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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (8)Little Howard and Big Howard in At Home with
the Howards Howard Read has once again brought Little Howard, "the world's only six-year-old animated standing up crumedian", to the Pleasance. The latest instalment of the Big Howard and Little Howard story takes us to their home on Little Howard's birthday (he is six - again), but the nasty man from social services wants to take Little Howard into care because he doesn't go to school and Big Howard is living on the "illegal earnings of a minor" - or, as Little Howard remembers it, "the sick kestrel earnings of a Welsh person". For the uninitiated, Howard Read's show is, like a lot of comedy shows on the Fringe, a fusion between stand-up and scripted theatre, but what makes this unique is the clever combination of living people and animated characters (but don't tell Little Howard he isn't real because he gets upset!). Big Howard has a great deal of boyish charm and infectious enthusiasm on stage and it is impossible not to warm to him, but he is also a very talented animator, and the various methods he uses to introduce this into his act are often ingenious. As with last year's show, he speaks to all of the animated characters when they are on the big screen behind him and can also make them more portable by letting them into his laptop. However this year's touch of genius used projections onto a sofa with a white cloth over it so that Big Howard could actually sit on the sofa with his characters. It is here where the two Howards do their superb duet of Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer. Audience interaction includes projecting dialogue on the screen for the audience to say in unison, a section of Little Howard's stand-up in which he interviews an audience member (Big Howard presses buttons on a Powerbook to give appropriate replies and looks triumphantly at the audience when he does something really good) and a date between a girl in the audience and Little Howard. There is a lot of content packed into this short show: for instance the Moslem ventriloquist act, Ronnie Corbett's answerphone message, Robert Kilroy Silk's present of a pop-up Mein Kampf, bizarre links related to 70s sit-coms, the story of how Big Howard abandoned Little Howard's mother, a Windows 98 laptop that was always crashing, for the glamour and stability of an Apple laptop - a story familiar to quite a few of us. Read always gives the impression of having a deep emotional bond with his characters, and so the show is often moving as well as extremely funny. He shows us how animation can be used to create high quality adult entertainment, and produces something unique in the world of live comedy. Get a ticket now for this wonderful and inventive show before Read and his cute creation gain the wider popularity they undoubtedly deserve. David Chadderton Hitler Sells Tickets The comedian Boothby Graffoe - or Graffione as he is billed on the leaflets, no doubt in a tribute to his musician friend Antonio Forcione - is a regular visitor to the Fringe with his stand-up comedy. However this year he has also brought a play he has written. Hitler Sells Tickets is not about Hitler; it is about Mussolini and a man called Aldo who looks identical to him (played by the same person, of course) who is employed to take his place on certain occasions. There are shades of Chaplin's Great Dictator, where the tramp is mistaken for Hitler, and Brecht's Arturo Ui, where Hitler is trained to speak in public by an actor, but this play is pure Graffoe. In fact the actor who plays Mussolini and Aldo could easily be Graffoe in a different body, as he uses identical gestures, tones of voice and facial expressions. The bizarre and almost surreal twists in the dialogue are the same as those used in Graffoe's inventive comic monologues, but they also belong very firmly to this narrative. The play is extremely funny for the most part, but the seriousness of the subject matter and its connection with real events in history is not ignored and there are also some clever theatrical touches. The scene in which Mussolini is shot dead is done three times in three different ways, as few people would have known what actually happened. There are some other serious, even shocking moments in the play, but ultimately it is a comedy. The three cast members are all superb in their multiple parts. This is a very good production of an entertaining play that manages to maintain the often surreal humour right through and also sustain an interesting story. David Chadderton Rosebud Mark Jenkins has followed up his successful play Playing Burton, a one-man show about Richard Burton, with another biographical one-man show, this time about Orson Welles. Welles is played by Christian McKay, who certainly has a look of him but has also got his voice and distinctive mannerisms - especially that slightly superior half-smile - just right. The play tells the story of its subject from child prodigy with a bizarre upbringing through the days of the Mercury Theatre and his radio plays (especially War of the Worlds, which brought New York to a standstill when people who thought it was a real news programme tried to flee from the invading aliens) to his controversial films and the battles he had with studio bosses and other powerful people to make them. However this is more than just a simple chronology; direct narration is mixed with re-enactments of events, combining Welles's own words with quotes from Shakespeare and from his own works and Jenkins's lyrical prose. This play is a celebration of Welles without being hero worship, telling the fascinating story of his life in a lively and varied script. McKay brings the character of Welles vividly to life with his superb performance in his Fringe debut. This is an excellent play with a very good central performance and is highly recommended. David Chadderton |
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