Jo Caulfield presents… The Speakeasy
Scottish Storytelling Centre
Edinburgh
Tuesday18th November
Comedian and actress Jo Caulfield hosts six short acts of varying styles, & makes up an evening that feels more like one of those lucky days at the Edinburgh festival when you randomly chose a class act of a show. For £6 the evening was an eclectic mix, with each act flowing well about Jo’s interludes of easy-humour and performer introductions. The whole effect was a mixture of a stand up comedy club, a poetry slam and an episode of QI. Jo Caulfield could host anything and I’d happily go – her style is so friendly & honest, we all feellike we’ve been personally invited to her home. Tonight, this was the Netherbow Theatre under The Scottish Story Telling Centre; a lovely, cozy, simple little Theatre in the heart of the Royal Mile.
First up was Sam Small, a member of the Black Lantern collective. A talented poet, he performed 3 of his pieces around the themes of ‘boxes, love and time travel’. All performed at a fast pace, – hyper, funny, angry, and intelligently executed. He had the audience intrigued and impressed from the first sentence and I was left wanting more. A talented guy.
Author Eleanor Updale spoke next, a friendly and warm presence, Eleanor told some wickedly funny & partly true, partly fiction (never 100% sure where the boundaries lay but who needs to know?) tales of what she and her media comrades are planning to do next after they have been robbed of the retirement pensions there were expecting. A story of pitching an idea to the BBC about an X-factor style show minus the music – just focusing on the sob stories called ‘Dead Nans’, followed into a weird and wonderful pretty believable plan to run a restaurant/brothel for pensioners with ‘live stream for TV’ in Edinburgh was surreal and lovely and sounded completely homely and respectable.
Phil O’Shea then shuffled onto stage and sucked the audience into his weird and wonderful surreal world. A intentionally nervous awkward style all of his own perhaps made the audience a little unsure for a few seconds before we realised that actually that’s how we were meant to feel and settled in for the ride. A squeaky northern accented turtle hand puppet accompanied some of the act and that’s all I can really write without rambling crazy nonsense as he does it so much wonderfully better!
The second half was kicked off with journalist and broadcaster from Radio 4’s Today Show James Naughtie. An engaging speaker, he told some great stories of ridiculous things that have happened when interviewing politicians, with some great tidbits and insights about his life as a journalist. A funny and interesting talk.
Next up we had Bram E Gieben Alias Texture, a poet also from the Black Lantern collective. Two poems were performed with thunderous hypnotic fury. The intelligent angry rhythmical ‘Burn’ was a wrenching strongly executed rant at the state of the economy, whilst ‘Keep going’ was as he said with a smile, ‘about divorce, suicide and cancer but -much more positive’. And it was – a powerful committed performance from this hugely talented poet. Highly impressive.
Last up was the bizarre ‘The Creative Martyrs’. Looking like an old fashioned mime cabaret act, the two chaps performed a slightly confusing piece with a cello and visual humour singing about war. I found it a little hard to follow exactly what they were singing about, but they were pretty funny to watch and ended the evening on a light note.
All in all a really lovely way to spend a wintery Tuesday evening and something completely different to see each time. I’d fully recommend spending £6 once a month to go to this lovely evening of well chosen performances and enjoy Jo Caulfield’s welcoming generous hosting and obvious love of the city’s talent.
Reviewer : Pip Burnett
Mumble Words 