Monday, December 25, 2017
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
I'd like to claim that they were all the same aperture and exposure etc but that's a bit too technical and anyway I mucked about a little with the camera settings and don't know what's what. That's the problem with being an ungifted amateur.
So the year is slipping towards Christmas and there have been the inevitable Christmas concerts including my own. This year we played in Old St Paul's Church rather than in the hall and friends in the audience thought the sound quality better. From the depths of the band you can't really tell. I went to hear another local wind band the following evening in Greyfriars. I thought the quality of their playing superior to ours but they fell down compared to us in not providing lashings of free mulled wine.
Though in fact we were a bit short in the lashings stakes. I left it somewhat too late to join the queue and got some only through the charity of those already served.
The Grads got into Christmas spirit of sorts with their production of Reckless. It's not about Christmas as such but it's set at Christmas. I was at the readthrough some months ago and thought it rather a weird and unwieldy affair, decided not to audition for it but was very pleasantly surprised when I went to see it. They'd made it a very entertaining piece. Played in the round it was propelled along by a troupe of Christmas elves who whisked bits of set on and off, pushed a couple around in an open car and generally added to the fun. I still thought it an odd piece but they definitely made a silk purse out of it, paricularly the final quite moving scene which brought out a tragic quality beneath the zany humour.
Tommy Smith is acknowledged as a great jazz performer but he's also a ccomposer of note and this month saw his most ambitious project to date. Spirit of Light drew together the jazz singer Kurt Elling, Capella Nova, players from the SNJO and a number of other instrumentalists to present the words of writers as diverse as Liz Lochhead and Meister Eckhart in a Christmas celebration that is both secular and sacred. I heard it within the lofty walls of St Mary's Episcopalian Cathedral which complemented perfectly the style of the work. It was excellent.
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Amongst the plethora of events I attended several. They both entertained and educated. I learnt that there is a Roman fort in Bearsden, that the Jacobites at Culloden were not wielding claymores but firing the same sort of muskets as their foes, that Napoleon's main problem was an inability to stop when the going was good and much more.
What I expected to learn at a talk about King Alfred was the truth about the cakes, but they weren't even mentioned. I didn't dare sully the fairly academic atmosphere by raising the issue in the Q&A.
The talks were a bit like the Fringe audiencewise although the audience were never outnumbered by the cast (usually only one) when I was present though some came damn close. The best attended event to which I'd say a hundred or so turned up was a double act with Alec Salmond and Tom Devine.
In the first half Devine probed Salmond's journey to and through his political life. With many amusing digressions and comments on the political personalities he had come across on the way we heard about his grandad's influence, his reason for choosing to go to the not overwhelmingly Scottish university of St Andrews and his various electoral campaigns.
In the second half Salmond took questions from the audience and dealt supremely well with all of them. He finished off with a hilarious impersonation of Ricky Fulton's Reverend Jolly that made me regret very much that I didn't see his Fringe show. He's clearly a comedian manqué.
He'll be back at the Fringe next year but this time in a more serious vein talking about some Scots who are not as well known as he believes they should be. James Connolly and Thomas Muir are two amongst those he intends to discuss. I'll definitely try to be there.
The other Salmond activity that has aroused controversy and that he stoutly defended is his RT interview series. I haven't seen any of them but I've set up my TV to record them from now on. The first one I should see will be the St Andrew's night show. You could hardly choose one more appropriate.
History of another sort hit the Traverse bar this evening with the launch of the Scottish Jazz Archive. This is a project to gather and curate memories and memorabilia of the Scottish jazz scene from its earliest days (thought to be the 1930s) to the present day and beyond. If you can fight your way through the adverts you can read a little more about it in this Scotsman article and a website will eventually appear because this is intended to be a digital archive rather than a physical one.
Saturday, November 18, 2017
As well as beautiful trees Autumn is giving us lovely skies like this one that I paused to take a picture of on the Mound. As I stood there I was approached by a tourist looking for information. He was sporting a dashing black baseball cap with a masonic logo in gold on it. He explained that he had just come from the Freemasons Hall in George Street and was now looking for Lodge No. 1 which he had been told was in St. John St. near the Mound somewhere.
Well I happened to know that Lodge No. 1 was in Hill St. and the nearest St John's I could think of was in Corstorphine. It took my smart phone to convince him about Lodge No. 1 and he set off back the way he had come.
But I hadn't been smart enough to check for a St. John St. because it exists and runs from Holyrood Rd. to the Canongate and it's there that you find St John's Chapel the home of Lodge No. 2 which is surely what he wanted. Must brush up my guiding skills.
There's been lots on in the last few weeks. I enjoyed seeing Trainspotting on the stage. It's an absolutely tragic tale really and I think that the enjoyement comes in much the same way as it does from a show like Downton Abbey in that you are looking in on a totally foreign way of life before going home to safely and comfortably back into your own.
I also enjoyed Cabaret. I've heard the music often enough and in Kitwe bits of it featured in some of our own cabaret type shows and I saw the film years ago but I think this is the first time I've seen the stage show in its entirety.
I was intrigued by the opening which featured a giant camera shutter, surely a nod to John Van Druten's play I am a camera, itself a dramatisation of Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin stories. I remember the play being presented in Kirkcaldy when I was in my early teens. I remember it mostly because of my mum and dad exchanging glances as they declared that it was "not suitable" so I'm not sure that I ever saw it though I daresay my desire to do so was heightened.
The amazing Carlos Acosta was here with his troupe of Cuban dancers in a wonderful show made up as most dance shows are of a number of pieces. I enjoyed them all but the finale in which twelve dancers threw neon lit litre bottles of water to and fro in a bewildering, complex and ever changing pattern while themselves being seldom still was breath-taking, though maybe it was stretching the definition of dance a wee bit.
I'd seen Ballet Rambert earlier in the month which got five stars from Claire who actually saw it twice. She persuaded Phil to come along the second time but despite being reasonably enthusiastic it wasn't enough to bring him out for Carlos.
Psycho was screened in the Usher Hall with the RSNO playing the soundtrack. It's still a pretty gripping film and as good a thriller as many more modern ones. Unusually I saw another film with a live soundtrack, this time only one man with a piano and a set of percussive blocks. This was the oldest extant South African film, made in 1916, called Die Voortrekkers. I suppose we might call it a docu-drama but essentially it's a propaganda celebration of the northwards movement of the Boers seeking to carve out a home away from British control and their battle in 1838 against the Zulus at Blood River. It was fascinating stuff full of that wild-eyed overacting that seems to pervade silent movies.
Another part of the British Empire has cropped up in a number of talks at the National Library that I've enjoyed, all of them featuring the exploits of Scots better known in India than they are here. A chap called James Taylor from Kincardineshire has a giant statue in Sri Lanka where he is revered as a major force in developing the tea industry. (Funnily enough in Forres I came across the Falconer Museum named after two brothers one of whom was instrumental in tea development in India.)
Then a talk about five Fraser brothers who went off to India one after another to seek fame and fortune, with mixed results it has to be said. An interesting book has been written using their letters found in an old trunk in the family home.
Finally Alexander Burnes from Montrose, a descendant of Robert Burns, who was in essence a British spy in what has come to be known as The Great Game when we feared Russian interference in India. Lionised in his lifetime then according to his biographer the Victorians later downplayed him and airbrushed him out of history because of his racy private and not so private life. His great claim to fame for my sons will be that he features in the very first Flashman book.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
The trees in Princes Street Gardens were resplendent in Autumn colours as I passed through on my way to see The Death of Stalin.
The film is a brilliant bit of comedy forged from the not at all funny jockeying for power amongst Khrushchev, Malenkov et al after uncle Joe kicked the bucket.
I was a bit disappointed with the National Theatre's much vaunted production of Hedda Gabler. I'm not too sure why. The Festival Theatre was not full and the mostly empty set stretched over the entire width of its very large stage. Both factors I thought worked against the creation of the sort of atmosphere that the drama needs. They might also have given some thought to the sightlines. Not seeing the action on one side of the stage was annoying.
Our Fathers at the Traverse had a good theme to examine. How to relate to those you love when you don't share their beliefs. Two atheist sons of clerics in this case. Alas I found their examination somewhat boring.
Thank God then for The Real Thing which gave me a thoroughly enjoyable evening in the theatre. Stoppard writes with wit and energy whirling the English language around like an F1 driver. A man who cares as much as I do for the proper treatment of the gerund and would never say less when fewer is required gets my vote every time. But the play is not all shiny verbal surface. There is content. His portrayal of the struggle to handle emotions and relationships and come out bruised but unbeaten moves even more than it entertains.
I was moved too by Losing Vincent. The publicity for this film was all about the vast team of artists who had worked on the painting of every frame. So I went out of curiosity to see that, and indeed the form of the film is impressive giving us Van Gogh's glorious brush strokes throughout. But the story of Armand's search for the truth about Van Gogh's death (whether that search really took place or not) was fascinating and painted a moving portrait of a lonely man who like other artists never saw his genius recognised.
I was down by Silverknowes golf course the other day, not to play though I must renew acquaintance with it sometime, but drawn out by the fine Autumn weather for a stroll along to Cramond. It was windy enough to persuade me to put my cap in my pocket for fear of losing it but the sun shone, the views were magnificent and I felt jolly healthy at the end of it.
