Low Down

 A sneaky look into life behind a bar.

Review

 Cute, endearing and very funny. Larah Bross is perhaps the only foreign performer brave enough to attempt a Scottish accent at the Edinburgh festival. A one women show, Breaking the Seal portrays a range of regular bar flys who share their always hilarious, often misguided views on sex, music and a whole lot of booze. 

Bross plays 6 different characters to great comic effect, through a range of commendable accents (the locals may disagree with me there!). The characters may be stereotypes but she milks them for laughs with a clear sense of what will please a crowd. However at times I would have liked her to engage with the audience more. 

The piece is visually and aurally pleasing with good use of a projector and music. It sometimes felt a bit fragmented as the character pieces became shorter, but the audience was kept entertained with clever parodies on anti drinking campaigns. 

A must see for binge drinkers everywhere.

Reviewed by CC 08/08/2007

* * * 

The people at Sweet have clearly thought through how to make their venue totally memorable – leave everyone on a day-long sugar high. With exquisite boxes of Turkish Delight on low tables, and circulating staff offering from giant trays of smarties, jelly babies, liquorice allsorts, mint imperials, and various other sweeties from the ‘Oh, I haven’t had those in years!’ range, it was always going to appeal to the sweet-toothed. For those who preferred something sweet cooler, there were pots of vanilla ice-cream, and anyone who collected a drumstick lolly from a passing member of staff could exchange the label attached to it for a Cobra beer at the bar, to wash it all down.

Amused Moose’s Nathan A Thomas considered his first ever sample of Turkish Delight, but steadfastly resisted the urge. Eventually, the trays of sweets led the assembled crowd through to Studio 2, where the venue’s director Julian Caddyexplained the year-round work that goes into organisation, and introduced his co-director Maria Lagos. He announced 82 shows across 8 theatre spaces, before letting Larah Bross take over as MC. She’s performing her own show, ‘Breaking the Seal’ across the month, and brought along various of her interesting characters, using wigs, jackets, and other simple props.

Sketch group Diet of Worms on (Melted) Ice, were introduced as usually performing underwater – their venue is the Apex hotel’s pool – and it being a worry for them to be out for so long. However, their very simple, but very funny sketch of the farmer trying to cross a river with his fox, chicken and bag of grain meant they looked worth seeing anywhere. Stephen Long is Not a Mind Reader, but his tricks are surprisingly similar to those a mind-reading show might use. If he fails to read your mind, he offers to staple his hand, a promise that makes even the most sceptical more eager to open their thoughts than his blood vessels. Picking cards from a pack, he not only read three minds in the audience, but taught an audience member to do the same. Unless all the rest of the audience had colluded in advance, she got it spot on.

Secs, Lies and Hazard Tape gave a musical version of the comedy behind office politics. The levels weren’t set quite right, so the lyrics were slightly drowned out, but even if their office wasn’t a fun place for the characters, it looked like it for the audience. Finale was Bang On. They’re a pair of accomplished drummers who do just that – bang on absolutely anything left lying around. Props in their drum rig included a couple of bins, a petrol can, kitchen pots and pans, a watering can, a rake, guitars (for a ‘guitar solo’, naturally) and a wheelie-bin, which took quite a kicking. This was part of the joy of the act – it didn’t simply involve drumsticks, but arms, feet, voices, and a spot of ducking to avoid hitting each other.

Amongst the audience, Thelma Goode, writing for Chapman, Scotland’s literary magazine, was delighted to be reviewing again after a number of years editing Fringe coverage – and meaning she didn’t get to shows. She swapped a few shopping tips with Matthew Collins, who was busy encouraging an audience along to his show How to Pimp Your Kids and Shop for Free at Waitrose.

When it was all over, Julian Caddy and Press and Marketing Manager Lucy Moore were keen to emphasis that their launch had finished on time – apparently a rare event.

(c) Gill Smith – Edinburgh College of Art – Thur 2 Aug 07 - www.fringereport.com 2007

SCOTTISH CATERING AND HOSPITALITY NEWS IN SCOTLAND 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 06, 2007

      

Bartender goes from Kitchin to comedy

Larah Bross, bartender at Edinburgh’s The Kitchin, is to star in her own one-woman show called Breaking the Seal in this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Canadian Larah, 29 (pictured) appeared on stage in New York for four years, winning an award at the NYC Fringe and appearing regularly at the famous Caroline’s venue on Broadway.      

‘The Edinburgh Festival is one of the world’s great events and it is every performer’s dream to get a slot at the Fringe,’ she said.

Breaking the Seal puts the audience in the position of a bartender listening to the stories of seven totally different and wildly entertaining customers, all played by Larah. They include flamboyant characters such as Uncle Joey, Billy O and Mr McNifficent.
The show runs from August 2-26 at the Sweet Grassmarket City 2 venue, Apex City Hotel, with tickets priced from &pound6.

 

A CurtainUp Report 
2001 New York International Fringe Festival 

by Les Gutman, David Lipfert and David Lohrey

A Montreal Fringe award winner from a young company called Untimely Ripped, Leaf in the Mailbox is a humorous, surprising tale about the elusive nature of things like young love and respect. The script, rich in dialogue, is appealing. Ernest (Elan Zafir, also the playwright) lives with his aging Bubby (Amy Marvaso, heard but not seen), has a smug, spoiled girlfriend, Allison (Amy Nol) and a pot-smoking, backgammon-playing, internet matchmaking (and Penelope Cruz)-obsessed buddy, Brandon (Andrew Farrar, also the director). A new neighbor girl, Sally (Larah Bross), appears, and befriends his Bubby, coming over often to play the piano for her. Ernest also has a recurring dream, and a particularly unpleasant memory, both of which have to do with playing the piano. The staging may be a bit clumsy, and the play may have a few weak spots (to name a couple, a parlor game the four onstage actors play doesn’t make a lot of sense, and neither does that leaf in the mailbox — Sally put it there), but it’s a strong entry that reveals quite a bit of talent. Performances are solid, Zafir’s warmly inccocent one especially so, and the production makes good and clever use of a wide variety of music. At Experimental Theater at Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street (@ Pitt). 1 hour. [Gutman]
[N.B. The Henry Street Settlement may seem at the fringe of the Fringe, but it's quite accessible -- a few blocks walk from the F train at either Delancey/Essex or East Broadway. For those desiring less exercise, the 14th Street bus (M14) passes directly in front of the complex.]

Top FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards ‘01

Ensemble Performance:
Leaf In The Mailbox