And so, as the wheezing bagpipe of social smoking finally succumbs to the sharpened pike of liver failure, and the numb buttock of audience marathons is given a rough slap by the hand of unread emails, my time at the Edinburgh Festival has come to an end.
By the time you read this, I will be on a Virgin train, somewhere beyond Berwick-upon-Tweed, sobbing into a £8.76 lukewarm cheese panini and gently pawing at the window.
But at least I went out with a bang. If you can call running through the recycler’s nightmare that is the Royal Mile dressed as C3PO and drinking five cups of free coffee before 11am a bang. I also watched one of the best pieces of immersive theatre I have ever had the pleasure to nearly sabotage.
Look Left Look Right’s Edinburgh-specific show Once You Said Yes was, without a doubt, one of the unlikeliest pieces of theatre I have ever experienced. It was also one of the best. From driving around the cobbled streets in a banged-up old Volvo and false moustache to drinking cider with a sea captain, it was frankly brilliant. Now, obviously, I can’t tell you too much about the show – not only would that ruin the whole point of the frickin’ thing, it would also look like gloating, considering how few tickets are still available.
It has, however, made me consider what I consider a Fringe triumph. For me, the things that worked best at the Edinburgh Fringe were those that gave the audience the benefit of intelligence. Doctor Brown’s 80% silent, totally surreal and snot-snortingly funny show didn’t explain its jokes. It didn’t even really make jokes. The American clownman simply did his thing and assumed that the audience was fun enough to keep up… continued HERE.
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