The Promise of Fun

I guess this is becoming a comedy-centric first week for me, because the second show of the festival that I've managed to see was also comedy - which is not usually a medium I pay particular attention to at the Edinburgh Festival - but this show combined with the joy of seeing Thom's show last night have really opened my eyes to how playful and innovative comedy can be. It's really not a million miles away from experimental theatre - it just promises fun, whereas ET doesn't. (It doesn't always deliver, of course, but it makes the promise, and that's what matters.) This fun-promise is probably the big reason that comedy does better than any other art form in Edinburgh. And last night and tonight the promises were kept!

The show I enjoyed so thoroughly was Claudia O'Doherty's show "What is Soil Erosion" at Teviot Gilded Balloon. I'd seen this show the year before, and based on that experience I quite deliberately brought along a member of the experimental theatre company Tinned Fingers to see it with me, because, as I told her, if the Tinned Fingers were to make comedy, I think it would look something like Claudia's show. I couldn't even gage if my friend was enjoying it or not because I was too busy hogging all the laughter for myself. I laughed an embarrassing amount. At one point I started laughing uncontrollably about the silliness of the concept of the show. She wasn't even making a particular joke at that point - I just started laughing at the absurdity of the idea of the show - which is something that probably only ever also happens to me while watching "Kids in the Hall." And Conor, one of the Scottish friends in the flat whose couch I sleep on every festival, has made it clear that I should point out that she was also wearing a great outfit.

Speaking of Fun promises - kept or not - one of the unexpected effects of this writing-a-blog post-every-late-night-of-the-festival-thing is that often I type it in the kitchen and often, just as I'm about to try and get profound about whatever silly thing I'm typing, the flatmates come home and distracting but enjoyable things happen. Tonight is a sing along of a series of soft rock songs (Boston's "More Than A Feeling") and the reveal of a crossword puzzle on the table with only one word written in - "Prostate."

So with that I'll leave you for this evening.

And I'll play you out with this... Sing along!