It Can Only Get Better, Eh?

Thursday 10th August

Graeme and I went through ahead of Victoria who was meeting up with Lelita, the PR girl.

We can get in to see all the shows at the Paradise Green venues for nothing. It’s mainly theatre shows, so it’s not all up my street really, but we went to a couple anyway.

First off we saw, Help I’m a Teenager Get Me Out of Here! The show is performed and devised by the K6 Collective, a company of young actors from the Kett Sixth Form in Norwich.

Ant and Dec present binge drinking in the jungle. It’s intended to tour for young people to warn them of the dangers of alcohol. For an adult audience it is quite entertaining. There are a few laughs, the set design is very well done and the space is well used. The actors were uniformly excellent.

It managed to avoid the Legs Akimbo style of ‘message for kids’ theatre and it was a first class example of its genre.

We watched David McSavage put on an improvised show outside the Comedy Rooms to promote his 6pm gig. He does a bit of musical comedy and was very fuuny. His act mainly involved ridiculing passers by.

Though if Victoria is reading this by ‘we watched David McSavage’ I of course mean ‘we handed out flyers to many interested punters’.

We then went to see Behind Closed Doors. There is quite a clever technique in the production. Three audience members go onto the stage and watch the show from letterboxes behind closed doors. At certain points, the lead actress asks the people there, for a yes or no response as to what she should do next. Based on the consensus the play turns one way or the other.

Victoria and Lelita, our PR girl, were two of the three, along with a guy who looked like Napoleon Dynamite’s geeky younger brother. Now, let’s face it Graeme and I are behaving like a pair of giggling schoolboys throughout most of this Festival. So it was no surprise that we both nearly lost it during this serious production, when we could see Victoria’s headband popping up thru the letterbox.

The play begins with a girl being neglected by her mother at home and it ends in an S & M club. Victoria and Lelita enjoyed it, but it wasn’t for Graeme or me.

We had 14 in the door this evening, which isn’t that bad. I got chatting to a girl called Katharyne Harrnacker outside the venue who came in and sat in the front row. She has two plays on in there next week, Retail Paradise Princess and Out of a Suitcase.

In the two small venues there’s a spirit of supporting one another’s shows. We were stopped on the street by a cast member from Behind Closed Doors earlier in the day reminding us that they came to see us so we were due to go see thyem.

For our troubled scene we decided to switch positions on stage. We also decided to ‘improvise’, though this mainly just meant that no one was sure who was saying what next.

The audience really didn’t go for it. The silence was piercing.

The last couple of scenes get their laughs. Graeme and I basically play two real life cartoon characters in the penultimate scene and in the last one I get the privilege of coming on in costume, dressed as I am, as a polar bear. Funnily I quite enjoy being in there. Cos you’re in a daft costume, simple little movements get laughs.

We went to drown our sorrows again in Rush. When we got there we discovered a stand-up night full of Glasgow comedians. One of whom was Jason Arnstein who write and performs in Sabotage. Another was Viv Gee. Viv is in a play called Falling For Grace at the Café Royale and we arranged to go see each other’s shows.

Big Keith from The Office was in again, giving the puggy a good hammering.