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Fringe 2013 bis: more stand up, there's a surprise
Celia Pacquola is a pro, which sounds like lukewarm praise for a stand-up show but really isn't considering the constant background level of laughter she maintained throughout ( Read more... ) -
Fringe 2013: Huh, is that all I use this journal for?
Lily Slade Shaved Her Legs For This; pity that was apparently it as far as her preparations went. (I was going to give her credit for persistence in the face of a stony-silent audience, but then she put us out of her misery 20 minutes early.)
Nikki Britton, on the other hand, demonstrates the injustice of the world in an entirely different way: ( Read more... ) -
Last minute Fringe notes
Gillian Cosgriff: Decent voice, worked the crowd well, serious gift for narrative songwriting. Her sound guy wants a slap in the face, though, I didn't even know you could get distortion one octave down from middle C. (Or maybe it's the equipment he had to work with's fault; still.)
Alan Anderson: I was going to say he was good but not great, ( Read more... ) -
I'm too old for this shit, or notes from a Big Day Out
Eleven years later give or take a week, I go to the same rock festival, walk through the same gates, to the same stage, at the same time of day, to see the same band, wearing a T-shirt I bought at the gig eleven years ago. Not that rock music's stagnating or anything. And I'm not complaining, since Frenzal Rhomb's two greatest contributions to ( Read more... ) -
It’s not often I make incoherent noises at a poster.
Yeah, exception. I mean, I can deal with not having any hope of seeing a show/talk/whatever in Britain when it's four Brits doing it. But then they had to go and bring in Tim Minchin . . .
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The Fringe! The Fringe!
I had something much longer and more pretentious written about Firestorm, but my phone ate it. In summary: the audience were there to see Beethoven's sixth symphony adapted for two pianos, one of those pieces which cannot be bad if scored and played without active malice or laziness. (Seriously. It may take an orchestra to give a thunderstorm ( Read more... ) -
. . . and some more Fringe stand-up.
Simon Pampena, “maths comedian”, should be prevented from repeating this performance at any cost, as he risks undoing all the good work Adam Spencer did for mathematicskind over the years. It’s not that he’s the worst comedian I’ve ever seen-that honour goes to European Man-but a show on one of my favourite topics (probability) should not leave me ( Read more... ) -
More Fringe stand-up
. . . while I'm still a little bit emboozled, because God knows I won't remember much of this in the morning.
First of all, from last week before man-flu the plague a mild cold took me out of commission for the weekend, An Evening with Style and Panache. This is the kind of sketch show which is difficult to stuff up completely, if only because a ( Read more... ) -
Refringements
So, last night I caught Jen Brister, another comedian of the “embarrassing stories of family and sex” school, which isn't a problem as long as the jokes are good and the delivery works. Which it did, in an endearing I-haven't-done-this-material-before-so-bear-with-me kind of way. The crack about Qantas deserved to lose, everything else was a hoot ( Read more... )