Fear and Loathing, Simon Callow and the Avengers Assembleth

When I named my blog I had no idea that fear and loathing would be such a running theme in the shows this Fringe. I knew it would occur in the reality, it always does, but I didn't realise so many shows would have a link to those exact three words. Some theorize that there is an Akashic Record, a global human consciousness that leads to the same ideas manifesting independently at the same time in the minds of several different people - this leads to such embarrassing disputes as Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz inventing calculus at the same time.

One man who would almost certainly scoff at the idea of the Akashic Record is Richard Wiseman - noted sceptical parapsychologist and one half of the two giving the talk titled Fear and Loathing at Hendrick's Carnival of Knowledge in what they call The Odditorium.

Of all the venues I have visited so far this was by the far the best; upon arrival I was swiftly led into their sitting room and bar - a place of civilization and refinement where, owing to my ticket purchase, I was entitled to a free gin cocktail (the whole thing is sponsored by Hendrick's gin, there are advantages to selling out to commercialism). They give away a free faux newspaper called The Unusual Times which tells of such things as an ape-loving 18th century Lord in Edinburgh as well as their shows and the cocktails available. Genius.

Moving up the stairs into the Odditorium we entered a room not with row after row of chairs but with tables and chairs like a (cheap) café. In the corner sat our speakers, Richard Wiseman and Jeremy Dyson who was a writer for the League of Gentleman and has written in the horror genre as well as in comedy.

The room took a dark turn when Richard Wiseman announced his scepticism as to the existence of ghosts... but the booing, it turned out, was good-natured and no half-empty glasses of G&T were thrown at the genial but sceptical professor. The discussion ranged from Pareidolia (seeing faces when there is no face to see) to the invention of the transparent ghost (a result of faked spirit-photographs created by double-exposure) to the theoretical reasons why we enjoy being scared and why dark, lonely places frighten us.

The ghostly experiences of The Moose were mentioned, as she told of a ghost she observed and became something of the centre of attention with her story. For someone who hates to be the centre of attention she sure is good at it, one of the many reasons I love her - her innate contradictions. I asked a question, with regard to my 'day' job experiences, about how much they thought fiction influenced real-world ghostly tales. We all concluded that, weirdly, it doesn't seem to do so very much even though culture influences our experiences in other ways quite profoundly.

At the end of the talk we were given a free copy of Jeremy Dyson's The Haunted Book. Having been given a free cocktail and a free book as well as an entertaining talk The Odditorium was well worth the price of admission. My advice to anyone looking to put on an entertaining talk at a good price with plenty of freebies is to find some kind of booze merchant you can sell out to - those people throw the best parties... obviously... because they have all the booze.

After that we charged from the city's New Town to its Old Town and the Assembly Hall on the Mound (actually, strictly speaking The Mound could be considered part of the New Town as the entire mound was built at that time out of the rubble they had left over... true story). We were there to see Simon Callow's Juvenalia.

Simon Callow is a great actor. I have been most impressed with him after seeing The Chemical Wedding, a film about Aleister Crowley in which he performs both as the stuttering Professor Oliver Haddo and as Crowley himself, a startling transformation which he performed spectacularly. He did not disappoint.

In Juvenalia he takes the part of the Roman satirist Juvenal and performs his sixteen satires. Ancient history was a part of my degree and when speaking he sometimes reminded my of my favourite lecturer - the sadly deceased Keith Hopwood. Historians dispute whether Juvenal was genuinely reactionary or whether the voice he uses is supposed to be mocked as much as those the words are mocking - in short whether he is Jim Davidson or Al Murray the Pub Landlord. The position on this shifts depending on the prevailing intellectual feeling of the time - among the reactionary Victorians he was considered a reactionary but in the modern ironic age he is considered ironic.

Simon Callow definitely chose the latter interpretation, something which I am grateful for as I think it is more fun... and his performance was fun. Blustering and visceral, the voices of other characters done to perfection, I relished every moment of seeing this colossus of an actor tear into the characters and archetypes I had studied at 19 when studying ancient Rome. It was enlightening how much the reactionary position of 100AD was akin to the reactionary position of today - concern over gay marriage (yes, believe it or not), shame and envy over other people's sex lives, a longing for a non-existent golden age. That golden age was complaining about the exact same things.

