The Forest Fringe – a studio space in an abandoned church, supported by Battersea Arts Centre – was a popular venue at the Fringe 2008. The Forest Fringe at the BAC weekend (27-28 March) showcased some of the best work from last year and previewed some exciting work in progress planned for 2009.

2008 highlights included Tip of Your Tongue, director Abigail Conway’s PostSecret -style anonymous truth-telling ritual, in which participants read and then eat unspoken truths written by others on rice-paper; and Lucy Ellinson’s Eulogy, In State. Ellinson’s piece, staged in a dusty corridor under the BAC’s main staircase, required the audience to help construct a eulogy for Ellinson before holding a vigil over her ‘dead’ body.

Looking ahead to this coming August, Bootworks had taken over a corner of the foyer with their Black Box, a short performance installation intended for a single audience member. In fact – probably intentionally – Black Box proved as entertaining for those outside the box as for the lone observer seated inside. While the silent-movie narrative could only be decoded from inside, only from outside was it possible to appreciate the company’s feats of timing and physical illusion.

In the Committee Room, Tinned Fingers created a cosy, playful world of animal stories, adapted drama games and arbitrary popularity-contest morality, in Our Father’s Ears. An ample supply of wine and the friendly atmosphere ensured the audience were happy to take part.

For just 15 lucky participants per night, Rotozaza were testing out their new ‘autoteatro’ experience, GuruGuru. Autoteatro blurs, erases and redraws the line between audience and performer by feeding prerecorded lines and instructions to participants via headphones, creating a prepackaged performance that changes with every iteration while requiring no regular actors. It’s a form of theatre that would be impossible to conceive without modern technology.

The Festival Fringe is a space for experimentation. Fringe audiences not only accept, but expect deviation from convention. From the looks of its 2009 line-up so far, the Forest Fringe is set to challenge every convention in sight, from the role of the audience right up to what we can comfortably classify as theatre.

First up to the podium is Itsoseng, Omphile Molusi’s one-man show about his South African hometown. Previously at the Pleasance Dome, the play opens at the Soho Theatre on 8 September for a three-week run. I never saw Itsoseng and to my knowledge I didn’t meet anyone else who had, but Molusi’s play picked up some excellent reviews and managed to win a Fringe First award despite not playing at the Traverse, so this could well be worth taking in.

Likewise, I never managed to see The Idiot Colony, winner of both a Fringe First and the Total Theatre Award for Best Visual Theatre; chalk it up to inexperience that I missed most of the year’s really significant shows. The play, which picked up four and five star reviews, is a condemnation of the treatment of women by the mental health system in the mid-20th century, when homosexuality and childbirth out of wedlock were considered mental defects grievous enough to warrant sectioning. The Idiot Colony is touring the country from late September to mid October. Detailed information is available on the company’s website.

There are reasons to look forward to next August, of course; not least that Belt Up (Nothing to see/hear), over whom I went embarrassingly gooey in Part 5, have won the Edinburgh International Festival Award. This means they’ll be back next year with International Festival funding, performing as part of the EIF’s Behind the Scenes programme. But as much as the Fringe is a theatre lover’s fantasy, with potentially life-changing theatre hiding in every pub, bookshop and temporarily converted university space, there’s no point spending the year pining for Edinburgh’s stairs and cobbled streets. The best of the Fringe is coming to us, and there’s always been a wealth of exciting theatre to be found in London. It’s just that, with it being more spread out both geographically and chronologically, we might have to look a little harder to find it.

Top and bottom photos by Matt Boothman

C Venues have handed Belt Up the keys to one of their performance spaces and let them run riot. The company named it the Red Room and wrapped it in a patchwork of carpets, silk drapes, armchairs, cushions, beds, mirrors and empty picture frames, creating a kind of faded, derelict glamour. The Red Room hosts a full programme of immersive theatrical entertainment, including new work, adaptations, promenade performances, freak shows and secret parties. I maintain that Women of Troy promised more than it delivered, but taken in context it’s just the least immersive end of Belt Up’s spectrum – and I don’t see any other companies attacking the fourth wall with anything approaching their zeal.

At the other end of that spectrum is The Park Keeper. A new piece by Nikolaus Morris, it casts the audience as a macabre bunch of 21st century hedonists, arriving at the Red Room to experience their deepest desires. The production does its best to blur the line between performers and audience. Within ten minutes I’ve waltzed with three cast members and been hand-fed sweets by a third. As I watch the skull-faced master of revels, Gabbitas, hands slither across my shoulders and tie a piece of red silk at my throat; jesters’ hats and other bits of costume appear on other audience members until only the performers’ greasepainted faces separate us. We become revellers, complicit in the actions of our companions.

