This Edinburgh Festival Fringe you can once again experience the exquisite monstrosity of Eric Davis’ brilliant creation, Red Bastard. Lines will be crossed and laughs will be had in this interactive feast of biting wit, mischievous improvisation, and physical prowess.
“Oh, you’re gonna love it. It’s brand spanking new. With the exception that I’m doing all the same material I did last year. Imagine taking last year’s show, getting in a time machine and then doing it one year in the future. Blows your mind doesn’t it?”
Just who is Red Bastard?
“I am everything you might want, and nothing you will ever get! Back breaker. Psychedelic psycho. Teacher, taunter, brother, lover, maker of miracles. A god damn walking, talking, breathing, heaving, fear-feeding machine, AND your best friend forever.”
What reaction do you look for in an audience?
“I am looking for the real reaction. There is space for the audience to have many reactions in this show: laughter, fear, outrage, confusion, intimacy, love and inspiration. One person could experience all of those at the show, or all of those could be experienced by different people at the same moment.”
What are your best and worst experiences on stage?
“Perhaps in looking back, best and worst moments are indistinguishable. I’ll mention a few and leave you to imagine which are good or bad:
“A woman with a missing tooth gets naked for everyone to see. A man breaks a beer bottle and advances toward me with the jagged edge, a woman, worked to a frenzy, throws her panties on stage and then realizes she’s left her maxi-pad on them. A Yorkshire man in his fifties says ‘I love you’ for the first time ever to his father, a man quits his job never to return, an 80 year old man plops his withered testacles in my hand. The undisciplined child whom I drag out of the theatre, his hands clawing at the floor, after he stupidly accuses me of being a ‘gay rapist’. The first moment I meet you. The last time we will ever see each other again.”
If you were curating a stand up show for television, who would be your guests?
“Bill Hicks, Mitch Hedberg, Sam Kinnison, Andy Kaufman, Lenny Bruce, Bill Cosby. Wait. Are they all dead? I guess it’ll be a pretty dull broadcast. But I bet it will make the news. Wait. Billy Cosby’s dead, right? Shit. I can’t remember.”
