Fringe Adventures 2006 - Part 2
Celebrity Spotting: Not totally sure about this, but I think I saw Doris Lessing at the book festival site in Charlotte Square. This celeb-spotting business is getting less appealing by the minute.
Show: Bill Bailey - Steampunk
This goes to the top of the list for this year so far. I’ve seen him quite a few times before, but this is the first time in a while I’ve seen a totally new set from him. His show is quite tightly scripted, but the best bits are usually when he goes off road and lets his mind wander. (It was nice to see a very ‘British’ show at this point too. e.g. The rock-star posturing of him kicking over a bottle of water in frustration and then immediately scurrying over to the guitar effects pedal he’d just soaked crying “Nononono! Water! Electricity! Badbadnooooooooooooo!”) Excellent stuff.
Show: Jim Henson’s Puppet Improv - Adults Only
Also brilliant. ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway’ done with eight puppeteers. They had the same format of pre-set skits with locations and situations taken from the audience during the show. There were video cameras set up feeding big screens around the hall to show just the puppet work, but it was more fun to just watch the stage and see all of the puppeteers working at the same time. A couple of the skits fell a bit flat - since they are kind of at the audience’s mercy - but mostly were excellent. Partly this show was about childhood wish-fulfilment; I’ve been waiting almost my whole life to hear muppets swear, so that’s another box I can check now.
Pubs: Mostly very very hurried drinks here and there, since I was dancing around bus timetables to get to and from the Borders. Assembly Rooms, Assembly Hall, The Rose Street Brewery (after I randomly bumped into an old high-school friend who was here doing something for Radio4,) and Wash (Which was now happily free of its usual retinue of pre-club kids, but did involve much standing around awkwardly with Edinburgh University GameSoc people whom I didn’t know at all.)
Food: Roti - More curry, in a weirdly swanky restaurant tucked away in a dodgy side-street. Both entrances/exits from the street involved going past ’saunas’, so it was hard not to feel kind of seedy when walking back out onto the main road afterwards. Good food though.