The narrative gets a little lost in places; the balance swings more in favour of audience participation than of clear storytelling. But what makes The Park Keeper unique is the way it implicates its audience in unsavoury acts, challenging our usual comfortable spectatorial position as we’re invited to kick or shove the keeper, or to hold down his assistant while the revellers piss in his face. It’s often unclear why we’re tormenting the man so, but no one refuses. After all, it’s only make-believe – right?

That’s the power of the Red Room – the audience lounges on the furniture or the floor, inhabiting the space as much as the performers, and this fosters a certain camaraderie with the company. This is especially true of the Red Room adaptation of The Tartuffe, in which Orgon and his company of French players relate his family’s downfall at the hands of the supposedly holy conman. The relaxed surroundings and Orgon’s pompous but likeable demeanour soon get us on side. Unlike The Park Keeper, The Tartuffe is a comedy, using the blurred line between audience and players to inspire not discomfort but laughter. Audience members are pulled up to play parts – Orgon’s company is too small to cast Mariane’s fiancé Valère or Orgon’s first wife – but immersion into this production comes less from physical interaction than from the intimate atmosphere the Red Room creates. The play meets us halfway; as we descend into Orgon’s world, the performers break out into ours with a script full of references to American Beauty, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and the Fringe itself (plus the most epic and committed mime-fight I’ve ever seen).

As if the Red Room programme wasn’t varied enough, Belt Up have given White Rose Theatre – the company responsible for last year’s Tony! The Blair Musical – an hour-long slot every evening, which they’ve filled with a rotating cycle of six short plays known collectively as Lost Soul Music. These range from monologues to cabaret-style performances, all themed around lost souls.

My particular Lost Soul Music show is a monologue delivered by a gentleman in waistcoat and bowler hat, interspersed with short piano recitals. The atmosphere in the Red Room is that of a plush gentlemen’s club – not the contemporary kind, but its Victorian incarnation, full of important men drinking port and smoking fine cigars by the fireside. The monologue itself is a neat little piece with a fantastic element and a twist in its tail, reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s short fiction; it muses quietly on the things a hopeless romantic like narrator Thomas would do for his one true love. Provided each of the six pieces are as strong, Belt Up have chosen their Red Room companions well.

Certain members of my company later found themselves at one of Belt Up’s secret events, in which they debuted a brand new immersive show in the final stages of writing. The event took them from the Red Room to the roof of the main C Venues building and then back for a burlesque party, and even in the light of the next day they found themselves expecting to see mysterious Brides, Beasts and Red Generals stalking C’s corridors.

Not one of the Red Room shows is perfect. But whatever their individual failings, Belt Up are still doing more to keep theatre exciting and vital than any other company at this year’s Fringe.

Top Image: Pass Red Room.
Central Image: C Central, hosts of the Red Room, perching on the edge of North Bridge.
Bottom Image: The Red Room itself.
All photos by Matt Boothman.

I mentioned in Part 3 that The Factory came very highly recommended, so that’s where I started. It’s a comment on consumerism, and especially the control multinationals exercise over their customers through planned obsolescence, set in a dystopian Factory that manufactures everything.

As a sometime theatre technician I found myself astounded by the level of technical competence Precarious demand of their projectionist. The projections are designed to seamlessly complement the company’s performers, so at times their upper bodies are their own while their legs are projected, or the environments with which they interact are entirely composed of projected textures, turning stacks of cardboard boxes into skyscrapers and upturned tables into factory conveyor belts.

Once I’d finished geeking out over the audiovisual magic on display I could start paying attention to the physical theatre I’d come to see. The show is both technically impressive and visually striking. Particularly memorable images include four nude women hanging from their ankles like carcasses in an abattoir and a woman struggling to escape from underneath a womblike bubble of plastic sheeting. There are moments when unnecessary movement seems to have been thrown in to cover stilted dialogue; the company’s strength is clearly in their physical work, and the piece is at its strongest when it eschews dialogue and gives itself over to music, movement and projection.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle of The Factory I moved on to Everyone We Know, a two-hander on a much smaller scale, both in terms of staging and themes. A devised piece based around the film Me and You and Everyone We Know, it explores love, body image and connections between people, but offers few deep or original insights.

Though billed, like The Factory, as a physical and multimedia piece, Everyone We Know makes no particular statements with either medium. I enjoyed the female performer’s gymnastics near the beginning of the piece, and stacked televisions playing DVDs and streaming live from a camcorder make for some interesting visuals, but neither device sheds much light on the plot or themes and overall fail to bind together into a coherent aesthetic.

