There's a pleasingly large monkey presence at this year's Fringe. Clare Dowie is performing Year Of The Monkey, an adaptation of the article about my visit to Hong Kong earlier this year. Monkey House Cabaret promises the "best, funniest, strangest and worst" Fringe acts. And then there's the comedy group called Spymonkey, who are following up their success in last year's Fringe with a new show called Cooped. Unfortunately, nobody seems to like Cooped very much. Luckily for them, they're also bringing back last year's show - Stiff - for a limited run, and everyone seems to like that a lot: at 11.30 on a Friday morning, the second-largest venue in the Pleasance complex is completely full, and deservedly so.
Stiff is the closest thing I've seen to old-fashioned music hall comedy this year. Actor Toby Park claims at the start to have written a moving, tragic piece about the nature of loss, concerning the people who work in the Graves funeral parlour: unfortunately, he's hired Aitor Basauri, Stephan Kriess and Petra Massey to perform it with him, and their lack of RADA training comes through in the way they piss about at every possible opportunity. The verbal gags are seriously vaudeville stuff, pointed up by the comic Spanish and German accents of Basauri and Kreiss. There's some inspired use of props and sets for great physical comedy, and the fact that they're all natural clowns helps: particularly Massey, who steals the show with her ludicrous improvised dance number. You don't normally get people laughing this long and hard at half eleven on a Friday morning, and when they do it should be celebrated.
By this point I haven't attended a show in the presence of the Pals for a good 24 hours. It happens: we're all individuals whose tastes just happen to coincide in a number of areas, and on Thursday we all went off to see different things. So I make a point of joining Lesley and SeaPea for the film My Best Fiend, even though I've already got it back home on DVD. This is Werner Herzog's 1999 documentary about his relationship with the actor Klaus Kinski, with whom he made five films before the latter's death in 1991.
Let's not mince words here: Kinski was mental. The opening scene of him ranting on one of his 'Jesus tours' (from a period during the seventies when he'd pack out sports stadia with people eager to hear him pretending to be a Mad Christ) should get that point across quickly, and the subsequent stories of his crazed antisocial behaviour emphasise it. The reason why Herzog worked so well with him is that Herzog's just as mental, only a lot more quiet about it: something that the tribespeople he worked with on Fitzcarraldo astutely noticed, as they confessed to be more afraid of the director than the star.
Herzog revisits the locations of their collaborations in this documentary, offering his own reminiscences and interviewing people who survived filming with Kinski. He's careful to emphasise how much of a two-way love-hate relationship this was, notably around the time that both men independently hatched plots to have the other one killed. Herzog's nicely self-deprecating throughout: there's a long clip of a 1980 interview in which he babbles in a hilariously pretentious fashion about the jungle, which even he must admit sounds rather silly now.
But the thing you bring away from My Best Fiend is the absolute love Herzog feels for Kinski, despite the stories of his atrocious behaviour. Crucially, when it comes to showing clips of Kinski's acting from the movies, he always includes good long extracts (several minutes apiece) to emphasise just what an intensely brilliant actor he could be on his day. And the final image is utterly beautiful: home movie footage of Kinski delicately playing with a butterfly, letting it hop from finger to finger as he smiles beatifically. The Film Festival has been running Herzog documentaries at lunchtimes for the last two weeks now: it's a bit late, but I wish I'd seen a few more.
Next up, the first part of a Messiah On Wheeled Transport double bill. Jesus Hopped The A Train is another one of those insanely hot theatre tickets on the Fringe this year: possibly in part because of the association with actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who directed this production for the LAByrinth Theater Company. Angel (Joe Quintero) has shot and killed a religious cult leader, and is currently residing in a New York prison cell awaiting trial. He spends his time talking to cellmate Lucius (Ron Cephas Jones): Lucius has murdered eight people, shows no real remorse and claims to have found God. Who's better? Discuss.
I suspect it's the quality of the performances that is drawing people to this play. Stephen Aldy Guirgis' lines are only occasionally memorable - "be flaming, be freezing, but don't ever be cool" - but are delivered with absolute conviction and passion by the cast of five. In particular, the confrontations between Angel and Lucius have a genuine dramatic intensity that takes the top of your head off. It's only in the cold light of day afterwards that you realise there's nothing particularly new being said here: but the force of the acting carries it through. This may seem like dodgy sleight-of-hand on the part of the cast and director, but it worked for me.
Spank and the Pals met Brian Appleton in a pub recently. We'd attended a taping of a radio version of his 1999 History Of Rock 'N' Roll show, and were predictably sitting in the pub afterwards when he walked in and chatted to us for ten minutes. Jolly nice bloke too. I said after his debut performance two years ago that it was hard to see where the character could go from here: unfortunately, it looks like his creator Graham Fellows is having the same difficulty.
