Overheard Festival Conversations No. 23
“He said he’d sucked off a horse….”

Unfortunately, that was the conversation I was involved in and the person that overheard it was the poor chap collecting glasses at the Udderbelly. Ok, I’ll explain... eventually ;oP

It’s begun again. Overnight the city of Edinburgh has gone mad. Sometime between me going home from work and venturing out again on Friday night a load of loonies snuck into town. I was idly looking out of my kitchen window while doing the dishes and noted the passing of, among others, a tall, skinny, scraggly-bearded man toting a six-foot long brass wind instrument and a lady wearing 3 hats. I wonder how many other kitchen windows in how many other cities you can hope to see such a sight from?

Well, they do say “When in Rome…” and having studied the Roman Empire at University I know that when the Romans came to town everyone flipping well did what the Romans did then too. So, with that spirit in mind, Emily and I had our annual day of Festival Fun. Hoorah!

As per usual we started our day with a bit of culture, caffeine and croissants courtesy of Shakespeare For Breakfast with their production of Taming of the Shrew: The Panto. The clue is in the name. Highbrow this aint by the way! They take one main Shakespeare play, throw in a few other Shakespearean characters, chuck in a bit of popular culture, jiggle it around and shoogle until very, very silly indeed. And you get a cup of coffee and a croissant thrown in. Bonus! I was very jealous of Petrucio’s outrrrrrageeowse Italian accent and pleasantly surprised that they managed to get a joke about fisting in at 10:30 in the morning. Good on them!

After trekking down to Princes Street and picking up a yummy and healthsome salad box from Henderson’s (my, how virtuous. Cancels out all the cider I had later – honest!) we ventured £3 on the Exeter University production of Twelfth Night. I’m happy to report that it was well worth £3 of anybody’s money. The lassie playing Mariah was very annoying and Olivia looked a bit too much like Buffy (she didn’t kick anyone’s butts. Boo! Rubbish!) but the rest of the cast did very well. Sir Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek were marvellous drunks and Malvolio was splendidly pompous and disturbing. And this production was only an hour long. Whoopee! I couldn’t have taken much more of that Mariah actually. It seemed a fitting punishment for Sir Toby to end up married to her, and for her to be married to him in the end. Hooray for Shakespeare!

Can you tell I was having a good day? Too! Many! Exclamation! Marks! Somebody! Stop! Me!!!!!

A pint of cider in the sun later and we’d taken a chance on a show that was starting at the right time in the right place. These chaps apparently wrote for Radio 4 and Dead Ringers so it seemed like a fairly safe bet, and guess what? They were. Laurence and Gus: Next in Line is sort of kind of based on the idea that everyone in the world is in a queue and the stories move from one person to the next in a sort of “comedy relay.” That’s the words from the flyer, not mine by the way. It was a very entertaining show which made me chuckle, guffaw, snort, titter and sigh. Marvelous.

Well, we were having a very good day and it got even better when we managed to score 2 for 1 tickets to see The Caesar Twins. I’ve had this show recommended to me by a couple of people so I was really looking forward to seeing it. Emily and I nipped back to my flat for a dinner of bread, cheese, antipasto, grapes and olives. Yummy yum yum yum is all I have to say about that. Then it was back to The Pleasance to check out these acrobatic twins with the strange looking poster that reminds me of that bit in Barbarella when she’s puffing away on “Essence of Man.” Hmm, not sure what to expect here…

Oh My God! This show was amazing! Sorry, the exclamation marks are back but, believe me, they are needed here. I still can’t quite believe how much I enjoyed that show. I could have watched those guys for hours! Their show consists of acrobatics, amazing contortions, music, video clips, humour and a big see-through bath full of water. It was all fantastic but some of the highlights were the upside down bicycle, the shadow play, live Tekken and their female companion doing a contortionist routine that still has my mind boggling!

I definitely had 2 absolute favourite bits of the show though. The first one involved one of the twins wearing a flowing white costume with a nifty harness that allowed him to spin through all degrees while suspended from the ceiling on both sides by big rubber bands. Much the same principle as those bungee things they set up on Waverley Market for kids at Hogmanay and the like. It was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful things I’ve every seen in my life. It may have been the sun or the cider or hormones or whatever but it was so lovely I could have watched that all night. The poor guy would probably have got very dizzy and thrown up though.

The other bit that I adored was the finale of the show when they perform a routine that involves a large, round Perspex tank. This is the bit you’ve been waiting for, it’s the picture on the poster – what on Earth could they be about to do? I’ll tell you what they do… they get soaking wet and that was when I just lost it. Ever since I saw my first Jackie Chan movie I’ve liked seeing a well muscled man and when you get one of those wet… Hummanah hummanah!! Sorry everyone but this is where brain stops to admire the view….

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Mmmmm. Got that one stored away for future reference. Cor blimey guvnor! Oh, and they did lots more wet acrobatics if you really need to know.

What’s that? Eh? Oh yes, I almost forgot – sucking off a horse. You’ll be wanting to know about that won’t you? There’s a big purple inflatable cow lying on its back in Bristo Square. It’s a venue of course, silly, what else would it be? Emily and I met up with Louise, Craig, Bruce and Suth for a drink by this big purple cow, which is known as the Udderbelly (It’s a pune, or play on words). The Duffs and Suth had been to see the comedian Brendan Burns and a disagreement as to the content of the act was in progress. The bloke collecting glasses happened to pass our table at that time. I like to think it was one of the most random things he’d overheard while doing the rounds that evening but I somehow doubt it was the strangest.