I was a bit disappointed with the National Theatre's much vaunted production of Hedda Gabler. I'm not too sure why. The Festival Theatre was not full and the mostly empty set stretched over the entire width of its very large stage. Both factors I thought worked against the creation of the sort of atmosphere that the drama needs. They might also have given some thought to the sightlines. Not seeing the action on one side of the stage was annoying.
Our Fathers at the Traverse had a good theme to examine. How to relate to those you love when you don't share their beliefs. Two atheist sons of clerics in this case. Alas I found their examination somewhat boring.
Thank God then for The Real Thing which gave me a thoroughly enjoyable evening in the theatre. Stoppard writes with wit and energy whirling the English language around like an F1 driver. A man who cares as much as I do for the proper treatment of the gerund and would never say less when fewer is required gets my vote every time. But the play is not all shiny verbal surface. There is content. His portrayal of the struggle to handle emotions and relationships and come out bruised but unbeaten moves even more than it entertains.
I was moved too by Losing Vincent. The publicity for this film was all about the vast team of artists who had worked on the painting of every frame. So I went out of curiosity to see that, and indeed the form of the film is impressive giving us Van Gogh's glorious brush strokes throughout. But the story of Armand's search for the truth about Van Gogh's death (whether that search really took place or not) was fascinating and painted a moving portrait of a lonely man who like other artists never saw his genius recognised.
I was down by Silverknowes golf course the other day, not to play though I must renew acquaintance with it sometime, but drawn out by the fine Autumn weather for a stroll along to Cramond. It was windy enough to persuade me to put my cap in my pocket for fear of losing it but the sun shone, the views were magnificent and I felt jolly healthy at the end of it.
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Elgin cathedral is a ruin but it has lots of fascinating bits and pieces on display. My favourite was the stone figure of an archbishop from the top of his tomb. The label on its case explains that it would have been highly coloured when first created but of course the paint has not survived the centuries. However at the press of a button and by lighting magic the colour is restored.
Colour was pertinent to the touring production of A Streetcar Named Desire that was on at the Kings last week. The play is set New Orleans and its main protagonist, Blanche, is a lonely alcoholic remnant of plantation society who looks back with regret on the days that there was a coloured girl to cope with drudgery. She has been forced to throw herself on the mercy of her sister in a white working class area of the city. There is talk of niggers in the text. We are clearly in a racially divided society. It seems perverse then to practice colour blind casting in that context. But they did.
I had other slight reservations about the show but the fact that the first half ran for an hour and fifty minutes and didn't seem a jot too long testifies to it's being a pretty good production.
The Traverse runs its Play, Pie and a Pint series of short lunchtime plays twice a year. I took a raincheck on the Spring series but I've seen the first two of their Autumn offering and they've both been excellent.
Pleading presents a young couple in an Asian jail, heroin having been found in their luggage as they arrived from the Australian leg of their backpacking holiday. Too bad it's one of those places where they execute drug smugglers. A local lawyer is trying to help them. They plead ignorance. They tell one story. They tell another. Aspects of their relationship are revealed. Through the lawyer the prosecution offer a deal. Plead innocent and die or plead guilty and spend life in the distinctly unappetising jail. They have differing views. The truth comes out. Serious stuff.
Death figured also, not surprisingly given its title, in Love and Death in Govan and Hyndland but here with much comic effect. It's a one man show in which the actor, Stephen Clyde, brilliantly takes us through his mother's terminal diagnosis and death with love and humour. He moves skilfully from character to character; mother, doctor, senior consultant, auntie, brother and himself never putting a foot wrong. It's very funny and ultimately life affirming.
Cockpit is a brave revival by The Lyceum of a brave play that hasn't been seen since its first airing in 1948. There's a sympathetic and sensitive review here.
I've had the great pleasure of listening to The Rite of Spring not once but twice within the last week. The RSNO played it at the Usher Hall and then the orchesta of Scottish Ballet at the Festival Theatre. They of course were playing to accompany dancers in what I thought was a superb bringing into flesh of the music even though I couldn't see the logic that led Christopher Hampson from the first part of his interpretation to the second. Claire didn't share my enthusiasm and has written amusingly about it.
In other ways I've been busy: a talk about tartan, a talk about a Scottish contribution to the tea industry in Sri Lanka, the museum's Jacobite exhibition, the City Art Centre's Edinburgh Alphabet exhibition, a couple of Spanish films (one good one not), a French film (enjoyable but about which I can recall more or less nothing), a round of golf, an afternoon of sax ensemble, a U3A Italian group (good fun), the start of an adult education Gaelic course (which promises to be entertaining but challenging). These plus my regular band and sax lesson have kept me from being bored.
Colour was pertinent to the touring production of A Streetcar Named Desire that was on at the Kings last week. The play is set New Orleans and its main protagonist, Blanche, is a lonely alcoholic remnant of plantation society who looks back with regret on the days that there was a coloured girl to cope with drudgery. She has been forced to throw herself on the mercy of her sister in a white working class area of the city. There is talk of niggers in the text. We are clearly in a racially divided society. It seems perverse then to practice colour blind casting in that context. But they did.
I had other slight reservations about the show but the fact that the first half ran for an hour and fifty minutes and didn't seem a jot too long testifies to it's being a pretty good production.
The Traverse runs its Play, Pie and a Pint series of short lunchtime plays twice a year. I took a raincheck on the Spring series but I've seen the first two of their Autumn offering and they've both been excellent.
Pleading presents a young couple in an Asian jail, heroin having been found in their luggage as they arrived from the Australian leg of their backpacking holiday. Too bad it's one of those places where they execute drug smugglers. A local lawyer is trying to help them. They plead ignorance. They tell one story. They tell another. Aspects of their relationship are revealed. Through the lawyer the prosecution offer a deal. Plead innocent and die or plead guilty and spend life in the distinctly unappetising jail. They have differing views. The truth comes out. Serious stuff.
Death figured also, not surprisingly given its title, in Love and Death in Govan and Hyndland but here with much comic effect. It's a one man show in which the actor, Stephen Clyde, brilliantly takes us through his mother's terminal diagnosis and death with love and humour. He moves skilfully from character to character; mother, doctor, senior consultant, auntie, brother and himself never putting a foot wrong. It's very funny and ultimately life affirming.
Cockpit is a brave revival by The Lyceum of a brave play that hasn't been seen since its first airing in 1948. There's a sympathetic and sensitive review here.
I've had the great pleasure of listening to The Rite of Spring not once but twice within the last week. The RSNO played it at the Usher Hall and then the orchesta of Scottish Ballet at the Festival Theatre. They of course were playing to accompany dancers in what I thought was a superb bringing into flesh of the music even though I couldn't see the logic that led Christopher Hampson from the first part of his interpretation to the second. Claire didn't share my enthusiasm and has written amusingly about it.
In other ways I've been busy: a talk about tartan, a talk about a Scottish contribution to the tea industry in Sri Lanka, the museum's Jacobite exhibition, the City Art Centre's Edinburgh Alphabet exhibition, a couple of Spanish films (one good one not), a French film (enjoyable but about which I can recall more or less nothing), a round of golf, an afternoon of sax ensemble, a U3A Italian group (good fun), the start of an adult education Gaelic course (which promises to be entertaining but challenging). These plus my regular band and sax lesson have kept me from being bored.
Tuesday, October 03, 2017
The Lyceum opened its season with What Shadows, a play from Birmingham Rep about Enoch Powell. Ian McDiarmid's performance as Powell was terrific but the play was somewhat diffuse and went round in circles that were not always very interesting. A tighter focus would have been welcome but I couldn't have been more gripped by the famous rivers of blood speech.
The Attic Collective's third and last show of the year was the eagerly awaited (by me) The Threepenny Opera. So eagerly awaited was it that I sacrificed the first evening of a saxophone weekend to see it. Alas I was a wee bit disappointed. Some of the performances were exceptionally good. McHeath, Polly Peachum and Mr Peachum in particular, and the on-stage band were great and I have to admit that the presentation's use of the full stage, the boxes and bits of the stalls was ingenious. But. Maybe it was just me.
The following morning I rose at dawn and headed for The Burn in Edzell to take part in the rest of the saxophone weekend. I'd guessed that breakfast would be around 8 and arrived in time for that but I was in fact an hour early. No matter, I rested. The weekend went very well. The Burn is lovely and proved much more comfortable in a bright September than it was in my previous visit in a cold and dismal February. After the Sunday afternoon session instead of coming home I headed North of which more later.
I came home a week later in time for a super concert by the SNJO. They were celebrating the music of Django Reinhart so they'd cut down on brass and added guitars, violin and accordion to the line-up. A friend who was there felt that the two musical forces didn't combine well and came over as two separate units but I couldn't disagree more. One feature of particular interest to me was that the accordion was played by Karen Street. She's a lady whose arrangements for saxophone groups I've played quite often, mostly down south.
That concert was packed (helped partly by the SNJO's policy of free seats for school groups) unlike another fascinating concert by the RSNO. This was of modern Chinese music by a chap called Xiaogang Ye who was there in person. Although one piece made extensive use of a dozen or more Chinese percussion instruments his work is very much in tune with Western styles. Indeed comparing his music with Benjamin Britten's Sea Interludes which was the only non Chinese piece on the programme I felt they could have come from the same pen.
