After a whirlwind week and a half of watching plays, downing pints and dressing like a Star Wars robot, our Assistant Editor Nell Frizzell is finally bidding farewell to the Edinburgh Fringe. She reflects on her time: the highs, the lows and the weird...
And so, as the wheezing bagpipe of social smoking finally succumbs to the sharpened pike of liver failure, and the numb buttock of audience marathons is given a rough slap by the hand of unread emails, my time at the Edinburgh Festival has come to an end.
By the time you read this, I will be on a Virgin train, somewhere beyond Berwick-upon-Tweed, sobbing into a £8.76 lukewarm cheese panini and gently pawing at the window.
But at least I went out with a bang. If you can call running through the recycler’s nightmare that is the Royal Mile dressed as C3PO and drinking five cups of free coffee before 11am a bang. I also watched one of the best pieces of immersive theatre I have ever had the pleasure to nearly sabotage.
Look Left Look Right’s Edinburgh-specific show Once You Said Yes was, without a doubt, one of the unlikeliest pieces of theatre I have ever experienced. It was also one of the best. From driving around the cobbled streets in a banged-up old Volvo and false moustache to drinking cider with a sea captain, it was frankly brilliant. Now, obviously, I can’t tell you too much about the show – not only would that ruin the whole point of the frickin’ thing, it would also look like gloating, considering how few tickets are still available.
It has, however, made me consider what I consider a Fringe triumph. For me, the things that worked best at the Edinburgh Fringe were those that gave the audience the benefit of intelligence. Doctor Brown’s 80% silent, totally surreal and snot-snortingly funny show didn’t explain its jokes. It didn’t even really make jokes. The American clownman simply did his thing and assumed that the audience was fun enough to keep up.
As a result, his wordless, ridiculous take on indulgent actors, cultural voyeurism and the ever-demanding critic had the caveful of customers wailing like banshees. Particularly when he attempted to mime-finger an 18-stone Scotsman from the front row.
One of my other Fringe favourites, Sabrina Mahfouz’s Dry Ice, didn’t pull its poetic punches. This was an hour of pure, lyrical genius, performed with all the accent assurance of a cast eight times her number. The one-woman show about the off-pole life and politics of Nina the stripper, performed in verse, was both jaw-droppingly accomplished but also unapologetically intelligent. It made me proud to call her IdeasTapTipTop alumni.
Thank you Josie Long for giving us the benefit of your political ire, thank you Tim Key for your surreal poetic snapshots and for going whole hog with the bath gag, thank you Bryony Kimmings for your playsuits and your philosophy, thank you RashDash for your scary gorgeousness, thank you Bridge Theatre for your fast-paced modern approach, thank you Curious Directive for your quiet, chilly beauty, thank you Free Fringe for the guilt-free lols, thank you Peter Antoniou for making me ponder how you done it and thank you Paul Daniels for your wild-eyed weirdness.
Now, if you need me, I will be hiding in a cupboard somewhere near Bristo Square.
More Upstaged:
Edinburgh part I
Magic: from Harry Potter to Peter Pan
Image by narcsville.