Farewell to Fringe

Saturday night saw the closing night party and artists' awards for The Age 2007 Melbourne Fringe Festival, at which good times were had by all. I called it a night at approximately 6am Sunday, and trudged happily home; I didn't crawl out of bed until 3pm that afternoon, and was fast asleep again by 9pm Sunday night. I've still been catching up on sleep the last two nights.

Saturday evening saw me take it my final show, in the company of a couple of friends; a tribute to Tom Waits (right) at Abbotsford's Terminus Hotel called The Piano Has Been Drinking...

Less a cabaret, more a cover band, but not a bad job at all. The band were tight, if a little conservative in their instrumentation by Waits' own standards (where was the person playing a giant seed pod when you needed it?) and the singer could perhaps have smoked an entire pack of cigarettes and gargled a bottle of whiskey before coming on stage to get that wonderfully raspy quality Waits has, but even so, they caught some of his wit, wisdom and compassion in a range of songs drawn from both old and newer albums.

The Piano Has Been Drinking: Three stars
Season concluded

So that was my adventure in Fringeland this year; some 15 shows (not including a few art exhibitions I saw, which I haven't had time to blog about here seeing as I was a performance judge and so mostly focused on that category; only one of which I walked out of. Not a bad strike rate at all!

No official word yet on final audiences figures and ticket sales, but I'll be willing to wager that both have gone up; certainly from my perspective it seemed a highly successful festival indeed.

Now, on into MIAF!