The rather sad sight of George Street's glorious eating and drinking arena being packed away. Roll on August 2014 and let's hope the sun allows as much open-air munching as it did this year.

Not everything has been put away yet. This is a shot of the so called mediaskins that have stood outside the Usher Hall displaying kaleidoscopic aerial views of parts of the earth.  A Scottish invention - the kaleidoscope that is, we owe the mediaskins to Korea.

I'm not having much luck with the fashion events that I booked. I did see the kilts and they were terrific. But I put the dancing hats against the wrong day in my diary and now Jaggy Nettle has cancelled.

I'd had my eye on Miles and Coltrane Blue (.) for a while. The other night was their last show so after band practice it was then or never.

(What's that dot in brackets for?  Who knows.)

Sadly I was a bit disappointed.  The music was fine but the story they wove around it was pretty weak.  Everybody did well what they were called upon to do but they were not called upon to do much of interest.

I didn't recognize any of the music and this chap has probably hit the reason on the head.  He has more nice things to say about the show than I have but hey, the end of the show was fun.

This was the last of 24 consecutive performances and boy were these guys pleased and ready for their flight back to North Carolina in the morning.  They fooled around singing and dancing as they dismantled what there was of a set. Even their techie got into the act, deserting his post in the box to deliver a poetry and dance routine.

You'd be well and truly knackered if you did 24 consecutive performances of the RSNO's City Noir concert.  That piece in particular has one of the most energetic climaxes you could hope to hear but the rest of the second part of the concert was equally rumbustious with Christopher Rouse's The Infernal Machine ("this energetic whirlwind leaves the listener breathless at the end of its five minutes" according to one programme note that I reproduce by kind permission of the composer) and the world premiere of Festival City by Tod Machover.

The latter, commissioned by the EIF, is made up of sounds of Edinburgh submitted by anyone who cared to, snippets of some of the many pieces that have been played at the Festival since its inception, new music by Machover inspired by the sights and sounds of the city and contributions from a small number of RSNO players who devised ways of using their instruments to imitate natural sounds.

All of that was shaken and stirred to produce an absolutely fascinating listen.  I was lucky enough to hear it twice since there was a short afternoon session describing how the piece was created with examples showing how the raw sound was manipulated and layered with music.  The session ended with a performance of the entire work.

By comparison the first half of the concert could be regarded as tame, but playing the overture from Verdi's La Forza del Destino and Bruch's Violin Concerto would still help you work up a good sweat. 

After the dance show I was feeling very enthusiastic about celebrating the last weekend of the Fringe so I dug out the Summerhall programme.  It's a venue that has hosted lots of interesting looking stuff of which I have seen very little.

I worked out that between noon and midnight yesterday I could see the last performance of seven shows and the last day of two exhibitions.  But as Sunday morning wore on my enthusiasm waned.  It was a lovely day with warm sunshine pouring through my balcony door and the attractions of relaxing with a book, listening to music, sipping a glass or two of wine with lunch and for exercise sorting out my window boxes grew, pushing Summerhall into the background.

I had a stab at substituting one Book Festival event for my seven plus two but that was sold out according to the website so a day of rest it became, as befits the seventh day.

I didn't entirely escape the Fringe though.  A year or two ago I saw there The Tailor of Inverness.  It was a play written and performed by Mathew Zajac telling the story of his father's wartime experiences in eastern Europe with the Polish, Russian and German forces ending up attached to British forces and eventually settling in Inverness.  Now Mathew has written a book telling the same story within the framework of his own journeys to Poland with his parents as a child and his discoveries there as an adult.  It's a very good read.

There is still the last week of the International Festival to go.  I have a couple of things booked and will no doubt find myself drawn to others as I was this morning to a concert at The Queen's Hall.

It featured the music of Mozart and of George Crumb with a starring role for the glass harmonica. That's not a form of mouth organ but a set of differently sized crystal bowls mounted on a spindle that turns continuously and is played by laying on wetted fingers.

