One of our very favourite acts of last year, clowning duo The Kagools return with new show Tutti, another family spectacular. We grabbed a quick chat with them, and thankfully Claire Ford and Nicola Wilkinson are far more talkative than their onstage alter-egos.
For those who may not know who you are could you tell us a little bit about The Kagools?
NW: We’re a physical comedy double-act.
CF: We are wordless but not silent, so there’s lots of music in the show. They’re really silly characters. There’s lots of film interaction so we have a big screen that we interact with.
You’ve been touring your last show in Australia. How did that go?
NW: It was great yeah; really good! We did Perth, then Adelaide and then Melbourne. We did a show in Brisbane as well.
CF: We did one for a deaf school, and one for an old peoples’ home so my Gran could see it as she lives out there.
You were out there for quite a while!
CF: Yes, about five months. What’s good about the show is that it’s really transferable. There’s no speaking so every any country, anywhere we good it works. Obviously in Australia it’s different because everyone speaks English! But we could do it anywhere.
What can we expect from your new show?
NW: More of the same as the last one. Same sill characters, fooling around.
CF: There’s a bit of an element of magic in the new show.
NW: More of a fantasy element. A unicorn makes an appearance.
CF: New shoes!
NW: Yes, we’ve got new shoes!
CF: We thought about fantasies we have of our own, or what The Kagools would have fantasies about. Like being saved by a big, strapping lifeguard. Stuff like that, which is genuinely really fun.
NW: We’ve added more light elements into it, and playing more with different film parts.
So where do your ideas come from? Do you have any particular influences?
CF: We usually talk about what we find fun. Because The Kagools are all about having fun. They just want to have fun in everything they do. They want to interact with the audience and create scenarios. When you’ve got your own hour and your own stage, you can literally go, ‘well I want to be this!’ So you just go and do it. It’s what our inner child would like to do.
You both had your own solo shows her last year but you’ve decided against it this time. What were your reasons for that?
NW: Just exhaustion really! We did three shows each last year in total and it was just too much. Because we had been to Australia and worked really hard on the The Kagools [their last self-titled show] and on developing the new show! we wanted to just focus on doing that. There is so much work that goes into doing just one show we didn’t want to do another show half-arsed. So we’ve put everything into this. We’re picking up guest spots in compilation shows, but we can pretty much concentrate on this. Maybe next year we might do something.
CF: We really love doing this. We had the best time over in Australia, and if we focus on this this time hopefully it will keep on growing and then we can perhaps go back to some other stuff.
Offstage, do you every find yourselves communicating without talking?
NW: Probably, subconsciously!
CF: Yes!
[Both share a look]
NW: We’ve just done it now!
CF: I think we know each other so well now. You know when you know someone so well you can just do an eye movement across a room.
NW: You end up finishing each other’s…
CF: Sentences!
NW: Love that joke. Yeah, we do. You have to have a bit of downtime as well away from each other. When you spend a lot of time together you need that really.
Finally, beside The Kagools, who should we go and see at the Fringe this year?
CF: So many! Rowena Hutson, she’s over from Australia. We met loads of Australian performers and a lot of them are in Edinburgh now. So they’re here with shows that are really working well because they’ve done them already for a year so they come here and smash it.
NW: Douglas Walker, he’s on at the same time as us so we can’t see him but he did really well last year. He’s in the same same venue as us.
CF: Tessa Waters. She’s always brilliant. She’s got a kids’ show as well called How to be a Rock Star. Also, Javier Jarquin who directs our show is doing a stand-up show called Hombre Al Dente, and his Card Ninja act.
The Kagools: Tutti is @ Just the Tonic @The Caves, until Sun 28 Aug 2016 @ 17:15