I hope you agree this find was worth sharing. In its way, its almost as coruscating,
nourishing, and unstoppably funny, if only – as Americans say – on
accident. The central message of "Emptying Yourself for God" is a hell of a hook, and the total lack of rapport between unrehearsed host and puppet creates a tension I find it hard to grow tired of, however much the deranged animated inserts start to drag.
This Lucy and Friends is also the kind of reminder I always enjoyed getting, that before hitting its stride with wall to wall,
parasocial direct address and crafted video essays, YouTube was once a lot
more like the show Takeover TV, a kind of petting zoo for anonymous projects as its name suggests. Like Macbeth and the taste of fear, I had almost forgot.
* I'm trying to make formidable happen as a noun, a bit like spectacle even though that was never an adjective. Pronounce it as French as you like.
Sticking with politics, it's been a while since we checked in on the folks at Lembit Opik's zero gravity baby farm. The following is taken from the "Weekly Q and A with the Chairman of Asgardian Parliament" held on the eighth day of the month of Leo in the Asgardian year 0010 (full video posted below) with thanks to YouTube's transcription function...
12:31 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Yes, I believe we are live. Um and while we wait on the Chair, Peter,
would you like to give a summary of our um chair's meeting from an hour ago?
12:42 - Deputy Chair Peter Maughan (pictured):
Yes, Sarah. [clears throat] We're looking forward very much in the the meeting of the chairs [clears throat] looking forward to further discussions of our trip aa of the uh
Antarctic potential. We also are looking forward to whatever we're going to be able to do to
celebrate the uh anniversary of Asgardia and uh we had a lot of chairs there at the meeting tonight.
So it was very very good. Um we're waiting for some reports back from Lembit (Opik, Chairman of Asgardian Parliament)with regard to the uh discussions he's been having with Head of Nation
and with uh the Prime Minister. So we're hoping we might get some more news from him him at uh at this
meeting. But as it stands at the moment, we're really sort of waiting, absorbing,
looking forward to what we can do, and hoping that I can find a cure for the hiccups that I keep getting every two minutes, um, courtesy of the new drug that I'm taking and it gives me uh it gives
me hiccups. So, don't let anybody tell you that it's easy to lose weight with these
injections that you have because it is. But unfortunately, it also gives you ter terrible indigestion which I
have.
But no, we had a we had a very good meeting and we're now looking
forward to what Lembit will bring back to us. Lembit's in a in a conference in London at the moment (GB News' and Jordan Peterson's ARC). So, he's having to work around that. But, uh, we're hoping that he'll have some good news for us [clears
throat] in a few minutes when he manages to come to us. So, that's pretty much all we did. We didn't come to any huge conclusions
about anything, but we did uh we did have a good meeting and uh and that, and now we're waiting for Lembit.
15:12 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Thank you, Peter.
15:13 - Deputy Chair:
But now, now we're live. I should say that uh that my name is Peter Maughan
and I'm de deputy chair of the parliament of Asgardia which is the first space
parliament and also the first fully digital democracy and that if anybody's
watching this who is not a resident of Asgardia this is a good time to join. It's €100 or the equivalent in your currency per year and that gives you access to
all of the facilities of Asgardia. So if you're not [clears throat] already a member, get joined. Uh we
love it. We come together once every week as chairman of the committees of
Asgardian Parliament, but we also we also enjoy ourselves. We're all friends. It's all quite nice. Those of us who've been involved in politics for a long
time, as I have, know that politics is a dirty, filthy business. But this is not politics. This is politics with a small P in the sense that we are looking to
guide the the destiny of mankind in space and looking to safeguard the residents of Asgardia, but not to fight with
one another. It's very easy to fall out with me. I mean, I'm in lo local politics in
the northeast of England and everybody falls out with me. Although I try to avoid that, but we're just all friends. If I'm in
trouble with regard to anything, I can reach out to all of my colleagues in the Parliament of Asgardia and they're always
here to lend a helping hand. So, it's worth it to join to have that constant on constant friendship
just at the end of a phone and it's lovely and I wouldn't have it any other way. Now, I
don't know who's here. You can't ask Lem any questions because he's not. But if anybody wants to ask any questions of any anyone, I'll try.
17:48 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Peter, you are you're muted, Peter. And I think Lembit has joined us...