The glass harmonica appeared three times.  Once it was overpowered by the other instruments playing alongside but in this fine work it is allowed space to shine and here is the solo piece we heard played by the very man who played it this morning.

Mozart's oboe quartet that started off the concert was delightful.  Crumb's two pieces were full of what we might call modern classical sounds.  In the duet the piano wires were played directly as well as via the keys.  The violin was plucked and its case drummed with bow and fingers. The piece had an undercurrent of tension and threat and its silences were of equal importance to its noises.

His Vox Balaenae that closed the concert is played by a trio; flute, piano and cello.  For some reason it's played in semi darkness and the players wear masks.  (To put them into a whalelike setting?)  We had a bit of amusement when the flautist slipped his on and the elastic broke.  The poor chap was a bit embarrassed but he managed to retie it and gamely got on with the job.

I thought it was lovely.  A recording is not a substitute for hearing it live but try this one.

If you want to compare the music with real whales check out this site.

Here's a slogan I came across in my Festival wanderings that will appeal to many readers.

And here's a restaurant that rivals the tram project for delay.




I took a short break from Festival wandering to visit the Lake District and snapped one of its beauties.
 

Back in Edinburgh I popped into the Livingston exhibition at the National Library.  One of many bi-centenary year exhibitions and events in Scotland and Africa this one concentrates on pictorial representations of the Livingstone story.  The little white blob nestling in the Atlantic to the west of the then dark continent is Scotland to the same scale as the map of Africa.  The head and shoulder picture of Livingstone may not be to the same physical scale but its size reflects the importance of the man.

Millepied is a wonderful name for a dancer and choreographer and it's a name well known to us all since Black Swan.

He's here with LA Dance Project, an American company he heads.  Their triple bill includes one of his own works, Moving Parts.  It's a fine piece of lyrical beauty quite different from the challenging darkness of Merce Cunningham's Winterbranch and the joyous vibrancy of William Forsythe's Quintett (despite its genesis).  The combination of these three works makes for a stunning evening.

To say my memory of Eugénie Grandet was hazy when I saw a dramatisation of the novel listed in the Fringe programme would be to endow it with a clarity it didn't have, but I knew I'd enjoyed the novel so I put the play on my list.

I'm so glad I did.  The director admits that you can't hope to fit the whole book into 80 minutes but this is a production that flows smoothly through the story, necessarily leaping over great chunks of time, but nonetheless giving space for characters to develop, in particular for Eugénie's growth from naive innocent girl to strong independent woman.

This is accomplished ensemble acting and sensitive direction.  An entire chapter of the novel is expressed in one over the shoulder look from Nanon the servant.

I loved the staging and its elegant transitions from one scene to the next. For example Grandet père is leaving the stage.  He stops, turns and looks back contemplating the action just completed.  His shoulders droop.  He clutches his chest. Nanon steps into the scene and without pause as she passes a walking stick appears in Grandet's hand, he has a blanket over his shoulders and is painfully moving forward to where she is already busy at the table; now an old man.

Teatro Máquina from Brazil present another 19th century piece but in an altogether radically different style.  It's Georg Büchner's play Leonce and Lena which they perform highly energetically.  They run.  They leap. They make wonderful noises.  They do marvels with bubble wrap.  They throw confetti.  Music pounds. They laugh.  They weep.

It's absurd.  It's great.  Only seven of us had the good fortune to be there.  That's a shame.

Beijing People's Art Theatre on the other hand more or less filled the Playhouse with their version of Coriolanus.  OK it has the prestige of being in the International Festival rather than the Fringe and it's a big scale show with vast crowd scenes and it's the mighty Shakespeare and maybe it was declaiming not shouting and maybe if there had been only one heavy metal band not two and maybe if I hadn't had to keep taking my eyes off the action to read the translation to right and left of the stage and maybe ...... but truth to tell for half the price I got twice the enjoyment from the Brazilians.

One of the cast of Mammoth takes a seat in the audience at one point and declares "This is the worst play I've ever seen."   It's by no means one of the worst I've seen but it's certainly one of the oddest.

At the start Jessica explains that she's made a mess of bringing up her son (not that he's a mess, she is) and that with a webcam in operation for his benefit (which husband pops off stage to sort out now and then) they are going to perform a play in which they set off to the woods as a family with her mother playing her son and accompanied by her therapy dog, to get lost.  This she sees in some way to be a re-enactment of their actual life as a family.

So far so odd.  The dog runs off after a rabbit early on and returns later covered in mud but minus his doctor's coat (he is I think her psychiatrist) to demand sausages from the husband who is not lost thanks to his mobile phone and GPS and has popped home to get a tent, a barbecue and some sausages.  In the meantime mother has wet herself in her role as son, goes off and comes back drunk dressed as The Phantom (a cultural reference that escaped me but which I have looked up since).  Jessica in the interim has a panic attack and demands help from the technical crew, demands that they lower the lights and play some music but not, definitely not some particular thing which I think may have been by Mammoth Life  (another escaped cultural reference) but that gets played anyway and Jessica rolls about on the floor a lot till husband returns.

So it goes on until husband, who has been taking Jessica back in time (a bit of psychotherapy) while she, mum and dog frolicked in the tent, collapses the tent.  Jessica emerges with a tail.  The dog is starkers again by this point and embraces Jessica.

A member of the theatre staff tells them their time is up and that's pretty much that.  It may have been a nod to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (another post hoc cultural discovery for me) or it may not have been.  I certainly didn't come out with a clue as to what it was about but it was fun.

Circa: Wunderkammer is much more straightforward.  Acrobats standing on one another's shoulders, doing amazing stunts on a vertical pole, whirling hula hoops from every limb, cartwheeling and tumbling all over the place.  They have however a disconcerting need to take lots of clothes off.  Do I really want to see a man strip down to a posing pouch in the course of a trapeze routine?

The SNJO remained fully clothed throughout their excellent concert at The Queen's Hall, though Brian Kellock freed himself from his bow tie at one point no doubt having worked up a bit of a sweat at the piano.  The concert was called In The Spirit of Duke and there is a CD for those who missed it.

My personal favourite was the duet between Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock played as the band's first encore.  It was warm and melodic and drew lovely, soft, melancholic tones from the tenor saxophone.  Here it is on piano alone played by the Duke himself.

The earliest occurrence of "you can't judge a book by its cover" noted in the Oxford Book of  Proverbs was in 1929 but was probably untrue then in its literal sense and was certainly untrue when Penguin started in the 30s and colour banding told you what category of book you were looking at; orange for general fiction, green for crime and so on.

Covers have moved on a lot since then and their importance in attracting attention and sales is probably enormous.  I say probably since I haven't come across any quantified reporting and didn't manage to get that question in at the talk about how a cover for the paperback edition of Far Rockaway was achieved.

 It came from a competition at Edinburgh College of Art. The artist, Astrid Jaekel, produced a work from which the publisher's inhouse design team developed the final cover and endpapers.

Coincidentally on my way to the talk I walked along Rose Street where more of Astrid's work is on view decorating the windows of a rather drab building with a poem by George Mackay Brown.

There's an article and pictures here  and this is a little sample
 
Standing around for an hour in the kitchen of The Freemasons' Hall may not sound like a bundle of fun but that's site specific theatre for you.  And indeed it was a well nigh perfect setting for Pinter's The Dumb Waiter.

It's a little gem of a piece, puzzling and tension ridden and this production largely does it justice.

From my window I can see Arthur's Seat and from the mountain you can, according to the late 19th and early 20th century climber Caleb Cash see twenty of Scotland's peaks.  Unlike Munro and Corbett he hasn't lent his name to any category of mountain but thanks to what sounds to be a most interesting book we can now talk of the Arthurs which is how the author of Caleb's List, Kellan MacInnes, has christened them. His book is part guide book to the twenty mountains, part biography of Cash and part memoir of recovery from Aids.