While sitting there (in chairs far more comfortable than those at the Grand, I might add) it became apparent that I was chuckling when few others were. I don't think the audience were expecting what they were given. I blame this entirely on the blurb given for him in the Fringe's tome of shows:

"Simon Callow in stand-up mode as an impatient and illiberal Roman commentator with coruscating views on the world around us - vice, hypocrisy, degeneracy, fashionistas, gay marriage and mortality."

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does it make clear that he is speaking as Juvenal and with genuine ancient Roman satire rather than a modern script set in Roman times. I did not know, going in, whether he would be Juvenal himself or a fictional Juvenal-esque Roman citizen. I knew I'd enjoy it either way but I suspect most of the audience were thrown and the comment The Moose heard most when leaving was, "It was interesting."

Ignore those nay-sayers, it was brilliant, but if you're reading this then you know damn well what kind of a brilliant show you're in for. Which is more than the Fringe tome gives you for some reason.

Fear and loathing reared its head here as well. On the way out I was given the option to buy a copy of the script for a fiver. Despite writing a ground-breaking but flawed essay on Satire Six in my third year I do not have a copy of Juvenal's satires so I bought it. In his foreword Simon Callow calls it "fear and loathing in the Forum." Synchronicity at work.

The Scottish independence debate, I later discovered, was as much a phantom at this feast as it was at Comedy Sans Frontieres. When I got home later I found Simon Callow had signed an open letter, recently released, asking Scotland not to vote to dissolve the union. A spectre is haunted the Fringe, the spectre of independence...

We then moved on to Shakespeare's Avengers Assembleth at the Greenside venue. The Greenside venue is a church hall, as about 20% of the Fringe venues are. Edinburgh was, for a long time, a religious hotbed. Now it is a hotbed of theatre in August but very few people believe in God (when Eddie Izzard said he didn't believe in God he got cheered, when Richard Wiseman said he didn't believe in ghosts he got booed - a state of affairs I am perfectly comfortable with). As a result, the churches have adapated.

One might think that a hastily converted church hall would at last mean a less comfortable venue than the Grand. That one would be exhibiting woolly-thinking of the highest order as it was STILL more comfortable. Though it was, admittedly, not as comfortable as the Assembly Hall and nowhere near as comfortable as Hendrick's place.

(Readers may wonder why I keep going on and on about the venues and not the shows. This is because this is not a review of the shows, though they are reviewed, it is a review of the festival as a whole and the endlessly variant comfort levels is a crucial part of that experience - so you're going to have to put up with my nigh-unto endless ranting about chairs.)

Avengers Assembleth was by far the most amateurish production I have seen so far at the Fringe. People with no experience of the theatre will take that immediately to mean that it was bad... nobody wants to be served an amateurish burger. Unless they're at a barbecue, in which case they positively DEMAND an amateurish burger.

This was comic theatrical barbecue. The actors almost all took on more than one role, the writing focussed on jokes more than plot (the plot did not make sense and everybody knew it) and the set was non-existent. While it was amateurish it was also the most laugh-out-loud funny show I have seen so far this Fringe. The jokes came thick and fast, high-brow and low-brow, and were delivered with a rapid-fire effectiveness.

Some of the actors were more impressive than others, Hamlet (who was also the Papal Inquisitor), Macbeth and Juliet especially impressed me. For both reasons of writing and performance the 'villains' - Tybalt, Ophelia and Iago, - didn't reflect their original characters very well while on stage (off stage Ophelia was spot on, a comment which will make sense if you see the show and damn those that don't). Even so they all entertained and, ultimately, that's what it's all about (that, and the hokey-cokey).

A final note, don't watch it if you have pretty much any strongly-held religious convictions. They make righteous fun of many of them, although I think Hindus and Muslims are safe. Also, defying our theme, they did not mention fear and loathing. Shame on them.