This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

Shane Koyczan: Talk Rocker was the first show to make me cry at the Fringe. There, I’ve said it. I’m not much of a crier normally. I have a reputation in my family for having a heart of stone. I didn’t even cry during the episode of The Royle Family where Nana dies. I’m basically subhuman.

But Koyczan’s poetry did something to me. He had a difficult childhood: raised by his grandparents, bullied throughout his youth, but don’t think for one second his poems are maudlin. They’re authentic, wise, wry and sparklingly funny, despite the heart-wringing content. Koyczan doesn’t ‘milk’ his past but utilizes it to form poems of rare depth and insight into the human heart, from first love and night terrors to the bonds of friendship and heavy weight of bereavement.

His delivery is understated, his quiet voice leaving audiences hanging on the lyrical beauty of his language. He seemed delighted that so many people turned up to hear him read. It’s touching to witness such a talented individual display genuine modesty. Shane Koyczan rocks.

Shane Koyczan: Talk Rocker, Underbelly. Until 27 August, 7.30pm.

This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

The great thing about producing a show with a legendary band/singer/actor in the title is that you have a potential ready-made fan base. Half a Person: My Life As Told By The Smiths should, theoretically speaking at least, draw in Smiths and Morrissey obsessives. Somewhere Under the Rainbow: The Liza Minnelli Story should do likewise for followers of the Queen of Broadway, and Oliver Reed: Wild Thing should appeal to those who appreciate the exploits of the boozy scoundrel.

The downside is, of course, that if you dislike a group or person and their name is in the title of a show then that show is unlikely to feature on your list of things to see at the Fringe. When I interviewed Joe Murray, star of Half a Person, I asked him if he thought it was necessary for audience members to be Smiths fans: ‘I think knowledge of, or love for, The Smiths certainly helps, but I don’t think it’s a necessity. I think it’s a fairly charming and touching story in its own right. I’ve had people dragged along to it that hate Morrissey, but have really enjoyed the show.’

To a certain extent, I disagree with Joe. I adored the show, certainly not just because I’m a Smiths fan, but if I actively disliked their music then I wouldn’t have gone along with the story the way I did. The songs would have interrupted my enjoyment of the otherwise excellent plot and stellar acting. The Smiths are viewed by their detractors as miserable, and Morrissey’s evangelical vegetarianism and provocative political statements infuriate many. The chances of one of these people going to see Half a Person are about as slim as Morrissey’s waistline circa-1985.

But sometimes it does pay to take a risk. Morrissey-haters might flinch at the thought of Half a Person, but who knows? Seeing the show might just change their opinion of his music. In fact, disliking his music might not actually get in the way of the haters’ enjoyment of the play. Personally speaking, it’s often my own ignorance that stops me giving shows a chance.

Throughout this month I’ve been sent to review shows I wouldn’t have gone a mile near if I hadn’t been told to, and I have absolutely loved many of them (a puppet show about Hiroshima, anyone?). So next year, when I’m no longer reviewing and am back to being a Fringe punter, I’m going to try my best to see shows I’d normally avoid.

That’s another thing that writing for Fringebiscuit has taught me: be more open-minded, take a few chances. The clue isn’t always in the title.

This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

Half a Person: My Life As Told By The Smiths tells the story of William, a young man obsessed by The Smiths (and himself), who is torn between two people: the red-lipped, black-haired, dour Salomé and his best friend, gentle playwright Rick. Lolling on couches, slugging red wine and generally feeling sorry for himself whilst listening to Smiths LPs, William (played by twenty-three year old Joe Murray from Cross Cut Theatre Company) faces infatuation, heartache and a final terrible loss. I met up with Joe in a rather chaotic Black Medicine on Nicholson Street to talk Mozzer, Britishness and bloody critics (!).

I was curious to discover whether Joe had been a fan of the Smiths before he became part of the show – as a diehard Smiths fan myself it seemed the natural place to start. ‘I’ve been a Smiths fan since I was about 17 when I read the NME’s Queen is Dead anniversary edition. Never quite to William’s level, but I certainly got even more into them from doing the show. I’ve become a fairly massive geek on the subject.’

Joe’s vocals and movements when performing the Smiths songs sprinkled throughout the show are testament to this geekiness. Learning the singer’s mannerisms must have been a challenging task; how does one performer mimic another without slipping into karaoke or caricature? ‘I watched a LOT of Morrissey performances and interviews on YouTube and I listened to The Smiths pretty much non-stop. We really wanted it to be William singing the songs, not a sort of bad Smiths cover band. I think the way Morrissey sings is very hard to replicate anyway. Movement-wise, I just had to really commit to it. If you go about it feeling worried about looking awkward, that’s when it looks naff.’