It's now on Brian's list of must reads.

21st Century Kilts and Iona Crawford combined forces to provide a splendid fashion show at The City Art Centre last night.

This was preceded by a little refreshment and a tour of the fashion photography exhibition that's on there.  The exhibition contains photographs from Condé Nast publications from the earliest years of the 20th century to recent times.  The tour was led by an old theatre acquaintance of mine and focused on pointing to how the photos sat within the social and cultural landscape of their time.  Not just pretty pictures according to Ernie and everything he said rang true, but is it not a bit of an affectation to talk of bijouterie when you mean jewelery, even in the context of haute couture?

After another break for refreshment the catwalk show was launched.  The women's wear was attractive but it was the glorious range of kilted outfits that I was there to see and that caused passing pedestrians to take time out to peer through the gallery's large windows.

Once again I had only a cameraphone with me so didn't bother trying to take pictures.  Check out the websites for a peek at the goods that were on display. 

Introducing the show Howie Nicholsby the kilt man said his models weren't models but ordinary guys since that's what his stock would fit.  I got into conversation with one of them afterwards when we were encouraged to finish off the ample stock of refreshments.  He turned out to be the drum major of the Los Angeles Scots pipe band here to take part in the world pipe band championships in Glasgow.  A little less than ordinary I'd say.

Like many people I find maps fascinating.  I've got two framed historic maps on my living-room wall and on my bookshelves a couple of dozen one inch OS maps from the various parts of the country I've walked in.  So Mapping the Nation was an obvious choice from the Book festival programme.

We got a fascinating review of how Scotland has appeared on maps from long ago to Google with a particular focus on four atlases from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries respectively.  A project to reproduce them has recently been completed.

Amongst many titbits I learnt of the existence of Open Street Map which is the wikipedia of the map world. Anyone can update it and make his mark.

Man has been making his mark on the landscape for millenia and that's the subject of  The Firth of Forth: An Environmental History.  The decline of the oyster beds, reclamation of mudflats for farming, the pollution that kept salmon out but fed Icelandic ducks and all sorts of other interesting topics are covered.

The lead author, T C Smout, lives in Anstruther and relates how on one busy fishing day in the 19th century over 3000 telegrams were sent from the local post-office by fish merchants to their customers concerning that day's landings.  Today the well known and much lauded local fish and chip shop gets its supplies from Peterhead.

Gavin Hewitt is a well known BBC journalist and hundreds turned out to hear him talk about The Lost Continent.  It's a sweeping review of the European crisis and how it arose with lots of entertaining anecdotal asides.  Questions from the audience mostly centred on Britain's relationship and were dealt with optimistically on the whole.

Britain's relationship with Europe may be troubled but it's not a patch on the Israeli Palestinian nightmare.  The Ballad of the Burning Star is a fast-paced very physical theatre piece led by a cabaret style not quite MC drag artist.  You can see from that sentence that it's hard to pin it to a category.

It's a brilliant show that gives us the Israeli perspective leavened by satirical gibes and sharp portrayal of paradox and parallels between Jew and Arab. Notwithstanding its humour (as an example the one musician is addressed as Camp David) it ends in tragedy.  How else could it?

Back at the bookfest at the end of the day the good people who make Isle of Jura whisky take over the spiegel tent (one of the many that has sprouted since the first was planted not that many years ago) and provide free entertainment and a mini dram of the craitur to boot.   Last night some islesmen took the stage and sang a few songs.  The whisky helped me enjoy them.

I was also delighted to receive a festival bookshop £5 voucher in return for ticking a few boxes on a survey form till I got home and discovered I need to spend £40 to get £5 off.  I can do better than that if I buy from you know who.