Despite all this, it still conspired to leave me unexpectedly uplifted. It is not an accomplished or life-changing piece of theatre, but it is a gentle, unassuming piece with few pretensions, that fosters an intimate, family atmosphere with its audience and is unafraid to provide a crowd-pleasing happy ending. So despite dramaturgical misgivings, my overall impression of Everyone We Know remains glowingly positive.

Finally, to the most fun I’ve had so far this Fringe: Japanese sword performance troupe Kamui’s dance and martial arts spectacular Samurai Spirit. It’s listed in the Fringe brochure under Dance and Physical Theatre, so I justified going as part of my physical performance education, but I’m happy to admit that seeing this show was pure indulgence on my part. Led by Shimaguchi Tetsuro, the man that choreographed Uma Thurman’s swordfights in Kill Bill, the show is a series of stylised sword, spear and quarterstaff battles. Some are more dance than fight scenes, while others, though silent, even come with a plot; the costumes and fighting style progress throughout the hour from feudal-era samurai in kimonos to street samurai in black suits and bandannas. The skill of the performers is breathtaking.

Make no mistake: Samurai Spirit is not high art. It’s aimed squarely at samurai sword fetishists and fans of Kill Bill – it even uses most of the first film’s soundtrack in the final twenty minutes. I want to state categorically that this makes it no less exhilarating to watch, but I tick the above boxes in permanent pen, so I can’t claim impartiality. All I can do is recommend the show to all and sundry and hope everyone enjoys it as much as me.

All photos by Matt Boothman.

Top image: ‘Pass monument 2′.

2nd from top: The Factory publicity poster.

3rd from top: Kamui including Sato Yu (foreground ); Kamui stage crew, Tanaka Akiharu, Fukuda Takashi (background left to right) .

Bottom image: Kamui including Sato Yu and Matoba Tsukasa.

Similarly, Finished With Engines is an outstanding piece of ’straight’ theatre which, along with most of the Traverse’s programme, is at odds with the ramshackle, low-budget, experimental kinds of plays I’ve found myself watching so far. A two-hander set on a nautical observations platform (and possible nuclear silo), it explores the changing face of local conflict and global peacekeeping. The play focused too much on the strained relationship between sailors Megan and Hemingway for my tastes; a lot of vital political issues sank under well-trodden observations that people in prolonged close proximity tend to get on each other’s nerves. But such is the strength of award-winning playwright Alan McKendrick’s blackly humorous dialogue that it is possible to enjoy the play purely as an extended dramatic duologue.

The first round of Fringe First Awards, presented by The Scotsman newspaper, have now been dished out. There’s a telling assumption amongst Fringe veterans that the Traverse will always scoop the lion’s share of Fringe Firsts, and predictably enough three out of this week’s five have gone to Deep Cut, New Electric Ballroom and Architecting, all at the Traverse. That makes the TEAM’s third Fringe First Award. The other two went to Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved and The Tailor of Inverness, both one-man shows.

Remember Fringe Diary Part 1? I tipped Architecting for success and their Fringe first proves me right – though anyone reading the press or listening to the gossip around town at the time could have predicted that. I also mentioned Mugensha, a Japanese theatre company and one of the first to be seen out flyering on the Mile. Their show, The Feast of the Ants, is at once a cautionary fable and an innovative experiment in overcoming the language barrier. The play is delivered in Japanese, with the action allowing simple interpretation of most lines and especially significant ones either translated in voiceover or displayed on umbrellas, placards, bits of broken set and, particularly memorable, embroidered into the lining of the lead actor’s kimono. Mugensha also employ various Noh and Kabuki techniques, so in terms of visuals and pace the play isn’t quite like anything else on at this year’s Fringe. Unfortunately, for all that it’s a long and not especially subtle piece of theatre that repeats its message (“don’t be a selfish idiot like all these characters”) ad nauseam.

Highlights of this weeks in brief include: Who Writes This Crap?, in which Joel Stickley and poet Luke Wright parody and lay into examples of everyday ‘crap writing’ (packaging, press releases, the book on which the show is based) but eventually decide rather toothlessly that churning out crap is what makes us human so it’s okay; and The Tiger Lillies’ Seven Deadly Sins, a punk cabaret fronted by a high-pitched man in skull make-up and narrated by a pierced and mohawked Mister Punch and his civil partner Jude.