Half a Person is written by Australian playwright Alex Broun, and the original play was set in Melbourne. In this version the story has been relocated to London/Manchester. ‘I think the show has really benefited from being anglicised. The Smiths are so iconic and so synonymous with a sort of “Britishness” that it was a fairly easy job. I think that’s part of the show’s charm now, so if we were to take it overseas I think that would be a major selling point. I think it adds authenticity.’

The show has received a wide range of responses. Fringebiscuit gave the show four stars, the Quotidian Times five stars, The Stage was full of praise for Joe’s performance but not the play itself, and Broadway Baby went for 1 star. I think this disparity may have something to do with the fact that if you hate The Smiths/Morrissey you may automatically hate this play and, on the flip side, if you’re a massive Smiths/Morrissey fan you’ll probably love it. (This question of ready-made fans/detractors is the subject for another blog. Stay tuned).

Half a Person is a wonderful, touching and funny show, and the songs are beautifully and lovingly performed. Go see it, swig some red wine, loll in your seat, and revel in the talent of The Smiths. And as for Joe – he’s a charming man (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Half a Person: My Life As Told By The Smiths, Zoo Southside, 17-27 August, 7.50pm

This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

Ever had a foil cloak wrapped round you and Nutella smeared on your arm? Ever been handed a box of soothing tea because you look ‘fragile’? Ever had balloons thrown in your face and your laptop chucked in a binliner? I’ve had all these things (and more) done to me at the Fringe and we’re not even halfway through. I feel thoroughly abused.

These sort of experiences take me outside the performance. They don’t make me feel part of it, which is what I think they usually intend to do. I feel conspicuous, sometimes downright embarrassed, and spend the rest of the show worrying what might happen next. Because of this, I feel unable to give my full attention to the actual content, as much as I wish to, and as a reviewer this isn’t helpful.

If you’d told me these things would happen to me here I might never have applied to be a Biscuiteer. And yet… I’ve actually started to enjoy the abuse. Is that weird? I’ve developed a sort of Fringe Stockholm Syndrome; I begin to love the performers who rough me up the most.

One tip I’ve learned for avoiding being singled out is to never let a performer know you’re from the press. I stupidly asked comedian Martin Mor for directions to the press office. It wasn’t my fault. I knocked on a door which said ‘staff only’ on it and it was just him inside. I couldn’t think of an excuse on the spot so spent the next hour squirming in my seat. He was mercifully kind to me, although he did make fun of the name Fringebiscuit (bloody cheek).

I was beside myself with glee when Tim Key asked me to test his bathwater during Masterslut, which featured an on-stage bubble-bath with a bottle of Radox perched on its edge. I rose from my seat, approached the bath, and stooped slightly to dip my hand in the water. ‘It’s perfect’, I said. Key smiled. He asked me how I ‘take’ my bath, with both water and Radox? I answered yes and he agreed that ‘neat’ Radox would be a bit much. He asked me what I do in the bath. I told him I listened to Radio 4 (Key is a regular on Radio 4. He knew it. I knew it. An unspoken understanding formed between us). He said something about cricket and lost me a little, if truth be told. Then he asked me what I read and I told him my Kindle (which in retrospect was a bit vague, should’ve said Kurt Vonnegut or something) and he told me he listened to Russian ballads and I told him I’d never heard any of those and he told me to sit back in my seat.

But the bond had been established. A little later, Key showed an image of a pornographic playing-card on the screen. It was of a muscled man. He handed the card to me and asked me if I liked it. I told him I did and he commented on the way I bit my lip while I said this. This was one of the most erotic moments of my life.

Later, as the show ended, I got (what I like to think was) an extra-special hug from him (wet, bear-like), and he popped a sugar cube into my mouth. I actually tasted his fingers. They tasted of Radox.

So I’m embracing this whole audience interaction thing now. It can be exciting, it can heighten experiences and, if nothing else, will leave you with lasting (albeit potentially awkward) memories of the Fringe.

But oh sweet lord: no more Nutella please. And hands off my gadgetry.

This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

The Banshee Labyrinth is a sweaty underground maze. Its doors and stairways are narrow, its ceilings low, the rooms oppressively small and dark. It’s brilliant.

Well, it is for a bit.

