The Edinburgh Festival Unwrapped, Cherwell, 6 October 2004, pp. 12-13.
On my first night in Edinburgh I watched a guy I knew from college successfully climb a traffic light. He sat on top of it for a good five minutes. My feeling on first inhaling the festival-tinged air that this was a time and place where anything could happen seemed to be confirmed.
The town was buzzing. Staying up all night. Its sun was shining, and I felt royal walking down the Mile. The circus had come to town. There were 1,700 shows to choose from. It was a lucky dip, but at £7 a go, you had to try to make an informed decision. Unfortunately, it would take at least a day to read through the entire programme. Fortunately, I had a free pass to all Gilded Balloon shows.
For those who have never been to Edinburgh in August, the blanket media coverage may be baffling. Listings and Arts sections which centre around London productions for 11 months of the year suddenly look North. What’s all the fuss about?
Quite simply, everyone in the entertainment industry is here, from the stars to the wannabes. There are actually four different festivals running: the Festival, a programme of high-brow opera music and theatre, the Fringe, which is getting bigger every year, the Book Festival, where authors discuss their latest work, and the Film Festival, dotted with premieres. And on top of that, there’s Titian and Cecil Beaton amongst others in the art galleries, and the Military Tattoo, with its fireworks going off at the castle every night. A cultural feast.
I was in town to promote The Ambassadors, a comedy double act who had obtained my services through an ad in the OUDS newsletter. I was living in a Wynd off the Royal Mile, in close proximity to Plaisir du Chocolat, which served a variety of intense chocolate cakes and 90% cocoa hot chocolate.
The quality of entertainment on offer did not always match the quantity. While the films and book events I attended were of a uniformly high quality, the herd of fringe plays contained as many goats as sheep. Here, I shall try to share with you the highlights.
A row of young women biting hungrily, Eve-like, into apples. A girl discarding pair after pair of white knickers, then slowly turning her head to look back at her trail. A girl furiously scrubbing at her eye, trying to eradicate the twinkle. Powerful images from a play dealing with the experience of repressed young Irish women, In a Month of Fallen Sundays.
Pieces of Poe (that is Edgar Allen Poe, the macabre gothic novelist), directed by Katherine Tyler, who I’ve known since I was two. Three short stories interwoven. Characters haunt the stage like ghouls, their eye sockets black and sunken, their faces white with powder. They prance about their plague infested world, their skinny black limbs silhouetted against the white. Nimbly shape and scene -shifting, they tell their tales of murder, crime and overweening curiosity. Fantastic caricatures peep out from behind white sheets.
A one-man Hamlet, an amazing feat; my skepticism dissolved swiftly, an achievement when it could have gone so wrong. Also, he reduced it to one hour 20 mins, without losing anything vital. The actor was fantastically versatile. Characterisations included stroking an imaginary beard as Polonius and a anguished fist to the forehead for Hamlet, who he hammed up. Old King Hamlet metamorphosed into a buzzing fly. Excellent. I recommended it to the guy who was scouting for a Cologne Shakespeare Festival when I bumped into him at the Fringe office.
At the Book Festival I was inspired by two very different men who want to change the world and have written books about it. Simon Goldhill, a Cambridge classicist approached our world from an ancient perspective, asking what Plato would have made of our democracy. He challenged the easy assumptions we make about every aspect of the ancient world- from its attitudes to homosexuality to the role of its tragic theatre. Pat Kane, a well-known Scottish journalist had written a book called the Play Ethic, in which he argues that the work ethic is unproductive, outdated, puritan. Instead we should use play to problem solve, be more creative in our approach to life. Both authors provoked lively discussion with their ideas, and I was so absorbed in the new ideas racing round my head that I spoke to complete strangers about them for hours afterwards in the festival coffee shop. This is the point of being here, I felt. To be exposed to new ideas, to debate, to be provoked to think.
I was provoked to think in a less traditional way by the interactive Paint Show. In matching paint suits, everyone looked the same. The group was infiltrated by weird beings, our leaders. They incited us to dance, to play, to build things, then to fight. When the red man tried to make me fight I hit him over the head! But I poked him in the eye by mistake. I think he was quite cross with me. He continued to rally his troops. I tried a new tactic, and bent my weapon, a foam rod, into a smile. I tried to spread peace, quite successfully, as others bended their weapons into answering symbols of benevolence. One of the leaders came and hugged me when she saw what I did. At one point I picked up a reddish glow-in-the-dark ball and placed it where my heart is and simulated a pulse. Some people went to this thing every night!
