Five star reviews from the Edinburgh Fringe: Glenn Moore & Boiler Room Six

No introductions, no preamble, Glenn Moore is off and running at a hundred miles an hour before he’s even on the stage, says Alister Tenneb. And strap yourself in because he doesn’t slow down for the next hour.

★★★★★

As well as being a regular on radio, Glenn will be recognisable to many from his TV appearances including Live at the Apollo, Have I got News For You, and 8 Out Of Ten Cats.

The show follows a very loose journey through Death Valley with Glenn’s cousin who is the confident blagger type, a stark contrast to Glenn’s own self questioning and doubting personality. 

The tales are all expertly cross referenced, intermingled and woven together, but there are a lot of jokes and it’s hard to keep up sometimes. I found myself just getting the punchline to one joke when Glenn’s already half way through the next one. 

Through the show Glenn was ably assisted by two books on stage that were consulted and quoted from. Book One, with fail safe, tried and tested jokes to be deployed if at any time the audience is not totally on board. And Book Two filled with ‘career ending jokes’ – to be used if Glenn feels the audience needs calming down a bit.

He has clearly worked very hard at the show, it’s slick and all delivered with a force and enthusiasm that really is quite something.

Bonus, there is very little audience interaction, so no problems of being picked on. I was amazed that someone wearing a voluminous cowboy hat in the front row wasn’t targeted.

It’s a full hour packed with jokes and covers a lot of ground from the Tudor Queen, Catheryn Parr, to some clever word play and belting one liners.

I loved the show and laughed out loud a lot, but I felt I did need to sit down and give my brain a rest after it. One of the best shows I’ve seen at this year’s Fringe.

Glenn Moore: Please Sir, Glenn I Have Some Moore? Runs until 24 August at Forth at Pleasance Courtyard.

Boiler Room Six – A Titanic Story: My advice? Get a ticket soon, I can guarantee this will be a sell-out, says Jeremy Welch.

★★★★★

From the moment this play starts you’re right there in the Inferno as the engine room of the Titanic was named by those that stoked and fed the engines with coal.  

You can almost feel the heat, smell the sweat off the bodies of engineers and hear the thudding of the pistons pounding away as they turned the propellers of the unsinkable Titanic.  

All of this atmosphere is created by one man, Charlie Sheepshanks, playing Frederick Barrett, one of the stokers in the Inferno.

Frederick narrates us through the gruelling and unrelenting routine of the engineers below decks. He introduces us to his fellow stokers and engineers, the camaraderie amongst them from shared endeavour.  

It is a brilliant performance by Charlie Sheepshanks. After hitting the iceberg the resulting chaos of the ice water pouring onboard, the roles and bravery of the engineers is portrayed with enormous skill.  

The atmosphere changes from the red-hot Inferno to a darkened, ice water flooded ship, the atmospheric contrast is perfectly executed.  

The play continues to describe the devastation to the ship, and the courage of those that stayed at their post in the Inferno to buy time for the evacuation of passengers.

Barret scrambles on deck and is ordered to command one of the life boats along with another of the engineers. They are the only two to survive from the boiler room.

This play is magnificent. I spoke to Sheepshanks after the performance and he told me it was a gift to work with such a script.  

He’s right, the script by Tom Foreman is one of the best I’ve ever witnessed. But no script can stand alone without the breath of an actor to bring the words alive. Sheepshanks certainly does that, he gives a mesmerising performance.

 My advice? Get a ticket soon, I can guarantee this will be a sell-out.

Boiler Room Six: A Titanic Story runs until August 23 at Forest Theatre at Greenside @ George Street.

Read more Fringe Reviews here.

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