Wow, it’s Sunday, pretty sure it is, yup, my Fringe calendar shows that I saw BriTANick last night and indeed I did. This afternoon I’m staying in to fill you guys in on what I’ve enjoyed so far. What? Staying inside on a lovely Sunday afternoon when the town will be heaving with Fringey things? Well, exactly, it’ll be heaving out there and I have to write something down, all these shows are starting to merge into each other in my head, some were perfectly bizarre enough on their own without added plots. I have been out earlier in Holyrood Park, I headed up by the lesser walked Lang Rig, round to Nether Hill and down the steps, a bracing walk on such a windy morning. Washing up from the last three days finally done, I have strong coffee and a punnet of cherries to help me along.

So, how was Fritz and Matlock? Pretty good. Two friends have managed to accidentally get locked in a house basement while putting a dead body into a chest freezer down there; they’ll be unable to get out for sometime. The house belongs to Fritz’s granny and the lads have been growing marijuana in the attic, dubious characters; this is drama and dark comedy about dependency within relationships, with occasional illumination from the chest freezer. Its well acted, well written and well conceived, it struck a chord with this moose.⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Pleasance Courtyard in The Attic)

I was back up in The Attic the following morning for Who Here’s Lost? an utterly delightful monologue by Ben Moor. The hour slips away as our narrator tells a tale about going on a road trip with his ex-mother-in-law who is dying from cancer; it’s funny, heart-warming, surreal, recognisable, beautifully eloquent. I really enjoyed it and intend to pop up to the Courtyard just after he’s finished one day as I want to buy the book of it (didn’t have any cash on me at the time), oo, and there’s a badge too, yay ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the Pleasance Courtyard I headed to the Pleasance Dome for The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much by the Voloz Collective. The blurb in the Fringe had “Chaplin meets Hitchcock meets spaghetti western ….. live music ….. Lecoq-trained physical theatre company” how could I not see it? (great promo pic too, quirky, intriguing) Live musical accompaniment can really enhance a show, this guy played keyboards, guitar and harmonica (well if you’re gonna get a musician in, might as well get one who can play a few instruments). Could the Voloz Collective deliver what seemed promised? Yes, and how, with impeccable timing and nuances. Physical, comic theatre at its best, and that red hat amid the grey, loved it. Definitely gonna be one of my top shows this year (yes, three weeks still to go, it’s that good) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

While I’m on about the best ones so far let’s stay in the Pleasance Dome and go back a day to when I saw Crybabies: Bagbeard. Picked because the blurb said Absurdist and “a sci-fi infected narrative sketch adventure”, the pic was too dark to inform further. By George, my fringedar was right on the bullseye with this one, these lads are great. Right from the first scene, so, so funny and inventive, and the owl. I lost it when the owl appeared, not just because it was a ridiculous costume (that looked more like a strange bat to me) but it looked like John-Luke Roberts had just wandered into their show (it so looked like something he’d come up with and the chap is not dissimilar to him). And Victor Valentine – this character (and only when he was playing this one character) so made me think of the crazed FBI agent in one of my favourite films The Frighteners.

Crybabies:Bagbeard is hilarious, ridiculous, sweet, quite bonkers, there is a very good, clever plotline in there amongst the laughs. Another top Fringe delight for me. So what if there was a slight technical mishap, it was the first preview and they handled it well ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Must finish here just now. I do need to eat before my next show.

Toodle pip!