Fringe minus 1. It's late, and a few hours from now more venues start rolling out their preview shows: Thursday sees previews from C Venues, the Bedlam, Zoo, and the Gilded Balloon to name a few. So I should be in bed.
Or rather, I shouldn't. It's the Fringe.
The city looked completely different today compared to my whistlestop tour of some of the main venues around town last night. Venues that had large crane arms swinging in front of them, were today open to the public. The show is now on the road. And there are swarms of people everywhere.
I took in a couple of venues' press preview shows. These compilations of bite-sized segments are a great way to get a feel for this year's acts.
Just the Tonic was first, after lunch, with a series of sketches, revue, cabaret, and comedy in the underground setting of the Caves.
Highlights included off-kilter sketches from the Three Englishmen, sardonic comedy-magic act Piff the Magic Dragon (who apparently has added another show due to strong ticket sales) and the show's compere and burlesque performer Kitty Cointreau for overall loveliness, including chatting us up at the bar afterwards.
The Caves is a great wee venue, especially if you are a mole. Burrowed deep into the Old Town, these stonewalled rooms have been hacked and cleared out to create a labyrinthine and characterful venue.
Just the Tonic's venue manager fed us booze and then gave three of us a tour of six Fringe performance spaces to be found in the Caves honeycomb, passing the same corridors that are used in Edinburgh ghost tours and a tiny cavern of a performance space which memorably had an internal gutter to catch rain coming in off the inside walls.
Guests to the press show had left early, I guessed, for the Underbelly press launch. So after emerging blinking into the sunlight – I headed over to the upturned cow at Teviot place.
The show had started, and the room was packed. Ruby Wax in lilac tails, tight-fitting jeans and platforms, compered. In typical brazen fashion, she spent much of the time bullying her stage partner, singer-pianist Judith Owen into silence, and making catty put-downs about the performers she was introducing.
Among other things, pianist duo Worbey & Farrell treated us to a performance of Beethoven's Für Elise while the two of them simultaneously made a cocktail. They're performing more of the same in their show Well Strung! at Underbelly.
Poptastic duo Frisky & Mannish were received with whoops of delight as they introduced this year's new show and their third on the modern world of pop, Pop Centre Plus. They have great chemistry, as well as good voices.
The show rounded off with high-energy, freestyle acrobatics off various boxes and high bars from free-running team 3Run. Pure spectacle, “Free Run” is based on the highly athletic sport of freerunning, where you improvise stunts off everyday objects in the street. The show was created specifically for Underbelly’s E4 Udderbelly.
Without announcing that the bare-cheasted and muscle-bound boys had done their thing, Underbelly's two directors Ed Bartlett and Charlie Wood wobbled energetically onto stage and tentatively negotiated the circuit. It was a nice bit of slapstick from the Underbelly founders to close the show.
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