The College goes to Edinburgh
Going to the fringe in Edinburgh means drinking to much, talking too much, not eating enough, and not having nearly enough sleep. Here, in chronological order, are the comedy shows I saw in a visit short enough to avoid serious liver damage.
I was told that I would love Ben Moor, and I did. A wonderfully witty, literate and ingenious writer, with a compellingly stylised stage presence, his show - Not Everything is Significant - is a meditation on memory and fallibility in a narrative about a biographer who one day finds a diary for the following year with the entries filled in, though only until a date in September. It's a fascinating piece with far too many epigrammatic lines to remember, which is why it's good news that this show, with his previous scripts, is going to be published next April. The idea of a chain of pubs themed after J G Ballard novels is genius.
A sense of fallibility also runs through Zoe Gardner's Fault, in which the gifted and luminous comedian and actress confronts 'Zoe Gardner's' insecurities and explores the nature of performance and the voice inside your head that tells you you're rubbish as both a human being and a performer. It's a show which puts vulnerability on the line but still manages to be extremely funny, particularly in the inspired character of a child inviting members of the audience to a party while desperately wanting them to choose sandwiches rather than cake.
Cake and insecurity also feature in Kitten Brides, where the wonderful Maeve Higgins, a young Irish woman from Cobh, talks with apparent artlessness about her cat, her family, loneliness in a foreign country, and her weight. It's the artlessness that disguises art because, at the end, her themes come together and reveal the structure that has been there all along. And someone in the audience is given a cake that Maeve has baked to take home with them (upside-down pineapple on the night I saw her). I shouted too late.
Aspiration is the twin of insecurity, and aspiration is the theme of Isy Suttie's delightful The Suttie Show, which deals with dreams - her own, those of her friends, and those of four characters. Amy Winehouse's country cousin wants to be a musical health and safety campaigner, Melodie the hairdresser from Liverpool wants not just any bloke, Billy enters endless talent shows, and Mr Mississippi would just like to get a lady into bed. With her engaging mix of autobiography, observation and songs, Isy provides a memorable show, packed with warmth and laughter, and ending in an affirmative singalong to make even the grumpiest join in with a smile.
Watson and Oliver don't have a theme in their self-titled show, apart from referencing James Bond, first in a sketch where John Barry and John Williams have a musical face-off, and then at the end when they canter hilariously through the Bond films. Along the way there is a poignant love story between a matador and his bull. Watson and Oliver have worked together for a while, and it shows in their confidence and energy, and in their ability to improvise when something goes mildly awry. Like Isy, Ingrid and Lorna have a warmth which makes the audience complicit rather than spectators.
A newer sketch grouping, the Boom Jennies, are three young and promising women with a distinctive style and a well-presented show in Shindig. Their characters are often people who misunderstand, delude themselves or get themselves into situations better avoided, and it will be interesting to see how their career develops. Worth keeping an eye on.
Keeping her eyes on the stars (sorry) is Helen Keen with her wonderfully titled It IS Rocket Science which, as the title suggests, deals with space travel, mixed with some autobiography and a few puns. Assisted by her writing partner Miriam Underhill with lighting and shadow puppetry, Helen's hugely endearing show features a number of home-made props and some fascinating history as well as big laughs. She seems guileless but, like Maeve Higgins, has a lot of guile going on.
Winning and eccentric also describes Tom Bell, whose free show in a packed pub back room considers what it's like to be 27, The Age of Rockstar Death. With the audience encouraged to play with paints, vote for their favourite wife of King Henry the Eighth, and back Tom as he sings an angry song that he wrote when he was 16, one never quite knows what's coming next, except that whatever comes next is going to be funny.
Demonstrating his versatility, Tom also features as Tommy in Tommy and The Weeks (Ed being The Weeks). Their Powershow is a brilliantly constructed conceit in which Ed has created an autonomous show that first runs itself, then turns vicious. The hour is stuffed with comic inspiration - Ed going online with his guitar and singing e-mails, Tom offering a telephone advice service to celebrities, the pair having a nap halfway through - and, like Watson and Oliver, the benefits of being an established partnership pay off in real style. Their contrasting personalities - Ed confident, wanting to be in charge but not quite achieving it; Tom will o' the wispy but with a backbone - make them a double act of real authority and style. They're not like any other double act, but they feel in the classic mould.
