BRIGHTON FRINGE REVIEWS 2022 - Part the Second

Unfortunately my fringing has been somewhat reduced due to both foreseen and unforeseen circumstances. I was very much looking forward to Christian Jegard's "Ol' Red Eyes" on reliable recommendation, but it was sadly cancelled due to health concerns. That one will have to go on the "see it when you can" list. However, the missus and I did get to take in one show which we have been meaning to catch for several Fringes.

THE GEEK SHALL INHERIT...

Hattie Snooks of Clap Back Club performs her one-woman show about the comforting joys of sci-fi and geekery. Definitely one for the slightly obsessive among us, this is packed with knowing references to Star Trek, Buffy, Doctor Who and more, as Hattie takes a sick day and dives head first into a sci-fi marathon. 

More than just a sci-fest, "The Geek Shall Inherit" is an honest and relatable look at anxiety and depression, and the pressures of life that lead us to take comfort in imaginary worlds. Plus it's a musical, packed with parody songs. My favourite was the technobabble song, but they're all awesome. 

A must for Reg Barclay fans. 

Last showing TONIGHT June 3rd at Sweet@The Poets (also bloody good food there), starts at 19.30. £12, £9 for concessions 

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DO THE THING: UP TO, BUT NOT EXCEEDING, TEN MUSICALS

If that doesn't suit you, I can also recommend Do the Thing in their latest show, which I have sadly been unable to attend this year. Based on previous shows, this will be a raucous and unpredictable comedy where the manic musicaleers Simon Plotkin and Tim Meredith do strange and unexpected things with audience suggestions. 

Previously limited to two improv musicals a night, the gents have played with the format to allow anything up to ten audience influenced performances of variable length. If previous shows are anything to go by, this should be hilarious. 

Not strictly part of the Fringe, Do the Thing is performing at The Electric Arcade on Madeira Drive. The last show is TONIGHT, June 3rd at 20.00 for £11

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BRIGHTON FRINGE REVIEWS 2022 - Part the First

 It's that time of year again, when I become so incredibly busy in the evenings and weekends that I don't know whether I'm coming or going and all my money seems to mysteriously disappear. Yes, it's the Brighton Fringe Festival, our annual celebration of creativity, artistry and hilariosity. 

I never manage to see as many shows as I intend, but here's a quick rundown of some of my favourites so far. More to come at the end of the month when we take in the last chorus.

THE BURLESQUE IMPOSTER

Alexandra Shaw is Fanny Dent, and Fanny Dent is the Burlesque Imposter. A brilliant one woman (well, almost) show, The Burlesque Imposter takes burlesque back to its roots as a way to satirise and dissect society's weird little ways. As Fanny tries to make it in the world of burlesque, she confronts the expectations that society has of women, and those she has of herself. 

It's an ingenious show, bringing burlesque back to what it used to be about - making people laugh and think - and away from the modern view of it being purely for titillation. What we get is a show that's sexy and smart, funny and fabulous, with some powerful moments that will make you stop and rethink your attitudes even as you're laughing or straining your neck to try to get a proper look around that tall person in front of you.

Far from being an imposter, Fanny brings us some of the wittiest, most creative dance routines ever seen. If you've seen the show in years past, then go along to see experience a perfected script and a performer at the top of her game. If you've not seen it, treat yourself to one of the funniest, sexiest and cleverest shows on the Fringe.

£8 - £10  Spiegeltent Fri 20th May to Sun 22nd May, 19.45 

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A TRANS FAIRYTALE

Cerys Evans, now with the Clap Back Club, brings back her one-woman show that sold out at the 2019 Fringe (you remember, the one in the before time). In another world, Miss... something-or-other is trying to make a living as a fairy godmother. This isn't like the fairytales you know, and our struggling fairy has to deal with shallow royals, a gobby disembodied narrator and the trials of fitting in in a trans-unfriendly world. 

This revamped, perfected version of A Trans Fairytale has new puppets, up-to-the-minute jokes and plenty of silliness, but it's the emotional heart of the story that will get you, as our heroine searches for her elusive happy ending. In a time when trans people are facing a horrifying upsurge of bigotry, Cerys faces issues head-on with a heartfelt and captivating performance. 

This hilarious, foul-mouthed and powerful play will make you laugh and hit you in the heart. An intensely personal show, Cerys has made this already great play even better for what will likely be it's last ever time on stage. Not to be missed.

