Phill Jupitus and Marcus Brigstocke at Jackson's Lane

It's that time of year when comics want to try out their Edinburgh shows which can mean cheap tickets for good comedy. And so I found myself back at Jacksons Lane to see the double bill of Phill Jupitus and Marcus Brigstocke.

Marcus Brigstocke was the main draw for me as I have enjoyed seeing him live a few times, though not for four years apparently. Having Phill Jupitus on the bill too certainly made the decision to go much easier.

This was my fifth trip to Jackson's Lane and was my first conventional show there. It is good to have venues that are prepared to put on such a diverse range of shows. It is just a shame that they are on the other side of Town.

Marcus was trying out his Brig Society show and made no pretence of this being anything other than a work in progress by bringing the script on stage and leafing through it during the performance to decide which part to do next.

It was a fairly typical Brigstocke rant, or collection of rants, against the Government and it hit some easy targets.

The Big/Brig Society featured in the opening and closing sections and the middle was more commentary on other foolish aspects of modern life.

It was a very rough and ready show at the time and, judging my his tweets, it is just now settling down a couple of performances in to the Fringe run proper.

That's not to say that it was not funny because it certainly was, it is just that the delivery was broken and it did not flow naturally as a set. But that's why comedians do try-out shows.

In the last segment Marcus chose people from the audience to take leading positions in the Brig Society and sitting in the middle of the second row (the front row was too low) we were natural victims so Howard became head of Treasury and Richard head of Eduction. Last time we saw him me had a go at Howard's long hair and this time he picked on Richard's It's nice to keep things like that in the family.

A short beer break and then the second half with Phill Jupitus.

One the stage was a simple board announcing the name, title and dates of a dead U-Boat captain from WWII.

On walks Phill dressed nautically. He gives us a little spiel about himself, his brash wife who lives in the East End of London (the war made their relationship a little strained) and the efforts he went to to avoid sinking allied ships.

Then it was audience questions.

This was then all unscripted though some of the questions had probably been asked before, such as how he met his wife, and that allowed expansive and often surreal answers. From this we learn that he spent some of WWII hiding in Lulworth Cove and his favourite food was bagels with crab meat.

A quick costume change and he returned as the dead himself from the future and happy to answer any questions about the time from now until his death. Here the questions were less constrained and most of the answers were devised there and then, often causing Phill to snort a few laughs before he could bring himself to speak. We found his answers funny too.

In the final, brief, Q&A session with Phill as himself he explained that he was trying an unscripted routine simply because he was getting tired of writing jokes all the time, and with such a quick wit he does not need to.

The contrast between the two shows worked well too and it was another entertaining evening in Highgate.

{Event(Dimension);} at Jacksons Lane

I fancied seeing something a little unusual and {Event(Dimension);} by The Sugar Beast Circus was certainly that.

Jacksons Lane was the venue for the evening which was not much of a surprise given that everything that I've seen there has been on the weird side of usual in a nice and stimulating way.

{Event(Dimension);} takes its theme from the worlds of Newtonian and Quantum physics. The first we all learnt at school and explains why apples fall and planets orbit whereas the regarding the second Richard Feynman, one of its greatest teachers, famously said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics".

The fun starts when you collect your ticket at the box office and are given a "0" or a "1" label to wear. Come show-time the "0"s and "1"s are led in different directions.

I was led in to the main theatre, a little smaller than I remembered it, where three identically dressed and wigged girls were miming to electronic music with some animations playing on the screen at the back of the stage.

Once we were all settled the story began. The miming continued and all the clues were given to us through written titles included in the animation.

There followed a series of short scenes, or acts, where we were given the introduction and then one, two or three identical circus girls would perform with ropes, hoops, balloons or throwing balls.

The circus acts were arty rather than technical, these were dancers giving their interpretations of the themes and the music rather than performers trying to impress us with their skills.

After half an hour or so it ended and the surprise came. We were led around the back of the stage, along narrow corridors and then in to what I realised was the other half of the theatre that we had just left, the two sides being divided by a black curtain.

The music started and one of the pennies dropped. There were two shows performed in parallel to the same music.

And as we sometimes had three girls on our stage it was obvious that there were more of them than I first thought.

The second half (or the first half if you were a "1") was not noticeably that different in format and feel to the first though light seemed to be more of a theme here (the girls wore spectral helmets for some of the scenes) whereas gravity had been prominent before (throwing, climbing, falling, etc.)

There was an after performance chat that did little to illuminate, sometimes artists can be just as self referential as philosophers are, and with the sort of questions that a guest on the Graham Norton show would have thought were a little easy we were never going to learn very much

I managed to grab a few words with the show's main creator, Geneva Foster Gluck, after the event but that merely lessened the connection in my mind between quantum physics and the performance. Not that that mattered at all, the show could be appreciated for what it is without needing to understand what inspired it.

At the core of the show is a clever (but not too clever) device to present two stories in parallel and each act within those stories is entertaining and sufficiently unusual to be stimulating too. All boxes ticked.

2401 Objects at Jacksons Lane

2401 Objects was at Jacksons Lane for just one night in preparation for Edinburgh and that was an opportunity that I was not going to miss as it was produced by Analogue the company behind Beachy Head.

And like Beachy Head, it was a production that told a sometimes harrowing story in a clever way.

2401 Objects tells the true story of Henry Molaison who emerge from experimental brain surgery in 1953 without any recollection of the last two years of his life or the ability to form new memories.

We see Henry has a young man heavily constrained by his epilepsy that his heavy regime of drugs is not controlling. He lives at home looked after by his parents and is wary of going out and of meeting other people.