2121 is Susan Greenfield's first novel and is informed by her experience as a neuroscientist.  According to this review in The Guardian it is her scientific work in another wrapper and all the worse for being so.

I'm not terribly interested in the novel but I did enjoy hearing her air her views on how the brain's great plasticity is reacting to new technologies and about her work on Alzheimer's.  In response to questions about how to keep dementia at bay she suggested exercising the brain by vigorous debate could be helpful.  Afterwards, gathered round a table outside, I heard a group doing just that.  Their debate was about how much rubbish Susan Greenfield had just expounded.

I followed the brain theme at a lecture by Suzanne Corkin.  She worked for over 40 years with a chap who had large chunks of his brain chopped off in an attempt to cure his epilepsy.  It did help with the seizures but the downside was that he essentially lost his ability to remember anything.

His loss was science's gain.  He became a very willing collaborator in numerous experiments aimed at gaining an understanding of how memory works.  He continues to help post mortem having allowed his brain to be sliced into over 2000 sections for further study.

Permanent Present Tense, Suzanne's book about the work is one I will definitely borrow from the library.  If I remember.

It's common currency that signals from the brain control movements of the body but no-one has as yet satisfactorily answered the question of who, what or how the signals are decided upon.  It's all in the mind.  Well what's that when it's at home?

You can't see it but you can see it at work.  In choreography for example.  All sorts of strange signals are flowing from brain to muscle in the Booking Dance Festival Showcase, in which half a dozen US dance groups give a taster of their work.

That work varies from the pretty pictures made by free-flowing colour soaked costumed dancers through jerky urban encounters accompanied by a heavy beat to a spotlit Mr Universe type rippling his muscles.  It's well worth seeing.

Music and art are other mind body phenomena and they came together last night at The National Gallery of Modern Art in Martin Kershaw's Hero as Riddle.  This is music inspired by the work of Eduardo Paolozzi, some of which is only yards away from where the music was being played.

A short cacophonous introduction that made me think of Paolozzi's jumbling together of disparate elements is followed by an eight piece suite and images of the artworks that inspired each piece were projected behind the ten man band as they played.   The music is a riot of colours, tones and tempos reaching high and plunging low.  It's at times stirring and at times restful but never less than absorbing.

Alas like the sax gig I was at the previous night it's a one-off and it's five years since it was last played so you'd be best searching out the CD rather than wait for  a reprise.

"Do it again with an air of paradox" is a line delivered to the actor portraying Adam Smith giving a lecture at Glasgow University way back in 17whatever in Adam Smith, Le Grand Tour at The French Institute.

Two actors romp their way against a filmed background on a tour of Adam Smith's life and work.  They jump in and out of the film which includes vox pop interviews with tourists and locals beside his statue in the High Street and culminates in the laying of flowers on his grave in the Canongate Kirk.  While very entertaining and quite humorous it's an intellectual play (as befits one written by a professor of economics) and in trying to get to know Smith the paradox they explore is his appropriation to the position of great God of the free market obscuring his stature as a moral philosopher and arguably against the balance of his thinking. 

How To Be A Modern Marvel, also at The French Institute, struck me as a bit of a paradox.  It's nicely done in an informal staging that simulates being in someone's living room.  We are presented with the induction of someone into a sales sorority and when the product is revealed to us it's tupperware type plastic goods. This is an exploration of the way in which women were able to move from housewifery to employment in the 50s and 60s without putting in jeopardy their ability to get the kids to school and have their husbands tea on the table at the right time. 

Now I know that one of the things that British retirees living in France extol is how close to the golden days of British yore is the French way of life.  The play is satirical but surely even in France in this day and age it's purely a historical satire.  For the sake of French girls I hope so.

Yvonne Guilbert was a belle epoque caberet artiste who had that Je Ne Sais Quoi and the show of  that name, again at The French Institute, is a delightful medley of many of her songs.

Those three shows are in English by the way and even the songs, necessarily sung in French, have super titles.