£8 - £10   Latest Music Bar  Thurs 19th May (TONIGHT!) and Fri 20th May,  22.00

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PETE STRONG: GREENFINCH

Bridport Poetry Prize nominee Pete Strong returns for an entirely new performance, combining poetry, comedy and audiovisual experience to powerful effect. An intimate look inside his life, from Ulster boyhood to Brighton adulthood, exploring the experiences that shaped him and learning to move beyond them. It's a profoundly personal show, yet one that speaks to anyone about identity, growth and hurt. 

In spite of how hard this one hits you, it's also wonderfully, weirdly funny, with Pete's unique turn of phrase shifting you through the full spectrum of emotions. This one really got me, just beautiful. 

My favourite poem was the one about the pickles, though.

£8 - £10  Phoenix Art Space  Thurs 19th May (TONIGHT!), Sat 20th and Sun 21st, 20.15

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Brighton Fringe Comedy 2018

Alasdair Beckett-King: Full Velvet Jacket

One of the great things about the Fringe is the amount of free events, and the comedy circuit is no exception. These events give comedians a chance to test out new material on receptive audiences. I love these work-in-progress events, even if they are, by their nature, very hit-and-miss. Full Velvet Jacket, though, is definitely strong on the hit. Alasdair Beckett-King, or ABK to his faithful followers, is a strangely philosophical comedian from a version of Durham in an alternative timeline, but don't let that phase you. He still loves toast and mocks the French. With a set that takes in the nature of entropy, grammatically correct movie taglines and what promises to be an incredible animated title sequence (once he gets round to finishing it), ABK lets us glimpse his unique viewpoint on the universe.

Pete Strong: Shame

Described as "not exactly comedy," this is an odd but effective mixture of jokes, anecdotes and poetry. Pete Strong reflects on face-burning, head-smacking shame, along with depression, anxiety and other such entertaining titbits. Taking place upstairs at the Duke of Wellington, in a tiny room on the hottest days of the year, "Shame" starts off with an uncomfortable auditory experience only exacerbated by the close confines, and that's before Pete starts talking about his mental health issues. Genuinely funny, affecting and cathartic, this is a powerfully honest one man show. Still a WIP, this looks like it will only get better with time.

Off the Cuff: Crime and Funishment

Improvisation is a very difficult form of comedy to make work, but when it does it's magic. Ask the audience for some random words, create an entire world around them, ba-dalla-dallah, the prestige. Off the Cuff have been running for several years now with a fluctuating line-up, and "Crime and Funishment" is their strongest format. Each show sees one of the team take on the role of Inspector Funishment in a murder mystery live TV show. Previous shows have seen Funishment solve the mysteries of the Elephant in the Zoo and the Cabbage Patch Murders (and solve Brexit at the same time). This time, the words "bouncy" and "cheese" led to a complex web of intrigue and sorcery in the deadly competitive world of dairy produce. Off the Cuff are the very best at the improv game, making stream of consciousness invention seem like a coherent story.

Do the Thing

Two of the five Cuffers are also improvising this fantastic show. Tim Meredith (also of improv troupe Blanket Fort) and Simon Plotkin (last year's excellent "Gerald Galbraith: Troubadour") perform two completely improvised musicals per show, taking the improv comedy challenge to the next level. Just like Cuff, they work off audience suggestions to create an entire story, only this time, through the medium of song. It's not the only improv musical show around in Brighton, but it's the best. Considering they're two big blokes they are gifted at portraying virtually any type of character - you will believe a bearded Scotsman is the ghost of the protagonist's ex-girlfriend. Tim and Simon manage to portray a full cast of characters between them, often taking on four or five characters in the same scene, all of them singing! See it if only for the spectacle of a group hug somehow created by two people. The Mysterious Iain Scott provides the musical accompaniment, while Tim provides the moves. Very funny, with great creativity and a touch of the style of Flight of the Conchords.

The Fannytasticals

For my money, the funniest of the five shows I caught this year. The Fannys are a changing roster of female comedians, although the core group stays the same, including Sarah Charsley (also of "Sex and Pugs and Rocks and LOLs," which I sadly failed to catch this Fringe). The Fannys provide a rapid-fire mix of sketches and ingenious parody songs that take on exclusively female life concerns such as periods, pregnancy and eating a banana in public. Absolutely hilarious and thoroughly disgusting, but with a strong feminist message amongst the silliness and smut, this is an absolute must - especially if you're a man. I want more than 2% of the audience to be male in future. You'll never be able to listen to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" the same way again. Highly recommended.