Anyone been up and seen something they liked?
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~33~RS~)
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Is anybody doing any original comic 'plays' up there Micheal, I know when I was last there... too many years ago... we did a lets put the show on right here kind of thing, and sold out because nobody else was doing it. It strikes me that there is a very close connection between the one act play in theatre and the studio based sitcom on television. It always surprises me that most aspiring sitcom writers I meet never consider writing for theatre.
Also re your last stimulating blog on the matter of emotional truth... I watched 'Moliere' the other night, and if you have not seen it I urge you so to do. A French 'Shakespeare in Love' but better. To link the two strands - Stoppard of course started his career famously at the Edinburgh Festival. In 'Moliere' the idea of emotional truth appearing in a comedy is addressed directly and the implication is that Moliere invented the notion - taking comedy above the mere farce. I think Aristophanes and Shakespeare and others may have something to say about that, but in truth I don't think Shakespeare (whoever they all were) was actually very good at comedy.
Euripedes trousers Eumenides these trousers. (Young Ones)
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I'd like to see that - did Steve Kaplan's Comedy Intensive course a month or so ago and a key part of his lecture is Wit Vs Comedy or, as he suggests, Shakespeare Vs Moliere. Steve encourages the notion that Moliere saved comedy from wit.
That's one thing I wish I'd known before I sent my first sitcom script to the writer's room a couple of years ago. The other? Micheal's advice to avoid plots with unexpected legacies featuring onerous conditions. That was the core of my entire sitcom!
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'The other? Micheal's advice to avoid plots with legacies featuring onerous conditions.''
Was it about Gordon Brown?
But do check the film out, look out for the Dewdrop!
:)
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Thanks again for a great write-up Micheal, I didn't get to the festival this year but it sounded as good as ever.
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That should, of course, be 'drinking too much'.
@MrP
Susan Nickson's first two scripts after winning a competition when 14 were one-act, half hour sitcom plays. The trouble now with the Edinburgh fringe is the straitjacket of an hour or 55 minutes. More flexibility would help both comic plays and comic performers.
@drvole@MrP
This blog is a tremendously educational place (as a college should be, I suppose). I had not come across the Moliere versus Shakespeare dichotomy before, and will certainly look into it.
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One way of doing it Micheal is to pad out your half hour with songs. If you forward through to about five minutes in you will see some award winning use of a pith helmet by a remarkable acting talent!
Or not. :)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wSL3QQe0PQ8
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Good to see you have an eye for the ladies this year Micheal, er, by which I mean your recommendations are predominantly female acts.
There seems to be a general encouragement in the industry for vehicles for female performers, certainly in feedback I've been receiving lately prod cos seem to be looking for female-oriented ideas (not like, sitcoms set in a bra shop or the Heat offices or anything, but where the core cast members are female, rather than foils or wife/girlfriend types who tut at the wacky male leads antics). As a writer, it feels like there's rich pickings from the world of funny ladies to write for - my current project i know exactly who my dream cast is, and they're all very funny performers rather than actresses who see comedy as an easy 'in', or just 'crumpet', which seemed to be the thing a few years ago. (this all comes from the support and encouragement of the industry, rather than there being no talent around then, of course)
I think in a few months we'll see a lot more girl-led comedy on telly. Girls are the new 'awkward-com' or something. Hopefully after that it will just be as normal to have a female lead as a male, and it'll all be a glorious melting pot of 'funny' or 'not funny'.
(although i've just realised everything I have tickets for in Edinburgh, bar Josie Long, is boy-shows. Oops. Bad feminist. I'll remedy that when I go up there.)
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Hi, Micheal,
You forgot to see the show that I was one of the writers of: "The Exquisite Corpse" (4 stars in "The Guardian").
It's on for another week, by the way.
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###my current project i know exactly who my dream cast is, and they're all very funny performers rather than actresses who see comedy as an easy 'in', or just 'crumpet', which seemed to be the thing a few years ago. (this all comes from the support and encouragement of the industry, rather than there being no talent around then, of course)###
There's always been loads talent around but if you're not in, you're not in and so jobs continually go to the same people/actors some who I agree aren't always the best.
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@juggles
Yes of course, didn't mean to imply there wasn't the talent around, just that people who are 'in' are more encouraging of new female comedy talent these days, and there are better parts to play than 'miffed girlfriend' or 'totty'.
