Well I’ve completed another Edinburgh Fringe, this time from the enviable position of only needing to be there for ten days. So I thought I’d better do some sort of comprehensive debrief from it before we all drown in the deluge of even more comprehensive Fringe debriefs at the end of the month from people who have actually earned the right to do them by dragging themselves through all four weeks. So, here we go, here’s what I did, what I saw, what I learned, and so on. May it bring succour to those who are not there this year, and support and encouragement to those who are – soon this could be you! Only two more weeks to go! You’ve got this!

Edinburgh Fringe Hall Of Mirrors Syndrome

This year I was more aware than ever of something I’ve dubbed “Edinburgh Fringe Hall of Mirrors Syndrome”, which is a strange psychological phenomenon that becomes more pronounced the more times you do that festival where you are simultaneously:

• Trying to experience your life moment by moment, while also:
• Intensely focusing on trying to move your life forwards into the future, and also:
• Being surrounded by versions of yourself from the past who don’t know what you know now and keep wandering around being stupid and making mistakes that are very painful to watch

“Ah, there I am in 2013, eating a sandwich while dressed as a shit superhero who talked like Terry Wogan,” I’d think as I saw myself coming out of Tesco in a red morph-suit and a bucket-hat. “There I am flyering in 2012, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. There I am gigging on that mixed bill show in 2014, and I’m really bad. There I am winning that award in 2019 and I think that’s going to be some sort of end point or threshold in my career where everything is different from now on, but quite soon after that I’m going to learn that life just continues.”

It’s quite a destabilising feeling to spend time in such an emotional pressure-cooker where you’re constantly surrounded by other people’s stress and anxiety as well as various iterations of your own ghost, particularly when the ghost is just frozen in the act of whatever he was doing at the time and you can neither reach him nor change anything about him. This aspect of ghosts – the fact that it’s impossible for them to know more than they knew at the moment they became ghosts – is one I’d like to see tapped into more often in ghost stories. If I saw that girl crawl out of the TV I’d probably just roll my eyes and go “Pfft, please. You don’t even know what Brexit is, you idiot.”

Anyway, the most intense ghost I experienced this year was quite a lovely one. In 2018 I fell out very badly with my best friend at the Fringe and we agreed not to talk for a while. The day after this happened I wandered around Edinburgh in a daze, feeling numb, until I bumped into my good friend Ben Target. He asked me how I was doing and I tried to explain what had happened but just ended up crying. He said he was sorry to hear it and then walked off and I felt a bit embarrassed for a minute – I’d obviously overshared and made him feel awkward. A couple of minutes later he came back with a cup of tea and a Tunnock’s caramel wafer bar, handed them to me wordlessly, and walked off. I was so grateful to him for recognising that I was in a place where no words were going to help me, but a simple act of kindness could do a lot.

This year, a friend of mine was having a bit of a tough time for the first few days and I sat trying to comfort her while she cried. Another comedian friend of hers approached us and saw how she was doing, noticed that she was crying and I was trying to comfort her, and walked off. I continued trying to comfort her, reminding her of how gruelling the Fringe could be but how quickly it could all change and that how she felt right now wasn’t going to be a predictor for how she would feel for the whole month. While we carried on chatting, the other comedian came back with a cup of tea, handed it to her wordlessly, and walked off. I was so happy to meet that particular ghost, because it reminded me that despite the acute and ever-present anxieties and stresses of the Edinburgh Fringe, the fuel it actually runs on is kindness. There are infinite different ways to fuel your worry and your self-doubt up there, but only so many ways to show kindness, and they remain fairly constant.

In fact, my overwhelming feeling about this year’s Fringe is the experience of compersion, which I’m told is something that has entered the cultural lexicon thanks to its significance in polyamory, but really should be something we all try to do more of anyway. It’s basically when you feel genuinely happy about other people being happy or doing well. In previous years at the Fringe, it’s definitely been something I’ve tried very hard to feel and have been intermittently successful with, but haven’t always nailed. Someone you care about having a really great time at the Fringe is a source of joy in many ways, but also a major source of anxiety – “Will I have a good time too? How do I get the thing that they just got? Is there something I can do to get it, or would I need to have already done it?” (The correct answer to this question is that everybody gets what they get, and there’s very little you can do about it. This truth is very liberating when you feel happy and fulfilled by your show, and very anxiety-inducing when you don’t, so as ever, the only thing you should be prioritising is making a show that you love doing every day).

