Previews

Twenty four hours in….

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Just a quick rundown of the twenty-four hours, before I get some sleep. It’s been quite a start to this year’s Fringeyness, a very wet one too. So, twenty-four hours ago I’d just got into Whistlebinkies to see that edgy and dynamic duo The Scat Rats. It’s becoming quite a regular slot for them, Tuesday midnight, it always surprises me how many folk are up until after two so early in the week.

The lads were on great form, as were some members of their audience, especially one particular lady to Babestation! I won’t tell you the details, suffice to say, Carl later said, it’s one of those things that could only happen in Binkies. So true, certainly Scotty won’t forget it for quite some time.

I happened to meet a stand-up from Austria, over for his first Fringe, a personable young chap so I’ll go see his show. He’s Elias Werner, his show is called Live & Deaf at Hootenannies. Oh, the show isn’t listed in the printed programme, neither is the venue! It’s taken over an older number 108, Hootenannies is at the Apex Hotel in the Grassmarket, it has plenty of shows on offer.

Didn’t make it home until around half two, had to be up in the morning at eight to be sure of making my first show on time. It was chucking it down outside, bugger, but I made it with time to spare for Shakespeare For Breakfast so second breakfast was coffee and croissant. A good show, I kinda felt it took a wee while to really find it’s stride but hey, first preview, oh, and Puck kept forgetting to light up, I’m sure that’ll get sorted. Overall, great.

A Voloz Collective double next. First The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much then just over an hour later The Life Sporadic of Jess Wildgoose, like OMG, they were both so brilliant; a very talented bunch! More on them later. Hard acts to follow for Crizards: This Means War in the early evening; there seemed to be a number of preview problems, or it could have just been their style of comedy (it was amusing, some parts very funny but I found it a tad lame at times).

I was hungry after that, didn’t want to wait to eat, so Mosque Kitchen time. Yum, chicken curry and rice, washed down with a mango lassi (I rarely go there outside of Fringe time these days, so it felt quite a treat). Home to chill, but not shut my eyes for fear they wouldn’t open in time for my last show.

Finally I’ve seen John Robertson’s The Dark Room and it’s bloody brilliant!! Again, more later, the clock’s ticking, luckily my first show tomorrow isn’t until early afternoon. Oh, and joys, Crizards had badges to give out after the show (well, they had 300 made, after that, tough).

So a fine start to Edinburgh Fringe 2023! Goodnight guys, sweet dreams!

The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much

(PS. Don’t miss anything by following me on Facebook, Bruce T Moose, and Instagram @bruceonthefringe)

Make me an offer, please

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I have Fringe tickets, woohoo. I mentioned as much at the end of my last blog post, I have even more now, thanks to an email update from Underbelly. I just wish I’d opened and read it sooner – I’d have saved a few quid! Only a few but it all adds up. Underbelly had announced a special offer of £6 tickets for shows up until 10th August, one just had to be organised enough to buy them by midnight tonight, oops. I only read the email after I had booked a wodge of preview shows; I did feel a tad disgruntled, my own fault, I know, I really should check my emails more regularly.

At least I’ve managed to save on booking fees, that old bugbear! The Fringe and Underbelly box offices have once again capped the booking fees at £5 per transaction (£1.25 a ticket). Organisation is key, fifteen tickets in and a tenner spent on fees, not that I see that as a saving, just less irksome.

Assembly have for a number of years now done an offer for locals at the start of the Fringe, they just like to announce it quite late on. To make us sweat or just so’s we might have already paid full whack? There’s a number of Assembly shows I quite fancy, that I may fancy even more with a cheap offer, only one has made my must-see pile.

My favourite comedy duo from last year are back, and with a new show, Grubby Little Mitts: Hello, Hi. Well, I had to get a ticket, this is one second outing I’m confident will be as funny, clever and dark as the first (not always the case).

It’s a tad late, I shall away to bed. I leave you with a peek at my possibilities…..

It was a very good year (part II)

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2013 saw McNeil and Pamphilon Go 8-Bit! Okay so if I just saw those words it would mean nothing to me, but the pic and blurb informed me it was about classic videogames. I had never been into videogames or particularly understood the appeal, but, well it was M&P so hilarity was expected. And how! So I didn’t know any of the games, but from my distance it was an entertaining hour of anthropomorphic insight; comedy, rivalries and the most evil forfeits (I really felt for Pamphilon by the end). The sheer enthusiasm and joy of watching a bunch of comedians mucking about and having a laugh was just a pleasure.

Go 8-Bit! embraced the new multimedia, these were young, tech-savvy comedians, or least, they knew someone who was! The following year the tech went even higher, the audience participated on their mobiles! Needless to say, I didn’t, and just as well as interaction meant you may be picked to play the next videogame – that would not have been pretty! The technology and interactiveness really fascinated me, but only as an observer.

The Pin was our opener that year (was or were? The name of a comedy act, but it’s a double act) two fresh-faced youngsters, Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen. It was the first preview which is possibly why they seemed to be trying too hard for the first while, but then it became much funnier as they relaxed. My journal says “They do have potential. ☆☆☆” I have seen them since and indeed, they’re doing well, they’ve even had the 6:30 comedy slot on Radio 4. I’d say that’s doing well.

2013 was our third outing to see Max and Ivan, who had moved into the Pleasance Queen Dome for Max and Ivan: The Reunion (they were going up in the world!)  The show was nominated for Best Comedy, though for me whilst it was slick and very well-done, it didn’t tickle my funny bone quite as much as their previous two shows. Indeed, the first time I put “A very enjoyable show, even though poor Holmes had broken his ankle… ☆☆☆☆+”, yes, Max Olesker had broken his ankle but he carried on and even got laughs out of it. Radio 4 beckoned and they’ve had two series of The Casebook of Max and Ivan with some great guests like June Whitfield and Reece Shearsmith!

Ah, I’ve just spotted on Thursday 15th at 14:10 I saw Sock Puppet in The Cellar at the Pleasance Courtyard. It was a monologue about a murderous possessed sock, and my first encounter with John-Luke Roberts. What a bloody fine year it was!

(To be continued……)

 

So a phoenix, a bear and a monster walk into a bar….

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Actually it’ll be myself going to the bar between shows 😊 Yes, the full Fringe programme is out! An intense first check through over three days, eighty two cuttings, several G&Ts and some of teeth gnashing later, I have bought my first batch of tickets: twelve previews and the Sleeping Trees’ Christmas Special. Yay!

First preview night this year will be Nick Helm: Phoenix From The Flames, Ben Pope: Dancing Bear, and Alice Snedden: Absolute Monster. Nicely spaced over the evening and not too late to bed afterwards. Nick Helm, just because! Ben Pope, umm, is it the bear thing? I have seen previous good reviews for him (and who didn’t smirk on seeing the  words pope and bear so close together?!).  Alice Snedden I know nothing about apart from the blurb in the programme but she’s a kiwi and that’s enough in my book to warrant a preview ticket.

20180825_171401And on kiwis, I’m off to the Modern Maori Quartet’s Garage Party on the Thursday night, looking forward to seeing them again (that’s yours truly with three quarters of them last year)

I don’t have a ticket yet for the wonderful Sarah Kendall, but as her previews are £8 I’m holding off in the hope that Assembly will do the locals’ tickets for a fiver thing again (just up to the end of the first weekend I think). There’s another five or six shows in that particular queue; if Assembly don’t come through for me they’ll all go into my Half Price Hut hopefuls pile.

The Sleeping Trees: Christmas Special is just on for one night so I had to, had to, had to get a ticket! Well, actually I got two, the show has the Fringe Friends’ 241 offer on it, so at £15 for one ticket (yikes), it made sense to get the second ticket – I’ll sort out a chum to chum me later.

Oo, I’m starting to get a bit excited now. Only fifty days to go!

Sweet dreams!

 

Bruce loves candy

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Hurrah! Those lovely people at Assembly announced on Friday that they are once again doing their Locals discount, that’s all Assembly shows from the 1st to the 5th for a fiver (to a maximum of six shows) at their box office, evidence of an EH postcode required. Woohoo! A swift perusal of all my cutouts and the Venue guide section of the Fringe programme  (it lists all the shows at each venue), et voilà, five more shows picked out.

This is a particularly good deal as Assembly shows are not cheap, even the previews can be costly – I paid a tenner for Thrones! The Musical! preview show just in case the residents offer wasn’t on this year. I can now happily snaffle sweets from the Baby Wants Candy flyerers as I’m finally going to see them (I’ve always felt a teensy bit bad taking their sweets as I never saw them or intended to). Again, their previews cost £10, then up to £14-£15, yeah a fiver sounds good to me.

Sleeping Trees have uprooted themselves again and are now in one of Assembly’s Studios. Couldn’t miss these guys but again, Assembly prices, so though they should really be in the middle week (see  It’s the wrong order, Gromit!) I’ll be seeing them the first weekend for just the fiver and I can see another show with the change! Fingers crossed they do Sleeping Trees and The Chocolate Factory again, that’s oodles of fun. It’s not in the programme, never is, but watch out for posters around the Pleasance Courtyard.

Assembly already have their George Square Gardens set up and running as part of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, so when I ambled up to get my tickets I was able to check this year’s layout. There’s a new bar at the bottom of the garden that has an upper level. Silly me, I didn’t check the drinks prices to see how much I won’t be drinking, but I did notice that whilst there’s no decent cider, they do have a couple of IPAs, so I may treat myself to a Deuchars before a show.

Toodle pip!

 

 

 

Well, that’s the previews sorted!

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If you read my last post (and why not?!) you’ll be dying to know what happened, will I have to miss my films? Well, good news, I will be heading back to the mother ship this weekend so won’t miss any of EIFF 2018, yay! Bad news, the whole piss-up/brewery thing has been totally cancelled this year (bloody numpty!) I am so not impressed.

Since then I’ve completed my first scour of the full printed Fringe Programme and bought my first batch of tickets, mainly previews with a few others. As there is now a booking fee of 80p a ticket that stops at £4.80 it makes sense to buy enough tickets to reduce the effect of it – £4.80 booking fee for fifteen shows is quite reasonable, I’d say!

I’m going to kick off this year with Russell Howard, good to see him back and for only a fiver! Mind it is called Russell Howard – Work in Progress, hmmm, first night could be interesting (interesting=shambolic). The ever delightful Felicity Ward (pic below is me swooning over her poster) is back and hopefully on time. I have 30 minutes to get from Pleasance Above to George Square Theatre for Thrones! The Musical! this is perfectly doable, just as long as the Pleasance aren’t running too late. Considering how long they’ve had to get it right you would think it should run like a well-oiled machine but, well, it doesn’t always.

After a break last year everyone’s favourite sock puppets are back  with a new show Superheroes, check out the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre on Facebook or YouTube for skits and songs on the subject (love the Deadpool and Black Lightning videos). As ever they’re in the exceedingly warm Sportsman room at the Gilded Balloon, grab a flyer on your way in to use as a fan!

At the witching hour the wonderful Will Seaward is back with Spooky Midnight Ghost Stories V, but what’s this? He’s no longer in the Wee Room, he’s been upgraded to the Dining Room! Yay!!

Oo, and I got me a ticket to see the Ukulele Death Squad as they’re bound to sell out. They’re back at the Leith Depot near the bottom of Leith Walk, an exceedingly hot room above the pub but it does have its own bar. Well I actually bought two tickets as it’s on the Friends of the Fringe list of 2for1’s, so if you’re reading this and will be in town Sunday 5th, I have a spare half price ticket for one very lucky individual! Bang Bang!

Toodle pips!

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