It isn’t quite as brilliant after six solid hours, which is the length of time I stayed in the same small room last Tuesday. I watched, in succession, Lucy Ayrton’s gorgeous Lullabies to Make Your Children Cry, Tea-Fuelled’s fantastic (two hour long) Slam Poetry Flea Circus, and the witty wordsmithery of Jack Heal’s Murderthon. By the time I was done, my pint in the upstairs bar was much-needed. Don’t get me wrong, the performers were great, but the room was a sauna by the end, and there are only so many moist, hairy men’s arms a gal wants pressed against her in one night.

This got me thinking about venues, and how they affect performers and audiences.  There are certain venues I dread going to. Many of the Underbelly Cowgate rooms are dank and stinking. Their ceilings leak and their stone walls glisten. I’ve seen roasting-hot performers actually steam in those rooms, like horses after a race. Shows like Jonny and the Baptists are so good I quite frankly wouldn’t care if they took place in a sewer, but some shows that I’ve quite liked, like Letter to the Man From the Boy, would certainly have been more enjoyable in a more pleasant venue.

There’s a bit of a noise-pollution issue at Surgeon’s Hall. During a few performances there, such asThe House of Shadows, I’ve heard the chatter of people milling about outside as well as the chastising ‘ssshhh!’ of the venue staff. Lack of closing doors in the Banshee Labyrinth also allows noise to interfere with performances, and during the Flea Circus this did irritate me.

A couple of the spaces in Summerhall are just plain weird: cold, bare and uncomfortable, though this has actually suited the wonderfully experimental feel of the shows I’ve so far seen there, such asHow a Man Crumbled. The surreal, unsettling nature of that performance was heightened by the bizarre space.

My enjoyment of the excellent Midnight at the Boar’s Head was marred by the awkward setting within Zoo Southside. The performers had to move clumsily around tables and chairs in a too-small space, and the audience had no access to the bar which was such an integral part of the show. I gave the show 3 stars but I feel that, within a more appropriate space, it would gain more than that. It’s not the performers’ fault, but space is important to this show and its interactive quality.

There are some stunning venues. Bedlam Theatre is a beauty, as is Merchant’s Hall. The seats are comfy, the carpets plush, the décor just lovely.  Gilded Balloon, Pleasance, Assembly and C venues have all been perfectly pleasant so far. But whether this has increased my enjoyment of the shows I’ve seen in these places is unclear. If a show is great it doesn’t matter where it’s set, and if a show is terrible no amount of comfort or jazzy décor will redeem it. But issues of noise pollution and discomfort can knock the edge off an otherwise great experience, and if a space is all wrong for a show it can set it off-kilter.

But this is all part of the beauty of the Fringe. In order to fully experience its highs and lows you need to feel the slick of a stranger’s perspiration against your own overheated flesh. Just sit back, enjoy the show and try not to think about what you’d do in the event of a fire.

This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

Luke Wright’s Fringe shows sell out each year, and when you witness the performance poet in action it’s easy to see why. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreakingly poignant, Wright’s witty and direct style, punchy use of rhythm and rhyme, and strong connection to the way we live in Britain today has garnered him a larger audience than most poets can dream of (as well as more 5 star reviews than you can shake a stick at). After the success of 2011′s Cynical Ballads, I spoke to Wright about his 2012 show Your New Favourite Poet to find out what he hopes to achieve this year.

Your poems hold up a mirror to Britain today: its media, political figures, class system and so on. Do you think that poetry should be relevant and timely in this way, and will Your New Favourite Poet continue in this vein?

Your New favourite Poet does continue in this vein. I have a long ballad about Raoul Moat and the media’s involvement in that case. I also have a jaunty ottava rima poem about a certain notorious political couple who befell a terrible scandal in the late 90s and then turned that into an opportunity for tabloid fame. The other poems are less political. The theme of this show, if there is one, is Britishness, but it’s more light-hearted over all. It’s got a greater sense of fun than Cynical Ballads.

In regards the relevant/timely issue – I don’t think poetry SHOULD be any one thing. My work engages with society, often through the prism of media, so it feels very contemporary. In 100 years time the work will suffer more than most because of this. I think people are surprised to see poetry engaging with public discourses because at school we are introduced to old poetry that has stood the test of time. Therefore contemporary stuff that places itself in the here and now feels alien, but it’s not. Poets like Pope and Swift were doing what I’m doing now in the 18th century, Shakespeare is full of puns on contemporary issues and slang, Tennyson famously wrote Charge of the Light Brigade after reading an article in the Times. It was a biting satire on a military fuck-up, no different from poems berating Blair for Iraq today.