But this year, because I wasn’t up there chasing accolades myself, I just felt pure delight at how well all my friends were doing. John-Luke Roberts hit the ground running with a slew of 5-star reviews and sold out shows, and believe you me, if he’d done that in a year when I was up there slogging away and trying to get my own show off the ground, I’d have been absolutely furious about that. “Wow, well done!” I’d have spat at him, my eye twitching as I tried to work out how I could sabotage his entire run and then claim his success for myself, like pirates claiming each other’s loot. This year, however, I was so happy to see my friend flying right out of the traps, and I just kept feeling that way every time I saw it happen to different people. As I said, the energy the whole thing runs on is kindness, and it’s very easy to forget that when you’re in the midst of it and let your experience be driven by anxiety instead. Even when your run’s going brilliantly, it’s easy to start thinking “Where’s the next thing, and the next thing, and the next?” This year felt like the most I’ve ever been able to engage with the energy of just wishing the best for everyone and feeling really happy to see their success, and I really hope I remember all this for next time when I’m back for the full month and will inevitably be feeling more of the anxiety too. Perhaps I’ll schedule this email so it sends directly to myself in the first week of next year’s Fringe and I remember how good it felt to be up there just feeling pleased for everyone.

So, What Did I Do Up There?

Joz Norris Is Hugh Jackman Is The Phantom Of The Opera – I just love performing this show so much, and can’t wait to bring it back for the full run next year. This sold out its original two performances, and almost sold out its extra show as well, and they were all a blast. The finale went slightly off the rails and became even more chaotic on one of them, so the show could possibly benefit from a few more guardrails to prevent that from happening, although I’d hate to polish that chaos energy out of it entirely. Largely, though, the show itself feels really solid and I love what it’s doing, so the majority of the work I need to do to it over the next year is about adding production value and taking it to the next level – sharper choreography, more exciting stage design, more spectacle and so on. The current WIP version will be performed twice more at Soho Theatre at the end of the month, and after that it’ll go back behind closed doors for a while so I can build the next version of it!

You Wait. Time Passes. – Francesca Moody Productions’s beautiful Shedinburgh venue is such a cool addition to the Fringe ecosystem, and was a really lovely place to give the final two performances of this show, which holds a huge place in my heart. Being a show about a guy who’s locked himself in his shed for years tinkering with his masterpiece, the space lent a really nice atmosphere to the story that was very different to the more minimalist design of the version of the show I toured this year. Most interestingly, while I love this show and loved sending it off like this, I was also very conscious of how much this now feels like an old version of me that is already in the rear-view mirror. It’s funny how quickly something that very much felt like your best work at the time can instead feel like “Yeah, that was fun but I’m excited about the next thing now.” We’ll probably do one final show of this at some point in the autumn so we can film it, but we’ll inevitably tweak it a bit to make it work on film, so these will have been the final times I performed the show as originally intended, and I loved it.

Barry & Tony: The Baritones – John-Luke and I have been openly referring to this show as “the only thing that brings us joy,” which we probably shouldn’t do considering we both have other shows we’ve worked harder on that we want people to come and see, but my God this makes us laugh. We’ve performed it four times now, and it’s become very clear that it thrives on us not really knowing what’s going to happen. We cycle out old pranks and songs as we get bored of them, and make sure to come up with brand new ones every time we do it. The plan is to bring it back for the minimum possible dates next year that make us eligible for Best Newcomer and call it Barry & Tony Win Best Newcomer to see if we can trick the panel into nominating two acts who have done the Fringe for over a decade, but never together. If they instead nominate us for Best Show, we will turn it down – it’s newcomer or nothing.

Incredible Baritones Valentine’s Day card design by Bec Hill. Now we just need to work out which one’s which

Table Reads: The Last One You’d Expect – I’m very grateful to Don Taffner and DLT for staging multiple readings of my whodunnit script The Last One You’d Expect at Monkey Barrel as part of their Table Reads script showcase, and to the amazing actors and comedians who brought the characters to life. I’ve got big plans for this script going into the autumn and am more excited about it than by any other scripted project I’ve worked on for years. It was really invaluable to hear what different qualities the actors brought to the characters, and how the script shifted in response to them. It’s given me lots to think about when it comes to redrafting it, and I’m excited for the next stage of its life!

RHLSTP – It was lovely as ever to guest on this and chat bollocks, although as soon as I’d guested on it Rich sent a newsletter saying the Edinburgh recordings weren’t selling as well as he’d liked and that he was probably going to wind down the podcast, so I think I might have been the guest who killed it. Also I told a story about eating cat food at sports day which the audience were genuinely disgusted by, and I can only apologise to them. I thought it was a worthwhile experiment, to find out if cat food is nice for future reference.

Comedy Club 4 Kids – Loved pretending to be Hugh Jackman and teaching a roomful of kids to sing “The Great Gig In The Sky.” I’m told by the venue staff who were sat outside that it sounded like I was slaughtering them all.

Anna Leong Brophy: Born Sexy Yesterday – I’ve loved directing this so much. It’s grown into a real theatrical extravaganza that says some really smart, insightful things about the kinds of stories we tell about women and girls. It does it all without ever losing its silliness and its sense of spectacle, and she anchors it all with a real virtuoso performance. It’s been getting 5-star reviews and selling out multiple dates, and it’s a real blockbuster thrill-ride for movie fans and comedy fans alike.

