![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeIt's been a more restrained than usual preview session of the Fringe for me. This is partly because I have booked lots of things for the weekends when people are here with me, so I don't need to do so much at the beginning, and partly because this year there seem to be fewer things I'm really desperately excited about, so I can fit them all in. Most of these (apart from the penultimate and ante-penultimate ones) I chose to see because they were in the £1 members offer from the Stand. I didn't really write at all about the shows I saw last year, and I found that I missed being able to remember the bits, so I wanted to try and write about more this year. They're really not reviews as such, just things I thought while seeing them. Recurring themes in shows this year (so far) are feminism, and the performers undressing.
Katie Mulgrew - Your Dad's Not Funny
This was a slow and not very funny start, but I enjoyed it more once she got to the meat of her show, which is talking about how her Dad's career as a comedian (he's Jimmy Cricket) affected her childhood, and informs how she works as a comedian now. This is her first solo show, and it just didn't feel like she was quite ready for it. It's nice rather than even amusing. Ended with her taking off her dress to reveal a "sexy" Star Trek costume she'd bought from Anne Summers while drunk.
Nadia Kamil - Wide Open Beavers
I loved this! I wasn't really sure I would, because the title put me off (though it turns out mostly I'm not literary enough to get the Vonnegut reference), but then my friend Hannah in Brussels recommended her as well, so I was more looking forward to it. She was GREAT. She talked about intersectional feminism, with a cool satirical burlesque dance and she had whimsey breaks including a Q&A with a unicorn who'd got to the final stages of America's Next Top Model. The audience got envelopes with numbers on that we had to read out when the number was pointed to. Mine was "I want to hear more about the competition! I want to enter!" so I already felt very well-disposed to it, even before I won a quinoa, seasoned with a pepper. She gave a woman who was a "smiler" a child's toy that laughed so that she could join in, which I loved. These bits reminded me of Caroline Mabey, and I would recommend Nadia Kamil to anyone.
Mary Bourke - Muffragette
Mary Bourke's show was also about feminism, but not as good. 2 main things I disliked were her saying she called herself a muffragette instead of a feminist to get away from the baggage that comes with feminism, and that for a show about feminism she did an awful lot of criticising individual women. (I was even less impressed that one of these women was Keira Knightley.) She also had a signal in the show for when things got too strident, which was an interesting but not wholly unexpected theme. She designated one man in the front row as a reluctant feminist, and gave him a pink fluffy cushion in the shape of a heart to throw in the air whenever he had a change of heart. He took it in good part. Enjoyed, but would not make a huge effort to see again.
Mike Wozniak - Take the Hit
I saw Mike Wozniak's previous fringe shows and they were great, so I was looking forward to this. It was rather disappointing, though. This show is all about how hard he finds it to live with his mother in law, and although it's pretty amusing, it's such a cliched topic that you have to have some pretty special material for it not to be a bit dull, and this just wasn't.
Sally-Anne Hayward - Hey Follower
From the title I was sort of expecting it to be twitter related, but it wasn't at all. I have in fact got no idea what the title related to. This was amiable and competent, but I can remember very little of it two days later, except that she had a very sensible dream about doing her tax return on time. I do remember that while talking abut being a feminist she called Emmeline Pankhurst "Emily", but then people often do that. I would be happy to see her again.
Ban This Filth!
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hfnuala suggested seeing this, and we went with cangetmad and buzzy_bee. It's a sort of one-man thing, where Alan Bissett (who is a novelist who's written books kind of about masculinity) explores his relationship to pornography, and to women more broadly, through his own past and the words of Andrea Dworkin. He has a co-writer I really enjoyed him as a performer, but I thought that the material of the show wasn't as clever or "vulnerable" as he thought it was.
This is the blurb for the show: Andrea Dworkin: radical feminist. Alan Bissett: man. One stage. Bissett plays himself, telling stories from his own life, with a penis, and Dworkin, one of the most controversial women in history, who has a few things to say to him. Expect laughter, Led Zeppelin and live reconditioning of a man who’s had it too easy. Until now.