I'm glad they've kept the intro, but why change perfection?
That was back in November of 2022. Actually it's 'irreplaceable' isn't it?
And apologies, this will be a quite long, largely unillustrated, and not very happy post madly stuffed with microlinks, but if you click on only one of those links this last day of Pride, please let it be THIS. Thank you. I always liked you.
Okay. Probably the biggest, if not the only, historical development I've derived any genuine
joy and hope from this century is the shedding of my own
trans-skepticism as friend after friend of mine found the answer to who
they were and came out as trans and non-binary. In the growing light of their revelation the world seemed to me, in this one sense at least, to become better, and richer,
and more user-friendly and less exploitative. Then the party I voted
into office turned that light out because they thought it's the
Government who should decide what human beings are and not human beings. I've heard no one this year
wish each other a Happy Pride. So no, I can't say I've grown any fonder of Sir Keir Starmer since I posted the picture above.
But now Labour is finally finding a replacement, and perhaps the knots in my brain will loosen. However, as the man himself said:
"while this is an important moment it is not one for celebration. It is
one for reflection. On how a party that has always prided
itself on its anti-racism, its commitment to equality, its belief in a
better, fairer Britain could have fallen so far as to betray its own
principles, as well as the principles of the country. This is also a
moment to apologise once again. To all those who were hurt, to all those
who were let down, to all those driven out of our party, who no longer
felt it was their home, who suffered the most appalling abuse. Today, on
behalf of the entire Labour Party, I say: sorry."
... and, at the very opening of this Pride Month, Wes Streeting's replacement as Health Secretary going on the Today programme to pronounce that a trans woman is a man in a dress, an interview I have literally woken up thinking about most days since. (His exact words were in fact "I wouldn't say trans women are women", but what are they then, fucking UFOs?)
Sorry, wrong picture
And obviously – actually I'll take that "obviously" back, because so many seem to miss it – Starmer-mandated cruelty wasn't just reserved for the trans. Look at Woolwich Crown Court: With plans still in place to speed up "access to justice" by ending a person's right to trial by jury, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson recently set a couple of unorthodox precedents, firstly by intitiating a prosecution for contempt of court against defense lawyer (and veteran of inquiries into Grenfell, Hillsborough, and the murder of Stephen Lawrence) Rajiv Menon for daring to remind a jury that they were allowed to vote with their conscience, and secondly, by sentencing the four Palestine Action activists left to defend themselves to a total of twenty-five years in prison for a crime they'd neither been charged with, tried for, nor found guilty of. What all four had been charged with was "criminal damage", specifically: taking a sledgehammer to Elbit Sytems UK "products" intended to be tested on Palestinians before being marketed globally as "battle-proven". (Who knows what "products"? Helmets probably.) What they were jailed for however was terrorism, with the backing of a Court of Appeal who had, in deference to the Government, reversed the High Court's overturning of Palestine Action's proscription.
But no, they're all tangents, because the only thing compelling me to write any of this at all was there was meant to be a mass lobby of MPs to reject the EHRC's "bathroom ban" last Friday, but it had to be cancelled because of the heat and so I was hoping we could all write to our MP instead (particularly if any of you live in Makerfield) and here's that link again please. I also hope whoever takes over as Prime Minister has a plan for the heat, and the hatred,
and the battle-proving, and I hope it's more than just letting it play itself out or whatever.
Finally, since I hope never to write about Starmer again, I'll use this post to share his very last interview before resigning, given at the G7 summit. Chris Spargo is a fairly new YouTuber to the scene, whose other videos include "Why is this bin everywhere in the UK?", "Do you really need to preheat the oven?", and "I just want to show you some weird stones". I love Chris Spargo. And Callum, Emma, Sib, Griffyn, Harry, Amanda, Ashley, Billie, Sarah, Alastair, Maya, Pippa, Jack, Jas, Jordan, Jay, Es, Ozzy, Miranda, Mamoru, Oli, I love you too. Happy Pride x
I never mentioned Hockney on here before yesterday, but I've mentioned Fred Spencer, with good reason. He used the internet as I feel it should be used, broadcasting hope, sharing his sadnesses, and living without embarassment. I'm glad he got back together with Sharon, as evinced in the video above, even if she's not interested in taking trips, and he definitely is. Of course he is. He's a pioneer. One of the first wave of YouTube celebrities.
