Fringe Street Reviews: Living Statue on a Bike
The Edinburgh Fringe has well over 3,200 shows playing, and with big names like Reginald D Hunter, Patrick Kielty and Daniel Sloss glowering down at us from the side of bus posters like they've been banished to some kind of Superman II Phantom Zone, it's easy to forget about the impossible bullshit that is currently clogging up the Royal Mile.
Two years ago, a little known space monster stole the Fringe with his unique performance of being an unkillable moon-lizard standing around outside Starbucks. His act was a simplistic, yet powerful character piece that ranged from standing on a box to frightening children.
But a show is only as fresh as the ideas behind it, and Predator Guy Outside Starbucks, which The Skinny rated at six stars in 2013, has brought nothing new and is now [★★★★★] at best. He's also now competing with a bunch of other new street performers – although one or two are admittedly not always of his calibre. For example, whatever the fuck is that thing is bending balloons near the City Chambers? [★★★☆☆]. Another (though extreme) case in point is Cowgate's Erotic Story Woman [★☆☆☆☆] – this chancer wouldn't even write me an erotic story about Timecop.
And then there's the living statues.
Living statues combine the mediums of visual depth, silent theatre, costume drama and improvised stillness in a prolonged street-blocking manner that allows people of all ages and cultures to hate them equally.
Alien Thing [★★☆☆☆] at the top of the mile may have potential, but breaks the cardinal rule of standing still by routinely waving his arms and screaming, 'Raaar.'
Maybe I'm being an asshole for attacking the noble act of not moving for money, but let's face it, if your job is getting up every day, covering yourself in gold paint and then standing still in a crowded street, you've got more problems in your life than me being mean about you.
This being said, of the eight living statues between The Tron and The Castle, there is something very special about the artist Statue on a Bike.
This living statue has taken the tried-and-tested 'not moving' routine and placed it on top of an equally immovable vehicle. As vehicles are universally recognised as something that helps moving things move faster, it is a stroke of genius for the statue on the bike to sit there motionless. The bike suggests speed and movement, and yet all the while offers neither, remaining equally still. Yes, that sound you heard was the part of your mind reserved for 'having seen it all', fetching its coat and fucking leaving.
Let us also not forget the statue must finish each day with the kind of buttock and rectal pressure sores usually associated with sitting on Alan Thicke's lap during a screening of The Accused. No-one could accuse this statue of shirking when it came to performing a Fringe show.
Quite frankly – unless Predator Guy Outside Starbucks gets a hovercraft or spacehopper next year – Statue on a Bike is the only Fringe act for which The Skinny would introduce our proposed new rating system (secretly devised by the Comedy team to replace the five-star system, and subsequently rejected). If I recall correctly, the new system had each act being awarded the Police Academy movie that best represented their work. Think how different the Fringe would be if, instead of a negative review, the artist was given a copy of the seventh installment in the series, Mission to Moscow.
Nothing less than a copy of the entire box set should be presented to Living Statue on a Bike, including Police Academy 8: Trubble in the Hubble. This, of course, is the unknown sequel where Mahoney and the Gang take the series to its obvious conclusion – outer space.
Police Academy 8: Trubble in the Hubble does not exist, but the intellectual property rights are owned by the mind of Fred Fletch.