It was a very enjoyable concert but the most sparsely attended I've ever seen in the Usher Hall. The stalls could not have been much more than a quarter full and from where I was I could see about one third of the dress circle in which sat one solitary punter. It was a real shame but there were quite a few Chinese in the audience, including the wife of a chap I met at the Napier jazz summer school, so at least the local Chinese community supported it.
My destination when I left The Burn was Banff. I wanted to take an indirect touristy route but had forgotten to bring a map. So I fiddled about with Google maps on my phone to decide on intermediate points and then connected up my GPS gadget. That led me round and round the mulberry bush before I eventually found myself on a recognisable route to Aboyne. It was pretty bleak and hilly and at one point my clutch was emitting burning smells and the engine was revving like fury while I crept up a hill. I didn't relish being stuck for the night out here (no phone signal!) but fortunately after a recovery period at the top of a hill progress was resumed without incident and I rolled into my hotel just in time to eat before the kitchen closed. (They don't dine late in these parts.)
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| Banff Beach |
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| Protecting Banff Town Hall |
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| Duff House |
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| Typical Landscape on Buchan Coast |
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| Despite appearances a working trawler |
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| Fraseburgh Beach |
Friday, September 08, 2017
The town has been pretty quiet since the Festival ended and I've been slowly recovering from hyper-activity by practising sloth.
Normal service is slowly being resumed. The band has started up again as have my sax lessons. I've put the clarinet back in its box so my Wednesday evenings are free for other things. I've booked up various dance, music and theatre shows for the Autumn and I'm off for a saxophone weekend and a wee staycation shortly.
Some of my chums from the Spanish class I went to for years are now meeting monthly for coffee and chat and that's a rhythm I think I can keep up. I've hardly spoken a word of Spanish for three years and when I've tried there's been a degree of Italian interference so a monthly douche will do me good. To blur my language landscape further I've signed up for a Gaelic course.
It's also been a good time to catch up on exhibitions that have been running all summer. I caught the end of one at the Museum on the fascinating subject of an Egyptian tomb and what was found in it. It made me feel that mummification might be a nice alternative to cremation when the time comes. I also saw the exhibition Beyond Caravaggio. I was struck by the modern feel of many of the figures in the paintings and the gorgeous capture of light by so many of those who learned from and/or copied the man himself.
I'm also trying to reduce the height of my books waiting to be read stack. I've got through half a dozen ranging in subject matter from the history of computer programming (an enthralling read) to a spy story set in Paris ( not enthralling at all).
Like the rest of the family and all his friends I was relieved that the Houston floods in the wake of hurricane Harvey had left Ewan pretty well unscathed and that the subsequent hurricanes are heading elsewhere. By the way I assume the hurricane namers have never heard of Irma La Douce.
Normal service is slowly being resumed. The band has started up again as have my sax lessons. I've put the clarinet back in its box so my Wednesday evenings are free for other things. I've booked up various dance, music and theatre shows for the Autumn and I'm off for a saxophone weekend and a wee staycation shortly.
Some of my chums from the Spanish class I went to for years are now meeting monthly for coffee and chat and that's a rhythm I think I can keep up. I've hardly spoken a word of Spanish for three years and when I've tried there's been a degree of Italian interference so a monthly douche will do me good. To blur my language landscape further I've signed up for a Gaelic course.
It's also been a good time to catch up on exhibitions that have been running all summer. I caught the end of one at the Museum on the fascinating subject of an Egyptian tomb and what was found in it. It made me feel that mummification might be a nice alternative to cremation when the time comes. I also saw the exhibition Beyond Caravaggio. I was struck by the modern feel of many of the figures in the paintings and the gorgeous capture of light by so many of those who learned from and/or copied the man himself.
I'm also trying to reduce the height of my books waiting to be read stack. I've got through half a dozen ranging in subject matter from the history of computer programming (an enthralling read) to a spy story set in Paris ( not enthralling at all).
Like the rest of the family and all his friends I was relieved that the Houston floods in the wake of hurricane Harvey had left Ewan pretty well unscathed and that the subsequent hurricanes are heading elsewhere. By the way I assume the hurricane namers have never heard of Irma La Douce.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
I've seen several shows as a result of having a flyer thrust at me in the street. It's as a good a method of random selection as any and none turned out to be turkeys.
My last was one of these, a musical with a simple story efficiently told and staged. A young couple meet, discover they are both murderers, team up and dispatch a bunch of hitchhikers, find themselves falling in love, consider going straight, too late the law is close on their tail. They commit suicide. The end.
Sounds a load of cobblers which I suppose it is but it was an entertaining hour and quite sweet. It met with a rapturous reception from a full house of around 150 punters at this their last of 26 performances so they must have been doing something right. It was called Buried by the way.
My last was one of these, a musical with a simple story efficiently told and staged. A young couple meet, discover they are both murderers, team up and dispatch a bunch of hitchhikers, find themselves falling in love, consider going straight, too late the law is close on their tail. They commit suicide. The end.
Sounds a load of cobblers which I suppose it is but it was an entertaining hour and quite sweet. It met with a rapturous reception from a full house of around 150 punters at this their last of 26 performances so they must have been doing something right. It was called Buried by the way.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Adam is the exact opposite of Eve. The gender change is female to male, the timescale is years not decades, the theatrical presentation is large and open not small and intimate, the acting is noisy and vigorous not quiet and reflective. But the impact is the same. You feel for them deeply and rejoice in their eventual liberation whilst quietly echoing Archie Rice's punchline "thank God I'm normal". It's superb. Too late now to see it in the Fringe but both Adam and Eve will be reprised at The Citizens in September. Go west young man.
It's probably pointless talking about music and the hopes I had of learning much from the talk given by Sally Beamish and Evelyn Glennie at the Book Festival were unfulfilled, not to say dashed.
Another disappointment was Rain. This was an object lesson, masterclass even in how many ways you can run about a stage for over an hour to very loud music without saying anything. I couldn't even work out by the end why it was called Rain.
A much more jolly and rewarding hour was spent in the company of Nicolas Hytner former director of the National Theatre. He's written a book about his twelve year tenure, some of which I'd heard read on Radio 4 so not all his anecdotes were new to me but even second time round they were fun.
Seagulls was also great fun but raised a question in my mind. Was the intention to illuminate Chekhov's play The Seagull? I hope not because it didn't. But I suspect the play was just a hook to hang their anarchic and surreal vision on and in that it triumphantly succeeded.
The actress Harriet Walter has made something of a thing about performing male roles in Shakespeare's plays in recent years and shared her thoughts about that and other theatrical matters while promoting her book Brutus and other Heroines. It was an interesting session though I can't say that I shared her enthusiasm for the all female Julius Caesar set in a female prison.
The Fringe is notorious nowadays for the number of stand-up comedy shows on offer, 144 pages in the programme against 106 for theatre. I saw only one and even that was only half a comedy show. The classicist, novelist and former comedian Natalie Haynes was at Blackwell's bookshop to publicise her rewriting of Oedipus the King as a novel and from Jocasta's point of view. It was a mildly humorous presentation and I enjoyed her thesis equating Greek tragedy with soap opera. I'd like to read Children of Jocasta but it will have to wait.
George Street's temporary installations were being torn down as I left Charlotte Square yesterday afternoon and scaffolding was being loaded onto trucks from a Bridges venue as I left Blackwell's in the evening. That sad moment has arrived when it's all over till next year. But not before I've seen my last show this afternoon.
It's probably pointless talking about music and the hopes I had of learning much from the talk given by Sally Beamish and Evelyn Glennie at the Book Festival were unfulfilled, not to say dashed.
Another disappointment was Rain. This was an object lesson, masterclass even in how many ways you can run about a stage for over an hour to very loud music without saying anything. I couldn't even work out by the end why it was called Rain.
A much more jolly and rewarding hour was spent in the company of Nicolas Hytner former director of the National Theatre. He's written a book about his twelve year tenure, some of which I'd heard read on Radio 4 so not all his anecdotes were new to me but even second time round they were fun.
Seagulls was also great fun but raised a question in my mind. Was the intention to illuminate Chekhov's play The Seagull? I hope not because it didn't. But I suspect the play was just a hook to hang their anarchic and surreal vision on and in that it triumphantly succeeded.
The actress Harriet Walter has made something of a thing about performing male roles in Shakespeare's plays in recent years and shared her thoughts about that and other theatrical matters while promoting her book Brutus and other Heroines. It was an interesting session though I can't say that I shared her enthusiasm for the all female Julius Caesar set in a female prison.
The Fringe is notorious nowadays for the number of stand-up comedy shows on offer, 144 pages in the programme against 106 for theatre. I saw only one and even that was only half a comedy show. The classicist, novelist and former comedian Natalie Haynes was at Blackwell's bookshop to publicise her rewriting of Oedipus the King as a novel and from Jocasta's point of view. It was a mildly humorous presentation and I enjoyed her thesis equating Greek tragedy with soap opera. I'd like to read Children of Jocasta but it will have to wait.