That said, some of my favourite comedy writers are really awkward at writing for women (Graham Linehan, bless his cottons, or Bain and Armstrong, masters of the 'tutting girlfriend' trope), it doesn't make them bad writers, in fact it's a bit adorable.
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'That said, some of my favourite comedy writers are really awkward at writing for women (Graham Linehan, bless his cottons, or Bain and Armstrong, masters of the 'tutting girlfriend' trope), it doesn't make them bad writers, in fact it's a bit adorable. '
Forgive me for coming over all Larry and Dustman here, but don't good writers simply just write for people?
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###Forgive me for coming over all Larry and Dustman here, but don't good writers simply just write for people?###
you wouldn't get a man writing in a woman character talking about her menopause as accurately as a woman writer could, so, we do write for people but somehow we can write about our own gender more realistically IMO. Would you agree?
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No I would have to entirely disagree. Otherwise I would only be writing about what I know, which would be extremely uninteresting and furthermore I would soon be unemployed. I just wrote a script featuring a transsexual, for example, I'm not sure, if we take your thesis, what would have happened there.
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Yes a good point, I too have written a transexual character [I'm female] and whilst I know some transvestites, I do not know their deepest thoughts.
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My take is that I don't write what I know juggles - I write what I feel.
And you do know their deepest thoughts because they are human thoughts mainly.
For me Art is about exploring the common connections between us all, what makes us alike not what makes us different.
:)
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@Othniel
If only I'd known I would have tried my best to fit it in. Sounds great, and nice reviews.
@Sarah
Yes, the zeitgeist is female, certainly in television comedy, which reflects more women writers, a wider choice of performers who have come through the live circuit, and more women in positions of influence.
@MisterP
I think good writers can write across gender, even transgender, but I also think there are aspects of female and male that only a writer of the same gender can make authentic.
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@Micheal
Not sure I agree. In a literary construct the imagination is the only essential organ you need. It is empathy that is at the heart of everything. Being able to put yourself in another person's shoes be it size twelve steel capped work boots or five inch high stiletto heels and walk that essential mile in them.
Otherwise only Black people can only write authenticly about Black people, or Jewish, or Catholics etc. Maybe in non fiction it's true. But also at the heart of everything is the metaphor. That is what we use to describe our world. So the best undestanding comes from describing something in terms of what it actually isn't. If that makes sense?
I understand what you are saying I just don't think it is an absolute. I hope not anyway.
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###Otherwise only Black people can only write authenticly about Black ###
I have to disagree with you there [respectfully]
Only blacks truly know their own culture and how they are in the privacy of their home.
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I meant to say...yes only blacks can write authentically about blacks....doh
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May I ask you this question then. Is the purpose of that authentic writing to educate the people not familar with their culture. So that understanding of it is engendered?
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It's difficult on a message board to explain. Obviously as humans we all have similar emotions etc, but I have a black brother-in-law and could easily write about a black based comedy/drama as I know the culture inside out. Of course one could write about it but not in depth, and there's nowt wrong with that, one could 'get by' but it wouldn't be the same as a black writing it.
I believe many years back there were no blacks in Coro St as they couldn't find a black writer....that must tell us summat...LOL
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I kind of hear what you say juggles, I suppose it is the melting pot versus the salad bowl debate. I think I am a melting pot kind of man, because that's organic evolution.
But, and I may be as mad as hyena, for me...
The purpose of Art is to enlighten, to educate. It's an evangelical kind of thing. If the writing is only preaching to the converted it's not really of any great value. What's important is writing that makes us understand other cutlures, perspectives etc. So in a sense if a white man can't write authentically for a black audience and vice versa, then neither culture has sufficiently represented itself in the mediums of Art - the 'Art' hasn't done it's job.
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@MisterP
No, I didn't mean to imply an absolute. Empathy and imagination are the hallmarks of good writing. I was trying to say that one can imagine a character and think oneself into being that character, but one still doesn't have the lived experience.
It doesn't mean that one can't think oneself into the head of someone whose experiences and background are different to one's own and make that authentic. Otherwise it would mean the death of fiction.
@Juggles
I don't think I agree. People are people, and social circumstances are social circumstances, and it's quite possible to deal convincingly with circumstances you haven't yourself experienced. If you want to write about something strange to you, then research would help feed the imagination and help to get the cultural references right.