Long after the video that made them both famous, Fred kept proving content creation wasn't just a job for him, but a calling. For over a decade he used this new platform to make whatever he wanted, whether it was Music Videos...
Satire...
Or whatever this is...
And the initial attraction of his output for me, obviously, was that so much of it was bafflingly bad. Or baffling and bad. Or bad and baffling and charming. And raw. Laziness was no impediment to his creativity, clearly. Fred would just throw the doors open and wait for poetry to happen – or to risk happening but then get derailed by him thinking about sex, then stopping thinking about sex but then thinking about volcanoes, as in the video below, which generates an emotion I have no name for.
Once relegated to life aboard the mobile home "Starship Betty" however, after his initial split from Sharon, he started to document a real life and, as I've written here before, I became genuinely engaged by and grateful for the candour of those unsponsored video diaires. I was sad to hear when things with Sheryl Ann hadn't worked out...
And when I shared my condolences in the comments, Fred was generous enough to reply. Then, a decade later, once things seemed happily patched up with Sharon, my comment received a second reply...
And that's how I learnt Fred Spencer had pasta way.
I couldn't find any confirmation of his death online, but that only made me realise how small a digital footprint he left outside of his own channel.
I've put off writing this for over a year – possibly because I've had, you know, as I'm sure a lot of us have, actual people I deeply love pass on in that year – but I knew I wanted some part of the internet to commemorate the passing of this particular Fred Spencer. And so here it is. He always kept things personal, and kind, and weird, and I hope his work stays up forever, because I honestly think it epitomises a kind of Internet before the fall, a pole star of the lived experience shared fearlessly, and a paradise we can return to whenever we like. In spite of all the algorithms trying to turn us into Hamlet, this invention is still ours, to do with whatever we like, for as long as we can pay attention to each other. Thank you. Where you've gone, I don't know, hope it's warm and sunny. Here's David Lynch.
Sure, another reason I haven't blogged so much might simply be procrastination. I didn't write much about Edinburgh, but as this year began with me wondering whether to take a show there, let's finish 2025 by sweeping up the spoils. I got a trailer out it for a start...
Pow. Huge thanks to DMLK for making it look like there were more than eight people in. Audiences averaged around ten in the end (for a room that sat around eighty) and one of the many lessons I learnt from taking JONAH NON GRATA to the Assembly Rooms was stars on posters don't necessarily mean bums on seats, so bums on posters next time? Maybe stars on bums? I'll stick links to the reviews that the trailer quotes from at the end of this post, but purely in tribute to the unimpeachable work done by this show's hype machine – ie Madelaine at Gingerbread – not for my sake. This isn't about me.
But I mean, look at that. It's not easy to PR a twenty-year-old show either. You're not up for any awards. Still, Madelaine worked actually literally round the clock to get me press even if I had to write it myself. I shared some of those think pieces back in July, but not the lot, so let me slip into italics now, as I present an article I wrote for Gareth Vile's Analogue magazine about why JONAH NON GRATA's a clown show...
I
remember an old interview with Dylan Moran where he stated an ambition
to do absolutely nothing on stage, and have the audience get it.
In a time of such social upheaval no-one even noticed it, Woody Allen made three comedies – in a row –
about the assassination of a political leader: “Bananas, “Sleeper”, and
“Love and Death”. In each, the ethical and religious arguments against
taking human life were inextricably tangled with the protagonist’s
solipsistic, Bob-Hope-inspired cowardice and laziness.
It’s
a cliché that every comedian wants to play Hamlet. The assumption, I
think, is they hope to be taken more seriously. But Hamlet’s one of them
already: more existentially comfortable splitting hairs and taking the
piss than defeating Evil. The prophet Jonah also – at least in the most
famous incident from the short book of the Bible bearing his name – is
an inaction hero, comically human-sized. Initially, he refuses outright
to call down the Wrath of God upon Nineveh, escaping on a boat. But then
a storm comes, and there’s not much to do once you’re inside a whale.
When
people ask me what “Jonah Non Grata” is about, I say it’s about that
story – “sort of” – but it doesn’t matter if the audience don’t know it.
When I’m asked what it is, I say it’s “a clown show”, because that’s
what all my friends were making when I first devised it in my bedroom
back in 2005. And if they ask me what a clown is, I‘m stuck.
