Wolves at the Gilded Balloon

Wolf was interactive theatre in the Caves, looking at the reintroduction of wolves into the wild, along with how we envisage wolves in popular culture and fairy tales. We stood throughout, the excellent cast weaving amongst us, sniffing, rubbing, investigating, as we were taken through various scenes of wolf activity, questioning how and whether we can live together. Special thanks to the lady in the audience who moved the red scarf from her to her boyfriend, sacrificing him to the wolves instead of herself; and happy birthday to the cast member who I met in the queue for Sadie Hasler what feels like a lifetime ago. Here’s a better written review.

An Hour of Telly: Live took us on a whirlwind sketch tour of TV shows and adverts with a twist, ably performed by two people, one of whom I’d seen singing in Colin Hoult’s show.

Pluck are a musical trio of violin, viola, and cello, who don’t appear to get on very well. This leads to some excellent playing under unusual circumstances, such as an upside-down cello, a violin being set on fire, or a fight over who gets to sit on the chair. I especially enjoyed when the cello player fell in love with the person sat next to me, and came over to serenade him, much to the chagrin of her two fellow players. Balero has never seemed so full of passion.

The Bruce Collective was another show in my time here that deserved a far bigger audience than it had – although as this was an improv show, it meant we all could certainly feel individually involved, and my choice of fear of the number 13 and my umbrella were both incorporated with excellent effect by Mike Wozniak, Jarred Christmas, Simon Young, Chris Harvey John, with Benny Davis of the Axis of Awesome providing music (getting thorougly annoyed every time the Space Sponge was mentioned and he had to flip settings to do the dramatic chord 😉 ). Pete Simmonds (the DJ from Baba Brinkman’s show) had his name used as the hero of our tale, and a wonderful time was had by all.

This was followed (after bumping into Helen Keen again – hello!) by the Axis of Awesome themselves. Everyone knows the Four Chords song, and this was preceded by other songs such as Can you hear the fucking music coming out of my car; I’m not trying to touch your ass, I’m just trying to put my seatbelt on; and songs about lasers or boybands. Accompanied by jokes and chat, this was, of course, awesome.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre was slightly annoying to me, not because of the act which was great, but due to one particularly drunk person in the audience (it was only 9pm!) who was laughing at every line, funny or not. I normally don’t let this bother me, but their laugh was very annoying. Anyway, ignoring that, we had sock puppets singing songs, performing period dramas, and making lots of bad puns on TV show titles with members of the royal family. It was easy to forget these two socks were being operated by one man hidden away behind the Punch-and-Judy style theatre front.

The Boy with Tape on his Face deserves all its accolades, and reminded me how much I love the Amélie soundtrack, which was used extensively throughout. From getting members of the audience to (eventually – I’m sure I’d be just as bad, but come on people, just do what he does) mime Blame it on the Boogie, re-enact a snow globe, or getting everyone to sing along to Enigma’s Return To Innocence (I cheated by actually knowing how it goes), this was amazing.