Show Details
Hungarian Bird Festival
Show type: Edinburgh Fringe 2001

Hungarian Bird Festival


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Description

A holiday tale with a twist: A bird-watching tour in Hungary accompanied by his dad

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Reviews

Original Review:

Show Rating:Hungarian Bird Festival rated 2/5

Sometime Comedy Store Player Niall Ashdown proves himself a formidable raconteur with this monologue about a trip he took with his dad to, yep, a Hungarian birdwatching festival.

He always commands the audience's attention, despite the fact that the yarn he spins is actually pretty slight.

For while it's an entertaining enough tale of obsession and the relationships between sons and their fathers, the themes are never truly explored, merely hinted at.

You never empathise with his drive to catalogue the birds of central Europe like some sort of fanatical reader of I-Spy books, meaning the show is always going to be a passive experience.

So all this amounts to little more than a succession of pleasant, and somewhat oversentimental, holiday anecdotes. It's gently humorous, and well told, but ultimately pretty insubstantial.
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Comments

The Hungarian Bird Festival was one of the best shows that I saw at the fringe this year (and that's including the Phil Nicol gig where I got to fulfill my wet dreams and play guitar to a crowd). There is no other comedian that has brought me to tears; not of laughter, but of joy, beauty, and just goddamned happiness. I went with two mates, all with no preconceptions and entirely on impulse, and all three of us left beaming, heading straight for the nearest bar where we sat for two hours talking about how lucky we were. Comedy that is both intelligent and beautiful is becoming increasingly rare.

Sean Davies, September 2001

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