Sunday 14 July 2013

Edinburgh previews London, Cardiff, Sheffield



And here are the Socks doing their third Edinburgh Fringe preview show of the week, in the outdoors for a change, at the New Barrack Tavern in Sheffield this afternoon. That's right, 7 hours in the car, 1 hour on the stage, that's how we roll.

That was Sunday afternoon, while on Saturday night we had the air conditioned splendour of Chapter Arts in Cardiff, on a double bill with the fantastic Joe Lycett. Before all of which we had our third night at Leicester Square Theatre - our least heavily-plugged of the three shows and, with mind numbing inevitability, the one with the biggest audience.

The show is developing, and going through lots of changes. In Sheffield, for the first time, we dropped the 4 Horsemen song, a cling-on from last year's Boo Lingerie, and hard as it is to lose it, the new show's now standing on its own feet, with entirely new songs and sketches (apart from the Bottle routine and a closing sketch from 2009 which we'll probably keep because they're short and pretty bloody good - plus a musical gag which debuted on this night in 2009, then known as the Andy Warhol routine).

New routines and gags keep coming thick and fast, and being dropped as quickly. They got the new Countdown routine in London (died) and Sheffield (worked) but not in Cardiff (chickened out), and the new Apocalyptic running gag got its first outing in Sheffield, along with the new time travel ending to the Ding Dong routine, which didn't work today but I'm determined will do. Other people's preview thoughts are always refreshing, here are mine from 2009

Oh I'm shuffling the order every time, I've discarded more material for this show than for any previous show, and I'm at that stage that we've been at pretty well every past year at this time where I think it'll never be as good as I want it. And every show we come away with a mixture of inspiration and desperation. What a daft way to make a living, eh? Next stop The Comedy Box in Bristol, our first Edinburgh preview there since a few years ago when, after two consecutive years of killer previews, we did one with way too much new material and which ranks, to this day, as our worst preview show ever. Steve (Lount) hasn't had us back since (though he came to see the resultant show in Bath and realised what he'd missed) but now he's taken the chance on us not cocking up again. So, no pressure.

 

SOCKS ON TOUR - Your next chance to see the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

July 17 - Bristol Comedy Box at the Hen & Chickens
July 18 - Larmer Tree Festival, Salisbury
July 20 - Bedford Fringe
July 21 - Derby Funhouse 3.25pm
+ Mimetic Festival, Enfield 8.30pm
July 22 - Clowns Pocket, Neath
July 26 - Lass O'Gowrie, Manchester
July 31 - Aug 25 - Gilded Balloon, 10.15pm, Edinburgh Fringe

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