Roll Up! - the show itself, a breakdown

Another Edinburgh Fringe ends and once more I find myself looking back over the show analytically. Having been unsure how good Roll Up! Was when we started the run, by the end it had really come good. This meant that whoever saw it in the first week and a half saw a show that flagged halfway through, that got criticised by The Daily Mail for not being as good as previous shows (which I found quite flattering, since it means they’d seen the previous shows), and had one audience member overheard as they left saying “well that got a bit dark.” The darkness lifted after the running order had shuffled and the performance became more assured. As for whether we’ll tour it the jury’s still out.

Here is what Roll Up!, in its final state, comprised.

Opening gags - Strongman, Billy Smart, Paul Daniels - all good

I’m A Sock - Good as always. I have tried opening shows without it and it never works. This song is variable because regulars often go quieter during it, cos they’ve heard it. However the newbie who reviewed us for the 730 Review loved it and praised it for “brazenly and amusingly acknowledges the show’s gloriously silly premise with true metatheatrical verve”. So there.

Greatest Showman music gag. This was falling flat for well over a week though lack of punchline. Then, in the last week, I came up with the Secret Of Comedy line, and it killed. Perfect.

Three Rings gag. Another late addition (coming sometime after Aug 13th, midway) this routine gets some laughs, and sets us up for good callbacks later.

Variety gag - another new one, went well, especially the 3 Rings callback it contains

Music Hall Song. Excellent. It’s gone well all through the run, possibly even better when set up by the stronger material preceding it. 

Burlescue gag, into Performance Artist Routine. Excellent. Kept the momentum going after song.

Philip Astley routine & music. Excellent, all the better when set up by preceding material. In week one we were getting to this point and the audience, and I, weren’t confident that this was a very funny show. I could tell some people weren’t on board, or whipped up to enthusiasm, by now.

Gags: Sock De Soleil, Stilt walking, Funambulism - a good threesome, that settled into place after an edit after week one.

Improv Section: Clown’s Accent (settled into place halfway) and Circus Improv Routine. This was a highpoint. In the previews this was often the first funny bit of the show. But if we’d got them on board by now, this was the best fun. Lots of interesting suggestion kept it fresh, but we managed to make lion taming and human cannonball funny and original on at least three attempts apiece.

Stuck In The Middle routine - a bit of new material inserted about halfway through that worked surprisingly well, calling back to the Jokes For Old Folks running gag (that starts in Philip Astley) and includes Send Him Up gag, which came from an adlib and stayed.

Nicole Kidman - excellent from the start, at its best from halfway when it had been so well set up (by the Clown’s Accent improv bit, which tells us to expect a female Australian). 

Australian Accent Song - very good, better once it was edited down in week one. I still found it funnier than many of the audience did. The Steve Irwin line got a groan 100% of the time, and the Mel Gibson one got the biggest laugh almost as often.

Linking routine to Lady In Pants - the only bit of the show that I could never make funnier. So it remains so-so, and very short. Mentions that Clown with funny accent (from Clown Accent routine) has been knocked out & clothes stolen, a useful bit of plot that helps when Clown appears later. Functional, but never quite funny enough.

Lady In Pants - Brilliant. Audience consistently finds it funnier than I do. (NB: This, and Greggs Song, were both resurrected from an un-made Socks sitcom script I wrote ten years ago. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that before. They were part of a totally different storyline and had never made it even as far as a Youtube video, let alone into a show.)

Are You Smitten routine, good. Nice three gags in a row, and linking well to…

Clown Routine. Another one that the audience mostly didn’t find as funny as I did. But laughs improved after midway point and it was never actually unfunny (except to that person who must have thought this was where it got “dark”)

Clown monologue - worked well once it started to be “pants”. About halfway through the run.

Clown’s Killer Song - Excellent. The audience largely thought this was funnier than I thought they would, especially those who got the references to the Psychopath Checklist and the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Very Edinburgh Fringe jokes those, can’t imagine how they’ll go anywhere else.

Front of curtain lines - material delivered offstage, giving me time to re-rig Nicole, the Clown, and the Nicole costumes. Occasionally got a laugh, did the trick.

Pagliacci Routine - What I thought was the best written new routine in the whole show, only went down as well as I expected half the time. Some lines killed, but never every time. Sometimes the Pal Is Archie bit got a laugh, sometimes a groan, sometimes just confusion. Venn diagram usually got a big laugh and rescued it.

Magic Routine - Obviously a highpoint, and definitely got the most consistent laughter every night. But we knew it would because it dates back to the 2010 show and has been in our club set since. But only a handful of people seemed to have seen it and it was generally the highpoint of every show. The new Sawing A Lady In Half prop helped, totally remade just before our last two previews in July. The one it replaced was so battered it was probably inhibiting some of the funny.

Slight falling out routine. The closest we got to the classic Socks falling out skit came here, to set up the Greggs Song.

Greggs Song - perfect, and genius. I am most pleased with the costume and dance routine which, when they worked, were brilliant. However on three occasions a hand came loose from the sleeve, on one occasion both hands came loose (though we got good laughs from this on the whole), and on one night the whole costume fell off. (In the first week, because of the heat in the venue, I had a number of costumes falling off. Partly through the heat making the metal bands less tight, and partly cos my wrists were so wet with sweat. I’d stopped this happening by week two).

Part two - Nicole Kidman’s Woe Is Me scene. This has one funny line in, of which I’m extremely proud. The rest just set up the next bit.

Eurovision Song - very good. The Brexit sentiment may have divided the room sometimes, but always went well.

Greatest Show/ Greatest Story - the mixed scripts went well, as long as I made it clear. Got big laughs a few times.

Little Baby Jesus and Charlton Heston - Some good laughs, but always variable. The only guaranteed belter was Feeding The 5000, which ends the scene well.

Pontius Pilot - Silly but did the trick

Nicole Kidman and John The Baptist - okay, sometimes got a laugh.

Little Baby Jesus “just out of shot” - worked well, once we made it clear. Not well performed in the first week I fear.

Pontius Pilot as Nicole Kidman - brilliant, once I’d got it right. Because this involved re-rigging a prop that I’d just used, I sometimes forgot to do it, making this scene un-smooth and therefore not funny. When done properly it’s very good.

“Here comes the creepy clown” - Excellent. When the audience got it, this stretch started to be all about physical and visual humour, not gags, and that’s always the best. The callback to the Performance Artist routine, which I introduced in a week one rewrite, was most satisfying.

“Climb up the ladder / he didn’t do stairs” Death Of The Clown  - Muddled in the first week, very good by the end.

Nicole’s Trapeze Routine - Excellent by the end, messy to begin with. Double Pike was funny at last, once it found its place.

Punchline at the Doctor’s - Fabulous. I was amazed when this got the big laughs it did, and applause sometimes. Because it is, by definition, an anticlimactic ending, it was in danger of falling flat and disappointing the audience. And I think it did that a couple of times in the first week, because the scene preceding it hadn’t been done well enough. But as the climax of a really tight farce scene, it was spot on.

Adlib songs - good when we had time for them, sometimes excellent, occasionally meh. Only skipped (because overrunning) two or three times.

Sweary Poppins - Brilliant. Felt like a cop-out to me cos it’s an old song, dating back to our 2nd or 3rd Edinburgh show, and a regular staple in our club set. But most of the audiences were hearing it for the first time so they loved it. A great way to end the show after the faux anticlimactic punchline.

Thanks for watching, now to write that new show...

 

July 31st -  August 25th 2019, The Scottish Falsetto Socks ROLL UP! at the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose 9.30pm #Edfringe