George Street's temporary installations were being torn down as I left Charlotte Square yesterday afternoon and scaffolding was being loaded onto trucks from a Bridges venue as I left Blackwell's in the evening. That sad moment has arrived when it's all over till next year. But not before I've seen my last show this afternoon.
Saturday, August 26, 2017
There's a Turkish rug in my hall, a souvenir of my one and only visit to Istanbul nearly thirty years ago. The fascination of that city came flooding back listening to Bethany Hughes race through several centuries of its history with a nod here and there to its present state. She spoke solidly and enthusiastically for an hour without a note.
She's written a book which I'm sure I will read with interest and pleasure sometime but I have more than half a dozen to consume first so I didn't buy Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities.
Gruffdog Theatre gave an impressive performance of Peer Gynt. It's not a tale nor a play that particularly attracts me. It was seeing the company on the Royal Mile that persuaded me to give it a go and I was well rewarded.
This is very much an ensemble piece. All cast members are in a basic costume of white top, grey knickerbockers and black pumps. That uniformity extends even to eye make-up. They add odd bits and pieces as required to change character and a cap passed from one actor to another passes on the role of Peer. Four actors in all play him. They work on a bare stage with precise and atmospheric lighting. Three triangular slabs on castors each bearing three eight foot high pieces of timber are manipulated to identify places now and then, for example a room in a house, a ship and a shipwreck. Even simpler devices instantly set a scene.
There is music: guitar, violin, drum and voice. They form and unform groups. They dash or slide or crawl or jump. They manipulate a giant troll king puppet à la warhorse and a smaller one for the result of Peer's dalliance with the troll king's daughter.
The acting is great. What more can I say? It's a masterly piece of work.
I soon identified the voice, indistinct and muffled as it was, as that of Cassius Clay (or Muhammad Ali as he later became) as I took my seat in front of a square platform on which stood a young woman. I was at One Step Before the Fall, classified in the Fringe programme as dance/physical theatre.
It was very, very physical. She expended tremendous energy bobbing and weaving her way around what became with the addition of ropes a boxing ring. She propelled herself from the ropes on one side to the other with such force that one rope broke and the fixtures went whizzing off. Fortunately they hit no-one. This was more hunting like a tiger than floating like a butterfly but it was great stuff, a truly impressive show and I musn't forget the atmospheric and highly charged singing and playing of her off-stage partner nor the tubular bell clanging out the rounds.
The actress in The Last Queen of Scotland gave a less physical but equally intense emotional performance. She was powerful, passionate and above all truthful. Were it not that she was in her twenties and the events she was concerned with happened over forty years ago you could believe it was her personal story.
The expulsion of the Asians from Uganda by Idi Amin brought the subject of the story to a housing scheme in Dundee where she grew up and nursed an obsession with her past that a journey back to Jinja helped her become free from.
Having watched those events in the seventies from next door in Kenya and having shared digs at university ten years earlier with an Asian from Jinja (we often wondered what became of him) I felt almost part of the story.
Christine Bovill brought the golden age of French chanson to George Street with an hour long programme of songs by Ferre, Becaud, Trenet, Barbara, Aznavour, Brel and Piaf. All my favourites were there plus a couple I didn't know. She sang them like a native, despite being a Glaswegian, revealed considerable knowledge of the genre and entertained us with personal anecdotes in between numbers.
She's written a book which I'm sure I will read with interest and pleasure sometime but I have more than half a dozen to consume first so I didn't buy Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities.
Gruffdog Theatre gave an impressive performance of Peer Gynt. It's not a tale nor a play that particularly attracts me. It was seeing the company on the Royal Mile that persuaded me to give it a go and I was well rewarded.
This is very much an ensemble piece. All cast members are in a basic costume of white top, grey knickerbockers and black pumps. That uniformity extends even to eye make-up. They add odd bits and pieces as required to change character and a cap passed from one actor to another passes on the role of Peer. Four actors in all play him. They work on a bare stage with precise and atmospheric lighting. Three triangular slabs on castors each bearing three eight foot high pieces of timber are manipulated to identify places now and then, for example a room in a house, a ship and a shipwreck. Even simpler devices instantly set a scene.
There is music: guitar, violin, drum and voice. They form and unform groups. They dash or slide or crawl or jump. They manipulate a giant troll king puppet à la warhorse and a smaller one for the result of Peer's dalliance with the troll king's daughter.
The acting is great. What more can I say? It's a masterly piece of work.
I soon identified the voice, indistinct and muffled as it was, as that of Cassius Clay (or Muhammad Ali as he later became) as I took my seat in front of a square platform on which stood a young woman. I was at One Step Before the Fall, classified in the Fringe programme as dance/physical theatre.
It was very, very physical. She expended tremendous energy bobbing and weaving her way around what became with the addition of ropes a boxing ring. She propelled herself from the ropes on one side to the other with such force that one rope broke and the fixtures went whizzing off. Fortunately they hit no-one. This was more hunting like a tiger than floating like a butterfly but it was great stuff, a truly impressive show and I musn't forget the atmospheric and highly charged singing and playing of her off-stage partner nor the tubular bell clanging out the rounds.
The actress in The Last Queen of Scotland gave a less physical but equally intense emotional performance. She was powerful, passionate and above all truthful. Were it not that she was in her twenties and the events she was concerned with happened over forty years ago you could believe it was her personal story.
The expulsion of the Asians from Uganda by Idi Amin brought the subject of the story to a housing scheme in Dundee where she grew up and nursed an obsession with her past that a journey back to Jinja helped her become free from.
Having watched those events in the seventies from next door in Kenya and having shared digs at university ten years earlier with an Asian from Jinja (we often wondered what became of him) I felt almost part of the story.
Christine Bovill brought the golden age of French chanson to George Street with an hour long programme of songs by Ferre, Becaud, Trenet, Barbara, Aznavour, Brel and Piaf. All my favourites were there plus a couple I didn't know. She sang them like a native, despite being a Glaswegian, revealed considerable knowledge of the genre and entertained us with personal anecdotes in between numbers.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
In Eve Jo Clifford presents a gentle and touching narrative charting her progress from a boy called John never comfortable in his own skin to her present contented middle-aged woman. She has the advantage in telling her story of being an accomplished playwright and is supported by an excellent but simple staging.
In Douglas Maxwell's The Whiphand a fiftieth birthday party disintegrates into a domestic squabble set against the moral case for making reparation for the family's apparent involvement in slave-owning several generations previously. Scars and hidden animosities surface and hypocrisy over modern misdeeds is uncovered as an excellent ensemble cast move surely through Maxwell's closely woven story. Reparation may be on the cards but simple apologies for lesser evils are not forthcoming.
Not many world champions can have come out of Kirkcaldy and the least likely must surely be Jocky Wilson twice world darts champion. Jocky Wilson Said has him reminiscing and hallucinating with only a cactus for company in the Nevada desert having lost touch thanks to the demon drink with the party he's travelling with to a tournament in Las Vegas.
Grant O'Rourke plays him as a warm, humorous and likeable man and also creates a wealth of characters from his cronies in the pub darts of Kirkcaldy where Wilson started to his rival and friend the Londoner Eric Bristow. It's a lovely show full of fun but this is Jocky when he was doing well and says nothing of the downward slide in health and wealth that was to come. Maybe that's material for a future work.
Though written in 1936 Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was not performed until 1961 and made its first appearance outside the Soviet Union at the Edinburgh Festival the following year. I spent that summer working in Edinburgh and remember standing in the Usher Hall (I assume a student concession in those days) listening to Shostakovich under the young Gennadi Rhozhdestvensky and falling in love with the music. I think that was the Fifth rather than the Fourth however. It remains one of my favourite pieces and I've heard it often since because it's quite popular.
The Fourth is not heard so often and given that it required the combined forces of the RSNO and the Mariinsky Orchestra of St Petersburg in the Usher Hall last night to provide sufficient players to satisfy the demands of the score I doubt if I will ever hear it again live in my lifetime.
From the opening bars which burst out in wave after wave of shattering sound to the final single note from the celesta with which the symphony ends I was transfixed. A glorious piece of music.
In Douglas Maxwell's The Whiphand a fiftieth birthday party disintegrates into a domestic squabble set against the moral case for making reparation for the family's apparent involvement in slave-owning several generations previously. Scars and hidden animosities surface and hypocrisy over modern misdeeds is uncovered as an excellent ensemble cast move surely through Maxwell's closely woven story. Reparation may be on the cards but simple apologies for lesser evils are not forthcoming.
Not many world champions can have come out of Kirkcaldy and the least likely must surely be Jocky Wilson twice world darts champion. Jocky Wilson Said has him reminiscing and hallucinating with only a cactus for company in the Nevada desert having lost touch thanks to the demon drink with the party he's travelling with to a tournament in Las Vegas.
Grant O'Rourke plays him as a warm, humorous and likeable man and also creates a wealth of characters from his cronies in the pub darts of Kirkcaldy where Wilson started to his rival and friend the Londoner Eric Bristow. It's a lovely show full of fun but this is Jocky when he was doing well and says nothing of the downward slide in health and wealth that was to come. Maybe that's material for a future work.
