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Hi, I’m Josephine Baker’s Great Grand Daughter

It’s not everyday that fiction meets reality. Or rather that legend intersects with real life. But it happened to me this weekend.

For some three weeks now, I’ve been walking around the streets of Edinburgh with the show’s t-shirt (don’t worry, it’s not the same t-shirt day in day out, I’ve got two.). Now, the t-shirt sports the show’s title “There’s Something in the Fridge that Wants to Kill Me!” as well as the banana girl created for me by the immensely talented Oscar Grillo. As well as being the show’s icon, the banana girl is a reference to the Josephine Baker tribute that I perform half way through the show, wearing a belt of bananas “and very little else”.
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DOMESTIC GODDI ********

BUNS BAKED: too many for us successful comediennes to be counting. (give or take 277)
CHARITY DVD’S FILMED: 1
SELL OUT SHOWS: Most
BATMAN DRESSES BOUGHT: 1
BOOK FESTIVAL TALKS ATTENDED: 1. (Yes I am multi faceted person. Also I am clever, honest)
FOUR AM BEDTIMES: 1

Hello, Rosie Wilkinson here from Domestic Goddi at the Edinburgh festival. The last week of our Edinburgh run. Is there an outside world? Is it not the norm for people to wander the streets in period costumes giving out leaflets?
Is everything in life not judged on a one to five star review system? I have decided to use the one to five star rating for all elements of my life.
Last night’s bath: **** plus a pick of the fringe nomination.
I give Helen a  luke warm *** for her role as ‘my friend’ just because I am feeling a bit sadistic. No other reason. Tomorrow I may give her a whopping ***** WOW imagine! OOOh the power. Maybe if she brought me breakfast in bed, that would push her into the five star catagory.
I am going to give the weather a ruinous * lone star.
London I give no stars to as I have forgotten what it’s like there.

Oh dear herein lies maddness or madness lies. Madness I give **stars because it’s a bit unnerving, in a bad way.
OOH we filmed a few sketches for an Oxfam Unwrapped DVD yesterday which was great fun. Charity really is comedy gold!
We had a good night out last night at a special tribute ‘Late and Live’, the baptism of fire for many comedians. It is a very robust atmosphere of drunken lairiness. One comedian was verbally abused by the audience and then carried off stage, one had an encore and one act was interrupted by another act who was  drunk. Most entertaining.

Good news! We have a new visitor, Helen’s cousin, the lovely Leah Wong. She is such a great person to have around. She has just arrived and was totally unphased when faced with a bowl of over cooked, reheated pasta. I think her sparkle  will reignite our appetite for the festival. Though tonight I am staying in!

Star Gala for Charity – Sat 23rd

Its wonderfully crazy here at the moment as we madly pull together the line-up for our Charity Gala on Saturday in aid of the Musicians Benevolent Fund.  Almost every star in the firmament of George Square has agreed to take part so we’ll have Eurovision, Broadway, West End, Reality TV and international performers all strutting their stuff.  Not quite sure how John Brant is going to manage to direct the gala wth one hour of tech time – but as normal he and the Pleasance tech team will pull it off.   What’s fun is hearing what each of the singers and companies are planning to do – they’re not, in the main, doing extracts from their shows. Some are writing special numbers, others are preparing massive West End classics, and still more are plotting to present new work not ever seen at the Festival.  It should be fun.

Its great that Mervyn Stutter and Simon Callow will be hosting the event, but before then Mr Callow will be putting the final polish on a showcase of MATHILDE featuring Frances Ruffelle. That opens tomorrow and when last seen the composer, Conor Mitchell, was hidden away in my kitchen quickly doing orchestral arrangements for cello and violin – hey, there’s still 24 hours to go…its Edinburgh 

In the meantime we have said hello and will sadly soon say goodbye to the Danish Uterus company. They’ve flown in for just two performances of their Midsummer Night’s Dream musical STEAM.  A bit crazy – a group of professional Danish performers, take an English play, reset it in New York, and showcase it in Scotland. Its great to have them around and hopefully Uterus will return to Edinburgh with other work in the future.

DEATH STAR END

As we enter the last week I’m still getting very full houses, selling out over the weekend. I’m not sure why I keep getting such a strong attendance. Perhaps word of mouth, good reviews, the excellent publicity (yes, Laura, it’s the publicity!) or the fact that my bare backside on the bike is acting like some kind of Star Wars Death Star, sucking the unweary in, caught in a tractor beam of curiosity and plunged into the smelly darkness of the Balcony room.

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Our friend here is a therapist…

We had another good show yesterday, buoyed by some lovely reviews. It’s really nice when people appreciate the work you’ve put into a performance: whether they’re theatre goers, just visiting the festival, or professional journalists. Actually, it’s really nice when people are just nice to each other. Isn’t it? Read more

George O on my mind

What seems like an eternity ago, maybe as long as three months back, I made the impetuous – some would say foolhardy – decision to ‘take a show’ to the Edinburgh Fringe. My first ever show – scripted by me, cast by me, produced by me. Well, OK, hands up, not exactly scripted by me; a monologue adapted by me from George Orwell’s novel ‘Coming Up For Air’ would be the more cumbersome but correct tag.

On and off, I’ve been reviewing the festival – first for the Independent, then Time Out, and now for the Telegraph – for over a decade, almost as long as little Tom Daley has been growing into a would-be champion diver. That’s quite long enough, I suppose, to be able to bring to the table a healthy scepticism about what it‘s possible to achieve here. Over the years, I’ve seen plenty of talented people head up to the Fringe in August and belly-flop badly; so much needs to be in place for things to go even moderately well that the odds seem fiercely stacked against achieving that dream of an outright hit. Read more

Becoming a celestial being…..

Stars, your future can be written in them, your fate decided by them, your Edinburgh sinks or swims by them….. and to an Edinburgh virgin, a somewhat compulsive obsession!. I have been very lucky and have a few nice stars adorning my poster and flyers, some nice things said, some not so nice things said but in the long run what does it really matter? But at the moment, it seems it’s all that matters. The range of these stars, as a virgin to all this, is what amazes me, two stars here, four stars, there and they probably saw the same show? There is no science to any of this maddness, the more I flyer, the less audience I get, the less I flyer the more audience I get, the more stars I get the less audience…… Is anyone noticing a pattern here? Read more

MTM Awards – and I nearly found out in advance…

This morning the joint chair of the 2008 judging panel for the MTM Awards, Dr Nick Phillips of LIPA, announced the nominations and special mentions at the end of the MTM Question Time which I chaired.  We’d had a great discussion with freelance producer Richard Jordan, Nick Williams of the Arts Council, Roy McAllister of South Hill Park and Annemarie Lewis Thomas of the new Musical Theatre Academy.  Read more

Parties, Bang Gang, Frances Ruffelle and Stars

 

I’ve been a bit remiss on the blogging front for a couple of days. Its a bit mad here with so many people coming to Musical Theatre at George Square to check out shows, meet, drink and have fun.  There are tickets available for most shows for most nights if booked in advance,  so get in touch with the box office and come-on-down.  Didn’t help a few days ago when all the Fringe website connections went down and our shows were announced as all being sold out.  Hey ho. I guess we’ve all had a few problems this year. Read more

that vintage smell

Buns baked: 423
vintage dresses bought: 3

Hello. Helen here.
Rosie’s mum’s staying here with us and has been taking on the lion’s share of baking, which is lovely. Chris from the venue (the one with a passion for fondant icing) thought that there were a lot of WeighWatchers in our audience today, as the full bun quota was not eaten. WeightWatchers or not, they were a lovely lot. Read more

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