I’ve also been recommended a lot of dance and physical theatre this week. 21:13 uses movement to break down the language barrier between its English and Italian characters. How It Ended explores ‘marriage in an era of uncompromising expectations’ and has been picking up five-star reviews in most of the dailies. Finally, I know nothing about The Factory except that it’s the one at the Zoo, not the one at the Pleasance Courtyard, and that the Canadian documentary-maker I met at Finished With Engines couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

At the other end of the spectrum is Belt Up’s Women of Troy; here the experiment is successful because it doesn’t push any boundaries. The audience is blindfolded and manhandled into a darkened room, joining the cast as defeated Trojan prisoners. But the promising immersive experience ends there, and once the blindfolds come off the audience are mere spectators once again. The company are clearly looking to do something a little different; surely at the Fringe they can afford to push the envelope more than this.

Three to a Room’s Mommie & the Minister takes this week’s prize for utter barecheeked weirdness. A celebration of so-bad-it’s-good B-movie Gothic horror, it’s chock-full of deliberate overplay, melodrama, violence and near-the-knuckle comedy (the kind you hate yourself for laughing at). Not to everyone’s taste, perhaps, but credit to it for being unashamed of what it is.

Pick of the week is The Rebel Cell by Babasword Productions. It’s a Socratic dialogue pitting civil disobedience against change from within the system through the medium of rap (blank verse for the twenty-first century?). It could just be that I share Babasword’s politics, or it could be because the rhythm and rhyme of their rap-battle dialogue is a joy to listen to, or more likely it’s a combination of the two, but I found it enthralling. If you can’t get to the Pleasance Dome to see the show, I highly recommend you download the soundtrack from Babasword’s website. (Having said all this, I have since wondered whether I shouldn’t have a problem with Babasword commandeering the music of black emancipation for a largely white middle-class theatregoing audience…)

Most innovative flyering technique of the past few days comes from Play Possum, who have turned the flyers for their show Ruling the Board into stylish bow ties.

Those were my highs and lows of Preview Week. Before I sign off here’s the round-up of what other people, both in my company and on the street, have recommended (or not) from the shows they’ve seen.

Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, a play about Heisenberg set in occupied Denmark, was under-rehearsed despite only having a three-night run. Overlong exposition on particle physics caused several audience members to leave at the interval.

Comedy trio The Boom Jennies come recommended by the crew of Abbas Tactus, who I ran into on the Mile, and also picked up four stars in ThreeWeeks, a not-for-profit newspaper that aims to review every single show at the Fringe. Others I’ve spoken to, however, said that while the Jennies’ performances were slick and got a good deal of laughs, their material felt a little safe.

Finally, the production team for I Love You, Bro (and, coincidentally, Mommie & the Minister) loaded me down with recommendation after recommendation when I collared them in trendy Hunter Square eaterie Chocolate Soup. They’re excited about a number of new musicals including Departure Lounge, The Butler Did It!? and Only the Brave – although I’ve since been told the latter feels unfinished. Also on their list were big-name acts such as Berkoff’s On the Waterfront, Total Theatre Award nominee Al Seed’s The Fooligan and Footsbarn’s take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, staged in their own big top. In fact the only negative feedback the I Love You, Bro team had was for UWE Drama Department’s attempt at Sarah Kane’s Cleansed. It seems the show defied description, because the only reaction I could get was a slow, wide-eyed shake of the head. One to miss, then?

On Sunday 3 August 2008, Edinburgh becomes the theatre capital of the United Kingdom. The annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe attracts the best and the barmiest of companies to show off, experiment and network for three weeks of non-stop plays and parties.

I’m a Fringe virgin. I’d never set foot in Edinburgh until last Friday. I’m here this year as company technician for Royal Holloway Theatre’s Darning Jilly, a modern re-imagining of the myths and legends surrounding Jack the Ripper. When I’m not pushing faders in the C SoCo Basement I’ll be seeing shows, walking the Royal Mile, talking to the public and the theatre community and reporting it all back home to the London Theatre Blog.

With over 2,000 shows playing over three weeks it’s near impossible to predict which will take off and which will ditch headfirst into the drink. At this stage all you can do is stick pins in the Fringe brochure or put your faith in big names. When the pin method can easily turn up Worst-Show-Title contenders like Kiddy-Fiddler on the Roof or I Kissed a Frog and it Gave me Herpes, I’m inclined to bet instead on Simon Stephens. He seems to hold the British monopoly on plays that answer big questions while also tenderly exploring the interpersonal lives of believable and subtly observed characters. His new play, Pornography, deals with the 2012 Olympics, the 7/7 Tube bombings and the growing gulfs between people in Britain today; it premieres at the Traverse Theatre on Saturday 2 August.

