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Blog News, reviews and cool stuff from the FestBuzz team.

Chris Cox wins FestBuzz’s Twitter of the Year award at Edinburgh Fringe 2009

Posted by elise on August 27, 2009

Chris Cox wins FestBuzz’s Twit­ter of the Year award at Edin­burgh Fringe 2009

Fes­t­Buzz have awarded Chris Cox, the com­edy men­tal­ist magi­cian, the first ever com­edy Twit­ter of the Year Award at Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe.

Cox has been given this prize for his cre­ative and pro­lific use of Twit­ter which has helped gar­ner him almost 3,000 fol­low­ers on the site, and ensured his pop­u­lar­ity at this year’s Fringe fes­ti­val with his show Mind Over Pat­ter. He has tweeted around 300 times this August, con­vers­ing with fans and fel­low come­di­ans about com­edy, the inter­net and his show. Chris’ online name is @bigcox, and his mind-reading and magic show com­bines other new social media such as Face­book to cre­ate some excel­lent tricks for his audience.

Fes­t­Buzz is a new way to find cool stuff at the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­vals. It’s a project from Affect Labs, a data pro­cess­ing com­pany based in Edin­burgh, and is sup­ported by Chan­nel 4’s 4iP fund. Fes­t­Buzz aggre­gates “tweets” about shows and then uses sen­ti­ment detec­tion to cre­ate a star rat­ing for the act: reviews are crowd-sourced directly from the peo­ple who are see­ing the shows, rather than critics.

Twit­ter has become an inter­net sen­sa­tion in the last 8 months: func­tion­ing a lit­tle like Face­book sta­tus updates, you sim­ply tell the site what you’re doing (in 140 char­ac­ters or less) and then read what other peo­ple are doing from their “tweets”. The attrac­tion of Twit­ter is fol­low­ing other inter­est­ing or famous people’s tweets about their lives, cre­at­ing a stream of con­scious­ness type feed which illus­trates the chang­ing mood of the moment.

The prize will be pre­sented to Chris Cox at Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe show start­ing at 1pm on Thurs­day 27th August. Stut­ter has been run­ning the revue since 1992 and will be pre­sent­ing his own Spirit of the Fringe awards on Sun­day 30th August.

http://www.festbuzz.com/

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FestBuzz Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Posted by Domenica on August 20, 2009

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What: A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, by the Bei­jing Film Acad­emy
Where: McE­wan Hall
When: 19:00, August 14 – 23; 14:30, August 16, 22 – 23
How Much: £10 – 12, £35 family

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Daz­zling the­atre spec­ta­cle fus­ing magic and tech­nol­ogy — a mod­ern and enchant­ing take on an old favourite.”

For a stan­dard, if well-loved, Shake­spearean play to stand out amidst the end­less options at the Fringe, it must cer­tainly offer some­thing spe­cial. The Bei­jing Film Acad­emy does just this by per­form­ing A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream as viewed through a games con­sole. At first glance this may seem merely a clever gim­mick, but the gam­ing motif is but one ele­ment of a richly daz­zling spec­ta­cle of theatre.

To begin, the royal fairies Tita­nia and Oberon, whose quar­rels spill over into the world of humans, are reimag­ined as gamers toy­ing with the lives and fates of Shakespeare’s hap­less human lovers, now char­ac­ters in a life­like vir­tual world. This proves an intrigu­ingly mod­ern take on the con­cept of fate and the forces that shape our lives. Do video games appeal because they allow us to play God in a world of our own cre­ation? And to what extent does tech­nol­ogy nowa­days con­trol our des­tiny? These are the ques­tions left float­ing as the actors stut­ter, jerk and bounce as though under the con­trol of an invis­i­ble thumb impa­tiently push­ing buttons.