Emmeline Downie: Gail – I co-directed this with Leo Reich and it’s a masterclass in how to create a comedy character who is both hilarious and utterly human. I’m in awe of the empathy and the dignity with which Emmeline has drawn her, and audiences seem really impressed by how the show pivots from something hilarious into something very human that stays with them for a long time afterwards. It’s sold out pretty much every day so far and seems to be growing into a real word-of-mouth hit.

Alice Fraser: Oh Man! – I also directed this and am so proud and impressed by how Alice has synthesised the intelligence and the depth of the themes she wanted to explore in this show with the sense of chaos and silliness that she wanted to use to explore them. This show walks the line between them both very skilfully, and I’ve been really moved watching audiences respond to its final act in particular. In a funny pairing with Anna’s show, it’s saying some really smart, insightful things about the stories we tell about men and boys, and I think it’s a message a lot of people are needing to hear. It’s been getting rave reviews and selling out every day.

What I Saw:

Katie Norris: Mother Succubus – I’m obviously biased because she’s my bioligical mother, but Katie is such a funny, powerhouse performer and this show is as brilliant as you’d expect. It’s a show about taking ownership of the things other people label you as and turning them to your advantage, but mostly it’s just very very funny.

Sam Eley Is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage – This is one of the big word-of-mouth hits of this year’s Fringe, in which Sam wears a big papier-mache head and pretends to be a horrible old man. The writing is so dense and imaginative and gross and brilliant, and contains so many fantastic images and turns of phrase.

Joseph Morpurgo: Highlander 70 – In which Joseph has taken a high school yearbook form 1970 and built an entire world from it. It’s a seriously impressive, high-effort theatrical piece packed with silliness but also a very interesting exploration of a world that no longer exists and what that world looks like to us from the one we live in now.

Margaret Thatcher: Queen Of Hollywood – This is just such a riotously funny good time of a show. Matt Tedford is as brilliant as ever as Maggie, now aided and abetted by Kathy Maniura as Meryl Streep and Rosalie Minnitt as Hollywood mogul Dick Sexpest. It’s so silly and stupid and the songs are awesome and the performances are great and the script by Matt, Jon Brittain and Tasha Dhanraj is phenomenal. I loved it so much.

Adam Larter: Who Remembers The 90s? – A joyously silly show about 90s nostalgia that is ludicrously committed to its central gag, which I won’t spoil so you get to discover it. Highly recommended for people who want to see a show that encapsulates what the Fringe is really all about.

Alexander Bennett: All It Takes – A very funny show full of really great, silly songs and music videos that also really touched my heart and has a lot of powerful things to say about the cost of pursuing your dreams. Deserves a nice big audience.

And that’s it! I saw so much less than I wanted to see. I’m desperate to see Frankie Thompson, Crybabies, Rob Preston, Adam Riches, Elf Lyons, Em Humble, Lil Wenker, Li Jin Hao and so many more. I’ll just have to catch them all in London or on tour!

Good luck to all those brave soldiers still up there smashing it. You’ll get your rest soon!

A Quick Plug – Come see Jackman/Phantom at Soho. Go on, it’s your last chance to see it for a few months. It’s very good! Friday in particular is very busy already, so do get booking if you don’t want to miss out.

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – God knows. I really don’t like completing this section while the Fringe is on. My brain is overloaded as it is.

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – John-Luke and I came up with a new prank for Barry & Tony where he anaesthetised me as I slept and turned all my internal organs upside-down, and it really broke me.

Book Of The Week – Emergency Questions by Richard Herring. He was selling this as merch and I’m falling behind on my reading target on Goodreads so I thought a quick short thing would be really helpful. Some of the questions are very funny as well. I really enjoyed “If there was a TV quiz show where there are four contestants and the winner gets £10 million and the loser is publicly executed, would you go on it?”

Album Of The Week – Sheer Heart Attack by Queen. Continuing my newfound exploration of Queen in response to my shocking discovery that they are quite good. I actually preferred Queen II to be honest, I liked the pomp and the proggy silliness. This is slightly more conventional glam-pop-rock, but “Killer Queen” and “Flick Of The Wrist” are classics, so they prop it up. Join me next week for more inane thoughts on a Queen album everybody’s definitely already listened to and formed their opinion on decades ago.

Film Of The Week – Not seen any films. Actually that’s not true, I rewatched The Princess Bride last night. That’s a great film, but you knew that. God, look at me recommending The Princess Bride and Queen and Richard Herring’s merch, what the hell happened to this section of the newsletter?

That’s all for this week! If you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it. Take care of yourselves until next time,

Joz xx

PS Feel free to send me a tip on Ko-Fi if you enjoy my work and would like to support me to keep making it!

PPS Thanks to producer superstar Queenie Miller for capturing me ready to rock the Shed:

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