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drinks Monday 1 September 08 Edinburgh Reunion in London
Topping And Butch Hit Leicester Square 26-27 September 08
Anneka’s Edinburgh
'Four weeks before the Fringe, I started to slowly crap my little panties'. Putting on an Edinburgh show? Anneka Svenska did. Here's how.
by Anneka Svenska
Edinburgh? Oh My God I Adored It!. It was the best experience of the year. It was like being back at university. I worked - and boy, did I play!
It started when - being a total loony-bin - I decided to poo-away £7,000 and take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe. It had been a dream to write, produce and act in a sketch comedy - and now the idea was rammed hard into my head, I couldn't back out.
I got writing a pretty disgusting show based on South Park
humour meets Car Crash. I thought if I laughed at it, there must be some disturbed people who would too - and I was right. Our audience turned out to be either really drunk Aussies or bald Rik Mayall
fans, with a pint of lager in one hand and a football scarf in the other. This show was not going to be mainstream comedy. My agent predicted a mixed response of top reviews and people who would hate us.
After managing to secure a full cast - two women dropped out, as the material was too close to the mark - I was away and raring to go. I applied to the Gilded Balloon
and had an offer almost immediately. 7pm was a blinding good time for our show and I snapped it up. The Pleasance threw in a late offer after I’d confirmed with the Gilded Balloon - it would be a hard call another year. I simply adore the atmospere of the Pleasance Courtyard. I could hang round there forever, in and out of the Belgian Beer bars. A dream. Hoegaarden
and Leffe Blonde - both of my favourite beers of all time, and both at The Pleasance.
After managing to extract £4,000 from a wonderful investor - but sadly still managing to lose £7,000 of my own cash - I was ready. We ran a few previews at the revered Canal Café in Little Venice with encouraging audiences and some great reviews. I snipped some rubbish scenes, tidied up gags which were not working and set to work on PR.
Here comes Anneka the composite PR machine- when I get going with it, nothing stands in my way! I can usually blitz any newspaper once I set my heart on it, and I intended to have a lot of fun with the press in good ol' Ed.
Pre-Edinburgh nerves? Oh no, what have I done? Sleepless nights? The last four weeks before departure, I started to slowly crap my little panties.
I had nightmares about no changing space off-stage, getting a shit tech, no audiences, meat-eating dinosaurs on the Royal Mile (no really - T Rexs - I still find it puzzling now). Not to mention my nerves about a well-known magazine hailing me as the 'World's Sexiest Comic'. Would I live up to their expectations? (I did find it pretty daft and a bit embarrassing - considering the character I was about to take to Edinburgh was a muff-eating, horse-faced, boil-ridden, freak-fest.)
Finally, the day. We packed all our excessive props into the hired Transit for the 8-hour journey north. After four hours, we felt as if we were on the home stretch. The last 100 miles looked like Royston Vasey
- huge, bleak peaking mountains. Our actor Jody Kamali suggested we stop for a snack. Best not. I reminded him that we weren't local people. Cue rain and thunder.
Instead of counting the remaining miles to Edinburgh, we counted Lady Boys of Bangkok posters. 800 later, we got there. We stopped briefly to stick some posters up of our own, but got damp, bored and hungry. And when we arrived, our landlady wouldn’t let us in. She had suddenly decided to paint our flat at 10 at night - and told us to go sit in a café while she finished.
When we were finally allowed in, there was no electricity. Apparently every electricity card the landlady put in didn’t work. £20 of cards later, the lights came on. Hurray! But was it chilly. Our poofy male actors started complaining about paint fumes, and how they were going to suffocate. I cracked a beer and went with our female actor Sarah Kirkland to the pub to get blitzed.
Next day, we unloaded into the Gilded Balloon and dropped the van back to the airport. I was doing serious exercise with all those boxes and stairs. And it seemed like the girls were doing all the lifting - while male actor fiddled with text messages pretending not to be aware of the need to shift props. We met all the Gilded Balloon staff, who were simply adorable.
Our space The Balcony was small, but incredibly cute and very atmospheric. Fear of lack of space disappeared when our lovely tech said he would bagsy a chunk of the props area for us.
We got started on our tech rehearsals and my heart sank. Our lovely tech guy just couldn't get what we were doing. He was fresh out of tech school. We noticed that he had started to smoke and drink while doing our show, when he had been a non-smoker before we had arrived. We asked why? He looked at us and said 'When your letter to the Gilded Balloon stated that you really needed the best tech available as it was the most heavily technical show of the year, I thought you were joking, but it's true. I've never witnessed a show as difficult to tech as yours. You must all think that I'm really crap.'
We all put our arms round him and assured him that he had what it took - and that it would just take a bit of time for it all to fall into place. Underneath, we were quaking in our shoes. We had two days left before previews.
The day before our first show our tech had had a night-time breakthrough. He seemed to wake that morning knowing what he had to do. Everything clicked into place - he became a shit-hot tech.
So here we go. Day One. Time for the Royal Mile flyering experience.
Our mates from comedy act Slaughterhouse Live had this down to an art. They’d been to Edinburgh two years in a row - and managed to go home with £15,000 takings the year before due to their excessive song-singing on the Royal Mile. I thought - if they can do it, we can too. I was wrong.
They had folk songs and nice family comedy which they could use on the Mile. We had filthy sketches - and nothing musical in the whole show. Sadly we had to pull out of appearing on the Royal Mile stages - our stuff just wasn’t right for families with kiddies.
So we erected a table-dancing pole - with a street light at the top - on the pavement outside the Fringe Office. Our actor Andy Day danced on it in a waitress outfit - complete with milk-squirting tittie. How we laughed. How Andy reddened. How we rolled on the floor with tears streaming down our face, how he wanted to die. Time to share his embarrassment. Time to reveal our magic weapon - my Edinburgh Fringe Edinburgh Minge. Drum roll please - dah Dah!
My character Sally
wears a nude body suit in the final sketch - complete with breasts, and a wig for down below. I put it on.
That’s how I got my first verbal warning. Apparently some woman had complained that it was offensive. I did point out that I was fully clothed underneath. If they'd prefer, I could go with the alternative of a state of full undress - with probably worse bosoms than the ones on the suit.
The Fringe Office laughed awkwardly and said that it was only a verbal warning so realistically I could go and re-offend - at my own peril, but they wouldn't advise it. Oh, and could I not pole-dance outside the Fringe Office door? It was putting people off going in to buy tickets.
That night we had a big audience. Ditching the body suit would be a huge mistake. So it came out again next day - and the next, and the next. Ten days, hundreds of photos with Japanese tourists, and lots of gropings from saucy beer-lads and aroused lesbians later, I was given my second verbal warning. Probably due to being in the middle of the Royal Mile lying down with my legs splayed.
We were now well into the festival, with a flying 4-star review from 3 Weeks, and getting really excited. Not to mention, the partying was getting bigger and badder. I was loving this night life. The Gilded Balloon Library is just the comfiest and the best relaxing place of the festival, and the Phat Cave in the night-club below kicks ass after 2 in the morning. We were having post-show drinks on a nightly basis, then staying out in different clubs till 5-6am every day.
And feeling the morning repercussions. After the second week, we were walking zombies. Every day was Groundhog Day. I rose (ish) at 11am. I would shower, tidy the props refill the fake breast with milk, clean the plastic dog-shit, and collect our costumes. We would stick reviews on flyers like machines, and drag our pathetic bottoms out to the Royal Mile for 3 hours, 2-5pm (if lucky). There we’d meet all the people we’d partied with the night before, and compare hangovers while shoving flyers into passing hands.
Luckily there’d been lots of press. We’d made the Scottish Sun twice, The Scotsman three times, The List once, Metro twice, Festival Magazine once, Fest twice. But sadly not the Glasgow Herald. When I asked why, I was snapped at by a journalist who said that I had been a traitor by placing my story with The Scotsman twice in a week - and that by going with such an 'inferior' publication, I was not going to be given the privilege of gracing the Herald. Perhaps his wife hadn't given him the goods
Three weeks in, on the Royal Mile, I had my third verbal warning. I thought the third would get me arrested, but no. Instead I was lifted by the sleeve off the ground by a 6ft-4 policeman (ooh, matron!) and angrily told - 'Button-up, or else'. I told him it was a different body suit and that the top of leg area was perhaps less likely to offend (humans) as it was made of bear-like fur rather than pubic hair. He screamed into my ear 'I don't care.'.