You mentioned Britishness as being the theme of Your New Favourite Poet. Your poems do seem to show a real pride in, and affection for, normal, unprivileged British lives (mentions of 3-bar fires and TV Quicks remind me of Morrissey’s lyrics). You also attack snobbery throughout your poems. How important is class to your work?

The single worst thing with the world is distribution of wealth. Pretty much everything, for me at least, comes back to the fact that, as Jarvis Cocker would put it, “cunts are still running the world.” The class system is a very visible and ugly symptom of that. It’s malicious and cruel. It also has lots of easily identifiable stereotypes which lend themselves to the kind of poetry I like to write. I don’t always sit down and think I’m going to write about class but invariably it creeps in there because it is so ingrained in the country I am writing about.

This strong connection to the country you live in reflects the direct connection you have with your audience. You’re extremely ‘out there’ with your poetry (on YouTube, the BBC, Channel 4, Latitude, the Fringe and so on) which goes against the cliché of the tortured, introverted poet. Is performance integral to your work, and would/could you write without it?

There’s no doubt that my style has been influenced by the performance of my work. I hit upon ballads as a form of writing in because I believe the seven beat gap between rhymes is perfect for live performance. If you watch these battle raps the kids are going crazy for you’ll notice a lot of the disses drop in at a rough seven beats after the last rhyme. It works, it seems ingrained in us. The Victorians would declaim their poetry, it was just something they did. They’d write it then say it out loud. We lost that with modernism but I think it’s creeping back in. Even the most hardened ‘page poet’ (I don’t like these crude distinctions as most of the best stuff straddles page and stage, but for argument’s sake) has to do readings now to boost book sales. I was talking to Hugo Williams about this not so long ago and he said that getting a reading was a very rare thing in his early days. His first one came after his second collection was published and they were very stuffy, intimidating affairs. He was told to wait on a hard wooden bench outside with his suit and tie and gravely called in after some time. The thing is, this idea of the tortured poet angsting in his garret is the exception that proves the rule that working poets are, these days, increasingly sociable creatures adept at reading their own work and often plugged into social media.

This angst-ridden, introverted vibe is absent in your work, though some of your past work does seem highly confessional (for example ‘Company of Men’). Do you enjoy placing yourself inside your work or do you prefer to put some distance between yourself and your poems?

Company of Men is an old piece. It’s from my 2007 show Poet & Man and that was a very confessional show. I did two confessional shows. I think I did it because it was very much in vogue (it’s that Apples & Snakes model of “here is me, here is my story.”) I guess a lot of stand-ups do it too. I had experimented with a poem about teaching workshops that was quite soppy at the end in my debut show in 2006. After that my director and a few other industry types convinced me that it would be good to explore a more personal angle. I don’t regret it. I still write plenty of personal pieces (though a lot of these tend to be shorter, more sober pieces that work better on the page). However, for the last couple of shows I’ve really enjoyed creating characters and stories and then letting my personality come across in a firm and ironic narrative voice, glossing over details and giving my opinions in the way a creative writing guidebook would tell a novelist to avoid at all costs. It’s not that I have issues with talking about myself, but there is limit to how much of my life is interesting enough to mine for material every year. And of course, in something like Chris & Ann’s Fish Bar, which was the centre piece of Cynical Ballads, I am mining my own experiences and emotions to write those tender scenes, as indeed any writer does.

This sort of engaging poetry is rife in this year’s Fringe, across comedy, theatre and the new spoken word category, yet (even very good) poetry sells a fraction of the amount that (even very bad) novels do. Can this change, and do you think shows like Your New Favourite Poet help the cause?

Performing your work will help you gain an audience. Novels sell well because essentially the greatest tool a writer has is story, narrative. Poems tend to be moments. Moments can be much, much more powerful. They can stay with us (as indeed can a great moment in a novel) but they don’t make us turn the pages in the same way, they don’t keep us on the edge of our seats. Poetry is closer to philosophy and/or religion (not in a spiritual way, rather a meditative and epiphanic way). The casual reader of poetry tends to love poems that say something they felt but were not able to articulate. The more one gets into poetry the more it becomes about style. No poet has ever told me anything that I didn’t already know or could look up, but the way they say it, well, that’s a different matter. People scoff at the idea of style over content, but in poetry, for me at least, it’s all about style. So, while anyone can pick up a novel and be thrilled by the story, the content, I think poetry rewards the reader who perseveres and develops their appreciation of language and style. It’s less instantly gratifying than most prose and for that reason I think it will always be less popular. That said, it is short and lends itself well to new media for that reason, so that is no doubt helping poetry get out there more. Plus if you’re telling stories and your work is more accessible, as mine is, there’s no reason why you can’t develop a larger audience.

