Blog: The Down The Road From My House Fringe

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There was a miniature THEATRE FESTIVAL in The Olympic Village Where We Live last week - they'd hired a "Pop Up Theatre" from Paines Plough and booked a bunch of SHOWS to put in them and, being less than five minutes from our front door, it seemed RUDE not to go to at least one or two shows, so that is what we did!

Once we got inside the theatre for our first show on Sunday we found it to be LOVELY, surprisingly so in fact. From the outside it looked like it was going to be a HOT TENT, but inside it was Actually Comfortable teired seating in the round with proper facilities and not BOILING HOT. The only downside was that it didn't have a bar in it!

The show we saw that night was Not Very Good. From the blurb it looked SUSPICIOUSLY like a two-man musical featuring general titting about, which FOR SOME REASON appealed to me. Unfortunately for all concerned, however, it was just a bit rubbish - I had had cause to listen to a little bit of Moon Horse earlier in the week, and I can tell you this: It was NO MOON HORSE.

It started off OK, but it soon became clear that this was very much a Work In Progress. This would be FINE if it had been advertised (and charged for!) as such, but if definitely wasn't. Actually, saying it was "in progress" would have been charitable anyway, as they gave the distinc impression that they'd not done it ANYWHERE before. The "Work" bit was questionable too, as we both thought it needed A LOT OF WORK doing to it. There was no proper story, the songs were a bit boring, and there just weren't enough GAGS in it.

We DID enjoy slagging it off on the way home though, which is always a big part of the fun of going to the Edinburgh Fringe anyway! When we got back I did my usual thing when I see Rubbish Comedians In Fancy Venues: I googled them to see if they went to Oxford or Cambridge. INVARIABLY they will turn out to be one or the other, and I was not disappointed this time, especially when I got the BONUS RESULT of discovering that one of them is also the POSH SON of a POSH HUMOURIST!

The next day's show was MUCH MUCH MUCH BETTER, when we went to see a double-bill of Rob Auton and Rhys James. Again, this was a Work In Progress and again it wasn't advertised as such, but a) it was a double bill so basically HALF PRICED and b) it was GRATE. I've never seen Rhys James before, but he was very good indeed - I mean, he's very much a young white male stand-up comedian doing stand-up comedy, but he was EXTREMELY good at it and had A LOT of Actual Jokes, although it was a bit unsettling hearing him talk about the 1990s as a long time ago and MEAN it.

Rob Auton was something else altogether, he is ACE. We've seen him before and thought similar thoughts e.g. that what he does is very close to being POETRY (especially this time as he was reading most of it out!) and also THOUGHTFUL with INTERESTING IDEAS and NEW OBSERVATIONS. On top of that though he is SUPER-ENGAGING and has, again, LOADS of Actual Jokes. It was, in short, a FAB night out which more than made up for the night before!

It also kind of made me want to pop up to the Fringe again sometime. A Day Return's doable, right?

posted 30/5/2019 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

they've got a better paid-for education, they've got your money, and pretty soon they'll have their own telly show thanks to nepotism and connections, then a lifetime buulding on that appearing on quiz shows. Result, eh?
posted 15/6/2019 by steve

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