Polari Brighton

The Polari Literary Salon is an LGBTQ literary performance workshop that is generally London-based but makes outings to other parts of the UK. The Arts Council England has presented the organisers with a grant to fund a nationwide tour to mark their tenth anniversary, and so last night Polari came to Brighton.

I didn't know anything about Polari until my partner Suz and I met the wonderful Cerys Evans at a very Brightonian barbecue in the summer (lots of vegan sausages on offer). Cerys is a writer and performer (and has just started her own website), and is instantly a hit with everyone she meets. We made sure we were free to come see her perform at the Marlborough Pub and Theatre, a cosy little venue on the edge of Kemptown. It turned out Suz's friend John McCullough, a talented poet, was also performing that night. So naturally we absolutely had to make this.

We still managed to be late, and missed Cerys's first poem, which is frankly unforgiveable, but she still wowed us with some amazing readings of her own, very personal, very moving work. John was up during the second half reading from his latest book, Spacecraft, and giving us a sneak peak of his work in progress. John's poetry can be moving, powerful, funny - the gamut. And he likes to sneak in Doctor Who references.

It wasn't all local peeps, though. V. G. Lee, five time novelist and short story writer, read one of her stories from her collection As You Step Outside, and I loved it so much I went and bought the book straight away. Playwright Alexis Gregory performed part of his upcoming work which deals with pivotal moments and periods in the gay community throughout the twentieth century. He gave us the opening piece, a performance of a memoir from a man who was present at the Stonewall Uprising in 1969. It was an astonishingly powerful and moving piece, bringing to life an event that was long enough ago to feel historical, even mythic, to us now.

Each step of the tour includes a writing workshop, and one person is chosen from each to perform their piece at the event. A new writer read her poem #MeToo, a powerful hit of painful experience. The event finished with Sylvia Brownrigg reading from her new novel Pages for Her, which was beautiful, although I feel I ought to read the previous Pages for You from 2002 first. The evening was hosted by top-hatted raconteur Paul Burston and sign-interpreted by Natalie MacGarvie. It was a wonderful experience, and I'm glad that I'm learning to appreciate poetry at last - something I never really "got" until lately, and a lot of that is down to Suz.

We stayed out chatting with talented people and making new friends. Just a wonderful night. There's still time to see Polari on tour in London and Newcastle, and beyond.

REVIEW: As We Are

As We Are is a new online TV series, exploring life for young LGBT people in Brighton and Hove. The first series was released towards the end of last year, in short, easy to enjoy episodes. As We Are was created by Deborah Espect, an award-winning writer who also acts as director and producer on the series. Espect first decided to write the series after watching lesbian characters in TV series continually being killed off. This led to the creation of a series where the main characters happen to be gay women and aren't punished for it by the narrative.

As We Are features a number of prominent LGBT writers, performers and activists both on screen and behind the scenes. It tells the story of Chloe, a young woman who agrees to flatsit for her dreadful ex-girlfriend because someone will need to look after the cat. The cat's much nicer than her ex, so it's fair enough. There she strikes up a friendship with Blake, the gent living in the flat above, who just happens to be transgender. Their friendship leads to Chloe facing her preconceptions, especially as she becomes more attracted to Blake.

If this all sounds like it could be extremely preachy and hard-going, rest assured it's not. We follow Chloe and Blake through drinks, dates and cat hunts, and the series' philosophy is kept very conversational. Actress and comedian Jenny Harrold plays Chloe, opposite artist, film-maker and trans activist Fox Fisher as Blake, both of whom give strong, realistic and likeable performances. There's a wealth of talent on screen, with award-winning performers appearing even in very brief roles.

As We Are has serious things to say but doesn't take itself too seriously, and finds plenty of opportunity to poke fun at how painfully Brightonian it is. (Trina, played by Sarah Charsley, is probably the most Brightonian person ever committed to film.) It's good fun for those of us in the area to see some well-known haunts on the screen, as well as well-known types of people, and anyone who's been involved in the Pride and LGBT scene, or the Brighton Fringe, will likely recognise a few faces. If you  have an interest in LGBT life, or just enjoy a light-hearted drama, it's definitely worth your time.

You can watch As We Are and read about its cast and creators here. If you enjoy it and want to help it continue, crowdfunding for series two will begin soon.