Though written in 1936 Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was not performed until 1961 and made its first appearance outside the Soviet Union at the Edinburgh Festival the following year. I spent that summer working in Edinburgh and remember standing in the Usher Hall (I assume a student concession in those days) listening to Shostakovich under the young Gennadi Rhozhdestvensky and falling in love with the music. I think that was the Fifth rather than the Fourth however. It remains one of my favourite pieces and I've heard it often since because it's quite popular.
The Fourth is not heard so often and given that it required the combined forces of the RSNO and the Mariinsky Orchestra of St Petersburg in the Usher Hall last night to provide sufficient players to satisfy the demands of the score I doubt if I will ever hear it again live in my lifetime.
From the opening bars which burst out in wave after wave of shattering sound to the final single note from the celesta with which the symphony ends I was transfixed. A glorious piece of music.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham is not a household name in Scotland today but it should be. Nicknamed Don Roberto from his years in Argentina he was adventurer, writer, politician, friend of both the great and the humble men of his day and well ahead of his time. His great nephew Jamie Jauncey gave a sparkling talk about him at the Book Festival. To everyone present's regret he hasn't yet written a biography but surely he will.
Former drama critic Robert Dawson Scott has written a most entertaining play. The programme warns that Assessment is set in the future, but only just. A pilot scheme called Pension Exchange is being run by a private company on behalf of the government. This offers selected individuals the opportunity of commuting future pension payments into a large capital sum. Alan McDonald, a man in his late seventies, is eligible because he has made a living will and declared that he would not wish to be resuscitated in the event of severe trauma. The snag is that in return for the money he has to make a dignified exit and that he can't use the money himself only determine who gets it.
How did the company know about his living will? Is that not a private matter? His daughter, struggling to bring up two boys without a husband around and with grandad sharing their small flat has let the company know.
Very funny, with great characters and not without a thought provoking streak this has to be a popular choice for Scottish drama groups in future. I've got my eye on the old man's part.
Another excellent show that combines fun and games with serious matters is Amy Conway's Super Awesome World. Amy get the show rolling by telling us, quoting various research findings, that playing video games is good for us and describing her own back story of starting with a second hand Nintendo. Then she gets the audience active. She moves them about a bit, gets them flicking balloons towards her, reading cue cards in response to numbers appearing on a TV screen while she frantically performs some associated task dictated by a squeaky female voice coming from the TV.
She introduces the idea of the Samaritans for whom she says she is a volunteer and we become overhearers of telephone calls from those in need of listeners in between game playing episodes. Subtly she turns into both caller and listener and finally poses enough questions to the audience about their experiences of feelings of inadequacy or depression or worse to end with everyone on their feet.
I finished the day in the Usher Hall with an orchestra and choir from Turin belting out Verdi's Requiem. Very loud, very raw, very enjoyable. I don't want to give the wrong impression. They were belting it out, not me though I'd have liked to.
Former drama critic Robert Dawson Scott has written a most entertaining play. The programme warns that Assessment is set in the future, but only just. A pilot scheme called Pension Exchange is being run by a private company on behalf of the government. This offers selected individuals the opportunity of commuting future pension payments into a large capital sum. Alan McDonald, a man in his late seventies, is eligible because he has made a living will and declared that he would not wish to be resuscitated in the event of severe trauma. The snag is that in return for the money he has to make a dignified exit and that he can't use the money himself only determine who gets it.
How did the company know about his living will? Is that not a private matter? His daughter, struggling to bring up two boys without a husband around and with grandad sharing their small flat has let the company know.
Very funny, with great characters and not without a thought provoking streak this has to be a popular choice for Scottish drama groups in future. I've got my eye on the old man's part.
Another excellent show that combines fun and games with serious matters is Amy Conway's Super Awesome World. Amy get the show rolling by telling us, quoting various research findings, that playing video games is good for us and describing her own back story of starting with a second hand Nintendo. Then she gets the audience active. She moves them about a bit, gets them flicking balloons towards her, reading cue cards in response to numbers appearing on a TV screen while she frantically performs some associated task dictated by a squeaky female voice coming from the TV.
She introduces the idea of the Samaritans for whom she says she is a volunteer and we become overhearers of telephone calls from those in need of listeners in between game playing episodes. Subtly she turns into both caller and listener and finally poses enough questions to the audience about their experiences of feelings of inadequacy or depression or worse to end with everyone on their feet.
I finished the day in the Usher Hall with an orchestra and choir from Turin belting out Verdi's Requiem. Very loud, very raw, very enjoyable. I don't want to give the wrong impression. They were belting it out, not me though I'd have liked to.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
With some erstwhile clarinet class chums I went to a lovely concert in the oh so beautiful St Andrew's and St George's West by the Scottish Clarinet Quartet. The music ranged from Indian raga to a Hebridean wauking melody and we encountered an Australian cartoon character with the delightful name of Vasco Pyjama on the way.
I ran from there to Charlotte Square to hear Michael Luders talk about Blowback. In this book he argues that the roots of the current calamitous situation in the Middle East lie in past western interference. I'm 100% with him on that analysis but it's solutions we need and he offered none other than the passage of time.
Before our last performance of Outside Mullingar (received rapturously to exaggerate only a little) the cast watched Arkle's other show The Fair Intellectual Club. This is a cheerful little comedy written by a twentieth century comedian Lucy Porter (who came along on her night off from stand-up) about an eighteenth century club for ladies who aspired to more than needlework. Both shows played to good houses and were favourably reviewed here and here.
Sunday lunch to mellow jazz with friends was followed by The Fall from the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. The cast come on tightly bunched together and move around the stage swaying and chanting like a Zulu impi. One after another they break off from the group and introduce themselves. The group breaks up and we find ourselves in a student meeting discussing the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes from the campus of the University of Cape Town.
The play like the Rhodes Must Fall student movement expands into discussion of the decolonialisation (as they term it) of tertiary education in South Africa and charts much of the student protest there in 2015 and 2016. The view is put forward that white privilege persists well into post apartheid education and a few swipes are taken along the way at well off blacks and coloureds (represented in the cast).
It's an enormous task to bring education to all in South Africa on an equal basis and this play does well to examine the issue in a vigorous, powerful and entertaining format albeit with little in the way of light and shade.
Summerhall can be relied upon to produce interesting if often baffling theatre. A good half dozen audience members failed to last the distance at Ivona, Princess of Burgundia and slipped out more or less quietly as the show wore on. Written by Witold Gombrowicz in 1938, Wikipedia tells me "it describes what the enslavement of form, custom and ceremony brings."
It's set in a royal court where a bored young prince decides for a joke of sorts that he will marry a lumpen, tomgue-tied young woman (played intensely by a strapping six foot lad with unruly locks in shorts and tee shirt). This is met with severe disapproval by king and queen but they are persuaded to go along with it by their chamberlain on the grounds that it shows the prince as generous and noble-hearted.
That makes the play seem almost rational but it's an absurdist piece so the ebb and flow of the action, the incarnation of the characters, the language and dialogue, the bits and pieces of the in the round staging; all of it, is basically nuts.
I have to say I really enjoyed it though I'd recommend cutting a good thirty minutes. And what does the aforesaid enslavement bring? Death by choking on a pike bone in this instance.
Immediately before that I saw Black Mountain which has some affinities with Pinter in its disjointed, or rather uncompleted, dialogues and its sense of unexplained mystery and a growing feeling of menace.
It's superbly presented by Paines Plough in their Roundabout season at Summerhall. The audience enter a tent full of swirling mists and the show literally cracks into action with a blackout that erupts with a flash and a bang. The excellent light and sound plot adds great atmosphere throughout.
Rebecca and Philip are a couple who prowl uncomfortably around one another in a remote country retreat avoiding being explicit about their back story but damage has been done somewhere. A third character, Helen, or is she Heather, appears to Philip and they too have some mutual mystery.
The three characters come together in a triangular confrontation, mist swirls, lights dim, the actors vanish, blackout, lights up to reveal an axe centre stage.
Loved it.
Jogging, part of the Arab season at Summerhall seems pretty straightforward in comparison. It's a one woman show performed in Arabic with occasional bursts of English and French and projected subtitles clearly visible to all. The audience are occasionally drawn into the action to read introductory pieces (in English) and in one case a man goes on stage to hold the actress's ankles while she performs some fairly orgasmic sit-ups.
It's quite a physical show because the format is explained as a woman in her fifties jogging around Beirut musing and we share her thoughts. She does run about and she does exercises but in the main storytelling sections she is less active.
She launches into the story of Medea and her murder of her children and segues into the murder (real event?) by a Lebanese woman of her children and her subsequent suicide. Effected by rat poison in fruit salad and cream, three dishes of which she provides for the audience enjoining them to tuck in after the show.
With references to her sex life with her husband and her erotic dreams about the Lebanese Boris Johnson she gets to the penultimate story about a woman who lost two sons in war with Israel in 2006 and her third son in Syria in recent years.
That takes us to the boats crossing the Mediterranean in which many sons are lost.
It's an absorbing show if a tad discursive, well performed by someone who in real life I'm sure we'd find feisty.
Nederlands Dans Theater in the EIF are quite simply wonderful. Three diverse and beautiful, beautiful pieces performed by dancers with bodies so flexible their bones must be made of elastic. Lovely music, light and sound. Perfection all round. But strictly non-narrative. Make what meaning you will out of them. Here's a taste.
