Final Festival update


Udder fail
Originally uploaded by d6y

So, the final week of the Brighton Festival saw us at four events:

  • Double Header: Hattie Hayridge & Norman Lovett at a very chilly Udder Belly. This was the first night on their tour, and it was an entertaining hour or so
  • The death and life of Sherlock Holmes at the Nightingale Theatre. This only starred Roger Llewellyn and he worked immensely hard for both 45 minute halves – especially given the heat in the theatre. It was a great play – with Roger playing Sherlock, Watson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Moriarty and a number of smaller, lesser characters. Excellent and real good entertainment
  • Brain Drain – a locally produced play at the Sanctuary Cafe. We missed the first half as we were still travelling back from the Hull City game at Wembley so despite Jeremy and Kirsty’s best efforts I never did quite work out what was going on
  • The return of the Ornate Johnsons at the Udder place – the most noisy venue I may have ever been to – with the traffic on the roundabout, the generator to keep the structure inflated and general people noise from both the Udderbelly and people milling around. It was quite memorable, however, first of all one of the microphones wasn’t working so quite a few scenes were played out with one of the cast shouting whilst the others were conversing normally – it broke things up a bit, but the level of professionalism was immensely high and they incorporated this handicap into the sketches. The background noise quietened down, and then the roof started coming down, until it was so low we had to be evacuated. After 5 or 10 minutes they got it sorted out (apparently a carrier bag blew into the fan – which was why it suddenly went quiet) and we started again. This was probably one of the best shows I’ve seen during the fringe – the level of professionalism that the cast showed throughout a troubled performance was incredible. I’ll look out for them again.


Author: jane

Software Developer, Photographer and Snowboarder