispatched for one weekend to report on 'the state
of the Fringe' - except that I won't be trying to sum up a three-week
arts festival as a whole, and I'll try to base my opinions on more
than seeing a single stand-up, a single piece of physical theatre
from Poland, and the Cambridge Footlights. Can I exceed the shoddy
standards of British/Irish journalism? A tall order, but that's the
challenge I've set myself.
The first thing that strikes the
recidivist Fringe visitor is how little changes, at least from year
to year (no doubt, the Fringe is rather different now than it was,
say, in 1992 – but it's very similar to how I remember it eight
years ago). The same patterns of activity across the city; the same
multitudes of impossibly fresh-faced students bursting into choruses
from musicals and ordering preposterous juices in Black Medicine; the
same mixture of desparation, naivete, cynicism, and out-and-out
insanity on the Royal Mile. Stepping off the train from Durham into
this maelstrom actually makes me feel thankful I'm not hawking a show
here. It's hard enough just trying to take it in, without scrabbling
for a foothold in the overloaded consciousness of every passerby.
Two shows this evening, offering
contrasting takes on musical comedy, and illustrating contrasting
dangers that the form faces. Christian Reilly played to a
packed audience who generally enjoyed his smuttier efforts and were a
little more reserved about his political fare. Project Adorno
(my obligitary wild-card Fringe choice) played to an audience that
peaked at four, though the four of us were still there at the end.
Reilly offered a much more recognisable
take on musical comedy, featuring such classic tropes as
sincere-sounding songs with smutty lyrics, a song from one artist in
the style of another artist, and songs with lyrics changed to reflect
recent events. There was nothing much the matter with his execution
of individual numbers, but the cumulative effect is slightly
deadening; when the same trick is repeated too often, it becomes hard
to appreciate it as anything other than a trick. (Stand-ups who rely
on one-liners face a similar problem: if the quality of the lines
dips, what was delightfully subtle and smooth becomes forced and
clumsy). One way to avoid this might be to explore unusual themes,
but Reilly rarely stretched himself on this score.
On the face of it, this isn't a
criticism you could level at Project Adorno; their electro-pop odes
covered such varied subject-matter as Rene Magritte, manhole covers
and the National Trust. But in it's own way, their treatment of
musical comedy was as conservative as Reilly's (although I should add
that they were in the Cabaret section of the Fringe Programme, and
clearly weren't primarily interested in getting laughs). While it's
good to see an act so determinately niche, they relied very heavily
on mentioning names (famous and obscure) and on the occasional
pastiche. Once you've gotten over the thrill of hearing a song about
the Test Match Special or catching a reference to Carl Andre, there
seemed little left to get your teeth into. The writing wasn't witty
enough to work as a celebration of their geeky love of pop culture
and art history, and for the most part they didn't appear interested
in subverting it either. You couldn't say that they were giving the
audience what they wanted, but they never moved beyond a set of
boundaries which ultimatey proved as resticting as those faced by
Reilly.
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