An utterly unique and unpredictable hour of musical anarchy
Last year, Dru Cripps’ loopstation tomfoolery saw him sell out his whole Fringe run and sweep multiple award nominations. This year he’s back, and just as ready for improvised songs, audience participation and general absurdity. It’s an unpredictable hour of music and silliness, with Cripps a hilariously chaotic host. Sit down, prepare for anything to happen, and be impressed.
Juicy Bits opens with an extended mime sequence, with Cripps acting out emotions, musical instruments and abstract movements and getting the audience to provide sound effects for each. He’s trying to avoid speaking for as long as possible. More accurately, the show starts as soon as the audience enters the Big Yurt at Hoots: most shows play background music as you file in, but here a mic’ed up Cripps provides a running commentary on what he can see from outside the tent (in between being asked for directions to the toilet by assorted festival goers).
Juicy Bits is the sort of show where an audience member, having given several unhelpful answers in crowdwork, is taken outside for a pep talk. And where an audience member sat right beside a booming speaker has a jumper tied around their head to cushion the sound, becoming the character of a band manager for the rest of the evening. It’s a lightning-in-a-bottle show where everyone spends a whole lot of time laughing, even though you don’t always know why.
Tonight’s show feels like it might have been particularly anarchic. There are multiple reviewers in, and Cripps may have let this get inside his head – he keeps looking over to The Scotsman’s critic: “the reviewer’s got her head in her hands, this can’t be good”. Cripps’ parents are also in the audience, and the show culminates with his father onstage improvising a reggae verse; I have to presume this isn’t the usual finale.
Cripps’ main draw is using his loopstation to layer improvised sounds into full orchestral soundscapes, with both the content and musical style selected from audience suggestions. But what makes this show compelling is its unrestrained anarchy. At one point, Cripps drags three (drunk but willing) young men off the street to become backing singers for his Britpop band, persuading them to take their tops off to increase the sex appeal (but only the ones who are nineteen, the eighteen year old is ordered to remain dressed). Cripps himself loses more than just his shirt in this routine. A metal song about fingerpainting sees an audience member given a Sharpie and tasked with drawing what the song makes them feel on Cripps’ body in real time. The whole show takes on a dream-like quality: you wake the next morning unsure whether any of it could have happened.
As an improvised show, many of the touchpoints of this review are unique and of the moment. But for everything listed above to have happened within the same hour is proof that something insane happens whenever you combine Dru Cripps with an audience. I wouldn’t want all improv shows to be like this, but I’m very glad this specific one was.
Show Listing: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/dru-cripps-juicy-bits
LISTINGS INFORMATION:
Venue: Hoots @ Potterrow (The Big Yurt)
Dates: Aug 7th–31st
Time: 22:10 (60 mins)
Ticket prices: £10
Fringe box office: 0131 226 0000 / www.edfringe.com