I ran from there to Charlotte Square to hear Michael Luders talk about Blowback. In this book he argues that the roots of the current calamitous situation in the Middle East lie in past western interference. I'm 100% with him on that analysis but it's solutions we need and he offered none other than the passage of time.
Before our last performance of Outside Mullingar (received rapturously to exaggerate only a little) the cast watched Arkle's other show The Fair Intellectual Club. This is a cheerful little comedy written by a twentieth century comedian Lucy Porter (who came along on her night off from stand-up) about an eighteenth century club for ladies who aspired to more than needlework. Both shows played to good houses and were favourably reviewed here and here.
Sunday lunch to mellow jazz with friends was followed by The Fall from the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. The cast come on tightly bunched together and move around the stage swaying and chanting like a Zulu impi. One after another they break off from the group and introduce themselves. The group breaks up and we find ourselves in a student meeting discussing the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes from the campus of the University of Cape Town.
The play like the Rhodes Must Fall student movement expands into discussion of the decolonialisation (as they term it) of tertiary education in South Africa and charts much of the student protest there in 2015 and 2016. The view is put forward that white privilege persists well into post apartheid education and a few swipes are taken along the way at well off blacks and coloureds (represented in the cast).
It's an enormous task to bring education to all in South Africa on an equal basis and this play does well to examine the issue in a vigorous, powerful and entertaining format albeit with little in the way of light and shade.
Summerhall can be relied upon to produce interesting if often baffling theatre. A good half dozen audience members failed to last the distance at Ivona, Princess of Burgundia and slipped out more or less quietly as the show wore on. Written by Witold Gombrowicz in 1938, Wikipedia tells me "it describes what the enslavement of form, custom and ceremony brings."
It's set in a royal court where a bored young prince decides for a joke of sorts that he will marry a lumpen, tomgue-tied young woman (played intensely by a strapping six foot lad with unruly locks in shorts and tee shirt). This is met with severe disapproval by king and queen but they are persuaded to go along with it by their chamberlain on the grounds that it shows the prince as generous and noble-hearted.
That makes the play seem almost rational but it's an absurdist piece so the ebb and flow of the action, the incarnation of the characters, the language and dialogue, the bits and pieces of the in the round staging; all of it, is basically nuts.
I have to say I really enjoyed it though I'd recommend cutting a good thirty minutes. And what does the aforesaid enslavement bring? Death by choking on a pike bone in this instance.
Immediately before that I saw Black Mountain which has some affinities with Pinter in its disjointed, or rather uncompleted, dialogues and its sense of unexplained mystery and a growing feeling of menace.
It's superbly presented by Paines Plough in their Roundabout season at Summerhall. The audience enter a tent full of swirling mists and the show literally cracks into action with a blackout that erupts with a flash and a bang. The excellent light and sound plot adds great atmosphere throughout.
Rebecca and Philip are a couple who prowl uncomfortably around one another in a remote country retreat avoiding being explicit about their back story but damage has been done somewhere. A third character, Helen, or is she Heather, appears to Philip and they too have some mutual mystery.
The three characters come together in a triangular confrontation, mist swirls, lights dim, the actors vanish, blackout, lights up to reveal an axe centre stage.
Loved it.
Jogging, part of the Arab season at Summerhall seems pretty straightforward in comparison. It's a one woman show performed in Arabic with occasional bursts of English and French and projected subtitles clearly visible to all. The audience are occasionally drawn into the action to read introductory pieces (in English) and in one case a man goes on stage to hold the actress's ankles while she performs some fairly orgasmic sit-ups.
It's quite a physical show because the format is explained as a woman in her fifties jogging around Beirut musing and we share her thoughts. She does run about and she does exercises but in the main storytelling sections she is less active.
She launches into the story of Medea and her murder of her children and segues into the murder (real event?) by a Lebanese woman of her children and her subsequent suicide. Effected by rat poison in fruit salad and cream, three dishes of which she provides for the audience enjoining them to tuck in after the show.
With references to her sex life with her husband and her erotic dreams about the Lebanese Boris Johnson she gets to the penultimate story about a woman who lost two sons in war with Israel in 2006 and her third son in Syria in recent years.
That takes us to the boats crossing the Mediterranean in which many sons are lost.
It's an absorbing show if a tad discursive, well performed by someone who in real life I'm sure we'd find feisty.
Nederlands Dans Theater in the EIF are quite simply wonderful. Three diverse and beautiful, beautiful pieces performed by dancers with bodies so flexible their bones must be made of elastic. Lovely music, light and sound. Perfection all round. But strictly non-narrative. Make what meaning you will out of them. Here's a taste.
Friday, August 18, 2017
The Queen's Hall morning concerts are a popular strand of the EIF music offering and generally a delight to the ear whether you get there in person or listen to them on the radio. There has only been space for one in my diary this year. It was an oboe and piano recital. Apart from the occasional solo within it I've mostly heard the instrument as part of the blend of sound produced by an orchestra.
I know nothing about the oboe repertoire but the lovely music came from composers we hear less frequently than Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and the like. They played Hindemith, Poulence, Dorati and others, Some pieces were delicate, some vigorous, some fast, some slow, all beautiful.
I'd positioned myself near the exit after the interval for a quick getaway and a bit of luck with the buses got me down to the Royal Scots in good time for the one woman Richard III that was my next treat. It's a clever show.
As the audience enter they are greeted by Richard as though they were characters in the play. I was welcomed as His Majesty King Edward IV, given a nameplate to wear round my neck and a little paper crown then escorted to a seat of honour.
The various principal characters were seated in a square of chairs encircling a small table and a swivel chair. As the actor goes through the play as well as dragging her withered leg about she whizzes around on the chair. The audience is enlisted from time to time. We stand for the coronation for example. She despatches two audience members to kill the princes in the tower. Their killing and all the others are effected by clapping a sticky label onto the victim.
Here's mine, kept as a souvenir. An excellent show.
Next stop the Book Festival for a talk by James Fergusson about his book Al-Britannia in which he describes his exploration of Britain's Muslim communities in an effort to uncover the truth behind the more lurid press stories we read. He attends a Sharia council, takes part in the Ramadan fast, talks to various feared preachers and so on. It's a fascinating insight and his conclusions are largely optimistic about the ultimate melding of Muslim and non Muslim into one British community.
I couldn't resist a Book Festival event called A Fifer Worth Following and it was well worth attending. The story of the life of Lady Anne Barnard, born Anne Lindsay at Balcarres is fascinating. She refused to follow the pre-ordained path of a Georgian lady of aristocratic but pecunious status. Instead she became an avid and lively "eccentric aristocrat" in London society spurning proposals of marriage until at 42 she fell in love and married a man without money and 12 years her junior. She travelled with him to Cape Colony and wrote extensively of their experiences there.
Indeed she wrote extensively about all aspects of her life and as well as correspondence and so on left six volumes of memoir hitherto unexplored by historians. These Stephen Taylor, who has written about her, would need a deal of editing if they were to be published but in the meantime we have his book Defiance which I am eager to get started on.
Half a dozen poets read work from both within and without a new anthology of poems about Edinburgh, Umbrellas of Edinburgh. I particularly enjoyed the work of Harry Giles and a Glasgow lady whose name I have forgotten but will find out.
A Stool Against the Printed Rule is a two-hander about an imagined meeting on death row in the Tower of London between Archbishop Laud and Jenny Geddes. The least said about this show the better. You'd think they'd at least have given Jenny a Scottish accent!
I know nothing about the oboe repertoire but the lovely music came from composers we hear less frequently than Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and the like. They played Hindemith, Poulence, Dorati and others, Some pieces were delicate, some vigorous, some fast, some slow, all beautiful.
I'd positioned myself near the exit after the interval for a quick getaway and a bit of luck with the buses got me down to the Royal Scots in good time for the one woman Richard III that was my next treat. It's a clever show.
As the audience enter they are greeted by Richard as though they were characters in the play. I was welcomed as His Majesty King Edward IV, given a nameplate to wear round my neck and a little paper crown then escorted to a seat of honour.
The various principal characters were seated in a square of chairs encircling a small table and a swivel chair. As the actor goes through the play as well as dragging her withered leg about she whizzes around on the chair. The audience is enlisted from time to time. We stand for the coronation for example. She despatches two audience members to kill the princes in the tower. Their killing and all the others are effected by clapping a sticky label onto the victim.
Here's mine, kept as a souvenir. An excellent show.
I couldn't resist a Book Festival event called A Fifer Worth Following and it was well worth attending. The story of the life of Lady Anne Barnard, born Anne Lindsay at Balcarres is fascinating. She refused to follow the pre-ordained path of a Georgian lady of aristocratic but pecunious status. Instead she became an avid and lively "eccentric aristocrat" in London society spurning proposals of marriage until at 42 she fell in love and married a man without money and 12 years her junior. She travelled with him to Cape Colony and wrote extensively of their experiences there.
Indeed she wrote extensively about all aspects of her life and as well as correspondence and so on left six volumes of memoir hitherto unexplored by historians. These Stephen Taylor, who has written about her, would need a deal of editing if they were to be published but in the meantime we have his book Defiance which I am eager to get started on.
Half a dozen poets read work from both within and without a new anthology of poems about Edinburgh, Umbrellas of Edinburgh. I particularly enjoyed the work of Harry Giles and a Glasgow lady whose name I have forgotten but will find out.
