We are slap bang in the middle of Edinburgh preview season here at the moment and you'd be crackers not to go and see some. Tickets are a lot cheaper than up North, usually around the £5 mark and you get first look at the new material that top comedians have been slogging over ahead of the Fringe. The reason for the price skim, is that in a lot of cases, this slogging can be left until the very last minute and some first London outings can be unpolished and hastily cobbled together. Being a member of the audience for these performances can be fun though, you get to see how a show looks before its slicker re-work is born and you can be a part of the artistic process of filtering out the rubbish.
At the Alpine Club on Hampstead Heath last Wednesday, it was clear John Gordillo was keen to use the audience to work on his weaker material. His set involved politics and personal relationships, mainly the stormy one he has with his father but there were occasions when he relied on old material to pad it out, such as a joke about labels which over-emphasise the pampered lives of free-range chickens. After this part he stopped and asked us: "Does this work with what I was saying, do you like this bit?", and so on and we answered no, we liked what he was saying about his father but this didn't tie in at all. It was a first being encouraged to criticise a comedian and not get eaten alive but the collaboration felt good and I think everyone enjoyed knowing their opinion was appreciated.
The first half was spectacular, some innovative musings on politics and terrorism that were by no means intellectually alienating. One comment on letting Al Qaeda govern London and beating them down with bureaucracy like tax and parking issues ("What does the Book say about Parking?!") was especially funny. He also talked about his father being brought up in Spain under the Fascism of Franco. This latter part is a combination of funny impressions, some good jokes, but mostly, it is a very honest and thoughtful journey exploring his relationship with his father and the psychology behind it. He has a bit of fine tuning to do, he slightly stumbled at the end over how to conclude it, but I'm in no doubt this will have come together before Edinburgh.
Michael Fabbri's show Dumbing Up, preceded Gordillo's, and was supposedly based on forms of stupidity. Intelligent satire it's not but it never attempts to be as Fabbri proves while dribbling beer out of his mouth, one of his favourite gags. It seemed to lack a proper theme or structure apart from Fabbri talking about loads of things that annoy him but that's fair enough, that's usually what most comedians' sets comprise of. A lot of his jokes seemed to miss the mark; there were occasional good parts including one where the role of religious activists and atheists are reversed but these were in short shrift and his final joke about punishing babies seemed designed to shock rather than amuse. Again this show was far from finished, Fabbri had to consult some dog-eared notes when he lost his thread just as Gordillo always had a notebook open in his palm. Both these performances could significantly change before the Fringe and it will be interesting to see how they are received.
Comedy nights tend to go on very late and if you just want to be entertained for an hour or two along with a pint, there are plenty of clubs and pubs putting on cheap previews this month. Some might be the finished product - all those comedians who used to do their homework on Friday nights will be well prepared; all those Sunday nighters might still be reading off notes but either way there is plenty of the Festival to see now in London.
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