Theatre

Fringe Reviews Batch # Whatever Comes After ∞

Alan Hindle | Tuesday 21 August, 2012 16:03

Sarah Campbell: Experiments in Fun
Sarah Campbell, a writer for Have I Got News For You, should take up a new career as a carnie. Before Experiments in Fun began the audience filled out slips of paper detailing their “idea of fun.” Campbell then read the slips and proceeded to guess who wrote what. “I think whoever wrote this one is dyslexic and drunk. Was it… you?” On that one occasion it wasn’t. It was the person sat next to her. Who was dyslexic. And drunk. For me she would have added “Spooked and creeped out.”

But what Sarah Campbell really needs to do is learn to have fun. She’s stressed all the time, unable to watch Happy Feet without fretting over the abusive behaviour of certain penguins, and constantly being mistaken for a teenage boy with emotional problems. For a comic her life is a goldmine. And yet she’s funniest when improvising with the audience.

Admittedly, I had very high expectations for this show. I wasn’t necessarily expecting snappy, newsy satire, but I was hoping for more than stories about getting ID’ed and being bored at music festivals. If I wanted stories about being bored I could have gone to some music festivals and just talked to myself. Campbell is a lovely person, and comics often do Fringe shows for something more personal than just telling jokes and making passing observations. But if your improv is better than your life, it doesn’t take a psychic to suggest which way a happier show lies.

Savage in Limbo
On a slow night in a Brooklyn drinking hole, three barflies circle the room. Denise, Gabriella and April are all 32, grew up in the same neighbourhood, and taken different routes to the same dead end. Hurt, lonely and desperate for change they fight, bond, scheme, fight some more and go on living. Apparently, for these ladies, the only thing worth living for is a man. And not much of a man at that.

Usually when a British production stages a show set in the US the first thing that comes to my mind is “Why not just reset the story here and use your own accents?” But Planktonic Theatre manages to create an utterly believable, living, breathing New York dive, filled with flawless (but deeply flawed) Noo Yawkers. While I was disappointed at several turns in the story, when the three damaged ladies appeared on the verge of taking charge of their existences but instead throw it away to squabble over a penis, that fact is that human beings are dumb. We do dumb things, even when we know we should be smarter. Biology and love is the most seductively destructive of cocktails. In this, Savage in Limbo is a chance for three excellent actresses to prove they can be every bit as stupid as the men dominating every other play out there. Bartender Murk and cock-about-town Tony are good too, but quality bastards are a dime a dozen in the theatre. This is a chance for clueless women to shine. Savage is funny, nicely detailed and rich in misery. An excellent show (with the one gripe being that as the characters get drunker they become increasingly unintelligible). And they provide Cheezies, too.

Nathan Caton: Work in Progress
Nathan Caton is putting together his show for the Edinburgh Fringe next year, Teenage Mutant Ninja Caton, and I think he might almost be there. He does all the usual stuff every other comic seems to do nowadays. At 27 He still lives at home with his mum and his endearing but embarrassingly oversexed new stepdad. He’s a huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, hence his life’s ambition to become one and the title of his forthcoming show. He’s breezy and charming, chats and riffs with the audience and then tells his life story.

But Caton is maybe playing comedy 3D chess here. Because a) his family tales are genuinely funny, b) his ‘story’ and his ‘riffing’ seem to blend seamlessly with equal hilarity, and c) Caton is actually one of the last crafters of the shaggy dog joke. You don’t even realise a conversation with him is actually part of a theme, is actually leading to a surprise punchline, is actually part of an arc that will lead you back to a previous anecdote/gag and all of it is a carefully constructed story with a point. Well, most of it. There are dips and long boring bits. It’s in progress, after all. On the whole, however, a very solid show already.

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