A Stool Against the Printed Rule is a two-hander about an imagined meeting on death row in the Tower of London between Archbishop Laud and Jenny Geddes. The least said about this show the better. You'd think they'd at least have given Jenny a Scottish accent!
Monday, August 14, 2017
Drainage Alley - a rehearsed reading from the Royal Court, plus our own Jimmy Chisholm, of a Cuban play about life in a less than prestigious Havana street in the uneasy borderland created by the Cuban/USA rapprochement. Very worth seeing but it's gone now. However the BBC were filming so maybe it will appear on the box.
What can I say about The Divide? Well it's big. So big that it's divided into two three hour sessions. I very much enjoyed the first half when the situation was being set up and we met the various characters. Great stuff I thought. Coming back at 7.30 for the second half it took a while for me to recover my enthusiasm. I began to lose it again as the play went past several jolly good points at which it could (even should) have drawn to a close.
The acting is super. The girl who holds the whole show together telling the story in which she is a principal character is outstanding. I didn't lash out four quid on a programme so I don't know her name.
Outside Mullingar opened this evening. We got a great reception. The audience obviously enjoyed it. They even applauded at the end of scenes. Could the Irish Times have got it wrong?
I went to a couple of things this afternoon. In Praise of Useless Languages was an hour long conversation between an academic and a very large audience which could be summarised succinctly as "being in command even partially of more than one language is good for the brain". No facts and figures were presented in support of this proposition and no voices demurred. Boring.
The Quito Papers in the Book Festival was a touch on the boring side also. Let's not have multinational franchise coffee shops but local establishments. Hear, hear say I, thinking of my regret at seeing an independent cafe turning into a Pret a Manger in Lothian Road this week. Strong on the problems of the modern city. Strong on what we'd rather see. Weak on how to get there.
What can I say about The Divide? Well it's big. So big that it's divided into two three hour sessions. I very much enjoyed the first half when the situation was being set up and we met the various characters. Great stuff I thought. Coming back at 7.30 for the second half it took a while for me to recover my enthusiasm. I began to lose it again as the play went past several jolly good points at which it could (even should) have drawn to a close.
The acting is super. The girl who holds the whole show together telling the story in which she is a principal character is outstanding. I didn't lash out four quid on a programme so I don't know her name.
Outside Mullingar opened this evening. We got a great reception. The audience obviously enjoyed it. They even applauded at the end of scenes. Could the Irish Times have got it wrong?
I went to a couple of things this afternoon. In Praise of Useless Languages was an hour long conversation between an academic and a very large audience which could be summarised succinctly as "being in command even partially of more than one language is good for the brain". No facts and figures were presented in support of this proposition and no voices demurred. Boring.
The Quito Papers in the Book Festival was a touch on the boring side also. Let's not have multinational franchise coffee shops but local establishments. Hear, hear say I, thinking of my regret at seeing an independent cafe turning into a Pret a Manger in Lothian Road this week. Strong on the problems of the modern city. Strong on what we'd rather see. Weak on how to get there.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Rhinoceros in the EIF is a cracking good production. The staging is superb, so imaginative in how the set mirrors the reduction of the human population to one solitary figure as more and more people gradually succumb to the epidemic and become rhinoceroses. It's performed with panache and viewed simply as an entertainment on absurdist lines it's great fun.
That's how I enjoyed it, but I know the author's ideas and intentions were more profound. There are many analyses available that bring those depths to the surface. Here's a good one.
Ben Jonson's Volpone is revitalised and made palatable to a modern audience in Martin Foreman's production for The Grads. The twists and turns of the plot in which various greedy Venetians try to outdo one another in currying favour with the allegedly dying Volpone, each having been assured by his tricksy servant Mosca that they will be the sole heir to his fortune, are ably directed and performed assuredly by a strong cast.
Everyone gets his comeuppance in the end of course, including Mosca and Volpone.
In beauty, the Grads other show, the protagonist, famous photographer Ty Jackson, doesn't. But maybe there's no comeuppance to be had. He's taking pictures of young girls but are the accusations of paedophilia warranted?
Claire Wood has written a believable story with well drawn characters and tight dialogue. The show looks good. The direction is sure-footed. The cast are excellent.
It well deserves the three and four star reviews that have appeared on the web and in the press.
That's how I enjoyed it, but I know the author's ideas and intentions were more profound. There are many analyses available that bring those depths to the surface. Here's a good one.
Ben Jonson's Volpone is revitalised and made palatable to a modern audience in Martin Foreman's production for The Grads. The twists and turns of the plot in which various greedy Venetians try to outdo one another in currying favour with the allegedly dying Volpone, each having been assured by his tricksy servant Mosca that they will be the sole heir to his fortune, are ably directed and performed assuredly by a strong cast.
Everyone gets his comeuppance in the end of course, including Mosca and Volpone.
In beauty, the Grads other show, the protagonist, famous photographer Ty Jackson, doesn't. But maybe there's no comeuppance to be had. He's taking pictures of young girls but are the accusations of paedophilia warranted?
Claire Wood has written a believable story with well drawn characters and tight dialogue. The show looks good. The direction is sure-footed. The cast are excellent.
It well deserves the three and four star reviews that have appeared on the web and in the press.
Monday, August 07, 2017
I was offered earplugs on my way into the Cantonese Opera Workshop's Macbeth with the advice that there was some loud drumming. Maybe that came in the second half which I didn't stay to see. The first half wasn't too noisy though I was using the earplugs.
It was similar to The Boor in style but not at all as well done in my opinion. They'd changed the story significantly. Macbeth is off fighting the King's enemies at the start. He's not doing too well so Mrs. M sets off and rescues him. On their return Macbeth expresses some degree of anger that an underling has received more praise from the king than he has. I was a bit puzzled by that since he's awarded a golden sword for valour by the king shortly afterwards. Anyway Mrs. M looks up the magic books and works out that they are destined to be king and queen. She can't persuade Macbeth to kill the king so she does it herself with the golden sword.
The curtain then fell on the first act. Metaphorically since it's an open stage, so open that the black drapes at the back don't stretch all the way across. Left and right of the action you are treated to actors wandering about throughout. There are longish, dark gaps between some scenes adding to that village hall feel and such furniture as is brought on for one scene is absolutely out of kilter with the luscious traditional Chinese costumes worn by the cast.
Like The Boor the acting is very exaggerated. I don't object to that in its context but when a chap comes on and spends a good while alone twirling a couple of swords about I'm searching for how that is advancing the plot. The constant drumming and banging of cymbals to accompany the actors' gyrations were a bit of a strain too. Overall I found it boring.
I couldn't see the second half being any more exciting so I left.
It was similar to The Boor in style but not at all as well done in my opinion. They'd changed the story significantly. Macbeth is off fighting the King's enemies at the start. He's not doing too well so Mrs. M sets off and rescues him. On their return Macbeth expresses some degree of anger that an underling has received more praise from the king than he has. I was a bit puzzled by that since he's awarded a golden sword for valour by the king shortly afterwards. Anyway Mrs. M looks up the magic books and works out that they are destined to be king and queen. She can't persuade Macbeth to kill the king so she does it herself with the golden sword.
The curtain then fell on the first act. Metaphorically since it's an open stage, so open that the black drapes at the back don't stretch all the way across. Left and right of the action you are treated to actors wandering about throughout. There are longish, dark gaps between some scenes adding to that village hall feel and such furniture as is brought on for one scene is absolutely out of kilter with the luscious traditional Chinese costumes worn by the cast.
Like The Boor the acting is very exaggerated. I don't object to that in its context but when a chap comes on and spends a good while alone twirling a couple of swords about I'm searching for how that is advancing the plot. The constant drumming and banging of cymbals to accompany the actors' gyrations were a bit of a strain too. Overall I found it boring.
I couldn't see the second half being any more exciting so I left.
Sunday, August 06, 2017
I was back next day to St Giles for another recital by the same pianist but this time as accompanist in a programme of songs called From Havana to BA. Enjoyable, though I preferred the previous day.
The Free Fringe promised a programme of songs under the title Nostalgie taking us back to the cafes of Paris, to Piaf and Greco, very much a genre close to my heart. When I got to the pub basement venue a magic show for kids had replaced the chansons. Softening my disappointment with a G&T I watched. The kids' reactions were more magic than the tricks but I didn't stay long.
Chechov's The Bear is re-titled The Boor in the Shanghai Theatre Academy's version but sticks faithfully to the story of a man demanding payment from a young widow of her late husband's debt to him, their arguments, their duel, the growth of mutual affection and the eventual happy ending. It's done in what I'm told is Peking Opera style which fits very well since the play is essentially a farce and demands broad comedic playing.
It gets that in spades from the melodramatic fluttering of the heroine to the swaggering bravado of the hero and the athletic backflip of the servant. He spends most of his time running around in a crouched position which I couldn't keep up for thirty seconds but he's clearly a fit young chap behind the white beard and oversized paunch of his costume. Costumes and makeup are gorgeous.
There are a couple of puppeteers as well who provide a preface and epilogue as well as saying something at another point or two in the action. The sub-titles were awkwardly placed so I'm not at all sure what they were telling us.
