Tag: stefan mohamed

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A Second Spin at the Intercity Disco

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote an entry titled The Attraction of the One-Off Piece. This was all about a one-night-only show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival titled The Greatest Literary Beef of the 21st Century.

My entry title has subsequently become redundant, since Ross McCleary and Stefan Mohamed.have done it again with another one-night show – Incubus Succubus Vengabus – that happened on Wednesday 12 August, two years to the day since the literary beef.

Even if I could recall every detail of the 45-minute script, it would take as long again to explain the context behind some of the gags and references, not to mention careful straddling of the spoken-word genre and the stand-up comedy scene.

Besides, I’m not sure I want to give too much away. The best comparison I can make is to imagine the offbeat comedy of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, but instead aimed at a audience almost entirely comprising their friends, followers and fellow poets who understand many of the in-jokes.

One thing I will let slip is a sketch where they searched the title of their last show and read out the automatic summary from Google. I’m reliably informed this was drawn entirely from my blog. This gives me ideas about hiding metadata in this post to influence search engines in the event of a third show, possibly in another two years from now.

Instead, I’ve already made my suggestion for a third show, pointing out that some of the lyrics from We Like to Party! (The Vengabus) on the left are strikingly similar to those from the Billy Ocean track When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going on the right.

I’ve got something to tell ya
I’ve got news for you
Gonna put some wheels in motion
Get ready ’cause we’re coming through

I got something to tell you
I got something to say
I’m gonna put this dream in motion
Never let nothing stand in my way

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The Attraction of the One-Off Piece

I make a point of seeing at least one show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every year. My first one was yesterday, titled The Greatest Literary Beef of the 21st Century, hosted by Ross McCleary and Stefan Mohamed.

While I’m only familiar with Stefan by association, I’ve known Ross for a couple of years now. He has a highly surreal sense of humour often centres around highlighting a concept and workshopping possible ways to make it funnier, with a lot of help from his online followers, many of whom were in the audience.

This show followed the surreal route. It took the form of the two poets exchanging paper letters to intentionally create a feud between them both. It benefitted from its brevity, with the show itself restricted to just one 40-minute performance rather than a multi-day run. There was also a donation bucket offered at the end, so the audience could choose how much to give, if at all.

I’ve always been particularly attracted to works that are a one-off rather than part of a series or serial. For instance, one of my favourite books is the standalone Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer, while I don’t think Spike Jonze is likely to direct a sequel to one of my favourite films, Being John Malkovich.

I’m going back to the Fringe over the coming days, so I hope to see more off-one bangers while I’m there.