Last but certainly not least yesterday was The Scottish Saxophone Ensemble and Guests at Summerhall.  This was a one off concert so however good it was, and it was very good, you've missed it.

The day after leaving London I found myself Leaving Planet Earth in the company of three busloads of theatregoers attending an EIF hot ticket event from Edinburgh's Gridiron Theatre.

Fitted with electronic wristbands we were playing the part of migrants from a dying Earth to New Earth where humanity would have a second chance.  Our on-board mentor with due seriousness filled us in on what was to come and equally serious videos built up an appropriate atmosphere.  Here's one of them.

We debussed at the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena where we were to go through the New Earth acclimatisation process.  We were led through this amazing building from one little vignette to another culminating in a bit of son et lumiere in the main arena.

It's a wonderful show which must have taken an extraordinary amount of work to develop.  Reading the programme you learn about the technological collaboration with universities and business in its development never mind the theatrical challenges.

I enjoyed the various bits and pieces but the illusion was constantly broken for me every time we moved from A to B, while a friend declared it to be the greatest immersive theatrical experience he had ever experienced.  Immersed to what end?  I suppose there is a bit of a message in that you see a hint that the wonderful future is going to repeat the errors of the past but on the whole I can't see it as more than a very elaborate children's game.  But then I'm no fan of Dr Who.

The Book Festival has been going for 30 years but until yesterday I had never attended any of its events. I heard three authors talking about their books

Alexandria by Peter Stothard - about the city, about Cleopatra and about the author - recently serialised on radio 4 some of which I had heard.

The Robber of Memories by Michael Jacobs - a dangerous journey up a Colombian river full of encounters with fascinating people.

The Golden Thread by Ewan Clayton -  writing and human civilisation by a calligrapher and former monk - Tom Gourdie didn't have enough time with me at KHS to do much for my handwriting but his calligraphic skills and knowledge influenced Mr Clayton.

The problem with the Book Festival is that having spent a tenner on a talk you are sorely tempted to lash out 25 quid or so on the book.  I'm resisting.  Either wait for the paperback or rely on the library.

In between books I was entertained by Worbey and Farrell who play duets and throw in a bit of comedy.  That description sorely undervalues their show.  It's terrific.

There was more music to end the day at The Okavango Macbeth.  This has all the simplicity, imagination, creativity, artistic and emotional impact that gets five stars in my book.  See it if you can.

On the first night of the Grads shows I was doubling as audience and front of house helper and focusing on the latter forgot to take my tickets.  Fortunately my word of honour was accepted so I was allowed in to see Romeo and Juliet and Agnes of God.  There were excellent performances in both plays.  I felt that the constraints of the venue made it a little difficult for R&J to deploy its large cast to full effect but I appreciated the efforts that had been made and was mightily relieved that I wasn't one of those having to wave a sword around.

No such problems for Agnes and the clever settings allowed the three woman cast to act their little socks off in comfort.  It's a powerful piece that gripped the audience throughout.  I just wish the Scottish government would bring the on-stage smoking rules into line with England so that we could be spared pretend puffing.

I then abandoned the festivals temporarily, though not the theatre, to shoot off south to a Golden Wedding bash in deepest Sussex.

En route I went to The Globe to see A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I've long wanted to see a show there and the Dream is perfect for that arena (and vice-versa).  It was great fun, though the pesky pillar in the picture hid from my view 99% of what was clearly a hilarious take on Pyramus and Thisbe.

 

   
From the quintessential olde worlde English theatre I went to the quintessentially olde worlde English village,

near which the bash took place in head-burning weather - my fault - I had a hat but didn't wear it.  It was a lovely event with old friends to catch up with and new friends to encounter.

Back in the great wen the following day I took in Liolà by Pirandello at the National Theatre.