But it is hard to focus too long on the intel­lec­tual impli­ca­tions. This Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream is also a sen­sory treat, with haunt­ing music (includ­ing a Chi­nese ren­di­tion of Scot­land the Brave) and cos­tumes that tread the line between tra­di­tional and futur­is­tic. Ele­gant dance and mar­tial arts are blended seam­lessly into the sto­ry­line and set against the already impres­sive back­drop of McE­wan Hall, which is fur­ther enhanced by ani­mated dig­i­tal imagery from the cre­ators of the open­ing cer­e­monies at the Bei­jing Olympics. This all serves to build a truly mag­i­cal atmos­phere around an oth­er­wise unadorned stage, cul­mi­nat­ing in a cap­ti­vat­ing final scene in which the building’s walls and murals them­selves come to life.

Still, it is the per­form­ers who are this show’s biggest asset. Despite sub­stan­tial sec­tions of the play being per­formed in Man­darin (and those seg­ments in Eng­lish being occa­sion­ally a lit­tle hard to under­stand), the actors all deliver such vibrant, emo­tive per­for­mances that any audi­ence mem­ber with even a pass­ing famil­iar­ity with Shakespeare’s play will be able to fol­low the gen­eral gist. Even when the com­pli­cated plot does become a lit­tle hard to fol­low, the emo­tional pathos of the lovers and enliven­ing scenes of robust phys­i­cal com­edy are still enough amply to engage the viewer. Indeed, the cast proved so com­pelling that my only regret was being unable to under­stand for the most part what they were say­ing, as their voices, expres­sions, and move­ments alone cap­ti­vated my attention.

All in all, the Bei­jing Film Acad­emy have proved with this fas­ci­nat­ing show that great the­atre tran­scends lan­guage bar­ri­ers, and that nowa­days tech­nol­ogy and art can go a long way toward replac­ing the magic miss­ing from our mod­ern world.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Domenica Goduto

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Festbuzz Review: Chris Cox — Mind Over Patter

Posted by elise on August 12, 2009

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Who: Chris Cox
Where: Pleas­ance King Dome
When: 8.30pm, Wed 12 Aug — Mon 31 Aug
How Much: £8-£9.50

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Chris Cox has plenty up his sleeves in this con­fi­dent & rather sweet magic show. Mind read­ing, tech­no­log­i­cal trick­ery & good laughs abound.”

Chris Cox is a slight, geeky look­ing boy who is so sin­cere when he admits to spend­ing much of his youth in his bed­room with a Paul Daniels’ magic set that it’s almost impos­si­ble to doubt him. How­ever, he’s remark­ably at home on stage and the audi­ence instantly warm to him. It seems his rep­u­ta­tion as a reg­u­lar Radio 1 guest goes before him, though it’s not imme­di­ately obvi­ous how magic can work on radio, the least visual of mediums.

Cox’s main “trick” is mind-reading, though he repeat­edly makes the dis­claimer that he can’t read minds. Der­ren Brown is an obviosu com­par­i­son, though the truth is that Brown’s pat­ter about psy­chol­ogy etc. is as much a part of his dis­trac­tion tech­niques as his jokes, so I’m on my guard already as Cox starts ref­er­enc­ing psy­chol­o­gists and soci­ol­o­gists like Stan­ley Milgram.

Watch­ing a magi­cian with a crit­i­cal eye is much like watch­ing a come­dian in the same man­ner: you’re wait­ing to see which way they are direct­ing you in order to work out where the surprise/punchline/magic will actu­ally be. And like watch­ing a come­dian, this crit­i­cal appraisal can ruin the humour by tak­ing the fun out of it. How­ever, it’s good fun try­ing to work out how Cox’s tricks work as he seem­ingly bum­bles through them. There’s lots of dis­trac­tion ele­ments, some good jokes, audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, lots of puns on the magician’s sur­name and some cre­ative set-ups. By using Face­book, iTunes and his lap­top Cox presents a very mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of the ancient arcane arts.

I con­fess, how­ever, that I had a pretty good idea how Chris did every sin­gle one of his tricks and I do think some of the ear­lier stunts in the show needed a lit­tle more work on tim­ing so the cracks in their facade aren’t quite so appar­ent. How­ever, most of the pat­ter was slick, and his charisma car­ried the audi­ence along nicely. He deserved the gasps of awe he got, though he also deserved a few groans for some of the puns. A great night out!

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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