Tuesday, August 07, 2007
A day at the festival
Well, I'm finally getting round to writing about my day at the festival on Sunday there, as it was the first day of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and I was meeting up with some of my acting class crowd (namely: Scott, Teresa, Alan, Miriam, Lynn, Gordon and myself) to go and see some shows. On the whole it was a real good day, so please forgive this entry as it will be a biggie.
The first play we saw Long Time Dead by Rona Munro (who also wrote Sylvester McCoy's last Dr Who story, the dire Survival, don't worry this play was way better than that!) about three mountaineers who go through personal and physical struggles while climbing. The actors in the play were excellent and having taken some acting classes myself I could kind of see some of the process of their acting namely that they used their "fourth wall" alot (staring off at something off stage or envisaging something in the play that was offstage). For a drama though there was plenty of humour and some really funny one-liners, I didn't know any of the cast, but the two men were both great and very natural while the women were very good, I felt the younger of the two wasn't quite as good. Some of my acting crowd also felt the older women who played the nurse who treated the wounds of the mountaineers wasn't terribly convincing at her part, although I thought she was pretty good, but do I agree she struggled to convey her emotions, when it came to being upset. The play did kind of lose its pacing in the second half though, and the ending felt a bit slapped on (suffice to say one of the characters didn't mind losing some limbs too much!).
After some lunch we went on to see the second play, which was a stage musical of Debbie Does Dallas, which I was really impressed with as it was so well choreographed, and the performers were all first class singers too (Pop Idol and X Factor were looking in the wrong places for singing talent, they have nothing on these guys!). Plenty of innuendo and smut of course, but there were plenty of laughs too, and the fact that the whole musical was done on the floor so close to the audience was also quite interesting (or arousing since it was alot of young hot women prancing around short skirts and tops). At first I thought it might be seriously tacky but I think it was the highlight of the day. Also I was convinced that Stockard Channing was in the show aswell, unfortunately I couldn't find a cast list for the show on the Internet, damn!! (I'll never be able to look up that blonde who played Debbie now!!).
The final show of the night was a stand-up one from comedian Rhod Gilbert, a Welsh comedian from Wales (ha ha!), or as he put it from the fictional town of Llanbobl (just remember it really doesn't exist!) which he claimed that several people in the audiences of his shows said they actually lived there! Stand ups can be a bit hit and miss, but Rhod was very funny, I loved one of his gags about people who go to learn Welsh, in his class he said 4 people passed and 26 died (i.e. mainly from swallowing their own tongue from trying to pronounce the words). Also a young boy in the audience provided a really funny moment as Rhod was spending some time skirting around using bad language until he asked the kid "Have you ever rode a horse?" and the kid said "No I hate it, you're arse gets too sore". Rhod's whole show was based on deception too, and also using the plot of Who's Eating Gilbert Grape (the Johnny Depp movie) as the basis for his show, so it was funny when he turned the whole thing on its head at the end.
So after all that we all went to a local bar and had a few drinks and after that another bar (another drink funnily enough). By the end of the night I was quite drunk and tired, although this didn't stop me from doing some of my Acting 2 monologue which I was supposed to do during that class run, but had the chickenpox at the time, and did it in front of my remaining acting mates at Waverley Station (which I could only remember about half of, if that!). Don't ask me why now, but it was one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" things.
Anyway train back, taxi back, and a damn good day out in Edinburgh, it was the first time that I had seen the festival, so I'd like say a big cheers again to Scott for organising the day, and cheers to everyone else who showed up. Hope I can go back again sometime and maybe check out the film festival or something.
The first play we saw Long Time Dead by Rona Munro (who also wrote Sylvester McCoy's last Dr Who story, the dire Survival, don't worry this play was way better than that!) about three mountaineers who go through personal and physical struggles while climbing. The actors in the play were excellent and having taken some acting classes myself I could kind of see some of the process of their acting namely that they used their "fourth wall" alot (staring off at something off stage or envisaging something in the play that was offstage). For a drama though there was plenty of humour and some really funny one-liners, I didn't know any of the cast, but the two men were both great and very natural while the women were very good, I felt the younger of the two wasn't quite as good. Some of my acting crowd also felt the older women who played the nurse who treated the wounds of the mountaineers wasn't terribly convincing at her part, although I thought she was pretty good, but do I agree she struggled to convey her emotions, when it came to being upset. The play did kind of lose its pacing in the second half though, and the ending felt a bit slapped on (suffice to say one of the characters didn't mind losing some limbs too much!).
After some lunch we went on to see the second play, which was a stage musical of Debbie Does Dallas, which I was really impressed with as it was so well choreographed, and the performers were all first class singers too (Pop Idol and X Factor were looking in the wrong places for singing talent, they have nothing on these guys!). Plenty of innuendo and smut of course, but there were plenty of laughs too, and the fact that the whole musical was done on the floor so close to the audience was also quite interesting (or arousing since it was alot of young hot women prancing around short skirts and tops). At first I thought it might be seriously tacky but I think it was the highlight of the day. Also I was convinced that Stockard Channing was in the show aswell, unfortunately I couldn't find a cast list for the show on the Internet, damn!! (I'll never be able to look up that blonde who played Debbie now!!).
The final show of the night was a stand-up one from comedian Rhod Gilbert, a Welsh comedian from Wales (ha ha!), or as he put it from the fictional town of Llanbobl (just remember it really doesn't exist!) which he claimed that several people in the audiences of his shows said they actually lived there! Stand ups can be a bit hit and miss, but Rhod was very funny, I loved one of his gags about people who go to learn Welsh, in his class he said 4 people passed and 26 died (i.e. mainly from swallowing their own tongue from trying to pronounce the words). Also a young boy in the audience provided a really funny moment as Rhod was spending some time skirting around using bad language until he asked the kid "Have you ever rode a horse?" and the kid said "No I hate it, you're arse gets too sore". Rhod's whole show was based on deception too, and also using the plot of Who's Eating Gilbert Grape (the Johnny Depp movie) as the basis for his show, so it was funny when he turned the whole thing on its head at the end.
So after all that we all went to a local bar and had a few drinks and after that another bar (another drink funnily enough). By the end of the night I was quite drunk and tired, although this didn't stop me from doing some of my Acting 2 monologue which I was supposed to do during that class run, but had the chickenpox at the time, and did it in front of my remaining acting mates at Waverley Station (which I could only remember about half of, if that!). Don't ask me why now, but it was one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" things.
Anyway train back, taxi back, and a damn good day out in Edinburgh, it was the first time that I had seen the festival, so I'd like say a big cheers again to Scott for organising the day, and cheers to everyone else who showed up. Hope I can go back again sometime and maybe check out the film festival or something.
# posted by kenny @ 6:28 pm 
