Fringe Music

Rob Adams

The Remains of Tom Lehrer

Gilded Balloon Teviot

FOUR STARS

Pianomorphosis

Summerhall

FOUR STARS

(I Could Go On Singing) Over the Rainbow

Summerhall

TWO STARS

THE REMAINS of Tom Lehrer is a lot of pith, which is just as it should be. Condensing humour to its very essence in song was what got Lehrer noticed in the first place and although he’s long since retired, but still with us at the age of eighty-eight, his wit endures and is very well served by Adam Kay in this thoroughly entertaining hour.

Accompanying himself with refined skill at a baby grand, Kay regales and involves his audience in roughly equal measure, dispensing condoms, inviting us to finish song lyrics and warning us of low-flying, and in fact poisoned, pigeons at the end of probably Lehrer’s best-known song as he takes us through Lehrer’s relatively short writing and performing career.

Lehrer’s poetic application to Harvard is a masterpiece, its laugh-a-line (at least) boldness all the more pronounced for Kay’s delivery, and where Kay has added his own updates to the material, they’re in keeping with the Lehrer spirit and just as amusing as the genuine Lehrer.

Run ends August 29.

PIANOMORPHOSIS begins with a lullaby and ends with a ballad caressed like a baby. In between, though, Will Pickvance is having a far from sleepy old time. With his perpetually bewildered expression familiar from previous shows, Pickvance appears as bemused by our presence as by the events that have apparently befallen him and the discoveries he’s made through his studies and really quite masterly playing of the piano.

Alternative versions of Beethoven and Johann Strauss pieces are presented, the latter with particularly mirthful results, and his recounting of his father, a doctor’s diagnoses at various stages of Pickvance’s life leads to some bonkers assessments and much skilfully manic reinterpretation at the keyboard. If the narrative doesn’t quite hang together, this is compensated for entirely by the scenes described from Pickvance’s tenure as house pianist at Skibbo Castle and his slightly less lofty, and altogether less sober, journey to that splendid Edinburgh institution, The Royal Oak.

Run ends August 28.

IN THE corridor outside a room in which an orchestra of pneumatic drills is rehearsing an usher offers us ear plugs, dispenses tickets and apprises us of what to expect inside. The industrial noise is, we’re assured, given with love, for which belated thanks.

Inside, in the centre of the floor there’s an X and whenever one of the audience occupies it F.K. Alexander steps forward, takes the proffered ticket and slips it in her bra. She then puts on a little top, black jacket and shoes, does her lipstick, raises a microphone aloft, its cable coiled, and takes the audience member’s hand. Letting the cable fall, she makes direct eye contact and mimes to Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow as the industrial noise, controlled by two people inscrutable in their shades, continues. The song over in a barrage of sound and strobes, a hug is exchanged, F.K. removes top, jacket and shoes and awaits another client. And so it continues. For an hour.

It may well be an artistic statement about the drudgery of repetitive work – the prostitutes in Jacques Brel’s Next came to mind, as did battery hens – but your reviewer was dying to see what might happen if nobody else stepped up to the X. Alas this wasn’t to be. There’s one compensation, though: by comparison, any dental treatment will hereafter be a skoosh. Run ends August 28.