Fringe Blather

We last left Vile lost in the forest. Appropriately, he realises this post at the time he is lost in the Fringe. It's been a week, and he is wandering somewhere around Edinburgh, pretending he is Red Bastard. He is currently trying to convince random actors that they ought to enrol in Lecoq, or waste their lives 'pretending to be someone they are not.'

He's been heard making the usual complaints. The first one is that the Fringe is full of shows that are too long. In the past, he has questioned the impact of the Fringe on the length of plays ('artists think of the Fringe and make everything run at just under an hour, the needs of the narrative be damned.'). This year, he's worried that some companies are trying to be too generous, extending the action by half an hour when they have a good forty minutes worth of action. Most notably, Omega suffers from this. It has a series of amazing circus style routines, topped off by an MC who is just bellowing and making it run slow.

Boredom isn't a problem in theatre - there are shows where the bloody-mindedness of the director, making the audience pay attention is part of the point. Vile is trying to catch up with Peter Higgs, reckoning that the man who thought of the particle that defines the universe will probably be able to write the equation that shows the relationship between content and running time. Vile's first thoughts are along the lines of: if (value of content) is less than (length of show) then this equals Audience(bored). Invert the values and you get Audience(Confused).

To be honest, he is only waiting to announce that tomorrow, on Fresh Air, he has Red Bastard as his guest. Listen in: he has a confession to make...