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 Rosie Wilby |
It’s time for some Fringe benefits
CAMDEN FRINGE
Various Venues
THREE venues, four weeks, one hundred shows – how does the Camden Fringe do it?
The logistics of the month-long comedy and performing arts festival becomes more baffling with each passing year, as the ranks of funnymen, musicians and thespians swell to ever greater numbers.
This year’s festival – the third in its history – is an object lesson in variety.
Hello... is a Guinness World Attempt for the Shortest Play ever (three seconds, apparently), while paranormal comedy Bea explores one woman’s psychological obsession with bees.
Audiences can catch a sneak peek of South Park creator Trey Parker’s brand new Cannibal the Musical, surely a strong contender for the best cannibalistic cowboy musical ever made.
Life on the Paris metro gets a burlesque makeover in Les Anges de L’Enfer – that’s Angels of the Underground to you and me. It’s a silent homage to the sights and smells of public transport and the frequently bizarre behaviour that humans can be driven to in such an environment.
Greek tragedy Elektra has been updated to modern day Zimbabwe, while the MP3 generation get their own brand of theatre with Playlist, in which the audience select what (short) play the cast in front of them will perform.
The wealth of talent is spread between the Etectera Theatre and Liberties Bar in Camden High Street, with able support from its Euston cousins, the Camden People’s Theatre.
Comedy has a strong suit this year, representing 37 per cent of the acts, to be exact.
There’s celebrity chef flavoured pastiche from comedian Chris Neill, and Faby Licious, “the only queer rock star to come out of the Vatican”, promotes his new record Love is in the Hair.
Stand up comedian Simon Dunn examines his torturous relationship with the moon, which serves as a constant reminder of his advancing years, in Little White Liar.
Fathers are encouraged to take a more active role in their child’s development in Those Young Minds, a thought-provoking new play commissioned by children’s mental health charity, Young Minds.
Poetry and stand up meet and make friends in Jude Simpson’s Growing Up Games and one-time science graduate Rosie Wilby uses her patchy knowledge of the subject to investigate human memory.
Northern Gap Theatre Company bring not one but two plays to the festival: Mercy, by Lin Coghlan, and Cracked, by Brian Marchbank. And then there’s The Extraordinary Mugging of Mr Winterbottom, a dark comedy – with wrestling.
Theatre of the Moment plans nothing beforehand and takes no audience suggestions for their improvised jaunts. How they produce their cogent plays is anybody’s guess.
The dramatically tricky subjects of Alzheimer’s, boredom, and loneliness will all get tackled, and there’s music, lots of music: Bossa Nova, Musical Revue and the Kitsch Kittens to name but a few.
July 28 – August 24
www.camdenfringe.org |
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