Camden Fringe versus London 2012
Recently there was a story in the Guardian about nervousness at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival administration. It’s feared the 2012 Olympics could absorb every tourist penny pouring into the UK. Will the crowds be pouring into the Scottish capital or stay down south for the games? Will theatre producers stay in London to cash in on these crowds? Will the cash waving hordes be packing out the west end when javelins are flying and ribbons at the finish line being broken in the east?
Meanwhile, will the Londoners who normally support small scale and neighbourhood productions stay indoors or even flee the city entirely to avoid these mobs? Optimism is shaky but the general mood is hopeful.
The Edinburgh Fringe is a big deal, but my love is for the Camden Fringe. Last year’s riots threatened to derail this smaller but more beautiful festival. The level heads of organisers Michelle Flower and Zena Barrie helped the event pull through with only a day or two lost. The Olympics, though, is the biggest event in the world. How will the Camden Fringe survive that?
“We’ve not really made any provision for the Olympics.,” says Flower. “Very difficult to know what to do about it all as it’s really a once in a lifetime thing. I think we have a 10 day overlap. Originally the council were all very excited about it and saw it as a very positive thing for theatres, as it would be bringing lots of visitors to the city. Now it seems they see it more as a logistical nightmare. We’ve decided to plough on regardless, thinking that there must be enough people who live locally who will be thoroughly bored of all the sport and want to come to the theatre. Hopefully a few of the visitors will make it down as well.”
The festival will be slightly smaller, as the Roundhouse and RADA are programming Olympics-related events, but Flower is probably right not to be too worried. Sports and arts aren’t exclusive of each other, but folks who live for theatre aren’t necessarily the same folks who live for weight lifting. And with all the artists being imported from around the world, there may be be an influx preferring the Fringe over the track and field events they have been brought to promote.
I know the javelin in the one where they throw spears at each other and track events are mostly about running in circles. I am also expert enough in sports to knowing football is the one with the Kicking Ball. Chances are, though, that I will be at the Camden Fringe, and hopefully some percentage of Olympic visitors will add to the theatregoers in Camden this August.
Ockham's Razor
Three people adrift. Such a simple idea, but there are hundreds of possible stories in this elegant premise. Ockham’s Razor, an aerial theatre company combining circus skills with physical theatre and physics, tell several of these stories in a tight thirty minutes, but they leave all interpretations so open the audience can imagine the hundreds in between.
Two women and a man dance with gravity on a grid suspended above the stage. Swooping and clambering with the grace of dancers, the performers can manipulate their flying stage with subtle shifts of weight, but every move has to be shared between them. Love triangles, power struggles, rivalries, but also vulnerability, mutual respect and cooperation, Arc’s themes are beautifully married to the techniques and circus skills used to tell their stories.
Two other pieces presented, Memento Mori and Every Action were every bit as cleverly done, but for me Arc had the most emotional power. The last, Every Action… is played out on a long length of rope between four characters. It was the flashiest in terms of acrobatic technique, and I could see why it rounds out the show. It was also the funniest, a big finale. Arc, though had more depth for me. The kids, however, loved it. On the night I saw the show the audience was primarily students, teenagers, probably on an official outing, but they were held rapt by the poise and physical power of the performers.
Artsdepot is a great venue. It’s mindboggling they should have been forced to scramble for funding last year, when they are the fulcrum of the arts in that area. This was my first time there and won’t be my last. But I do have to manage my travelling time a bit better. Finchley must be a huge patch of land. I had no idea it would take so long to get out to Wood Green Park tube station from central London. Give yourself plenty of time to get there. I gave myself an hour and was still nine minutes late for the show. The front of house staff kindly bit their tongues and ground their teeth but slipped me in anyway. Sweethearts.
Ockham’s Razor will be back at Artsdepot at the end of the month, 29-31 March, with Something in the Air, a collaboration with Oily Cart. This is an interactive aerial show specifically geared for kids with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, but no doubt a cool show for all. More details at ockhamsrazor.co.uk and artdepot.co.uk.
