Fringe Day 5

Monday, August 6, 2007

1:00 pm The Man Who Planted Trees – Paid 3.75 each on a 2 for 1 sale. This was a puppet show, but excellent. The puppetry was superb and the story was heartwarming. The adults loved it as much as the children, or more so.

2:30 pm Faith Brown and Her Boys in the Buff – Paid 5.50 each for these as we heard so many good reviews. Faith Brown is a well know comic in England. The show was a comedy musical and hysterical. YES, boys were all in the buff by the end. Worth seeing and paying for.

7:00 pm Flamenco con Fusion – 4.50 each on a 2 for 1 sale. We arrived late having gone to the wrong place. Flamenco dancing, music and interesting costumes. Good memories of Argentina.

10:30 Amsterdam Comedy Collective – Paid 4.25 each on a 2 for 1 sale. These Dutch guys are funny, but they are learning the cultural differences of humor. What works at home doesn’t always work abroad just because you translate it. A couple commented "This would have gotten more laughs in Holland." No, these are not the guys that were actually in the show. They had a multitude of different and outrageous flyers.

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Fringe Day 4

Sunday's shows were:

1:00 pm State of Matter – Paid 4 pounds each on a 2 for 1 sale. Eight young men do break dancing, acrobatics, and ballet to all different types of music. Excellent performances and amazing coordination and movements.

9:15 pm The Naked Comedy Showcase – Paid 4.50 pounds each for these on a 2 for 1 sale, but wish we hadn’t. Though we expected the comics to be naked, we also expected them to be funny. We were disappointed. Some members of the audience were taken aback. Duh! What did you think from the title of the show?

10:30 pm The Sound of Music Drag Show – Paid 4.75 on a 2 for 1 after speaking to the performers. They have been playing for 7 years on Melbourne and were invited to come here to perform. We loved the show. They were hilarious, clever, and terrific.

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Fringe Day 3

What we saw today -

12:00pm Forgotten Voices – Free tickets – The stories of survivors of WWI. The characters were all Brits except one American. The lone female had an accent so cockney, we could not understand her. It was touching, but difficult to comprehend some of the accents.

5:25pm Sweet UFO – Free tickets- Thankfully, we did not pay for these. The premise is that this young girl has denied that her father has killed her mother and then disappeared. She believes he was abducted by aliens. Her two friends support this belief by pretending to do night watches with her and they develop a whole world for her fantasy until if all falls apart at the end.

11:00 pm Butch: A Queen’s Struggle to Become a King – One free ticket from the star of the show, but we had to buy one. It was a one man show about butching up his feminine side. Very funny and worth buying a ticket.

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Fringe Day 2

Friday- Our events today

12:15 pm Sting for Nolte – Free tickets - An aspiring Professor of Philosophy ditches everything after his finance gives him tickets to a Sting concert. She did not know he hates Sting and he becomes obsessed with getting Sting to remake all of Nick Nolte’s films. Two person play, excellent performance.

2:45 pm As The Mother of a Brown Boy – Paid 4 pounds each. Based on a true story about a mixed race young man who was bright, top of his class, but mixed with the wrong crowd, got chased by the police and died in a car accident. Dance, multimedia, song. Excellent performance.

5:00 pm Break-Out – 5 pounds each on a 2 for 1 deal – A group of Korean comedy actors’ play about prisoners breaking out of a prison and the guards who try to catch them. Excellent dancing, action, and comedy.

8:30 pm Druthers Precarious – The young girls hawking this show made it sound great. It was 2 for 1 and only four pounds each, so we decided to chance it. This was really existential and otherwise weird. We would not have paid for knowing what we know now. It is about a guy in a dusty attic with suitcases who have never gone anywhere and neither has he. Different characters use overused quotes from philosophy to show him his options. Some good body work, but other wise thumbs down.

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First Full Day in Edinburgh

Our first order of business today was to get our pre-paid tickets for the Fringe Festival. We know that many events are free the first days too, so we scored some freebies and bought others. Here is what we have seen today.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

1:00 pm Potted Potter – 5 pounds each as a 2-1 – Excellent comedy act about the first six of the Harry Potter books all in one hour. Two young men had the adults laughing harder than the children. Well worth the money, even at full price.

3:15 pm Touch – We were approached by the writer and director of this play while hanging out. He convinced us to pony up 5 pound each on a 2 for 1 deal for tickets. It was a great play about a woman who is presumably going to commit suicide and the man who saved her. The savior finds out what life is really about through the rescue. Two person play, great theater.

5:20 pm Extropia – Free tickets - I enjoyed it but Ron did not. Very Orwellian about a time in the future where there was no music. Workers are programmed. The sound effects were fantastic, but we had to leave the show before the end because we had another to go to and this one started late. They had technical difficulty.

6:40 pm God’s Pottery Saves the World – We paid 5 pounds each for this online before we left home. It sounded interesting, but it was a comedy act by two young men that was silly, a bit racist where it did not need to be and objectionable in other areas. We were not impressed.

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Edinburgh, Scotland

We arrived in Edinburgh late tonight. The airport bus is a real bargain at 5 pounds with an open return. We took it to the train station, the end of the line, then a taxi to our B and B, Alva House. We have stayed here three times now, and really like the location and the owners.

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