I don't think it lived up to that. There also wasn't very much interaction between his experiences and the readings from Dworkin - it didn't feel like she "had a few things to say to him", and he certainly didn't seem to have anything to say to her. It was pretty much separate, here is a story about my life (or the narrator's life, there were a few inconsistencies that suggested the stories were not entirely autobiographical, though I could have misinterpreted that), now here is a reading. When they did start to get close, it seemed to swerve off when it was actually getting to an uncomfortable point. He started by talking about how many women had put their talents and efforts into his own success, but then a lot of the rest of the show was using Dworkin and then reporting posting quotes on twitter and getting angry responses from a woman pointing out his blanket acceptance of this without paying attention to anything that women working in sex industries had to say, so it sort of seemed to be still resting on women's efforts to give him a show, and to help him think through his relationship to pornography. I definitely didn't feel as though I was witnessing "live reconditioning".
At one point he said that he might strip off, as that was the most vulnerable he could imagine being, and maybe it's because I don't find being naked a particularly vulnerable situation, but I thought that showed a particular lack of imagination if that was the most vulnerable he could imagine being. The tickets say "possible nudity", and he asked the audience who thought he should strip off - no-one put their hand up. I then did when he asked who thought he should strip off but were worried about being seen as a perve. This was less because I was worried about being pervy than because my interest was entirely pervy - I didn't put my hand up at first because I thought it wasn't going to add anything to either his understanding of vulnerability or the audience's engagement with his ideas, but I do like to see naked men. A woman asked him if there would be a point, and while we had a nice snigger at this unintentional double-entendre, he didn't really answer her, just started taking his shirt off. He got as far as his pants and danced around a bit, before getting dressed again. I would be interested to read reviews from later in the run - I have strong suspicions that the pants never come off. He dithered a bit at the beginning of it after 5 people said they didn't want him to take his clothes off, about consent and power, but again quite shallowly - I can believe that for him it felt momentous, but it really didn't for me as an audience member, and I came out feeling rather frustrated (and not just at the lack of visible cock).
Festival of the Spoken Nerd (Helen Arney, Steve Mould, Matt Parker)
My friend Hannah in Brussels won a ticket to see this, and as she is not called my friend Hannah in Brussels because she lives round the corner from me, she couldn't attend. She very kindly offered it to me, and so off I went. This felt rather rushed, because they each had a number of short bits to fit in, but it was pretty cool. First there was an demonstration from Steve Mould, which was a mini FIRE TORNADO, which was pretty as well as cool, and the metal beads leaping out of a glass jar. Helen Arney sang some songs, including the one about cryogenically freezing her lover, and Matt Parker showed us some great spreadsheets. Love a spreadsheet.
Brendon Burns Hasn't Heard of You Either
I've only really seen Brendon Burns as part of showcases or on TV but that's been more than enough for me to work out why I probably wouldn't like seeing his full set. Nevertheless one of my friends suggested seeing it as it was £1, and I thought I would like to see it. I had a good time and laughed a lot, but the bits about him I find irritating I find SO irritating that I don't think I will look to see him again. The political views especially I can't manage to gloss over. There's another twist in this show as in previous years, that was really well done, but mostly felt weird from the start.
Hannah Gadsby - Happiness is a Bedside Table
Yay Hannah Gadsby! I was sort of expecting the show to be more about the bedside table, to be honest, and what it represented. I am oddly rather wishing for a bedside table centred show now. Anyway, what this was about was confidence, especially body image, and horrible bits of her life. She'd stopped swimming because she was so self-conscious about being fat and pale, and 8 years later, when she was having morose walks along a beach (while living with a girlfriend who deliberately gave her worming chocolate without telling her because she thought she ate too much) unexpectedly went for a naked swim. Unfortunately this led to her equally unexpectedly getting caught in a riptide, and having to swim diagonally back to shore while burning her skin int he sun, drying up her face in the salt, and wondering if she should even bother. Then she found that she was proud of her body for having managed to get her back to shore, and it was a sort of turning point. At the end of the show she strips down to her swimming costume (with legs to knee), and actually that seemed far more vulnerable and reconditioned than the Alan Bissett down to pants, though I'm now wondering if I just lack empathy with men and nudity, but I think it's more than that.
David Morgan - Pretty
I chose to see David Morgan because I'd enjoyed seeing him as the clock in Comedy Countdown (which is back again at the end of this year's fringe, hurray), and thought he would be good. He was! Again, more nice than hilarious, but still funny. It was a bit about confidence and looks - with more nudity, as Gay Times asked him to be in their Naked issue, and he showed us the photo. It was odd, he looked like a very beautiful lesbian to me, though not at all womanly in person.