Next up at Artsdepot, on 10 March is John Peel’s Shed, an Edinburgh Fringe success by John Osborne (not the Look Back in Anger one) about loving the radio and its lost champion.
The Ladykillers
Five creepy criminals versus a batty old lady. It hardly seems fair. They never stood a chance.
The classic 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers stars Alec Guinness and Herbert Lom at their villainous best (along with Peter Sellers in his early chubby phase). It has seeped into the British cultural consciousness and fermented into a satirical fairy tale for the ages. The odd story, dreamt one night by writer William Rose, has a simple premise: Five bank robbers, disguised as a quintet of practicing musicians, have holed up in the lodging house of daft landlady Mrs Wilberforce. But unlike most moralistic crime capers in which the bad guys receive a comeuppance via their evil natures, in The Ladykillers they are struck down by their sense of compassion. Or at least squeamishness about killing sweet little old ladies.
Peter Capaldi is the mastermind Professor Marcus, a leering, crook-faced gargoyle with an unplaceable accent, flapping about like a bat in knitwear. A Nosferatu in Dr. Who’s scarf. James Fleet as the cowardly but frilly Major Courtney, Stephen Wight as the pill-popping spiv Harry Robinson, Ben Miller as dastardly foreigner and gerontophobe Louis Harvey and Clive Rowe as the mountainous One Round, wallowing in his own thickness; All the performers were excellent, and obviously Marcia Warren is great as the adorably innocent harbinger of death. But the set is the equal to them all, a full member of the cast. Lurching angles (the actors seemed to stumble sometimes, still disoriented despite rehearsals by the subtly psychotic cottage) and sputtering lighting bear the burden of maintaining the sense of evil the film somehow conveyed despite its humour. That noir atmosphere can’t be sustained in a live production as goofy as this one. Drama’s loss is comedy’s gain. Which it needn’t have been, and that’s a shame, but the result is still a brilliant piece of entertainment.
Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd, has loosely reworked the story, keeping the rough shape but with more silliness, whimsy and sight gags. In fact, the play works best when he completely abandons the rigour of the film in favour of his own mad obsessions. Not that the play is sloppy. The madness is tightly choreographed, with sleight of hand and magic tricks employed to create comedic surprises he would normally have counted on editing to produce. But while the resulting show is fairly slick it also manages to seem shambolic, wonky and extremely low-tech in a way that only increases its charm. When other shows in the West End and Broadway are battling Hollywood with huge casts wearing animals on their heads, elaborate laser shows, terrifying web-slinging accidents and stages that can transform into giant robots, The Ladykillers has stagehands hiding inside the furniture awkwardly pushing stuff about using sticks or maybe magnets. Instead of an enormous budget this show makes do with cleverness and a child-like sense of fun.
The biggest difference between the two versions of The Ladykillers is the world outside the theatre. In 1955 it was a given that these bank robbers must be punished for their misdeeds. In 2011, however, Prof. Marcus defends their actions by pointing out that all the money they have stolen is insured, and asks “What is the difference between robbing a bank… and founding one?” The play’s modern relevance had me thinking- why shouldn’t these criminals be allowed, this time, to live happily ever after? When bankers are thieves and everybody else is treated like lowlifes who deserve to be fleeced, then surely these villains are the heroes and Mrs. Wilberforce- dear, naive, upstanding Mrs. Wilberforce- is a tool of the devil. I kind of wanted the show to end at the halfway point, with the crooks absconding with their loot to the Turks and Caicos. But then, I’ve spent my life scheming ways for Charlie Croker to reel back the Swiss gold.
