Mouse's Fringe Review Part 2 - 'The Mouse Strikes Back'

Saturday 19th
I spent the afternoon watching various street performers in Hunter Square. First up was the Space Cowboy, who I'd also seen at Fringe Sunday. It was exactly the same act, patter and all, but he's so entertaining that I didn't mind. As well as having a very good act, he's got some really nice tattoos and some implants under his skin that I find very interesting.

Next, there was Dave McSavage. His act mostly involved singing songs about random people in the crowd or anyone who was unfortunate to walk past. On a theme that may be familiar to some of you, one song was about how hilly Edinburgh is, and that this is the reason why local women have such muscular thighs! I thought he was really funny, and his show was over far too soon.

A New Zealander calling himself 'Basketball Jones' was the next performer. He was juggling and balancing basketballs (as you may have guessed from the name), ending up by juggling three basketballs while riding a three metre unicycle.

I was going to say 'why do all these performers ride those giant unicycles', but I know why - because they can, and it looks cool, of course.

I was very unimpressed by the next act. They were called 'Acro Buffo', and their show involved a little bit of juggling, some acrobalance, and a lot of rather unfunny clowning. I'm not that fond of clowns at the best of times - I just don't find them entertaining and they're freaky. These two were also wearing slightly grotesque masks, which creeped me out. The whole act gave the impression that they thought they were much funnier and cleverer than I did. A large proportion of the audience drifted away during their performance, and at the end of their act when they asked us to give money if we'd enjoyed the show, I didn't give them anything (and I usually would, even if I thought an act was so-so).
I think that my main problem with them was that if I'm going to spend my time and money on seeing a particular act, then I want the performers to be doing something that I can't do, e.g. fire-eating, swordswallowing, unicycling, juggling more than three items, making up funny songs on the spot, etc. Nothing about this act was at all spectacular or memorable, and I don't think that's good enough.
*aaaaand relax*

The last act that I saw yesterday was a man calling himself 'Silver'. For the rest of the year he does a kind of robot act to music, sprayed all over in silver paint, usually on Princes Street. As he said, he's probably the only Festival street performer who's actually from Edinburgh. The act he did was a combination of playing with the audience and mime done to a soundtrack from his ipod. I generally have very little interest in mime, but he's very good and funny too, so I enjoyed what he did.

Ok, this is going to be a three-part review so the last bit will be written once I've seen the rest of the shows. I've got some photos of the Space Cowboy on his giant 'suicycle' as he calls it, so I'll put them in the next instalment.
See you then.