Fringe preview week: Day 1

First day of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe today. Well technically not, the Fringe starts at the weekend, but previews start today. So I knocked off work at lunchtime. Now I don't want to be giving away my secrets, but there is really no need to be paying much to see Fringe stuff in the preview week and I like to take full advantage of that.

First I met Peach for lunch, and met her new boyfriend for the first time.

We then were given some free tickets for our first show.

Fringe show #1: Kaput
This was a family act, a sort of clowning slapstick gymnastic routine about a guy doing some maintenance work at a cinema. From what I could gather it didn't go exactly to plan and the set kept falling down unexpectedly, but actually he built it all seamlessly into his routine. I enjoyed it, it was very entertaining and charming and amusing, and the kids in the audience loved it too. It made me smile.
Rating: 4*

Peach and I then headed into town and met English Rose, and also her new boyfriend. A day of meeting new boyfriends. English Rose and I were given some free tickets to see the next show.

Fringe show #2: Sheeps
I had seen Sheeps before last year in a compilation show, and thought they were ok. Same again this time really, ok. Sheeps are three young lads who do sketches. One of them plays a thicko, and much of the humour comes from that. They were fairly slick, but not particularly memorable. An amusing sketch where they got the lines out of order, and a really creepy one about Harrods.
Rating: 2.5*

E turned up at this point, having come up from London for the weekend. We got tickets for another show.

Fringe show #3: Amateur Transplants: Adam Kay's Bum Notes
Adam Kay does parody songs, and accompanies them on his piano. Just a load of nonsense basically, classic and contemporary pop stuff. The fun is in guessing through the verse what the parody on the chorus is going to be. We laughed a lot. His links between the songs were good, he's cynical and sardonic but witty and likeable at the same time. Somehow he is able to make something extremely silly feel quite intelligent. We laughed a lot.
Rating: 4*

Cyclops turned up at this point.

Fringe show #4: Pat Burtscher's Patapotamoose
This guy was confused. I'm not sure whether it was part of his act or not. He said he was jetlagged and his ramblings were a little incoherent. He did a lot of chat with the audience and he said he didn't do much of his prepared material. It's a shame because one or two of his sections were quite good, so if he was on better form he might have been alright. He also has a full size moose outfit.
Rating: 1.5*

Fringe show #5: Hannibal Buress: Still Saying Stuff
We saw Hannibal at the Pleasance Press Launch last year, and liked him. He was also award nominated last year. So this was one we actually paid for. He was pretty good, he's a likeable guy and he had a nice set. Saying that, I can't recall anything memorable to tell you about his act, or maybe later occurrences have led me to block it out (watch this space)...
Rating: 3.5*

We finished the evening with a couple of beers with a few other dirty stop-outs.

Mrs Cyclops recommends:
- Kaput
- Amateur Transplants: Adam Kay's Bum Notes

Fringe stats:

- Total shows: 5
- Total cost: £5
- Average cost per show: £1.00