The
word means something. It has to. But read any casting breakdown of an
advert calling for a “funny bones” or a “Zach Galifianakis/Martin
Freeman/Jack Black type” (I only get the male ones, sorry) and you’ll
see it’s hard to put into words. “Yes!” is one I remember from a
clowning weekend sometime last century given by the great Angela De
Castro – head of the “Why Not Institute” – and if you only have one word
with which to teach someone how to be a clown, “Yes” might be the best.
But doesn’t that then run entirely counter to my opening? Yes. And Why
Not? Harpo and Chico try to steal a painting. Chico hears someone coming
and hisses at Harpo to hide. Harpo stands on his head in the middle of
the room. He’s still saying yes, just to something else. “If thy mind
dislike anything,” Horatio tells Hamlet, “obey it.” Yes. Exactly. No.
I
had a good pandemic. I hadn’t performed Shakespeare in a while, but
with all the theatres shut, I decided to try performing the Complete
Works on YouTube in my pyjamas, using a range of radio sketch show
voices to differentiate characters, and some home-recorded foley,
because why not? I hope the tone didn’t read as taking the piss. Or at
least, no more than Rylance at the Globe – who never winked at the
audience, but always let them in fully onto how weird everything going
was. I like it when actors pretend to be the audience’s friend.
Weirdly
though, I don’t like it when stand-ups do it. Maybe because stand-ups
are pretending to be themselves. Every solo performer – or at least
every solo performer with decent enough PR – is wildly outnumbered by
their audience, which I find inherently, situationally funny. But
stand-ups can’t acknowledge this power imbalance, because they’re not
playing a character, so it’s just awkward. But Jonah is a character. And
the audience’s friend, because – although he never uses the word “God”
(or indeed “Jonah”) – they are clearly his congregation. The audience
however, playing themselves, are under no obligation to be on Jonah’s
side in return. That’s the motor of not just this show, but a lot of the
work I was lucky enough to make with Shunt that inspired it: “Dance
Bear Dance”… “Money”… The audience outnumbers the performer, but the
performer knows the territory. I’ve made it sound like we’re at war.
We’re not. But it’s nice if we’re strangers.
I
assume most people know the story of Jonah, even if they’re not, like
me, culturally Christian – or Jewish – and even if they don’t know
that’s the story I’m telling. Old stories are good, because you don’t
have to worry about making anything up, you can just get on with
depicting people, and you can’t be blamed for the horrible things they
want to do. And I’ve always thought Theatre was a good place to stage
demons. But those attending have to feel it’s their own demons they’re
watching, not those other fuckers’. They didn’t seem nearly so
prevalent, even back during “The War on Terror”. So, I’ve added one line
since which I hope will help keep us safe: “Waiting is also way of
joining in."
Production shot taken during the technical rehearsal by John Scott.
(I think I was thinner by the time we shot the trailer.)
Back to the italics, as I present next an interview(by which I mean they emailed me questions and I emailed them answers) with the British Comedy Guidefrom the 10th of August, illustrated with more of John's production shots, which is why it's important to get production shots (and of course a press release, otherwise what are they going to ask me about, which is another thing I learnt)...
You describe Jonah Non Grata as "Hamlet, only sillier - or Tommy Cooper, only slower." What's the most ridiculous thing that happens onstage?
I don't want to give too much away, but possibly my entrance. And I'm
not saying it's all downhill from there - my final exit's pretty
ridiculous as well - but when you're presenting a solo immersive piece
without any scenery, inspired by a three-thousand-year-old story about a
prophet who lives in a fish, with self-penned soft techno songs (one of
which is purely a three-verse summary of the Scrap Brain Zone of Sonic the Hedgehog) it's... Do you know, I think it's when I try to mime getting the air nozzle working on a plane. It's not good.
Is it true you've performed the complete works of Shakespeare on YouTube in your pyjamas?
No. But it is five thirty-eighths true. I performed - forgive the
abbreviations, but they're long titles and I'm a massive wanker - Two Gents, Shrew, Titus, Julius Caesar, and Richard the Second, that last one twice because I didn't like the first version. I absolutely nailed the others though.
It was lockdown. Everyone was making stuff online, and I'd always
been YouTube-curious, so I started reading aloud Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year.