The Ladykillers at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, 0207 492 1548, gielgud.official-theatre.co.uk Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square stations
Luke Toulson: Laid-Back Grouch
Like so many comics I’m seeing at the Camden Fringe, Luke Toulson is much funnier interacting with the audience than delivering set material, and when things go wrong he has gear up to salvage the show. Wisely, then, Toulson has made a show with very little material, a whole lot of chatting with the audience, and plenty of opportunities to fuck up. Or, perhaps I lucked out on the night, as there can’t be that many audiences out there containing people whose job description is “Thai Ping Pong Dancer,” or “Tasmanian Illegal Gaming Site So I Can’t Tell You Who There Are Or They Will Have To Kill Us All.” The show was sold out the night before, and doing the barest minimum of research I found Toulson is a regular at the Edinburgh Fringe and won some awards for stuff, so chances are it will be full tonight as well. However, Toulson, while funny and I certainly laughed, delivers an even amount of average laughter, a level carpet of humour- with a reasonably thick shag, but with few outstanding thrills. Perhaps I like my comedy graph a bit spikier. I’m happy to sit through lulls if they lead suddenly to LOLs. (I don’t really know any Txt slang, I just know that one because some twelve year-olds were using it in conversation on the bus and I am apparently the sort of person who eavesdrops on 12-year-olds for writing tips.)
CAMDEN FRINGE
The Pauly Show
Paul F. Taylor, AKA Pauly, has always dreamed of having his own sitcom. His mother, apparently not knowing the damage she was doing to her child, indulged by watching his little shows in the living room, featuring the family dog and all the fruit in the house. She even laughed. Will parents never learn? Today Paul is a lanky, hirsute, goofy, unemployed and unemployable comedian living on canned chuckles in a CGI house (filmed against the “red screen” of the Camden Head curtains) with a rotating cast of friends and dogs, depending on who’s in the audience. On the night I saw the show there were only seven of us in the room and half of us wound up as guest-stars. And that is a criminal shame. (And poor use of math, since that makes for 3 and a half guest stars. Having half a guest on your stage probably is criminal.) The show is brilliant, with a bit of Harry Hill about Taylor. The “plot” is as worthless as you could hope for, and while Taylor’s jokes are excellent, it’s better when he gets them wrong, or they don’t get a laugh and he has to scramble to find it elsewhere. He does seem to exhaust himself, petering out towards the end, suffering from nipple-sweats and occasional desperate muggings. But I loved the show and hopefully he’ll see fuller rooms for future shows. Where the hell is everybody? At home, watching My Family.
The Last Mad Dash to a Nervous Breakdown
This is the final week of the Camden Fringe and there are still so many opportunities to see both crap and shining gems. Good luck and take as many chances as you can. A possible tip might be Luke Toulson: Laid-Back Grouch at the Camden Head pub tonight and tomorrow at 8pm. I went last night and was turned away from a sold-out room. A full house for the first night of a Fringe gig is rare, so obviously folks know about this guy and there might be something to it. Book online to avoid being disappointment, like the several other people who were waiting with me. Maybe they did get in after all. Toulson did say he expected at least some people to leave during the show. “I’m pretty bad,” he muttered.
Also at the Camden Head, for one night, the 28th, Leisa Rea sings and plays guitars and banjos and ukuleles with Sarah Adams. Rea’s Pension Plan (see review) was excellent and the thought of seeing her coping with both life and a tiny guitar seems like a nice treat to end the Fringe with.
The Camden Fringe continues until 28 August at various venues. See their site at camdenfringe.org
CAMDEN FRINGE
Rob Deb: A Comic Book Guy!
Rob Deb lives with his family, probably in the basement, hunched over his computer, stacks of comics, multi-sided die and D&D encyclopaedias, eating pizza and dreaming of women he has seen depicted in hand-painted lead figurines as dryads. If you are looking to see stereotypes of geeks shattered, this show is not going to do it for you. Except for the revelatory “Romulans are assholes” you will learn nothing. In fact, if you know anything about Romulans you already understand they are smug bastards who scratch starships with their keys. Deb’s comedy is very much in the tradition of the “Has Anybody Here Ever Noticed/ What’s Up With That?. I call it Reference or Recognition comedy. Unfortunately, the demographic here is so very, very small that unless the room is full of hardcore Warcraftspeople nobody will understand a thing Deb is saying. I am actually hip to the unhip, having played Dungeons and Dragons back in the days when the industry was so puny the gaming books were printed in blue ink to save money. I’m talking Basic D&D. Yes, basic.
