11/08/08
The fine line between success and failure -
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"Emotional rollercoaster". I've given up how many times I've used that phrase to describe Edinburgh; to friends, to family, to other comics, and to journalists in interviews. Every time I say it, it comes across at best an exaggeration, and at worst unadulterated melodrama. But it's true.
Because 12 hours ago I was feeling pretty pleased with myself with a strong and positive 4-star Chortle review under my belt, and now I'm feeling a touch angry about a show that should have been sparkling, but in the end turned out to be a frustrating exercise in verbal firefighting with a knob of an audience member disrupting the entire performance.
Today had started so well. My Saturday show had been immense; a sell-out, the best performance so far, and I was still buzzing from how good it had been. Still on a high, I headed to Fringe Sunday to do my allotted 10 minutes. In the last month I have done two outdoor festival venues; Canizaro Park and Latitude, so I felt that I was on good form for this sort of gig. When I arrived, Patrick Monahan had just been compering. Unrelatedly, I imagine, the show was running 30 minutes late. Lloyd Langford did a stirling effort, despite getting 'heckled' by the ridiculously overloud cabaret tent next door.
Eventually, I went on, after an act that I can best describe as an Aboriginal Butlins Red Coat (once he'd got 2 different people on the stage after his first 3 singalongs, I was looking everywhere for the Robin Hood style hats.) Sorry if that's caustic, but he overran hugely - not good form. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, and even the parents of the kid in the yellow jumper were OK with the three f words that crept in. At least - unlike the Edcom show on Saturday - I didn't say 'this evening' repeatedly instead of 'this afternoon'. I felt that it would help sell out my show that evening - and it did.
But then things turned a touch sour with my show. I still believe that the majority of the onus of crowd control sits with the act on stage, so dealing with the people who'll disrupt and interfere with a show is YOUR responsibility. That said, when doing a Sunday show at 6pm, you're not expecting a room of pissheads nor an aggressive Jim Jeffries-style audience with verbal combat on their mind, so any deliberate disruption is a surprise. So when a bloke in the front row got up just 10 minutes in, I was bemused. When he was asked where he was going, he grabbed his crotch and aimed a pretend piss at the stage. The alarm bells weren't exactly ringing at this point, but I felt at worst the person in question was a touch eccentric. He had turned up to the show with his heavily pregnant wife; so I wasn't expecting him to be the utter, utter cock it soon transpired he was/is.
The clue, as ever, was that he was pissed. And this is where you rely on your venue staff; it's hard to throw people out of any gig, but if they leave of their own accord; it's simple, you assess how wasted they are, and if they don't appear able to control themselves, you don't let them back in. Unfortunately, this relies on your venue staff having not buggered off at this point - which they had, so ten minutes later, captain phallus reappeared and continued to butt in, chat, stare, cough, fidget and generally wreck the goodwill of the room. Now, I'm totally aware that this is where I should be in my element; and the antisocial activities of one idiot are a drop in the ocean to the scores of neanderthal stags and hens that I regularly joust with the other 11 months of the year. So, with a few key comments and sideswipes, he was duly, and repeatedly, dealt with.
But the problem here was that it had now changed the entire mood of the room, to one of an aggressive club environment. And what a reminder to me as to how much that differs from your classic Edinburgh vibe. The rest of the audience felt intimidated and uneasy, and the laughs and the momentum flipped in a milisecond. Even though his heavily pregnant wife was continually remonstrating with him to shut up and the audience cheered my every chastisement of him, the flow was interrupted so many times my timing started to lose its precision and bits of the show had to be edited out on the fly to abandon routines he'd chipped in on, and to keep me to time.
It takes every ounce of your experience to conceal your annoyance in this situation, and I'm never sure how much I pull this off, but naturally, this just happened to be the show when I had two press in - 3weeks and Metro. Last year, Metro really hated me, almost to the point where I was wondering if I'd upset the reviewer in a previous walk of life; and with 3weeks having already given me 4 stars for the show during a preview in the Brighton Festival, I was gunning for the 5. My friend Corry had came along to proffer a supporting laugh or ten, and told me that she thought the reviewers would be impressed with my handling of it. But it was obvious to me that it wasn't the show I wanted to do; or at the least, how I wanted to do it.
I'll be frank. Last year, I got a 5 star review, and that lifted me up into another league of the festival; judges came right up until the longlist, other reviewers who had ignored me suddenly wanted to see me, and my sales figures hiked impressively midweek. These sort of setbacks happen every day in the world of comedy, but the margins between 'great' and 'brilliant' in Edinburgh are so narrow, that this man's interference could easily be the difference that grades your show down a notch, completely changing the course of your festival.
And I appreciate it's not just me. The brilliant Andrew Lawrence is also in my room (the Pleasance Upstairs) and just so happened to be cursed by a much more venemous pair of hecklers on one of his opening nights. The only problem there was that this just happened to be the night when a ton of press was in. Has it affected his festival? Well, he's still selling out, but more than one review has mentioned this event, and I can't help feeling it has coloured some of the ratings he has acheived, giving a much more negative reflection than the show probably deserves (I have yet to see it though). Though I'm hoping the most negative snub of the lot was unrelated; in that the Independent did a breakdown of this year's shows from last year's if.comedy finalists, and completely missed him out. Compared to my slightly niggly knobhead, that's properly harsh.
Well done everyone who got Klang. Now, we're going up another level. All 5 people here, please.
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· http://www.chriscoltrane.com 
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11/08/08 @ 09:05 · http://www.tonycowards.co.uk Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Jason Cook, Robin Ince, Dan Antopolski and Rob Brydon.
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11/08/08 @ 10:21 · http://randomalan.co.uk/weblog/ Left to right, Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Jason Cook, Robin Ince, not sure, Rob Brydon. Could the not sure one be Dan Antopolski? Or possibly Jason John Whitehead?
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11/08/08 @ 11:45 Permalink
11/08/08 @ 14:32 I thank you and goodnight! x
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11/08/08 @ 16:49 Keep these coming!
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11/08/08 @ 18:42 Permalink
11/08/08 @ 18:51 Leave a comment:
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