Edinburgh Arts: Festival diary: <i>MacHomer</i>

Festival diary: MacHomer

An absolute delight. True, the impersonations weren't always spot on, but clearly Rick Miller was aware of his limitations and kept the appearances of those voices he couldn't manage as well (most notably Bart and Lisa, my favourite character from the show) to a minimum.

This could be billed as The Simpsons do Macbeth: imagine an extended edition of a Treehouse of horror episode and you're getting close. The scene was displayed on a background screen, the first appearance of each character being heralded by a picture of them in appropriate costume: Homer and Marge as the Macbeths, Mr Burns as Duncan, Ned Flanders as Banquo and so on. Inspired doesn't even begin to cover it.

Two minor problems: it took a little while to get used to Shakespearean dialogue coming from the mouth of Homer (at least until he said "hmmm - iambic pentameter"), and the (I quote) "gratuitous encore", in the shape of Bohemian rhapsody as it might be done by anyone from Meatloaf to ACDC was a little hampered by the voiceover - used to announce the next target - not being very audible. These slight niggles, however, took very little away from the enjoyment of a superb show.

MacHomer runs until Monday, 29th August at the ballroom of the Assembly Rooms, George Street, starting at 4:15pm. Phone the Festival Fringe box office (0131 226 0000) for details.

(22nd August 2005)

Comments:

can remember when Rick was doing this show at the 1994 or 95 Montreal Fringe Festival. It killed then. I imagine it's matured, but is still a great show.

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