During this Fringe trip I had planned to be spontaneous but mostly in week #3, so I was surprised to find myself here as my first show wasn't until 1645. Thanks to the Fringe app and the "On Nearby" feature it's quite easy to find shows locally when you have a slot to fill ...
Pamela DeMenthe is Mancunian comic and actress Jenny May Morgan. The character is a mid-thirties Home Counties gal, made redundant and embarking on a career of writing erotic fiction (28 self-published books and counting).
The show is in the form of Ms. DeMenthe presenting a writers' workshop. She presents her new book and highlights some of her previous titles such as Panties Inferno and Asphyxia (It's Not For Everyone), takes the audience through her writing tips and tactics, then performs a reading of the first three chapters of her new book Sticky Digits - which quickly morphs into a performance piece.
It's a great and surprising show. It starts off as what appears to be a simple character-based comedy but rapidly changes into a very physical piece of solo performance - Ms. DeMenthe is not afraid of putting it out there. The story, and parallels between her "real life" and the life of her book's heroine are cleverly intertwined and as the book's heroine used to work at a nuclear power station and initial romance blossomed over a glovebox of plutonium rods this former nuclear worker smiled at the inaccuracies.
It's a great one-woman show and hopefully the first of many finds on this trip.
Side note - the show was almost ruined by quite the loudest most obnoxious American I've ever come across. Waiting in the bar prior to the show this chap was chatting to the barmaid - I say chatting, more yelling. Basically screaming "look at me I is the special" with every bellowed vacuous word. He sat in from of me and proceeded to howl, bray and stamp his feet at every vaguely funny thing said during the show. Fortunately the performance was strong enough to stop me doing anything (like tutting disapprovingly) but, jeez, there aren't some selfish arrogant wankers about ...
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