ED FRINGE 2023 REVIEW | Cabaret Impedimenta
★ ★ ★ ★
Reviewer - Jordan
*Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review
Cabaret Impedimenta returns to the Fringe festival with its unique and intriguing concept, can some of the best performers in their field continue to perform while being “impeded”. And with different performers every show, you never know what you’re going to get when you turn up.
This year the hosting has been taken over by Mark Watson, an established and successful comedian in his own right, who I found unfortunately, fell a little flat on the MCing for the night I attended, I think this may have been down to a mismatch of energy put forth by Mark compared to that of the show as a whole.
The show itself presents 5 different performers who will each be delivering a short segment where they must attempt to get through one of their own bits while being “impeded”. What are they impeded by you may be asking, well they don’t find out until just before their performance starts, when the wheel of impediments is spun to choose one at random. This could be a Victorian ghost child, a children's birthday clown, a 90’s impressionist, or anything else that could be distracting or irritating.
One further twist adds to the chaos, while each performer does their own bit singularly, the impediments never leave the stage, so by the 5th performer there are 5 impediments roaming the stage (and occasionally the audience) trying to disrupt their performance.
I will say after the first and second performances I was finding the concept hilarious and enjoyable, but after Mark broke the wheel of impediments, it was almost like a sign. Things went downhill from the third performance, at least for me. What started out as fun distractions, slowing down and irritating the performers until this point, just became a wall of noise as balloons, party horns, victorian nursery rhymes and (intentionally) terrible impressions were all blasted through the mics. Even if the performer had managed to ignore all of this and keep on with their act it would have been impossible to hear them anyway.
I liked the concept, and the show has obviously done very well, returning so many times to the festival, and perhaps different performers would have handled it differently. The show is definitely worth checking out even just for the novelty of the concept as it’s certainly one I would want to give another go.