A reviewer of a production of mine once expressed surprise (and that negatively) that one section of my cast spoke with Irish accents while the characters they represented were in fact Spanish. (I had my reasons!) So you would expect me to be sympathetic to Richard Eyre's choice of Irish for this tale of Sicilian peasantry. Since they were harvesting almonds and grapes he clearly hadn't reset the story in Ireland, which one could well do.  No harm done but I couldn't see a reason.  The main effect seemed to be to make it more difficult for the audience to make out the words.

Those of us who did understand the brogue enjoyed this little tale of a lusty young man who fathers at will and a rich old man with no child to leave his money to, but there must be better plays out there longing for a production.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart was a big hit for The National Theatre of Scotland when it first appeared in early 2011.  For some reason (she knows who she is) I missed its various touring appearances in 2012 so was delighted to discover that it was on under the auspices of The Royal Court while I was down south.

Not in Sloane Square though but in a loft like hall up a close in Peckham Lane, set out cabaret style with tables and chairs.  It was a great venue for this anarchic romp through academe, border balladry and hell.  Our enjoyment was enhanced by the free tot of whisky and the close up of an actor strutting his stuff in his underwear on our table.

I got to the Pompei exhibition at The British Museum, spent some happy hours in the V&A and rounded off the trip at a family barbecue starring my twinly pregnant niece.

Saturday's crop.

I'm With The Band - Traverse. Not bad.  A band called The Union made up of a Scotsman, a Welshman, an Ulsterman and an Englishman.  The Scots guitarist wants to leave the band.  You get the point I'm sure.  It's a neatly worked analogy but dragged out for an hour and a half it lost its charm for me.

Ciara - Traverse. Very good.  A one woman show, beautifully written, beautifully staged and lit, beautifully performed.  The life and times of a Glasgow criminal's daughter, criminally married but legitimately running an art gallery.

Survival of the Fittest - Sweet at Apex Grassmarket. Fair.  Six dancers throw themselves around energetically in two pieces. Nature versus nurture, problemette being I couldn't tell which was which, then a more straightforward narrative in which a gazelle is attacked by two lions and a buffalo (your guess is as good as mine as to which was what), is rescued and the rescuer perishes. A bit tame and lacked any sense of terror, relief, sadness.

Cadre - Traverse.  Having fought for freedom where are the fruits?  I expected the play to deal with events post Mandela but it was all flashback to the bad old apartheid days unless I closed my eyes for longer than I thought.  Disappointing.

The Events - Traverse.  Mmm?  There's been a shooting - of members of a choir.  The choirmistress survived.  The play deals with how she deals with it in an imaginative set of dialogues between her and various people including a psychiatrist, her partner, a friend of the shooter and ultimately the shooter himself.  Interspersed is the singing of a choir and a complex tapestry of words, music and emotions is created. Alas I wasn't engaged.  

Hot on the heels of the Jazz Festival come The Fringe, The International and The Book.  All of them will receive my patronage: some shows are already booked, some will be grabbed on the wings of good reports, some will be stumbled over by chance and others sold out before I can get to them.  What a treat.

Brief reports on seen so far.

Quietly - Traverse.  Excellent.  Meeting between two men from opposite sides of the Irish troubles. Confrontation yes.  Truth yes. Reconciliation maybe.  A future world without prejudice not likely.

Grounded - Traverse. Very good. Great acting from one woman cast. A bit long. You might say it drones on.  Thought provoking.

Fight Night - Traverse. Excellent. Great fun.  Audience participation and improvisation with a difference.

Have I No Mouth - Traverse. Mmm. Didn't quite live up to the heartbreaking poignant strapline for me but the mother and son argy bargy bits struck a chord.

Long Live The Little Knife - Traverse. The set and opening moments were promising.  The actors worked hard.  I wanted to like it and the audience as a whole seemed to love it but I wasn't too thrilled.

Preen Back Your Lugs - Pleasance Dome.  Brilliant show.  Clever. Comic. Talented cast of six do miracles with a handful of props and a dozen wooden boxes.  A must see before the referendum.