How many people can you fit in a karaoke booth?
No, this isn’t the beginning of a bad joke. It’s an honest question and one that I’m pretty sure comedian and musician Alex Prescot would know the answer to. And said answer would probably have something to do with depending on how many fluffy cushions he can get his hands on.
In ‘I’ve Got A Song About That’, Alex Prescot (who also stars in Gigglemug’s A Jaffa Cake Musical), brings his musical talents to Laughing Horse @ City Café – Hollywood, improvising songs based on anything and everything. In a 45 minute showcase, audiences are treated to both Alex’s skilful and incredibly funny music and a short stand up piece from a different act each day, and to say that the show has proven extremely popular would be a severe understatement.
Yes, the room is small, and things do get very cosy as more people pour into the little karaoke room, but its intimacy only adds to the humour of it all. At the performance I attended, the three benches were full, the seating around the edge of the room was full, and three children sat on the before mentioned fluffy cushions on the floor. And this was before another family of 4 turned up late. Long story short, one member of the family ended up in a very intimate spot pretty much underneath Alex’s keyboard.
Aaron Twitchen was the opening act at this performance, delighting the audience with his improvs about the amount of people in the room and trying his best to explain the year 2000 panic to the children.
With the claim that he has a song for everything, Prescot had the audience in the palm of his hand with his laugh out loud ditties with topics ranging from penguins and seals to the lives of those in attendance. Highlights included a song about people have sandwich holidays, visiting the fringe, then another place and then back to the fringe, which a few audience members were doing, a song about the relationship between a man and his hairdresser and a song about Scotland begging a former resident to return after she had moved away.
The music was interspersed with humorous deep dives into various musical albums, including the delightfully bizarre blurbs on vinyl records from ‘The Mama’s and the Papas’ with Prescot showcasing a natural ease at interacting with the audience and making sure everyone is involved in one way or another. He is not only a brilliant improviser when it comes to music but also reacting at the drop of a hat to what is happening around him. His ‘sorry there’s no exit music because *points to the now unmanned piano in the corner after he climbed his way out over the audience’ raised a huge laugh.
This is a show that truly feels like a true Edinburgh Fringe experience. Crammed into a tiny room like sardines, in a room that wouldn’t normally be a performance venue like this, all wrapped up in the moment and sharing it together, laughing together and soaking in the atmosphere.
Tickets are flying out the door for this pay what you can production, which runs daily at 10.20am, so you better grab your tickets quickly if you want to experience this hilarious one off show which is different every time.
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