Here, Hal Cruttenden gives us his thoughts as the Fringe nears its finish line...
Well it’s nearly over. The Edinburgh Festival is like running a Marathon for us comics. We’re pleased to have done it, but we’re really happy it’s finishing and a bit fed up we didn’t get interviewed on the telly at Tower Bridge.
In the week of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, I am frankly stunned that two acts were not shortlisted for the main prize. First of all myself. I’ve had the privilege of the best seat in the house for this show and have witnessed it develop into something truly spectacular. It’s just so sad that the judges didn’t agree (if they came at all that is).
Seriously though, one performer who definitely should have been on the list is Tom Binns. He has been nominated before, in the guise of Ivan Brackenbury the Hospital DJ, but this year his two shows have been the finest things I’ve seen all festival. In the first, he’s playing his character Ian D Montfort in ‘Ian D Montfort; Under Sciencey Conditions’. This subtly bitchy camp medium is a wonderful creation and also does the first set in his second show, ‘Tom Binns Club Sets’. The second show also features ‘Ivan Brackenbury: Hospital DJ’ and then Binns himself does a ventriloquist act featuring virtually all the members of his family. This guy is the real deal. He’s a great actor, a wonderful comedian, an improviser, a top notch magician and he’s now learned ventriloquism (although his attempts to hide his ineptitude are some of his biggest laughs). He’s an all round entertainer with a brain. If you gave Binns the whole of the BBC’s Saturday night schedule he’d give you a wonderful evening of varied hilarious viewing. I took my family to Club Sets and, as we left, I asked my youngest what she thought. ‘Oh he’s brilliant. Much better than you Daddy.’ So it’s through gritted teeth that I have to repeat that Binns shouldn’t just have been nominated for a Fosters Comedy Award. He should have won one… years ago.
I finally saw some serious theatre this week. ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ is a stage adaptation of two books. George Orwell’s famous work that gives the show its title; and Polly Toynbee’s ‘Hard Work’. This is a constantly engaging piece that offers a useful counterpoint to the ‘poverty porn’ that currently fills our television screens.
There are strong performances throughout and it’s beautifully staged as it flits between Orwell’s 1920s Paris and Toynbee’s accounts of 21st century London. They are both middle class tourists in a world from which they can always escape but that doesn’t make this piece any less poignant, funny and thought provoking.
Go and see ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ in Edinburgh or London, where they will also be performing next year. If you can take a Tory Cabinet minister with you, then please do (preferably George Osborne or Ian Duncan Smith). This just might be the piece to penetrate their black souls.
Go and see Tom Binns wherever you can find him. He’s a bloody genius. I know my kids will be asking me to go again. Damn them.
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