Why are we doing this?

Hi, I’m Sam Simmons, a 32-year-old Australian human man. I’m a failed former zookeeper, who likes Mike Leigh films, Thai green chicken curry and getting caught in the rain. These are my first 36 hours in Edinburgh.

After a picturesque train ride sitting opposite a vulgar mid-forties business man, mouth farting cider, sausage and cheese out of his rosatia stained red wine lips of spittle and butter, I arrive in beautiful Edinburgh. I spend rest of the day searching for walnuts in shell, as you do, so I can make little googly eyed walnut men for my show, as you do.

(FYI: It’s tough finding walnuts in shells out of season)

I decide it’s time to walk the Royal Mile so I can laugh at fat North American tourists wearing those hideous ginger Scotsman hats. Have you no respect?

Suddenly a dude dressed in a bear costume, thrusts a flyer in my face. I reject his flyer. He then looks at me all shitty ‘cos I won’t take it. Fuck off bear! I think to myself. It’s a children’s show! You want me to go to a children’s show by myself? A single white thirty-something male, with male pattern balding and a sexpest moustache? Yeah… fuck off, bear, I think to myself again.

I then see a woman dressed like a busty wench. I like boobs, I think to myself, and I forget about my bear rage. I see men dressed like Vikings, a soggy Egyptian mummy man, snow white, ghouls, clowns, jugglers (hardly a life skill). I even saw one of those statue people who paint themselves bronze having a sandwich on his break. I told him I could see him moving and he told me to “shut it”.

Hungry as hell I head to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. I stack my plate so high the polystyrene snaps in half. It plops around my feet. I feel like an awkward teenage boy at a public swimming pool trying to hide his erection. The lady is nice and she lets me refill my plate.

Full of deep fried food I head to the Assembly Rooms for my first show with David Quirk called The Incident. It’s a really dark, bizarre comic play about a man in a shop inappropriately touching a customer. Hilarious.

The audience is pretty full, with a heap of old people looking for a mid-afternoon laugh. They don’t laugh. Two grown men choreographing masturbation to a Stevie Nicks song is not really a Nanna’s cup of tea.

Unperplexed by the lack of response Dave and I vow to trudge on with the show regardless of the blue rinse response.
Fringe is about experimenting right?

So between the bears, the boobs, walnuts with googly eyes, Nannas gasping in shock, and the beef and black bean on my foot, I think it’s gunna be a great festival. But remind me: Why are we doing this again?

 

Sam Simmons - Fail
Gilded Balloon @ Teviot
6-29 Aug, 9:15pm, £9.00-11.00

*

The Incident
Assembly Rooms @ George Street
7-29 Aug, 4.45pm, £9.00-12.00