Let's Look At Sound starts out as a lecture on sound recording techniques, mutates into a series of recordings of songs for Appleton's new album, and degenerates into a series of whinges about his ongoing domestic problems with aromatherapist Wendy (not to mention the pending lawsuits from rock stars libelled by the first show). The problem is that History Of Rock 'N' Roll managed to meld the rock trivia, music parodies and domestic soap opera into a single seamless whole: here the joins are plainly visible, and the show has to painfully change gear a number of times as it tries to be three things at once. The anal music references are still enjoyable, and there are some nice new songs (notably the telephone chatline anthem Single Mums Welcome), but this is still pretty thin stuff.
Next up, the second part of a Messiah On Wheeled Transport double bill. Christ On A Bike! is the latest show by Richard Herring: regular readers will be aware that he's an unofficial (and probably wholly unknowing) patron of this site since he wrote a letter to me about my review of the 1998 Lee and Herring show. This solo piece is a crystallisation of the atheism that's been a major theme of his work for years. Herring's Christian parents are a little tired of his incessant God-bashing, and ask him why he spends so much time going on about something he doesn't believe in. This triggers off a train of thought about the nature of Christianity, and the observation that one of Jesus' key themes in his life was his scorn for those who concentrated on the minutiae of the Jewish faith and missed the bigger picture. Why did he spend so much time going on about something he didn't believe in? Are there other similarities between Jesus Christ and Richard Herring? And is it possible to draw the obvious conclusion from all this, that Herring is the returned Messiah? As he tactfully points out, "that is for others to say."
This is Herring's first stand-up performance for some time - his last few Edinburgh appearances have either been in collaboration with Stewart Lee or as part of the company performing one of his plays. Even disregarding his being my showbiz mate, I can honestly say this is his best work for ages. There are some terrific setpiece rants in here, notably a long section in which he undermines the entire Christian faith by pointing out that the first page of the New Testament has a mistake in it. Lots of silly running gags, thirtysomething cultural references and cheerful offensiveness as usual, including (following Mark Thomas earlier this week) the second reference to having sex with Mother Theresa in this year's Fringe. "When she was alive, of course. Not now. Now, you'd need a spade, some time and a suitably jaded moral outlook. [pause] Just the spade to get, then..."
Six separate events in one day is probably a little overambitious, and the strain starts to show during the last one, Claire Denis' film Trouble Every Day. Answer me this: how is it possible to make a film in which Beatrice Dalle fucks and eats a number of men, and make it so bloody boring? I don't have an answer for that one, unfortunately, as I was drifting in and out of sleep all the way through the middle third. I know that Dalle spends most of the film locked in some doctor's house for protection: I know that Vincent Gallo and his new wife have just flown into town at the start of the movie: but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you how they were connected. I do know that at least an hour of the film passed before we got any of the fucking and eating action we'd been promised, and even then it's limited to two comparatively short scenes buried within 90 minutes of tedium. And why do people think Vincent Gallo is such hot stuff anyway? He's incredibly ugly, he can't act for toffee, and you just know from looking at him that if you were in a confined space with him, he'd smell.
The day closes back at the flat with a beautifully bohemian scene. It's 2am, and we're all slumped around the room drinking the last of our wine. Mac Tontoh's CD is playing cool African rhythms on my laptop. The window's wide open, and Lesley is sitting in it writing a review and smoking a fag. And a pissed-up young bloke is standing outside shouting to ask if we've got any "chaff". Unless Costcutters sell it, we can't help you, pal.
Notes From Spank's Pals
The 2 Muses - An Englishman In New York: Resident Alien is an endearing portrait by the talented Bette Bourne, a friend of Quentin Crisp, who also bears a close resemblance to him, skilfully assuming his personality. The filthy flat in East Village Manhattan was brilliantly recreated, and Bourne's portrayal of a doddery 90-year-old was inspired. Bette Bourne is a master of the dramatic pause, used while he painstakingly peeled a potato for his unappetising lunch - "endless possibilities in an egg". His apt and perceptive observations of the human condition, encompassing love and sex, are warm and human - we have all been there! Quentin Crisp - a lovely, warm, philosophical human being.
Lesley - The UK premiere of The State I Am In, a film by Christian Petzold. From the programme: "A family tale more indebted to Baader-Meinhof than the Brady Bunch... 15 year old Jeanne is a typical adolescent... which would be fine, except that her mother and father are former terrorists, wanted by the State since the late 1970s: as a result her entire life consists of being dragged from one temporary hiding place to another." I loved this film, and am worried that its theme may be historically redundant. In retrospect, the most moving message of the film is that the net is drawing in on Jeanne's parents just as she is trying to find her own way towards independence, yet totally inculcated into loyalty to her parents and their fragile existence. The implication is that all her tentative reaching out beyond her parents' situation is part of the web bringing her parents to justice. A beautifully crafted and acted film. I most sincerely hope that this film is appreciated by people.
The 2 Muses - An excellent young group perfectly recreated the aura associated with Noel Coward in Mad Dogs And Englishmen. A synopsis of his life punctuated by his well-known songs gave us an afternoon of pure unadulterated pleasure. A delightful frothy confection beautifully executed by an extremely talented quintet.
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