Les Quizérables is a fun and intimate quiz taking place in a dungeon-like cellar that entirely enhances the atmosphere. It is very much targeted at LGBTQIA+ musical buffs. If you aren’t L, G, B, T, Q, I, A or + you will certainly not feel alienated as their community is welcoming to all, so long as you too are accepting. If you aren’t a musical buff then don’t touch this with a barge pole.
A fun night for musical experts who want to get tested to their absolute limits
The guest host this evening was a young drag queen called April Adamas, who was dressed beautifully and fitted the event very well. As a host, she has strong potential to be a big hit in the drag world. She started slowly, blagging her way through an intro with little substance but engaged increasingly well with the room as the show went on, by being calm and natural, and proving popular. She performed an average lip-sync routine and a decent burlesque piece at the end.
The format is quite typical of pub quizzes – three or four rounds of eight questions slightly themed around different aspects of musicals, with a music round and picture round. At a couple of points in the two hours, quizzers were invited to get up and sing a musical song for bonus points (I took advantage and unleashed my Alexander Hamilton – a real Fringe highlight!). It should be noted that the questions are bloody hard, with requirements to name Tony winners from specific years and obscure characters from Fiddler On The Roof. If you know your Grease from your Phantom but not your Waitress from your Evan Hansen, this will leave you clueless and aggravated.
It’s also missing a trick over opportunities to be creative with such a flexible format. A roomful of musical-loving theatrical types for two hours on a Saturday night in Edinburgh are definitely going to be up for some involvement – structured singalongs, riotous interactions, challenges across the room. The quiz was just screaming for it, but the atmosphere remained relatively tepid. There were also five-minute pauses between each of the five rounds while someone marked the papers that, again, could have been taken advantage of. Let us mark them and shout out the answers, or at least use this time to give quizzers the chance to sing, rather than cutting into precious quizzing time later. There was also a round to which answers weren’t given, which probably frustrated a few people.
This is a fun night for musical experts who want to get tested to their absolute limits, in a comfortable atmosphere where they can relax and be themselves. It’s a decent standard of quiz with a decent standard of host, but fails to take full advantage of its timeslot, the ample scope for creative round design and building the atmosphere into a truly epic event.
