We never thought the first Fringe review would be of a Street Performer. If you follow us on Instagram , you might know that we have been to fair few shows this year. While we enjoyed all of them, the one which entertained us the most was The Atari Show.
His show was on Chambers Street, right in front of the steps to the National Museum of Scotland. We were on the opposite side of the road and his antics really caught our eye. Normally, we avoid street performers because many of them spend 20-30 minutes building up to their performance only for it to transpire that they only have 5 minutes of material. This was different. We were already at the end of a long day and were on our way home, but there was something magnetic about this performance.
We couldn’t stop ourselves from crossing the road and getting ourselves positioned right in the middle of the stage. I should have mentioned by now: his stage is the road, the pavement, the steps and even the opposite pavement. He dominates the whole area and tries to involve as many passers-by as he can. From cars to children to the elderly, he involves everyone to huge hilarity. His antics range from pretending to push a van along the road, while it is stuck in traffic to chasing pedestrians with a remote controlled shark fin. For every situation, he has a piece of music, a funny sound effect or a cool prop. Speaking of props, he has with him a huge box full of them. Every time he reached his hand into his prop box, I thought that he must be about to repeat a previous joke but he rarely did and I was constantly surprised by the variety in this show. On the rare occasion that he did repeat a gag, it was completely worth it and perhaps even more funny than the previous time.
We at Explore Edinburgh thoroughly enjoyed every second of it and laughed for the duration. Please seek out this wonderfully talented improvisational street performer before he moves on to another city.