Pleasance Press Launch

Saturday 6 August, 2011

Pleasance Grand

10.40am

It often pays to have friends in high places. Or rather with friends in high places, you don’t have to pay. Courtesy of Miss Sophie Tolley and her job at the Pleasance, we landed ourselves complementary tickets for the last of the venue press launches by Edinburgh’s ‘big four’: Assembly, Guilded Balloon, Underbelly and Pleasance. 

On entry, Aindrias de Staic’s slightly dubious folk violin was easily usurped by the first act; charming songstress, Camille O’Sullivan. Her sultry voice effortlessly mesmerized the audience with an unaccompanied rendition of Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam, followed by an equally enthralling and no less theatrical interpretation of The Ship Song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

However, like a butterfly being followed by a warthog, Nick Helm’s somewhat abrasive entrance was a little bit of a shock to the system. Screaming, ‘Do you like jokes? DO YOU LIKE JOKES?’ repeatedly at a bleary-eyed 11am audience may have seemed like a sure-fire way to piss everyone off, but his expert timing and crude delivery quickly won over the now fully-awake spectators.

Unfortunately, this left a rather hard task for Henry Paker, whose genteel comedy seemed weak and slow in comparison. Yet kudos to him as he only started stand up in 2006, although perhaps he needs slightly more originality and slightly less Michael McIntyre-ness.

Comedy was followed by theatre, and Steven Berkoff (complete with dodge Scottish accent) introduced an excerpt from his adaptation, Oedipus. Firmly sitting in the physical theatre camp, the disturbing choreography and haunting subject matter indicate that this is one thing to catch on the Fringe this year.

Pleasance director Anthony Anderson then came on with a rather clumsy ‘thank you’ speech. Basing his address on various ‘c-words’ – cobbles, Candida, and Kermit (?) to name but a few – as we came to ‘c-word-number-fifteen’, you rather hoped he would shriek an obscenity and be done with it. However, he was joined by charming magician Pete Firman, who managed to wile the reluctant Anderson into a guillotine, along with a couple of unsuspecting carrots.

Sheeps was on next; a ‘sort of sketch group’ whose awkward self-conscious humour left many in the audience cold. However, the softly spoken drawl of New York comic Hannibal Buress smoothly won the audience over. Looking as though he was enjoying himself as much as the audience, this is certainly the hands down hot ticket at the Pleasance this year.

Bringing the event to a close, all male a capella group Out of the Blue shimmied their way through a Bon Jovi and Final Countdown medley before rounding off with the Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody. Hailing from Oxford University, it was more the ‘mathletes’ than The Monkees and although we may have been spoiled by the glitz and glam of Glee, to be frank it was difficult to get excited about these somewhat mediocre musical misfits.

For more details visit www.edfringe.com or http://www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh