Review of Mark Watson’s Edinborolympics, Fringe 2012

I imagine Mark Watson’s Edinborolympics will over run each and every night. It’s chaos. You could try and argue that Watson needs to get better organised but I think trying to marshal three guest comedians through a mock Olympics can only result in chaos.

With three guest comedians there’s a large variable element to Edinborolympics. We were lucky enough to catch the Adam Hills show. Hills lined up with Charlie Baker and Des Bishop to give us a Australia versus Team GB verus Ireland clash.

The Edinborolympics are silly and, at times, slightly scary. It begins with a 100 metres crawl – which was clearly news to the comedians who boggled at the suggestion they’d have to speed crawl around on the stage. Hills not only changed into the shorts and back again, on stage, but changed his foot too. He won but wound up with bleeding knees.

The crawling isn’t the dangerous part. There’s a round which involves throwing objects at someone’s head. That someone is a “volunteer” from the audience and the objects are apples. Apples are thrown from a considerable distance, comedians prowling up the aisles of Pleasance Beyond in an attempt to out-do the competition, and land with a smash on the stage. Unless they hit someone – which they do.

Edinborolympics overruns because of the banter from the three contestants during and between the five games. Their reaction to surreal sports and reflections of everyday life transformed into an Edinborolympics event are the laughter supply for the gig.

Mark Watson, meanwhile, manages to keep the crowd engaged, throwing in jokes as the bizarre proceedings unfold live on stage and making some attempt to explain what is going on.

To his credit Watson turned my opinion around. After hearing the plan for the night I wasn’t impressed. In no time at all, I was laughing, though – and dodging apples as they flew overhead.