We finished our first week in Edinburgh with a fantastic show on Monday night. Just a lovely audience, laughing in all the right places, and nice to have it just before our first day off.
Saw a bundle of shows on the Tuesday to add to the few I'd fitted in already. Highlights include Otis Lee Crenshaw, Laurence and Gus, Tony Law's A Tony Law Show and Marcus Brigstocke - all engendering pretty much constant laughter which in my view is basically what you want.
The next day we're back to doing the show again and as always with the first performance after a day off it seems really weird to be doing it again. Edinburgh is much like cramming for exams - doing the show over and over uses a substantial amount of short-term memory, and if you stop doing it for a day there's always a nagging worry that when you step out on stage you won't have a clue what you're supposed to be saying. Thankfully such disastrous problems were avoided and we had a nice audience and a good show.
The rest of the week is largely uneventful - good houses, good responses - one odd one where hats kept falling off and props were dropped and it was a bit of a mess, but nothing to worry about to much, and the show feels like it is getting slicker and better every day just from performing it. There are still bits that aren't perfect but by now it seems okay to ride over them and get to the good stuff, rather than toiling each day to work on replacement material with the inevitable messiness of performing new stuff. Better to be really getting to know the show we already have, I think.
A bunch more shows caught during the week, although I'm definitely a bit behind already this year - still 25 or so to go - of which the best was easily Stewart Lee, and the oddest was definitely La Clique, a very entertaining two hour long burlesque and acrobatic sideshow at the Spiegeltent, which felt like a Fringe version of Zumanity, the Cirque show Cal was involved with.
A moment away from the Fringe last night as, after an excellent show (much enjoyed by both Graham Linehan and Ben Miller apparently which is good), Robert Webb and I took in a showing of the rather dull I, Robot at the local multiplex. I think we probably should have gone to The Bourne Supremacy instead.
Day off tomorrow, Barunka's birthday today, and Pleasance Party tonight.