DJ DANNY Shake your butt and laugh your ass off 0...
Hold onto your arses, throw your hip hop arms in the air and come worship at the altar of bangin’ tunes. Your host for the evening is none other than that serious baadaass DJ Danny, teacher by day and purveyor of all things phat, def and ill by night. His mission? To take you higher - 110% higher - the highest level of excitement achievable, in fact.
Ever the pedagogue, Danny - a stick thin, bespectacled, excitable pogo stick of a man - has created a step by step lesson plan on how to attain the much-coveted status of superstar DJ. This involves such trifling activities as releasing a globally significant album and uniting the whole world in music.
In his mission, Danny’s joined on mixing desk by Mr Walker, teacher of music and RE. ‘Is there a connection between the two subjects?’ wonders Danny. ‘l-lymns,’ grunts Mr Walker. The sidekick may sound strait-laced, but he proves pretty adept at creating a mean dance track, involving improvised contributions from audience members.
Indeed, interaction between the performers and an increasingly excitable public forms the meat of this
32 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE l 148 Aug 200:";
fast-moving, energetic show. We’re nostalgically reminded of the dance moves we once knew but are glad to have forgotten, such as the Hadaway (that’s the scissor-fingers flicking across the eyes a la John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. But the most ingenious segments are the ones in which Danny cooks up three-minute iPod megamixes or creates spontaneous bootlegs from a pair of contrasting tunes (‘pellas’ and ‘mentals’) chosen at random by the audience. There’s a palpable feeling of suspense among the audience as we wait to see whether Danny can pull off anything coherent from these incongruous pairings. But just when you’re convinced it’ll never work, weirdly, it does. On the night in question, Danny successfully fuses Nelly’s ‘Hot In Here’ with the audiobook version of Harry Potter.
Usually, any Fringe show that involves trailing cables and a profusion of technology fills me with dread. But this is fabulous, infectious fun. And Danny (the alter ego of comedian Danny Robins, himself a one-time DJ) is a superb creation, the archetypal dad- on-the-dance~f|oor, nerdy enthusiast who actually has you rooting for him by the end of the show. He does indeed deserve to be a superstar. (Allan Radcliffe)
I Pleasance Courtyard. 5:36 (55:30. untr/ 29 Aug met 16/. 70.45pm, {IQ—5‘70 (57.5048. 130/.
DAN TETSELL
Witty tales of a sinister past 0...
A comic monologue abOLit the Nazis that opens wrth archive footage of raised arms and goose-stepping sOunds like the result of a drunken bet in the pub. Or else — perish the thought — a live version of 'A//() 'A/lo. But. no. Dan Tetsell has bravely delved into his family history to create a compelling and. actually. very funny hour's entertainment. The show is based around the fact that Tetsell's maternal grandfather was a fully paid- up member of Hitler's 88. That he was also. by many accounts. a thoroughly decent chap who loved his old mum has led Tetsell to raise
questions about the nature of evil.
In less competent hands. this premise would have been very tricky to pull off. not simply due to the controversial Subject matter. but because personal histories don't always make the most hilarious or riveting of comedy shows. Happily, it is With tongue firmly embedded in cheek that our host posits such questions as: ‘Do we British secretly find Na/is cool?‘ While Tetsell's tale is occasionally a little rambling, he's a confident and engaging raconteur, who Wisely never allows his material to meander into territory that is overly sentimental or earnest.
(Allan Radcliffe)
I Underbel/y ()8 7 0 7/15 3083. unfr/ 28 Aug Inc! 17;. 5.25pm, £‘7.:3()—£.‘8.:3() (5365047430).
OMAR MARZOUK European Muslim puts a Jihad on ignorance 0000
With a cartoon of cowering Bin Laden as a backdrop. it is immediately clear that the insightful. topical and really quite loveable Omar Mar/Otik is not for beating around any race relation bushes; which is not to say the Danish—Egyptian is confrontational by any means. Just one of his seemingly incidental. disarming charms lies in soliciting the audience's assistance With his English ihis fifth language after Germani, a similarly symbiotic relationship being applied to the tweaking of his set. including his bald Justification: “I don't want to die up here; I'm not that kind of Muslim.‘