There was, once upon a time, something before Advanced. Comic books were a quarter then (probably about a shilling) and underwear was always outerwear. Already, I may lost readers with even this minimalist foray into inside references. Unfortunately, even if this material is your meat I doubt you will not find much to nibble on in this show. Deb tries to have it both ways, to be a geek and to disavow himself with claims that comic-con gals won’t sleep with him because he is not geeky enough. Tragic, yes, but not enough to make a Fringe show.
Not the Adventures of Moleman
What does the cow say? Well, as any one knows who grew up on the Canadian prairies with nothing to do but either push over sleeping cows or make love to them, it’s not so much what they say as the startled/sexy look in their eyes that communicates in volumes. Not the Adventures of Moleman leaps and jumps frenetically between sketches, which don’t so much recur as organically grow into each other. Cheerful desperation rarely works, yet Moleman pull it off spectacularly. Arron Ferguson, his head so square he makes Daniel Radcliffe’s look like a rectangle, and Richard Murray, who is naked throughout all but the majority of the show, have created something more like comedy jazz. Even when their sketches don’t work, which is only occasionally, there is still a pretty damn rich seam of possibility in their premises. I have a feeling I might have been seeing something which goes on to greatness. They are both still quite young, somewhere between 20 and 11. I can say with confidence Murray has not yet grown pubic hair. Or perhaps he is just that much of a professional already and is employing the services of a nether-coif stylist. In any case, I can definitely say that if this show plays elsewhere I would happily pay to see it. My only complaint is that the third and fourth performers, known vaguely as Page and Wally, got absolutely so mention or credit in the programme, on their website, or in my subsequent dreams of cows.
CAMDEN FRINGE
Beings
Butoh is a form of dance requiring absolute control. It can move quite quickly, but often, more usually, moves at a snail’s pace, the body creeping in slow motion across a room, or through a complex series of movements. In Between Butoh’s production takes Antonin Artaud’s The Cencis, itself an adaptation of Percy Shelley’s play of 1819, and employs this resolute discipline to tell a tale of incest and murder. The story opens with dancer Flavia Ghisalberti cocooned, or perhaps mummified, in plastic wrap and fighting to be free. From the far corner of the room, Ezio Tangini, contorted into an inhuman pile of twisted limbs, inches towards her. They finally meet and there is a peace, but it is short-lived. Beings is so abstract it’s hard to convey in a review what it might be about. Ghisalberti’s mute rage and Tangini’s frozen anguish ripple through the tiny Sheephaven Bay’s back room performance space, better suited to sketch comedy than performance art. In Between Butoh is based in Italy and Switzerland, but the company knew long in advance the shape of the room and I have to wonder why they chose it. Still, the performers used the space as well as could be hoped. The cellist provided a spare, Tom Waitsian soundscape.
CAMDEN FRINGE
Taniwha Thames
In Maori mythology the Taniwha ( “Tani-fa”) is a shapeshifting water spirit that can protect or destroy. While the word itself suggests a connection to sharks the creature may take any shape it pleases to lure and seduce, enforce taboos and punish wrongdoers. On Captain Cook’s boat The Endeavour, around 1770, young Jimmy Frigate first spied the Taniwha, and the sailors become both too fearful and too obsessed with her to work. The captain took Jimmy aside and they agreed, it was for the best: Jimmy jumped overboard as a sacrifice. However, the Taniwha hitched a ride, and today they live also in the various waterways of Britain, and especially in the river Thames. People are still drawn by the Taniwha from around the world, seduced by London. Some will stay, and some, teased and tempted by the same sensuous creature, will return home. Traveling, however, living abroad, changes you.
It’s not that you can never return home. It’s that when you return you have become somebody else. Shaky Isles director stressed that Tanwha Thames is still very much in its creation phase. The performers, from Britain, New Zealand, Samoa. America are still gathering ideas and influences, feeling their way to a finished creation in November. Physical theatre, dance, songs and storytelling, wonderfully crude puppet shows using simple, wrenched bits of paper to represent sailors and sea monsters, and short historical lectures add up to a rich and fluid fairy tale that certainly I, as a Canadian infatuated with London, could appreciate.
Again, this was not a show. It was a creature in pieces putting itself together. But already there is a strong structure and an excellent, enthusiastic and light-hearted cast.
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