What a nasty chap. I did up my jacket and sulkily walked away. What can a girl do? Go home early and eat for comfort.
For the next few days, the body suit was hidden. It was time for a milder costume - a pair of jumbo pants covered in poo.
I was partying even more than usual. Come on, that’s not bad if you get the show done well, which (before you wag your finger) I was doing every day - it was going great. Oddly enough, we found tons of energy to do it with vigour and passion. And everyone else at the Gilded Balloon was doing the same as us (whispers Anneka the sneak) - spending far too much time on the booze into the early hours. And one night (explicit detail omitted under threat of bodily harm).
Anyway, swiftly changing the topic, the last week flew by, and the Gilded Balloon’s lovely head of press Fraser Smith said - go forth and get totally trashed, it’s the last week. We had to take his advice, as he was an authority figure.
By now, with great good fortune, the show was selling very well. 'The World’s Nastiest Sketch Show' was the pull. And everyone wanted to see that body suit. So we didn't need to flyer anymore.
In the final week, we went to see as many different sketch shows as we could. The gems for me were 13 O'Clock at the Pleasance Dome, and We Are Klang at Pleasance Courtyard. In 13 O’Clock, two girls played off each other in a French & Saunders way, using slapstick, silly humour, fast-paced acting, surreal imagery and incredible comic timing. One of the girls was even a bit like Dawn French
- prior to her sticky bun phase. We Are Klang almost made me pee myself - my favourite male sketch show ever. It was like watching Rik Mayall, David Baddiel and Matt Lucas in a single act. Wonderful, anarchic, filthy, outrageous - and some great scripted mistakes.
I preferred both these shows to the Perrier-nominated Dutch Elm Conservatoire - which I thought had few and far-apart gags, was pretentious and completely unfunny. It always feels as if Perrier expect a degree of highbrow script - but comedy should not have to go this way. Anyhow - I think the two girls in 13 0’Clock should have been picked, and the We Are Klang lads. So there. And both shows got far more laughs than the Perrier-nominated acts. Ha.
On the last day of the Fringe I felt oh so sad. I wanted to shout 'I'm coming again', but I was so bunged up with Edinburgh flu that I couldn’t handle another knob gag, and settled for 'I am returning next year'. I'd become an addict.
I was sneezing and sniffing, I ached from foot to apex, I could probably sleep till 2010, I had bruises all over my body (don’t ask) - and my eyes looked like piss-holes in the snow.
Edinburgh? A joyous emotional big-dipper of love, life, laughter, career-passion and friendship. I left feeling slightly broken-hearted, not quote sure why - many reasons. Maybe the post-Ed adrenalin, maybe mixed reviews, maybe because I had to say goodbye to so many people I would never see again, maybe because I let my emotions get carried away, maybe because something so incredible had to end after four weeks. At the same time, I felt so totally in love with the whole experience that it was worth every part of it.
And next year, I knew I’d have to be back with another show. A few months before, I’d been to the Cannes Film Festival
. Edinburgh trounced it. The last day was unbearable. I hated seeing the packing-up at the Gilded Balloon, and watched droopy-faced as the stages were stripped and loaded into vans at the front of the Teviot.
However, there was still the final party.
It didn’t seem right to be there, as many of the good friends we’d made had left the day before. Did we stay away in sorrow? What do you think? We loved it. We danced and danced and danced. And the final song I danced to was Hey Ya by Outkast. Which just happens to be my favourite song.
END
(c) Anneka Svenska 1 January 06
Anneka Svenska (www.annekasvenska.com) wrote, produced, directed, PR’d, styled and acted in Sally Swallows And The Rise Of Londinian at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
2005.
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008
