Comedian Reuben Lee was not seeing the funny side when he arrived in Dunedin yesterday only to find his venue closed.
''I had already missed my flight from Auckland,'' he said.
''When they said the flight was at 4pm, I didn't realise you had to actually be there at 4pm. So that cost me some money.
''Then I get to Dunedin and go to the pub and find it's all locked up, with a pile of letters under the front door.''
The Auckland-based Englishman's show is appropriately called ''Whinging Pom''.
Lee was saved by the kind folks at Metro Cafe, who even bought a mike stand for his three performances.
He who laughs last.
Curiously, the Barmy Army held a fundraising dinner at Madly British last Friday for the Christchurch earthquake appeal.
There was fire and brimstone in the old Dunedin Gasworks Museum last night for the opening of Gothic steampunk fire fable Mr Faust and Dr Jabberwocky.
The performance by Dunedin's FireBugs welds Goethe's Faust to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.
''It's a fusion of the different stories done in a steampunk style with fire props,'' performer Mariya Semenova said.
Other theatre productions on tonight are The Road That Wasn't There at the Playhouse, The Last Taniwha at the Globe, What Is This, Woman's Hour? at Allen Hall and Nostalgia for Reality at the Fortune.
The free ''Song Sale'' at The Church last night was neat, too. A very clever and entertaining concept, it joins performers and audience in a unique way. It is on again at 7pm on Tuesday.
There is plenty of great art and performance to see for free at the Fringe. Check the ''Wild Lines'' poetry art at the Otago Museum reserve, the ''Graf the Box'' graffiti exhibition in the Octagon, ''Monsters Great and Small'' at the Margaret Freeman Gallery, ''Hurry Up and Wait'' at the Dowling Street Project Space, the ''On The Rise'' group show at Flourish Studio Gallery and ''Today in History'' at the Blue Oyster Art Project Space. Streetlight circus In and Out of Context illuminates the Octagon every night at 8.30pm.
The Festival Club continues at Queens at 9 tonight with Scarlett Lashes, Totems and Death and the Maiden, followed by comedy show Trubie and Abie Are Just A Bit Worried at 10pm.
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