While nobody hopes to see a bad show at the fringe I had been warned it was inevitable if you did it right and boy was there a corker. While I’m sure Improvable and the Chapter of Secrets was entertaining as a kids performance, it certainly didn’t seem to attempt to link it back to the Wizarding World. 15 minutes in and it was decided to call it time and pop up to the Mile to try and find something different to see.
As with any normal day there were flyerers out by storm. How on earth are you going to choose what to see? After ranking the shows’ flyer against each other the lucky duo who created Camels had the pleasure of entertaining us for a few hours and to help recover from the events of early that morning.
It all turned out well. Camels is a hilarious sketch show with a variety of larger than life characters, quip remarks, great physicality that all keep you laughing from the start to the end. It promises to be an hour long lesson in distraction and once you’re in that room, all the darkness in the world today certainly does disappear.
Marmite was the next show of the day. This is a piece of LGBT theatre about a couple who accidentally meet while on a date with someone else and end up getting together. They seem a great couple but there’s only one issue; one wants an open relationship and the other wants a purely monogamous one.
This is an engaging three-hander that does well to reference other characters that aren’t portrayed on stage. It’s a fascinating insight into the lives of a strained couple as they try and find out what they want from life and whether compromising is worth the reward. Through an impeccably naturalistic script, it encaptures the challenges, highs and lows of a couple who decide to try life without a monogamous relationship.
Coming out of Marmite, it was realised we had 27 mins to do a 30-minute journey to get to the next show. Therefore, the pace was picked up, corners were cut to ensure we made it on time. However, it wasn’t until we were trying to find the venue and asking for help when we realised that oops we put the time of the performance down wrong and in fact we still had an extra half an hour to go! Lesson three of the fringe learnt….always double check your start time.
The Political History of Snack and Crack is a piece that playwright Ed Edwards has created based on his memories and uses a small range of characters to tell the story of Manchester’s history with Heroin.
While the dominance of the play was in the character story there were interesting small segments on the politics which could have been expanded.
The final show of the day was Hamilton (Lewis). It was created due to the Twitter storm following the news of Hamilton the Musical and people getting crossed wires thinking it was a musical about Lewis Hamilton.
While there is certainly an influence of Hamilton in the musical it was pleasing to see this was more than a rip off version with a few lyric tweaks. Each of the four cast members is very talented and execute the Musical numbers like pros.
This is a parody through and through and while it doesn’t take itself too seriously at the same time, the thought gone into every element of the production makes it sophisticated and very entertaining. It’s more than a cheap rip off, it’s an entertaining musical in its own right.
After a small detour to the foot of the castle, it was time to call it a night. A day full of the good the bad and the damn right funny.
The Theatre Twittic 
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