A sideshow, a conceptual dinner, Edgar Allen Poe in circus and magic psychology

A few days ago myself and two friends got back from the Edinburgh Fringe. I’ll be using photos I found online because, rather than reflecting the beautiful Georgian buildings or lively street performers, most of our holiday pictures look like these two below:

Steve’s arm performs an optical illusion

For further details of streets and shops have a look at this previous post). For now here is a list of my favourite shows this year:

Rachel (right) and I show how we’d dance in an Amsterdam brothel

1. The Curious Couple from Coney Island. Set to a background of 30s jazz and covered with a sprinkling of sideshow history, this engaging couple swallowed swords in ever more dangerous ways, pulled condoms through noses and made me laugh lots. By the end I wanted to run off with them to form an alternative lifestyle couple.

2. Backhand Theatre and Circus Performs Edgar Allen Poe. Using poems and snippets of story from the gothic horror scribe, The Backhand Theatre company have formed a very visual and very intriguing play. I was amazed by the constantly moving sets and spooky story of a mental asylum owner willing to do whatever it took to keep the hospital running his way.

You’re being watched

3. Richard Wiseman. Psychologist, magician, author and supernatural debunker Richard Wiseman led us on a very funny journey of video clips and magic tricks. He reminded us how fascinating the brain really is by explaining our need to see faces in everything in case we miss the one hunting us in the trees, thus creating ‘ghosts’ in the darkness. He illustrated his point by showing us pictures of sneaky roofs and happy light switches.

The Curious Couple from Coney Island

4. Simon Munnery. My favourite I’ve saved to the end. Simon Munnery is one of my favourite comedians ever. Partly inspired by Andy Kaufman, he’s a delightful bag of surreal silliness. We went to both his shows this year, I Am A Fylm Makker (in which he performed the entire show off to the side, projecting his face via camera onto a big screen in front of us) and La Concepta.

Whilst I loved the songs and silly cardboard figures he’d made for Fylm Makker, nothing can compare to 8 of us sitting around a table in a windowless artist’s warehouse being served bizarre and silly concepts for dinner.

Because they only sold 8 tickets at a time, the amount of chairs available in the ‘restaurant,’ it was an intense experience and felt a bit like we’d all swallowed an untested drug, especially his final entrance wearing an enormous chef’s hat pumped up by pneumatics attached to his feet. The video I’ve added below won’t capture that experience, but here are a couple of the things we witnessed at La Concepta restaurant:

Ooh, it’s the Jeckyll and Hyde

But wait…there’s more! Along the way we visited a hippie chocolate and milkshake place with surrealist cups hanging from the ceiling called The Chocolate Tree, wandered around the book fair (missed getting tickets for Neil Gaiman though) and sat in the spooky Jeckyll and Hyde pub, as featured on eeriepubs.co.uk.

So that’s it from me. Below I’ve included the best picture of the three of us, just to prove that we are indeed human beings like anyone else.

Us at the Book Fair

Live Storytelling

I’ve just read two of my stories aloud to a dictaphone, which made me feel a bit silly. Hopefully it’ll help me memorise them as I’ll be performing them this summer as one of my Braintree Ways characters, possibly at the Brighton Fringe, the Camden fringe and a smaller venue in Edinburgh (the paperwork has been arduous).

One of the stories will be The Magic Forest and a comical homage to Edwardian ghost stories called The Train Journey to Hell, and Liverpool Street.

It reminds me of the ancient way of storytelling by the aborigines or the Saxons or American Indians. I like to think of them sitting around a fire passing on tales they heard from their grandfathers – about pimp trolls and trains that take people to Hell.

I was inspired to hurry up and learn all my lines after seeing Simon Munnery perform at Colchester Art Centre last night, his character monologues are genius.

Edinburgh Fringe Frolics

In the middle of August we three travelled all the way to Scotland to the Edinburgh Festival. We were lucky enough to stay with a friend, but I have previously stayed in a hostel with a few friends and found it to be a good option. If there’s enough of you an entire room can be overtaken, but remember – weeing around the perimeter as a form of territorialism is a bad idea.

Ooh, it's the Jeckyll and Hyde...

Cockburn Street's lovely shops

Ooh aren't we wacky?

Edinburgh’s looks are enough to make you fall in love with it. I lived for four years in Bath and it has the same Georgian style buildings and hills framing the distance, but there’s so much more to it than lovely but sleepy Bath it feels almost like a graduation.

 You go out with a plan to see three shows and end up seeing twice as many, sometimes only from sitting in a pub and hearing about a free play/comedy act in that very venue.

Cockburn Street's art cafe - Steve was a very happy boy

The Assembly Rooms

There are things happening in the street every few feet; authors signing copies of their books at the book festival this year included Richard Wiseman and Neil Gaiman; there was a spooky comedy stand up show with John Robertson in the gothic Assembly Rooms; Simon Munnery and Stewart Lee; burlesque and a mentalist called Oliver Meech who pulled us up on stage; the Jeckyll and Hyde pub has fake blood all over the bathroom and is featured in the online ‘eerie pubs guide‘; the Forest Art cafe; Grassmarket and Cockburn Street with their bookshops, art cafes and gothic, vintage and alternative clothes shops – honestly it’s just beyond great.

Go next year, and watch Braintree Ways in our own show!

Simon Munnery

Yesterday we three wearily returned from the Edinurgh Fringe Festival, drained but delighted. Expect an overview of the festival shortly, but for the time being I wish to share with you a personal highlight.

Back in 2001 I witnessed a sight so strange my mind couldn’t process it. It excited me mentally, physically and maybe even sexually. It was a live performance of Simon Munnery’s show ‘Attention Scum,’ and I was left fascinated ever since.

This year, 2011, we ventured to the festival to watch the shows and do some research, along the way encountering a vision of Jesus and accidentally coming on to an actor (again, more on that later). One of the shows we saw was Simon Munnery.

He made his entrance wearing a bubble blowing top hat, urging everyone to clap hands and sing a song with him. We were sitting right at the front (as we did with Stewart Lee, more later) and he gave Steve in our group a picture of an airship to hold up for the audience. How can you not love him already?

What followed was a mixture of personal comedy, silly songs and character monologues, my favourite being his speech as Sherlock Holmes revealing the less than impressive truth behind his status as great detective and man of science. His grasp of the peculiarity of Victorian vernacular left me jealous.

His outlook on life is very sweet and infectious, and when I cornered him afterwards brandishing one of our business cards he seemed genuinely pleased. All in all, I’d like to lick his eye and give him a cuddle all at the same time. Go see him!