fringe: eventyr

This is both a general recommendation for all Fringe shows, but also a specific recommendation for both this show, and the Fringe-going public in general.

If your show is somewhere slightly offbeat, and you've advertised that the gathering point is a specific point... say, for example, a particular gate on the Northern side of the Botanical Gardens... then you change that point to something on the Southern side of the Botanical Gardens... you might want to let people know! Or at the very least, have a staff member somewhere on that side of the gardens.

So the lesson for me (and everyone else) is to not necessarily trust my tickets.

What all of that meant was that we had a very hurried and somewhat frantic forced march through the Gardens (thanks to a slightly gormless young man on one of the gates that we passed) and found our way to Eventyr by Beg Borrow and Steal about five minutes or so after the 7pm start time.

But even so, the show, which is listed in the Guide as going for an hour, was over by 7:35pm.

Thankfully we only paid Cheap Tuesday prices.

And it also meant we missed whatever the set up for the story was. Fortunately it's not a particularly complicated or especially original story, so we didn't miss out on anything. Plus I already knew that "eventyr" is Norsk (Norwegian) for fairytale or adventure.

The image that appears with this post is incredibly misleading... while three of the performers do get into either this shape or one very, very much like it, they're not in their underwear, and they're certainly not indoors. The image makes the show appear adult and maybe a little bit edgy, and is probably one of the reasons I wanted to go and see it. However it's very much a show for kids. There are some cute moments, but overall the story is incredibly simple and feels like it's aimed at the under 10 crowd.

Which is fine... but unless something is specifically billed for children then there should be enough to keep everyone engaged.

It's disappointing really... the performers had great enthusiasm and were very likeable, but they didn't have a lot to sink their teeth into, and as I said, it was all over almost before it began.

I also felt like they could have used more of the Botanical Gardens space than they did. Maybe they weren't allowed to use more, but it just felt that they really could have moved us completely from one area to another for each scene... making the whole thing feel more like a journey.

Overall though, it really wasn't worth the effort it took to get there.

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