The surgery is experimental and drastic with severe consequences and Henry becomes a goldfish living in a perpetual present punctuated with a few memories of his former life.

The story is told as a history and we see the both old Henry in a nursing home and the young Henry with the story flipping between the two.

In the nursing home we see his nurse and doctor and in the family home his two parents. The cast doubles by with, for example, Henry's father also playing the old Henry and his mother the nurse.

The story's narrator is a neurologist with a professional interest in Henry's brain and its his action and the end that produces the 2401 objects of the title. But I'll not spoil the surprise for you.

The story is a good one and it's well told.

The storytelling is similar to Beachy Head with storytelling being part of the story. In this case it is the neurologist who guides through Henry's life. And also like Beachy Head, the story is tense with one moment of almost excruciating emotion that haunts long after the play has finished.

The staging is clever too, possibly a little too clever. A translucent screen slides and rotates to divide the stage as the scenes shift. It works and is effective but there were times, such as when cast members were crawling under it, that I felt that it was being overused. But, on balance, it worked better than not and was another plus point for the show.

There was another packed house at Jacksons Lane showing that there is an appetite for new, experimental and challenging theatre; not everybody wants to see Wicked. This was simply another fine example of why I keep going to the theatre and especially the smaller ones.

And the evening ended on an unexpected note. Taking the 65 bus in Richmond on the final leg home the couple next to me mentioned Jacksons Lane. I was happy to tell them that it is a great venue and is easy to get to despite its northerly location. Spread the word.

Beachy Head at Jacksons Lane

Normally with my theatre reviews I describe the show and lead up to a conclusion but this time I'll start with the summary to make sure you get there.

Beachy Head is one of the very best things I have ever seen in a theatre.

Having made that bold claim I'll try and justify it.

Jacksons Lane is a long way from home but it's next door to Highgate underground station so it's fairly easy to get to. I came across it only recently through my Czech/Slovak connections and I went there to see e Slovak Dance Theatre perform their version of Carmen. That was good too. And that was enough to sign up for the Jacksons Lane newsletter which is how I heard about Beachy Head.

The clincher was the video clip that the newsletter pointed me to.



This seemed like just the sort of quirky and innovative production that I like so it was quickly booked.

Arriving straight from work I took advantage of the neat cafe and reception area to have a panini and the traditional bottle of Becks (often the only drinkable beer at theatres).

Fed and watered it was time to grab a good seat for the show.

The play opens with a Doctor talking to camera with her back to the audience with the picture projected on the back of the stage so that we could see here. Things got a little weirder when I could see myself in that picture.

The doctor tells us about suicides and so the scene is set.

The story revolves around a suicide at Beachy Head that is accidentally captured on film by some film makers planning on doing something on lighthouses. They decide that the short clip of the man's leap would make a good centre point of a film and so, after some agonising, they try to find out more.

That brings them in touch with the young widow who is (understandably) struggling to come to terms with her loss and sees working with the film makers as a way of helping her. They do not tell her that they have the film of her husband and that leads to further tensions.

The doctor returns as the dispassionate voice of reason talking first to the wife and then to the film makers. This device works very well to both provide as with information, much as a narrator would, and also to provide moments or respite from the
high emotion of the story.

At first we see the husband as just a memory, a ghost even, that the wife sees around the house doing the familiar things she is used to him doing.

The story then proceeds in several directions, or times, simultaneously. We see the development of the film which shows us more of the past while the Doctor adds her detail from time to time.

The tension grows as we learn more about the husband through a story he was writing and he starts to appear more to tell his side of things.

There is one particularly dramatic scene where the husband calls the Samaritans from the cliff top. The dialogue is convincing and depressing. We know how it ends.

The play ends as it started with the doctor talking to us quietly and calmly and suddenly the emotion has nowhere else to go except in rapturous applause for a stunning performance.

Some of the expected pyrotechnics promised by the video were delivered and they added something to the show but they were never became the point, that was left to the story.

So, a sympathetic story about suicide turned out to be surprisingly wonderful on many levels and gelled in to a truly remarkable and memorable experience.

Spanish story. French music. Slovak dancing. Great drama.

I love dance and am trying to find ways to see more of it. Mostly this means getting myself more organised!

The latest opportunity came via my Czech/Slovak connections through whom I learned that the Slovak Dance Theatre were performing their version of Carmen for two nights only at Jacksons Lane in Highbury.

I did not know anybody else who was going but I was free that evening and Highbury is not that hard to get to (when the Northern Line is working) so I thought that I would give it a go. And I'm glad that I did.

The first good news was that the tube strike had no impact on my travel and the second was that some people that I knew were also there. One of them, Ruzena, is Vice Chair of the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA) and she had done some publicity for the event and had been rewarded with a ticket. A quick word with the organisers from here and I had a reserved seat too.

Jacksons Lane, a former church, looks to be an excellent community venue. The theatre seats around 120 people, there is a nice cafe that boasts a good selection of vegetarian food, a small bar and a mix of community spaces some of which were also in use that evening.

I had a little idea of what to expect from a short video but that's never a fair way to judge anything so I sat in my seat in the middle of the second-back row with an open mind.

The first thing you notice is that it's a small group so each of the dancers has several roles, sometimes crossing genders to do so.

The dancing is energetic and expansive making full use of the depth, width and height of the stage. The set remains constant and largely anonymous as a series of scenes are played out before it, smoothly flowing from one to the other as the story unfolds.

The tension of the drama is maintained throughout (there is no break) as we watch the various couples come together, argue, split, flirt, reconcile and, eventually, kill.

The standing ovation at the end was well deserved.

This is only the second time that I've gone to see dancing by myself at short notice and it's worked better than expected both times. Must do it again.