Tomorrow: Domestic Science, Hannah Gadsby's art show, Comedy Death, Eric Lampaert, Mark Thomas.
Katie Mulgrew - Your Dad's Not Funny
This was a slow and not very funny start, but I enjoyed it more once she got to the meat of her show, which is talking about how her Dad's career as a comedian (he's Jimmy Cricket) affected her childhood, and informs how she works as a comedian now. This is her first solo show, and it just didn't feel like she was quite ready for it. It's nice rather than even amusing. Ended with her taking off her dress to reveal a "sexy" Star Trek costume she'd bought from Anne Summers while drunk.
Nadia Kamil - Wide Open Beavers
I loved this! I wasn't really sure I would, because the title put me off (though it turns out mostly I'm not literary enough to get the Vonnegut reference), but then my friend Hannah in Brussels recommended her as well, so I was more looking forward to it. She was GREAT. She talked about intersectional feminism, with a cool satirical burlesque dance and she had whimsey breaks including a Q&A with a unicorn who'd got to the final stages of America's Next Top Model. The audience got envelopes with numbers on that we had to read out when the number was pointed to. Mine was "I want to hear more about the competition! I want to enter!" so I already felt very well-disposed to it, even before I won a quinoa, seasoned with a pepper. She gave a woman who was a "smiler" a child's toy that laughed so that she could join in, which I loved. These bits reminded me of Caroline Mabey, and I would recommend Nadia Kamil to anyone.
Mary Bourke - Muffragette
Mary Bourke's show was also about feminism, but not as good. 2 main things I disliked were her saying she called herself a muffragette instead of a feminist to get away from the baggage that comes with feminism, and that for a show about feminism she did an awful lot of criticising individual women. (I was even less impressed that one of these women was Keira Knightley.) She also had a signal in the show for when things got too strident, which was an interesting but not wholly unexpected theme. She designated one man in the front row as a reluctant feminist, and gave him a pink fluffy cushion in the shape of a heart to throw in the air whenever he had a change of heart. He took it in good part. Enjoyed, but would not make a huge effort to see again.
Mike Wozniak - Take the Hit
I saw Mike Wozniak's previous fringe shows and they were great, so I was looking forward to this. It was rather disappointing, though. This show is all about how hard he finds it to live with his mother in law, and although it's pretty amusing, it's such a cliched topic that you have to have some pretty special material for it not to be a bit dull, and this just wasn't.
Sally-Anne Hayward - Hey Follower
From the title I was sort of expecting it to be twitter related, but it wasn't at all. I have in fact got no idea what the title related to. This was amiable and competent, but I can remember very little of it two days later, except that she had a very sensible dream about doing her tax return on time. I do remember that while talking abut being a feminist she called Emmeline Pankhurst "Emily", but then people often do that. I would be happy to see her again.
Ban This Filth!
hfnuala suggested seeing this, and we went with cangetmad and buzzy_bee. It's a sort of one-man thing, where Alan Bissett (who is a novelist who's written books kind of about masculinity) explores his relationship to pornography, and to women more broadly, through his own past and the words of Andrea Dworkin. He has a co-writer I really enjoyed him as a performer, but I thought that the material of the show wasn't as clever or "vulnerable" as he thought it was. This is the blurb for the show: Andrea Dworkin: radical feminist. Alan Bissett: man. One stage. Bissett plays himself, telling stories from his own life, with a penis, and Dworkin, one of the most controversial women in history, who has a few things to say to him. Expect laughter, Led Zeppelin and live reconditioning of a man who’s had it too easy. Until now.
I don't think it lived up to that. There also wasn't very much interaction between his experiences and the readings from Dworkin - it didn't feel like she "had a few things to say to him", and he certainly didn't seem to have anything to say to her. It was pretty much separate, here is a story about my life (or the narrator's life, there were a few inconsistencies that suggested the stories were not entirely autobiographical, though I could have misinterpreted that), now here is a reading. When they did start to get close, it seemed to swerve off when it was actually getting to an uncomfortable point. He started by talking about how many women had put their talents and efforts into his own success, but then a lot of the rest of the show was using Dworkin and then reporting posting quotes on twitter and getting angry responses from a woman pointing out his blanket acceptance of this without paying attention to anything that women working in sex industries had to say, so it sort of seemed to be still resting on women's efforts to give him a show, and to help him think through his relationship to pornography. I definitely didn't feel as though I was witnessing "live reconditioning".