When I finished that, I looked around for something else to read, and
realised if I did a Shakespeare a week, I'd be done by Christmas -
performing one act a day, with summaries and regular content warnings -
but that didn't happen in the end, because it turned out to be a lot
harder than just reading a book, and things were beginning to open up,
and Black Lives Mattered so distractions became less useful. But I'm
incredibly proud of both the quality and quantity of that work. I
remember everyone making so much during lockdown. We thought it was the
internet keeping us from having hobbies. Turns out it was pubs. Oh, and
they weren't my pyjamas.
What's harder - writing an existential clown show or delivering legal advice in EastEnders?
Both are phenomenally easy, it turns out. In the first case, you just
take a really old story everyone knows, make a mix tape to accompany
it, listen to it while pissing around in your bedroom, and write down
anything you might want to do again in front of an audience. Then you
wait twenty years until you land a nice advert and can take it to
Edinburgh.
In the second case, you send in a self-tape playing one of a million
faceless interfaces with authority soap characters have to face daily,
then get a phone-call saying you've landed the role of "seedy lawyer".
You turn up knowing your lines. Everyone is brilliant. Danny Dyer's brilliant. Kellie Bright's brilliant. The director's brilliant. You're brilliant. Three cameras record it, and it never happens again. It's brilliant.
What's the most absurd line you've had to say in character?
That "had to" is interesting. So is "in character". I actually got to
play Hamlet once. When Horatio tells him the ghost of his dead father
has been sighted in a suit of armour on the battlements of Elsinore, his
response is "This is very strange" which always got a laugh.
"You wouldn't shit on a bun" from the Shunt show Money also
gets quoted back to me sometimes, but I wrote that one. The line I'll be
declaiming on pavements in my final days though, like Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, is Sir Maxwell House's intro to The Monster Hunters
podcast: "Take two elements. Any two elements. Say, electricity and
water. On their own, perfectly harmless. But mix them together, maybe in
a bowl... Dynamite!"
Who's your dream audience member for this show - and who would be absolutely baffled?
Exactly. Yes. Them.
The following day, August the 11th, I did an actual interview in person, with Peter Green who was lovely and posted a slightly expurgated (ie minus me gushing about my PR) recording HERE. It's a good reflection of where I was two weeks into the run, and includes a few other lessons I'd learnt, such as how to describe the show when handing out flyers: it had become clear from the look of those walking out halfway through having clearly expected a Play about a Man from the Bible, that a stronger contract with any future crowd might be forged by abandoning the initial pitch "it's based on the Book of Jonah" in favour of "it's a mad show about nothing." I also reflect in the interview on having totally missed the "Art Comedy" bus: whether or not to bill the show under Comedy, rather than Theare, had always been a quandary, and it turns out – due partly to the brilliant and queer work produced that year by BigHead Comedy – that 2025 might have been the year to make that switch. Anyway, I hope Art Comedy remains a thing long enough for me to try and take some credit for it. There's more.
musical accompaniment
Back to the press. My final piece was for a music magazine, Fame, published along with a few more production shots on August the 14th...
While I make not claims for it as a "process", I went about making my first solo show the same way I would advise anyone to: I chose a very old story everyone knew as my starting point – in this case the Book of Jonah (of "and the whale" fame) – then, instead of worrying about how to tell it, built up a playlist of music which might accompany that story, and at my own leisure in my own bedroom, worked out things to do to it which I wouldn't mind doing again in front of an audience.
This
may be a generational thing. When I was a student in the nineties,
beginning to associate with people who were making theatre from scratch,
we didn’t just put movie posters on our walls, we listened to carefully
curated playlists of movie soundtracks. Trainspotting. Pulp Fiction.
Romeo plus Juliet. Everyone had these CDs, and pre-existing songs
beloved by a director were an integral – structural – part of work we
found exciting.
When I graduated, we didn’t disperse, and I
started working with a theatre collective in a railway arch in Bethnal
Green, called Shunt. Under this arch, behind the Oxo Tower, and finally,
in a sprawl of tunnels beneath London Bridge station, we created absurd
spaces around which the audience could move, which might change beyond
recognition the moment spectators’ backs were turned. Losing your
audience is normally considered a bad thing, but having an audience let
themselves get lost is different, and essential to these changes were
not only the extraordinary designs of Lizzie Clachan, but the versatile
and hugely enjoyable soundscapes of Ben and Max Ringham. How, as a
performer, could we accompany such compositions, and bring these spaces
to life? That was the process I took into making Jonah Non Grata. (And
it’s also why I can literally say I have more experience dancing about
architecture than I do writing about music.)