Also considered a guarantee of quality is The TEAM – they’ve won two Fringe First Awards in the past and great things are expected of their Architecting, also premiering at the Traverse.

The Royal Mile – a straight, cobbled street joining Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Abbey – is the traditional home of Fringe publicity. It’s impossible to beat the competition without showing your face to flyer on the Mile. When it comes to methods of promotion I’m expecting innovation and lunacy in equal measure – anything goes as long as it persuades bums onto seats. The Festival doesn’t officially start until Sunday 2 August, and most shows aren’t even previewing until Wednesday 30 July, yet some companies are already putting in the hours, hoping to beat the rush for punters’ attention. A group of people spotted on Saturday, sticking posters in shop windows while dressed in kimonos, turned out to be Mugensha Theatre Company, publicising their Japanese black comedy The Feast of the Ants at Rocket. Two lonesome members of the Alcock Players had the privilege of being the only people flyering the Mile on Monday; their show, Alcock Improv, is Cambridge’s answer to Whose Line Is It Anyway?, though how a show dependent on audience participation will fare with the average audience of 3 remains to be seen.

Those two Alcock flyerers had one last pre-Festival tip for me: Roy Walker, formerly of Catchphrase fame, is performing stand-up at Assembly on George Street. If his show, Goodbye, Mr Chips turns out to be the surprise hit of this year’s Fringe, don’t forget: Alcock Improv are to blame!

I was performing my act at a regular monthly comedy night. The night comprised mostly of character comedy and sketches. There was one small, angry Glaswegian lesbian who was…well, she was ok, if a little aggressive. She did deal with a drunken heckler* rather well though. But apart from her, there had been no other stand ups on the bill. I’m not a big fan of the stand up discipline myself. I often find it ‘in your face’, moany, very male dominated and often quite harsh. There are, of course, a few exceptions to this – Stewart Lee and Josie Long are among a handful of acts I would pay to see – but generally speaking I wouldn’t plan my evening around an event at the Comedy Store.

This night was different though. There was something in the air. Rhys Darby was headlining. He’s a kiwi comic who lived in the UK for 4 or 5 years, steadily working his way round the comedy circuit; making annual appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe until finally he made it to Hollywood. He plays a prominent role in The Flight of the Conchords – a cult TV comedy show that has taken the Internet by storm and has been a buzz word amongst comedians for the past year or so.

I had seen a couple of episodes of that show but didn’t really know what to expect from his solo work. In short, he was brilliant, amazing and as a friend said afterwards, ‘beautiful’. There was no ego attached to this man. No ‘Look at me, I’m showing off!’ What he was doing looked effortless. His material was original, entertaining and sharply executed. His act consisted of stunning sound effects with a very physical delivery. There was just so much to take in and I think that’s what made it for me; the sounds, the movement, the material. I stood for the entire 40 minutes beaming like a fool and when he finished I was speechless. His act changed the way I view stand ups and comedy.

Comedy doesn’t have to be racist, sexist, rude or political to get a reaction. It can simply be gentle, observational, harmless fun and can get just as many laughs, be just as hilarious. Like most comics, Darby has been performing the same material for years, but it’s his familiarity with the material and the slickness of his delivery that make him stand out. Proof that if you put the work in, eventually you will reap the rewards.

Watching a stand up perform new material can sometimes be quite a painful experience, but regardless of how cringeful it is, for the practitioner it’s invaluable. The only way to truly know whether your act is funny or not is to perform it in front of a live audience. You then discover what works, what can be cut, what needs tweaking. Practice makes perfect and once you’ve found that your material does (hopefully) work, you can really start to enjoy your time on stage.

Being comfortable with your subject matter and knowing it inside out gives you the freedom to play around with your delivery, your comic timing and sets you up, ready to tackle those drunken hecklers or, on a more positive note, affords you the time and space to ad lib and have fun with your audience. All these factors were present in Darby’s performance. He knew exactly what we wanted and delivered it spot on.

I don’t know whether I will get the opportunity again to see him in that kind of environment – a small pub theatre of about 70 people – but if you ever see his name on the bill of a comedy night near you, I highly recommend you go along and check out his beautiful comedy.

* The drunken heckler was a woman. In my, albeit small and limited, experience of the comedy world I have noticed that the drunken hecklers who seem to ruin a show are women. They seem to think that alcohol has given them super human powers that make their normal voices a whisper and have no qualms about starting up a conversation with the person sat next to them, behind them or even on stage in front of them!