Well, pretty both myself and Laura were wiped out from yesterday, lord only knows how all the production team and performers in The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning must have been feeling. 

So I think I'm right in saying that I have only seen two shows today, but I am off for a third later. 

The first was Volcano's L.O.V.E. I have mixed feelings about the show. After talking to one of my flatmates who saw the show when it first premiered in 1992 (the year after I was born - scary), I can see how it would have been breaking a lot of standard procedures to Shakespeare and re-evaluating the approach to love as a topic. The production is charged, and  highly physical with a lot of focus on the savagery of passion. But for me, it didn't really click. I understand the desire to undercut the pretension and unquestioned value of Shakespeare's language of love, but the continued use of a faux-Shakespeare rhetoric clashed with this design, and the language felt misused. I guess that academic practice has long since caught up to a re-evaluating of Shakespeare's language, and I am well aware of the complexity of the issues of love that already pre-exist in the sonnets, and within the performance this was reduced to a more simplistic view - stripping the text to its brutality and rawness of sexual energy is an important aspect of the language, but it does so much more at the same time. Obviously the production has far more focus on the physicality, but I always find it hard to appreciate that aspect when it doesn't marry with the text. 

The second was The Bloody Ballad of Mary Maid, by Gabblebabble theatre. I loved it. The show consist of a live hilly-billy-esque band walking you through the tale of Mary Maid, and it was frantic, fun, and a really sweet story of unusual love. I slightly too tired to accurately put this into writing, but I have spoken about it in the video below. I would highly recommend it, again it is another show that has made me think 'Damn, that's what I want to make'.

And now I am back from the third - the absolutely amazing Alternative Comedy Memorial Society. Just everything you want from comedy at the Fringe. Basically, it is just a platform for people to do stuff that is a bit more absurd, or stupid, or weird, or just new, but it had the most amazing atmosphere. Whenever anybody finished their set the compéres say: "Failure?" to which the audience reply "A Noble Failure". Highlights included Robin Ince doing the most amazing Stewart Lee Impression for a full 8 minutes, a set entirely in (I want to say) German/ Danish, Tony Law doing a drawn-out, rambling interview about knowing Joan of Ark (it was a moment of clowning at its best) and so much more. If you're here be sure to go. It's late a night, but that is what made it the best.

I am going to sleep.