From here on in - it's all going to be Edinburgh reviews - to kick start here is an interview with Richard Tyrone Jones who is running the Utter! Spoken word nights
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ThreeWeeks has a word with the ringmaster of Spoken word
‘Utter!’
Roll up, watch poets
Read, drink, then eat their words, free-
flow, fall-down comets!
Comedy, musicals, dance, opera and street acts are all performance arts that the average Fringe adventurer might expect to see in abundance. However, one art form - like a nervous marmoset - who has rarely tested it’s popular appeal by elongating its spindly paw into the bright roaring jungle of festival madness, has stayed in the dark. But now, one man - who is so unnerved about being popular that in his own words he “is as proud to be a ginger as any other ethnic minority should be of their heritage” has dared to snare the marmosetian art form and unleash it - in all its glory - under the scorching heat of the Fringe audience. This scarce and endangered medium is spoken word, and its ring-master is Richard Tyrone Jones and his varied show Utter!
Having successfully run Utter! on the London circuit for the last five years, Jones has decided to bring his show to “one of the most poetic countries in the world” to “reach a wider, non-London audience and tap into the talent of Scotland”. And tapped he has, hosting a variety of different shows such as: “Utter! Scots on Tuesday, August 12th,” simply “because often Scots feel like us Sassenachs are invading for a month so we’re showcasing talented local bards”, “Donut Night on Saturday 15th, featuring the recently published works of John Hegley, Tim Wells and Tim Turnbull from Donut press collections” accompanied by “a Cool Hand Luke-style donut eating competition” which is “open to all” and “Utter!’ Dead poets & puppets society on Friday 21st” where the man himself will “channel the spirit of Ted Hughes for ‘The Sylvia Plath story: in puppets” promising us that it is in “not as poor taste as you might imagine!”
But why now? After years of poetic dehydration, why will a spoken word show quench the thirst of Edinburgh’s eloquent elite? Is it enjoying a revival due to the acceptance of Carol Ann Duffy to Poet Laureate-ship and a few well placed shows on BBC 4? Jones believes the former to be true, but not due to the copious amounts of sherry that have become available to Duffy, explaining “the quality’s always been there but now it’s getting press thanks to lively nights like: ‘Utter!’, Luke Wright and his Latitude festival stage, and acts like Scroobius Pip, PoeJazzi and MC Dockers, some of whom have beards, but don’t mumble into them.” He adds that “festivals are open-minded enough to put poets on alongside top name comedians, authors and musical acts, and so am I. In ten years, I’ll fill Wembley with spoken word acts. Wembley Social club, that is.”
He also rightly suggests Edinburgh is the perfect pitching ground for less-mainstream performance types due to the “open-mindedness” of the audience; “An Edinburgh audience is up for comedy, music, cabaret, puppetry, all in one day, and at ‘Utter!’ they’ll get a bit of each in one hour, in poetic form, often from the same act.
It seems then, that if your bore of the usual Fringe safari and fancy a real adventure off the beaten track, to see the rare and the beautiful, you should venture down to the dark recesses of Fingers Piano Bar because, as Jones states, “Edinburgh should expect the unexpected from us,” and be rewarded with “poetry with a good sense of humour and humour with a poetic sensibility”
Utter! Spoken Word, Utter!/PBH’s Free Fringe, Fingers Piano Bar, 8-29 August, 17.30(18.30), Free Non-ticketed, fpp 108
Tom Peel
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