At one point he said that he might strip off, as that was the most vulnerable he could imagine being, and maybe it's because I don't find being naked a particularly vulnerable situation, but I thought that showed a particular lack of imagination if that was the most vulnerable he could imagine being. The tickets say "possible nudity", and he asked the audience who thought he should strip off - no-one put their hand up. I then did when he asked who thought he should strip off but were worried about being seen as a perve. This was less because I was worried about being pervy than because my interest was entirely pervy - I didn't put my hand up at first because I thought it wasn't going to add anything to either his understanding of vulnerability or the audience's engagement with his ideas, but I do like to see naked men. A woman asked him if there would be a point, and while we had a nice snigger at this unintentional double-entendre, he didn't really answer her, just started taking his shirt off. He got as far as his pants and danced around a bit, before getting dressed again. I would be interested to read reviews from later in the run - I have strong suspicions that the pants never come off. He dithered a bit at the beginning of it after 5 people said they didn't want him to take his clothes off, about consent and power, but again quite shallowly - I can believe that for him it felt momentous, but it really didn't for me as an audience member, and I came out feeling rather frustrated (and not just at the lack of visible cock).
Festival of the Spoken Nerd (Helen Arney, Steve Mould, Matt Parker)
My friend Hannah in Brussels won a ticket to see this, and as she is not called my friend Hannah in Brussels because she lives round the corner from me, she couldn't attend. She very kindly offered it to me, and so off I went. This felt rather rushed, because they each had a number of short bits to fit in, but it was pretty cool. First there was an demonstration from Steve Mould, which was a mini FIRE TORNADO, which was pretty as well as cool, and the metal beads leaping out of a glass jar. Helen Arney sang some songs, including the one about cryogenically freezing her lover, and Matt Parker showed us some great spreadsheets. Love a spreadsheet.
Brendon Burns Hasn't Heard of You Either
I've only really seen Brendon Burns as part of showcases or on TV but that's been more than enough for me to work out why I probably wouldn't like seeing his full set. Nevertheless one of my friends suggested seeing it as it was £1, and I thought I would like to see it. I had a good time and laughed a lot, but the bits about him I find irritating I find SO irritating that I don't think I will look to see him again. The political views especially I can't manage to gloss over. There's another twist in this show as in previous years, that was really well done, but mostly felt weird from the start.
Hannah Gadsby - Happiness is a Bedside Table
Yay Hannah Gadsby! I was sort of expecting the show to be more about the bedside table, to be honest, and what it represented. I am oddly rather wishing for a bedside table centred show now. Anyway, what this was about was confidence, especially body image, and horrible bits of her life. She'd stopped swimming because she was so self-conscious about being fat and pale, and 8 years later, when she was having morose walks along a beach (while living with a girlfriend who deliberately gave her worming chocolate without telling her because she thought she ate too much) unexpectedly went for a naked swim. Unfortunately this led to her equally unexpectedly getting caught in a riptide, and having to swim diagonally back to shore while burning her skin int he sun, drying up her face in the salt, and wondering if she should even bother. Then she found that she was proud of her body for having managed to get her back to shore, and it was a sort of turning point. At the end of the show she strips down to her swimming costume (with legs to knee), and actually that seemed far more vulnerable and reconditioned than the Alan Bissett down to pants, though I'm now wondering if I just lack empathy with men and nudity, but I think it's more than that.
David Morgan - Pretty
I chose to see David Morgan because I'd enjoyed seeing him as the clock in Comedy Countdown (which is back again at the end of this year's fringe, hurray), and thought he would be good. He was! Again, more nice than hilarious, but still funny. It was a bit about confidence and looks - with more nudity, as Gay Times asked him to be in their Naked issue, and he showed us the photo. It was odd, he looked like a very beautiful lesbian to me, though not at all womanly in person.
Tomorrow: Domestic Science, Hannah Gadsby's art show, Comedy Death, Eric Lampaert, Mark Thomas.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 10:56 am (UTC)