Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Eric Davidson’s Amazin Prime Parodies (26 Songs to Make the Whole World Cringe)
Eric Davidson
Genre: Comedy, Political, Satire
Venue: theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Twenty six songs, parodying just about anything and everything that’s happened in public and political life over the past twelve months. With Davidson clearly knowing his audience and them knowing him, it was rather like being entertained with your mates in someone’s front room. He’s a consummate entertainer who sends his appreciative audiences out into the Edinburgh night with smiles on their faces.
Review
To paraphrase that great Tory patrician, Harold Macmillan, satirists have “never had it so good”, given the tsunami of political incompetence that assails us daily over the news feeds. And the growth of social media has allowed almost anyone to share news of their every move over the ether, resulting in every faux pas becoming forever available to bore or amuse.
So, given that politicians and public are now creating so much material almost by accident, you could argue that the bar for successful satirists to leap over in terms of making us think (and hopefully laugh) is getting higher and higher. They have to be balanced, topical, clever with words, funny, sensitive, present material appropriate to their audience and, above all, entertain.
Eric Davidson, that doyen of the Scottish after dinner and public speaking circuit, ticks all those boxes and more with his latest Fringe offering, including a title so long it makes finding it on the Fringe website a doddle.
Never offensive, politically on-point, topical, always funny and “on the money”, he had a packed audience at theSpaceUK’s intimate Theatre 2 at Surgeons’ Hall in stitches from start to finish of a show packed with both memorable one-liners and intricately woven rhyming couplets. You needed to pay attention though, as Davidson had to gallop through his repertoire to squeeze things into the allotted show time, so you’d barely clocked one joke and laughed before the next assailed you.
Twenty six songs at a gallop is rather too many to list here but standouts (for me at least) included the parody of the Major-General song from Pirates of Penzance featuring our very own Nicola – “I was the very model of a nippy wee First Minister” being a killer line that I can’t stop singing to myself. Then we had a number exposing the Duke of York exposing himself and more (Editor’s note, allegedly, allegedly!) to Virginia Giuffre, an “All By Myself” parody themed around the regrets of Brexit and a genuinely cringing pop at Thames Water’s sewage problems – the “smell” from that one will linger long in the memory.
And it wasn’t all “barrel laugh” parody either as the egregious behaviour of the Post Office and its senior executives was witheringly exposed, as were the pretentious political aspirations of a certain far right figure, normally seen in a flat cap, pint glass and fag in hand. Oh, and with egg splattered on his clothing.
Davidson’s lexicon is impressive, driving the tsunami of words that flow with precision and clarity from his lips, involving tongue twisters, alliteration and complex rhyming patterns that build to a denouement that is inevitably funny and often unexpected, absurd or all of the above.
Coming up with and then fitting a song for each letter of the alphabet into the tight fifty minutes accorded most Fringe shows must have been a real challenge, especially as the audience got to determine the running order. But with his ever helpful techie keeping the scores on the doors, we cantered over the finishing line right on time, which is more than can be said for the buses and trains that brought most of his Glasgow, Lanark and central belt audience to their capital city.
Davidson clearly knew his audience and they knew him, which gave an intimate feel to the whole piece. It was rather like being entertained with your mates in someone’s front room. Having seen him in action previously, it’s his ability to engage with his audience that differentiates him from others of his genre – he’s a consummate entertainer who sent his appreciative audience out into the Edinburgh night with smiles on their faces.
Clever comedy is often hard to find but it was here in abundance. It’s a show with a lot to recommend it – and it’s not just me saying that, as demand for tickets meant he’d sold out the week’s run before the first night had started. You’ll just have to hope, like me, that he comes back with more next year.