The
show I’m taking to Edinburgh this year I made alongside that work. It
is in many ways a personal sequel to it, but as a solo show, it’s also
far more suited to rooms above pubs, and – not wishing to give too much
away – the audience pretty much stay in their seats (unless there’s a
hymn). I wanted it still to have that what-would-now-be-called
“immersiveness” though, and music was crucial for this. Nothing I chose
for my soundtrack could be too “on the nose” though. The Ringhams’ work
for Shunt, while highly evocative, was never generic, and what exactly
was being evoked was part of a show’s mystery, something to play with,
or against. So there’s no whale song in Jonah, for example. Trying to
work out what’s happened once you’ve been swallowed by a whale is, I
think, a far more interesting state to play than knowing you’re in a
whale, and I’m very happy for the audience to share that mystery. Nearly
everything I do onstage, nearly everything we hear, is about existing
in the story, rather than telling it.
And
there are a lot of songs. An abstract space invites abstract text,
something sparer than a monologue. Rather than lectures, I learnt
working with Shunt that the audience might be better addressed by
awkward questions, slogans, ritual, found text or invented catchphrases,
language as part of the alien landscape. Or of course, lyrics. There’s
an economy to lyrics. People receive words differently when they’re
sung, and a performer delivers them differently too. Songs are time
stretchers, time savers, and, as well as releasing words from their
obligation to convey specific information, music releases an audience
from its obligation to follow what’s going on. This can be essential
when a public might worry they’re not “getting it”. All attention should
be rewarded, but rather than demanding intellectual engagement, I think
there should always be space for an audience to drift off, without fear
of getting lost, especially if – as may happen at the Edinburgh Fringe – they’ll be seeing four or five other shows that day.
I hope this helps.
Hmm. Two "though"s. Not good.
Anyway, that's what I wrote. Just before I move onto the reviews: I lost or maybe I should just say spent ten thousand on the whole thing in the end, which is what I expected to lose, but I wonder if I'd have still lost it if I hadn't exxpected to. it was the most nerve-wracking show I have ever done which is probably a good thing, Edinburgh New Town's not what it was ten years ago in terms of passing trade, I was surprised how long it took me to be in the mood to see anything else, at least two weeks, if I return with a solo show I'll try to make sure it's still part of a larger group of people, every night saw somebody not like Jonah and somebody absolutely love it and with single-figure crowds there's only so much you can sway that, I felt like an artist, if not a working artist, and I finally want to make a next show, and if you came, thank you, and whether or not you did, let's shake off these italics, and happy new year!
Here in France, it's just turned 2026, and a warm hello to everyone sticking around for the plaudits. So. PR's plan to do a second London preview at the Hen and Chickens in order to potentially have something to stick to the posters as soon as we were up, bore beautiful, juicy fruit, although I balked at turning Ben Moor's whales into stars...
Still, long term readers of the blog will know how much those whales will have meant to me. As for the rest, here are the links along with any quotes that ended up electric-stapled to the flyer. That's how I'm celebrating. (I also have port.)
So, I already mentioned Rich Cline's review from June 22ndat the timebut here it is again: "There's a reason why this show has such a following: it's a
near-perfect display of surrealist comedy, brain-bending and utterly
hilarious... a skilful performance that brings out hauntingly deep, dark
ideas about humanity in unimaginably amusing style."
July 20th, The Reviews Hub (This was a hell of a review. ) "A divinely commanded clown... absurd and profound... Kane's
performance is extraordinary... He welcomes both laughter and awe... so
thematically dense that you could discuss it for days on end, but it is
also an absolutely joyous, in-the-moment experience." This was a hell of a review.
July 21st, Sarah Birch Hackney Citizen
(quality) "A virtually indescribable cacophony of humour and found
language... be sure not to miss this captivating five-star-quality
production."
July 22nd, Malcolm Beckett Theatre VibeDON'T DO STARSbless, and then we went to Edinburgh, to receive...