I saw 24 fringe shows, four films and four authors in 16 days. A gentle average of 2 shows a day. 14 of which I saw for free with my Gilded Balloon pass. I’ll be going back for more.
The town was buzzing. Staying up all night. Its sun was shining, and I felt royal walking down the Mile. The circus had come to town. There were 1,700 shows to choose from. It was a lucky dip, but at £7 a go, you had to try to make an informed decision. Unfortunately, it would take at least a day to read through the entire programme. Fortunately, I had a free pass to all Gilded Balloon shows.
For those who have never been to Edinburgh in August, the blanket media coverage may be baffling. Listings and Arts sections which centre around London productions for 11 months of the year suddenly look North. What’s all the fuss about?
Quite simply, everyone in the entertainment industry is here, from the stars to the wannabes. There are actually four different festivals running: the Festival, a programme of high-brow opera music and theatre, the Fringe, which is getting bigger every year, the Book Festival, where authors discuss their latest work, and the Film Festival, dotted with premieres. And on top of that, there’s Titian and Cecil Beaton amongst others in the art galleries, and the Military Tattoo, with its fireworks going off at the castle every night. A cultural feast.
I was in town to promote The Ambassadors, a comedy double act who had obtained my services through an ad in the OUDS newsletter. I was living in a Wynd off the Royal Mile, in close proximity to Plaisir du Chocolat, which served a variety of intense chocolate cakes and 90% cocoa hot chocolate.
The quality of entertainment on offer did not always match the quantity. While the films and book events I attended were of a uniformly high quality, the herd of fringe plays contained as many goats as sheep. Here, I shall try to share with you the highlights.
A row of young women biting hungrily, Eve-like, into apples. A girl discarding pair after pair of white knickers, then slowly turning her head to look back at her trail. A girl furiously scrubbing at her eye, trying to eradicate the twinkle. Powerful images from a play dealing with the experience of repressed young Irish women, In a Month of Fallen Sundays.
Pieces of Poe (that is Edgar Allen Poe, the macabre gothic novelist), directed by Katherine Tyler, who I’ve known since I was two. Three short stories interwoven. Characters haunt the stage like ghouls, their eye sockets black and sunken, their faces white with powder. They prance about their plague infested world, their skinny black limbs silhouetted against the white. Nimbly shape and scene -shifting, they tell their tales of murder, crime and overweening curiosity. Fantastic caricatures peep out from behind white sheets.
A one-man Hamlet, an amazing feat; my skepticism dissolved swiftly, an achievement when it could have gone so wrong. Also, he reduced it to one hour 20 mins, without losing anything vital. The actor was fantastically versatile. Characterisations included stroking an imaginary beard as Polonius and a anguished fist to the forehead for Hamlet, who he hammed up. Old King Hamlet metamorphosed into a buzzing fly. Excellent. I recommended it to the guy who was scouting for a Cologne Shakespeare Festival when I bumped into him at the Fringe office.
At the Book Festival I was inspired by two very different men who want to change the world and have written books about it. Simon Goldhill, a Cambridge classicist approached our world from an ancient perspective, asking what Plato would have made of our democracy. He challenged the easy assumptions we make about every aspect of the ancient world- from its attitudes to homosexuality to the role of its tragic theatre. Pat Kane, a well-known Scottish journalist had written a book called the Play Ethic, in which he argues that the work ethic is unproductive, outdated, puritan. Instead we should use play to problem solve, be more creative in our approach to life. Both authors provoked lively discussion with their ideas, and I was so absorbed in the new ideas racing round my head that I spoke to complete strangers about them for hours afterwards in the festival coffee shop. This is the point of being here, I felt. To be exposed to new ideas, to debate, to be provoked to think.
I was provoked to think in a less traditional way by the interactive Paint Show. In matching paint suits, everyone looked the same. The group was infiltrated by weird beings, our leaders. They incited us to dance, to play, to build things, then to fight. When the red man tried to make me fight I hit him over the head! But I poked him in the eye by mistake. I think he was quite cross with me. He continued to rally his troops. I tried a new tactic, and bent my weapon, a foam rod, into a smile. I tried to spread peace, quite successfully, as others bended their weapons into answering symbols of benevolence. One of the leaders came and hugged me when she saw what I did. At one point I picked up a reddish glow-in-the-dark ball and placed it where my heart is and simulated a pulse. Some people went to this thing every night!
I saw 24 fringe shows, four films and four authors in 16 days. A gentle average of 2 shows a day. 14 of which I saw for free with my Gilded Balloon pass. I’ll be going back for more.