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Yes I agree, I think with the 'black' issue, it's not so much a white man can't write it as such, it's that he wouldn't know the very detailed things that would make the piece so accurate/educational/entertaining and satisfying a black audience too.
Without my black in-law I wouldn't have a clue, not that there's a vast difference, it's 'culture' language and their sense of humour etc that would add 'meat' to a piece I wrote.
I don't think it's so much art that is at fault, I just think most people just get on with their lives/jobs/family etc and but for my relative I'd never think to have a connection with blacks and that's a shame but the way the world is. It's not that we don't wish to know, it's we're all too busy to find out...and that goes for other cultures too
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I'm talking West Indian here BTW
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Having said all I did... I would still like to know why the Jewish are the best at comedy writing in the world?
:)
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###Having said all I did... I would still like to know why the Jewish are the best at comedy writing in the world?###
LOL you're not going to believe this but my husband is Jewish. I have asked him why the Jewish humour is the best in the world and he has no answer except that the Italians sing, the Brits have stiff upper lips and Jewish write humour etc.
I too think it's the best humour ever and am puzzled as to why there have never been any sitcoms since the sixties when we had..'Never Mind The Quality feel The Width'
That was just hilarious
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Well we have had a lot of Jewish sitcom writers in British tv ... still do. From the two Rons to David Renwick... who is an absolute genius... Love Soup. That's from a female perspective come to think of it and is... well it's genius.
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Yes there are Jewish writers but not a sitcom about Jewish characters, it's a shame.
Many USA sitcoms are written by Jewish writers too and I think they're the best
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They should bring back a modern version of The Rag Trade! That's what I say.
:)
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@MisterP
An early feminist comedy.
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Absolutely. And it would be a good counterbalance to all that linegrie on display in How Not to Live your Life. Which I have just series linked. Purely to study the form you understand, so as to be better prepared for an application to the college next year, should you be given tenure.
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***Forgive me for coming over all Larry and Dustman here, but don't good writers simply just write for people?***
(Can you tell I'm on an ibook? No hash key...)
Mr P, I was kind of making that point, the writers I mentioned, Graham Linehan and Bain and Armstrong, don't write especially dynamic or multi-faceted female roles (GL did an episode of the IT crowd based purely on the concept 'women like shoes!' and he's done the 'inadvertantly chatting up a gay man' bit TWICE), but as a viewer I don't really care about that. They're writing for me, as a comedy appreciator, I think it's rather endearing that they find women hard to get their head around. I meant that the more interesting, funny female performers there are, the more interesting the female roles writers can write for them. Male or female writers. Of any ethnicity.
You certainly don't need to be a woman to get in the head of a woman, look at Alan Bennett or Ghost World writer Dan Clowes to pick two at random.
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Good points Sarah.
:)
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On the subject of the Edinburgh Festival, do ordinary people go to it, or is it predominately media types?
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I think all they ask is that you are a regular reader of The Guardian.
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Have you ever had anything up at Edinburgh, Mister P?
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Yeah I took a couple of shows up there a long while back Aspie, not been up for a few years.
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###On the subject of the Edinburgh Festival, do ordinary people go to it, or is it predominately media types?###
Anybody goes
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@Aspie
There are three festivals, Aspie. The Edinburgh Festival, the Fringe Festival, and the Media Guardian International Television Festival, which takes place over the bank holiday weekend. The other two are cultural events attended by anyone who fancies going.
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A couple of things of interest from the television festival.
First, Graham Linehan:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2008/08/graham_linehans_guide_to_writi.html
Second, Paul Jackson (with whom I entirely agree).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/22/itv.television
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Adrian Edmondson's Teenage Kicks did not fare so well in the ratings.
"Some people might think it was not very good. It's a subjective judgment," said Jackson. "I think there were some very good jokes in it. It's very important we carry on trying."
Does he mean carry on trying with that show I wonder??
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I think he means carry on trying to get a comedy that succeeds.
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Well that's simple. Just get a good script and a good cast and film it.
:)
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###http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2008/08/graham_linehans_guide_to_writi.html###
I couldn't get that to work Micheal, it said something like ...sorry we couldn't find the page
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@Juggles
Oh dear. They've reproduced it all on Chortle if you want to try there.
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Hello. I'm away now until 11 September. See you then.
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