August 9th, Erin Ross Edinburgh Guide
"The show is, yes, funny; it’s absolutely mad; but it has a startling
poignancy. Perhaps it’s the sheer conviction of this writer and
performer... The audience left dizzy, happy and connected having
experienced something very strange together, something to think on and
share when someone inevitably asks, “What did you see at the festival?”
Don’t miss the chance to see something devout immersive and interactive
theatre lovers have lauded for many years; it’s the fringiest thing at
the Fringe."
August 11th, Kay Marquis The Wee Review "Kane
manages to be both alarmingly unpredictable and reassuringly genial...
it may dwell on angst and be full of sinister shocks and disorientating
requests, but it’s very funny... for anyone looking for something different, this is perfect."
And then my first actual print review on August 12th, from Hamish Gibson in Fest
Never mind, let's check on those audience reviews (thanks, Morgan!)
So the show was, if not finding its audience, at least losing its non-audience, and trouble was being shot...
August 13th, Sean Greenhorn The List, a big one which we didn't use any quotes from, but I still enjoyed the writing: "It’s always tough to review a show like Jonah Non Grata; a show
that consistently wrongfoots the audience, revelling in awkward moments
where things don’t seem to be working. It’s tough because, to some, the
lack of laughter is the point, and can perversely lead to the biggest
laughs of all. Simon Kane’s surreal anti-comedy piece is loosely about
dilemmas and decisions. Or a vengeful man who wants to stay at the
Marriott. Or simply the slow unravelling of an entertainer. It’s
honestly hard to tell."
The show was definitely better when people laughed though, I knew that by now. You can't let the audience know you're in on the joke however without breaking character, but I was getting better at it...
August 19th, Oli Fuller Binge Fringe
"An hour of theatre that will have you on the edge of your seat and will
keep you thinking about it for the rest of your life... It is artistic
and beautiful and indescribably enticing... an absurdist masterpiece. Go
see this show, do not put it on a list, do not see it if you have time,
book it now."
Oli stayed around afterwards. I loved Oli.
August 22nd, My Goddess Complex
"equal parts absurdist theatre, stand-up
comedy, and performance art."
And finally...
August 25th, Ben Kulvichit Exeunt (who also don't to stars) "I like liquorice." And it should have turned 2026 in Britain too now so HAPPY THAT! No rush.
To think there was a time I balked at the thought of putting my face on this blog. But here's a little record of my business trip to Praha! for another advert, and catching the mood board for my character at the wardrobe fitting, I see who I have to thank for it...
Thank you, Michael Cera, for giving me a type.
In my time off, I revisited many sites still standing from my last trip with Lanna in 2011: the crazy babies crawling up TV Tower – I had forgotten the massive holes in their faces – the weird, giant metronome which replaced the statue of Stalin – the third AD told me they were thinking of bringing the statue back, but pink this time, of which he approved – and there was, of course, new mad shit too...
The Giant Prague Museum of Endless Glass Cases of Minerals now boasted other stuff as well! Like a life-sized diorama of "dog-bears" fighting Early Cenozioc ungulents, a complete whale skeleton...
I've played smaller. And those beautiful Šalamoun "Hobbit" illustrations I mentioned last post – here are more...
There were also harps you could play, suits of armour, skulls, typewriters, and that big, empty room in the video, none of which I remember from 2011, but what I really went to the Museum for of course was the stairs, and they never disappoint...
I also – for the first time – went to the zoo, as recommended, which was huge, its enclosures far less enclosing than those of Regent's Park...
At its centre was a giant statue of Radegast on Mount Radhošť. Not just a guano-soiled wizard played by Sylvester McCoy, Radegast is also it turns out a Slavic Beast God overthrown by Christian missionaries – a deeply disappointing legend.
With of all this, Badphone did its best, bless...
But my PR's given me her old phone now, which I didn't take with me, and I think it's time to start taking better pictures.
(Reviewing the video, I notice it's actually shot with a different – and possibly worse – Badphone from the one I took to Bucharest in '22. I fell for Prague just as hard [and indeed for Norwich, when I did Polar Express there {and indeed Croydon, when I went to voice video games there}] but while I did make it to the last two minutes of a band in a cellar playing Watermelon Man, I didn't discover any cool, new music to round off this post with like the Bucharest one.
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