Luke Wright – Your New Favourite Poet, Underbelly, Cowgate. 22-26 August, 18.30

This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

The challenge of celebrating literary legends in theatre is a tough one. How do you capture the essence of a much-celebrated writer whilst simultaneously maintaining the integrity of their material and creating something that is fresh and new? Two of the shows I’ve so far reviewed at the Fringe – Joyced! and Dylan Thomas: Return Journey – manage to achieve this, though they do it in different ways.

Joyced! takes us through a year in the life of James Joyce (1904), when the writer was twenty-two years old.  We experience this through the eyes of Dublin market stallholder JoJo, who is obsessed with all things Joycean. JoJo performs a host of characters from Joyce’s world, including his difficult father, his lover Nora Barnacle and a ragtag bunch of Dublin greats and grotesques.

Katie O’Kelly slips from one character to another with skilful dexterity, from old frail ladies to drunken brutes. Her unstinting energy and her deft control of her voice and movements avoid the confusion audiences might feel when faced with such a rapid onslaught of different personae. The language feels utterly Joycean – rich, authentic and exquisitely lyrical – but the wonderfully inventive and unique plot avoids unfair comparisons with Joyce’s writing; the show exists on its own terms. Donal O’Kelly’s script does not try to ape Joyce, but rather celebrates him with integrity, wit and finesse. In this way, Joyced! becomes a fitting homage to the man himself.

Dylan Thomas: Return Journey was originally directed by Anthony Hopkins, and serves as his interpretation of the sell-out American tours the Welsh poet embarked on towards the end of his life. Blending a selection of Thomas’s stories, poems and anecdotes, the play is performed as if it is one of Thomas’s lectures so that the actor, Bob Kingdom, actually becomes Thomas. He touches on childhood memories, his relationship with his wife Caitlin, his literary career, his endless flight from his considerable debts, and reads a number of poems including ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ and ‘Fern Hill’.

Kingdom’s appearance, voice, mannerisms and style of address are uncannily like the man he is playing. The imitation doesn’t fall short, and the bulk of the play’s power comes from this astonishing likeness. Every sound and gesture Kingdom makes is full of the wit, pomp and undeniable charisma possessed by the poet during his lifetime.

So whilst Joyced! creates an entirely new story in order to celebrate the life and literary spark of James Joyce, Dylan Thomas: Return Journey takes from the stories Thomas already created during his life, shaping them into an original work. Both cherry-pick from the biography and writing of their respective heroes with astonishing results.

Go see these marvellous plays and celebrate the bountiful talent of both the living and the dead.

Joyced is on at Assembly George Square until 27 August, 16:45; Dylan Thomas:Return Journey is on at Assembly Hall until 27 August, 14:45. 

This first appeared on fringebiscuit.co.uk

In past years spoken word acts have been quite the nomads of the Edinburgh Fringe, sprinkled throughout theatre, cabaret and comedy sections without a home of their own. But this year the Fringe Society has finally put a roof over their heads, and spoken word has its very own category in the Fringe Guide.

Which begs the question: just what is spoken word anyway?

I asked George Lewkowicz, creative director of Tea Fuelled arts collective, this very question. He seemed a good man to ask, not least because I’m from Fringebiscuit and George is from Tea Fuelled and what could be a more perfect union than tea and biscuits?

Tea Fuelled are putting on four spoken word shows this year. George himself stars in Superbard Starts to Save the World, directs Lucy Ayrton’s Lullabies to Make Your Children Cry and Jack Heal’s Murderthon, and comperes the Flea Circus Open Slam. Busy fella.

This is what he had to say: ‘I would define spoken word as: a performer speaking their own words directly to the audience. Theatre often doesn’t use this direct method of address, and if it does, it’s by an actor rather than the writer themself.

‘Comedy is often a looser, less scripted form, and there’s less of an emphasis on the words and more of a focus on getting a laugh. This usually means spoken word is storytelling or poetry, and it’s often comic, but by no means exclusively so.

‘It’s a broad church and the boundaries are fuzzy, so at Tea Fuelled we think it comes down to the performers themselves; if they say they’re spoken word, they’re spoken word.’

So there you have it. It’s about where the words stem from; about the words themselves as much as the effect they have, and ultimately it’s about how the performer regards themself. Which is why it’s so wonderful that audiences now have the means to target the kind of shows they want to see, and that performers have found a place to call their own.

Spoken word performers, enjoy your new home. I love what you’ve done with the place.