The dialogue is mostly sung in somewhat unattractively shrill tones matched by accompanying live music from strings and percussion. All a bit loud for my taste. I liked what I saw more than what I heard but the audience (at least 90% Chinese) loved it all.
The Free Fringe promised a programme of songs under the title Nostalgie taking us back to the cafes of Paris, to Piaf and Greco, very much a genre close to my heart. When I got to the pub basement venue a magic show for kids had replaced the chansons. Softening my disappointment with a G&T I watched. The kids' reactions were more magic than the tricks but I didn't stay long.
Chechov's The Bear is re-titled The Boor in the Shanghai Theatre Academy's version but sticks faithfully to the story of a man demanding payment from a young widow of her late husband's debt to him, their arguments, their duel, the growth of mutual affection and the eventual happy ending. It's done in what I'm told is Peking Opera style which fits very well since the play is essentially a farce and demands broad comedic playing.
It gets that in spades from the melodramatic fluttering of the heroine to the swaggering bravado of the hero and the athletic backflip of the servant. He spends most of his time running around in a crouched position which I couldn't keep up for thirty seconds but he's clearly a fit young chap behind the white beard and oversized paunch of his costume. Costumes and makeup are gorgeous.
There are a couple of puppeteers as well who provide a preface and epilogue as well as saying something at another point or two in the action. The sub-titles were awkwardly placed so I'm not at all sure what they were telling us.
The dialogue is mostly sung in somewhat unattractively shrill tones matched by accompanying live music from strings and percussion. All a bit loud for my taste. I liked what I saw more than what I heard but the audience (at least 90% Chinese) loved it all.
Saturday, August 05, 2017
One of the projections near the end of the Festival's opening light show Bloom. The display starts with war-torn Europe and celebrates how the small seedling that was planted in 1947 has become the gorgeously overflowing garden of art, culture and entertainment that we have today. It's a lovely show. I watched it through three times and believe me that's high commendation.
Earlier in the day I enjoyed a recital of Latin American music by a Cuban pianist in St Giles. It was associated in some way with a campaign that's devoted to sending a decent grand piano to Cuba. If you'd like to help here's their fundraising page.
Speaking in Tongues at the Pleasance is two plays, one called The Lies, the other The Truths. I had mistakenly got the impression that they were two looks at the same events. They are not but they are linked a little narratively and strongly emotionally. They both deal with pretence, with love and rejection, with shame. They are both performed by the same four actors who are magnificent in imparting that truth that came up in a previous post.
They do so at very close quarters. Their stage is an igloo like inflated tent holding maybe two dozen spectotaors seated on swivel chairs. The action takes place in and around the audience supplemented from time to time with projections on the side of the igloo.
It's a very good piece of work, surely destined for a four star review in the broadsheets.
Friday, August 04, 2017
The festivals are up and running. Choosing How to Act as my first show had nothing to do with the fact that I'll be on stage myself in ten days time. But maybe some tips were to be gleaned from a show that starts off as an acting masterclass.
The intense, absorbed, mildly poncy luminary carefully prowling barefoot round the stage dispensing wise thoughts to the slightly nervous and unsure but promising actress, encouraging her to present are beautifully observed characters beautifully performed.
The show rolls along like this for a while but gradually morphs into something else. The story becomes darker, roles are reversed and the relationship between the two protagonists becomes both more personal and more political. The denouement is maybe a teensy weensy bit unsurprising but I shan't spoil it here because while not wonderful the production is worth seeing.
As is Flesh and Bone, a vigorously performed set of episodes in the lives of a group of London tower block dwellers. Rough, tough and generally short of the readies they have much in common with Falstaff's chums in the taverns of Shakespeare's London. And the text, as vigorous as the performances, has a real Shakespearian flavour. It's excellent writing. The acting is great. The stories are fun. A bit of trimming needed here and there but a good show.
At the end of Rupture the five actors left the stage and the four spectators left the auditorium. No show really deserves that but on the other hand I wouldn't encourage you to choose this show out of the three thousand odd on offer. But then science fiction doesn't often hit my spot whilst it might make you quiver with joy.
After some sort of apocalypse (the rupture of the title) a government organisation, the bureau, controls the population to help eke out the planet's meagre resources. They are charged with arranging for people to shuffle off their mortal coils when they no longer make a contribution to society.
A new employee comes along, Keen as mustard to make his mark he's not been there five minutes before he's employee of the month but crunch time comes hard behind. He has to arrange his mum's departure (as the jargon puts it).
He doesn't want to snuff out his mum (the nasty deed is actually done by non human agents, his role is merely administrative but still). The play then is all about the working out of this dilemma. It's not a bad story with twists and turns here and there to keep you guessing but something doesn't work, or to be fair didn't work for me.
Harking back to How to Act, one of the mantras of the acting game as expounded there is that to connect with the audience the actor has to find the truth. The truth of his character, of his situation. That's what the cast of Rupture failed to do though they got close now and then.
The economics of the Fringe mean that there are an awful lot of one person shows on offer. I tend to avoid them. It is after all a big ask to keep an audience attentive and entertained for an hour or more all on your lonesome.
The actress in The Portable Dorothy Parker did her best, and her best was very good but despite considering myself to be something of a Dorothy Parker fan her bons mots just didn't seem so bons any more. Does this mean I've grown up or grown old?
The intense, absorbed, mildly poncy luminary carefully prowling barefoot round the stage dispensing wise thoughts to the slightly nervous and unsure but promising actress, encouraging her to present are beautifully observed characters beautifully performed.
The show rolls along like this for a while but gradually morphs into something else. The story becomes darker, roles are reversed and the relationship between the two protagonists becomes both more personal and more political. The denouement is maybe a teensy weensy bit unsurprising but I shan't spoil it here because while not wonderful the production is worth seeing.
As is Flesh and Bone, a vigorously performed set of episodes in the lives of a group of London tower block dwellers. Rough, tough and generally short of the readies they have much in common with Falstaff's chums in the taverns of Shakespeare's London. And the text, as vigorous as the performances, has a real Shakespearian flavour. It's excellent writing. The acting is great. The stories are fun. A bit of trimming needed here and there but a good show.
At the end of Rupture the five actors left the stage and the four spectators left the auditorium. No show really deserves that but on the other hand I wouldn't encourage you to choose this show out of the three thousand odd on offer. But then science fiction doesn't often hit my spot whilst it might make you quiver with joy.
After some sort of apocalypse (the rupture of the title) a government organisation, the bureau, controls the population to help eke out the planet's meagre resources. They are charged with arranging for people to shuffle off their mortal coils when they no longer make a contribution to society.
A new employee comes along, Keen as mustard to make his mark he's not been there five minutes before he's employee of the month but crunch time comes hard behind. He has to arrange his mum's departure (as the jargon puts it).
He doesn't want to snuff out his mum (the nasty deed is actually done by non human agents, his role is merely administrative but still). The play then is all about the working out of this dilemma. It's not a bad story with twists and turns here and there to keep you guessing but something doesn't work, or to be fair didn't work for me.
Harking back to How to Act, one of the mantras of the acting game as expounded there is that to connect with the audience the actor has to find the truth. The truth of his character, of his situation. That's what the cast of Rupture failed to do though they got close now and then.
The economics of the Fringe mean that there are an awful lot of one person shows on offer. I tend to avoid them. It is after all a big ask to keep an audience attentive and entertained for an hour or more all on your lonesome.
The actress in The Portable Dorothy Parker did her best, and her best was very good but despite considering myself to be something of a Dorothy Parker fan her bons mots just didn't seem so bons any more. Does this mean I've grown up or grown old?
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Because of a minor cock-up the National Theatre of Scotland owed me a favour. Amongst their suggestions was a visit to their new HQ in Glasgow which I gladly took up as an answer to what to do after lunch with Andrew on one of our occasional dates.
Such a date fell the other day. Since Rockvilla, for so is their converted cash and carry shed named, is a little distant from the city centre I did an internet recce for eating places in the vicinity and ten minutes away found Ocho.
With Google's help we navigated north from Buchanan Street to Speirs Wharf on the Forth and Clyde Canal. The area was formerly a hive of industry and a transport hub but the offices of the canal company and associated warehouses have been titified up into fancy flats. If you don't fancy a flat you can rent a mooring for your yacht and there's a spa adjacent to the restaurant as an alternative to a cleansing in the canal.
Lunch was fine although the wine was a bit warm. But its fortifying effect came in handy when Rockvilla hove into sight. It was ten minutes walk up the canal but separated from our bank by a ten foot fence behind which was a bridge leading from the other bank to a pathway to Rockvilla on our side.
On investigation I found that I could move out above the canal on a couple of piles to the end of the ten foot fence, squeeze in between it and the bridge, climb over the bridge balustrade and bingo I was on the path. The wine had not fortified Andrew to the same extent so he retraced his steps to cross the canal at the other end of Speirs Wharf and twenty minutes later caught up with me.
Inside the shed, converted beautifully for around seven million quid, we found just what you might expect. Offices, workshops, costume store, lighting store, props, rehearsal rooms etc. All very impressive and enthusiastically presented by our guide. Connecting us both firmly to the enterprise was meeting a fellow langtonian in the person of their Head of Stage. A good excursion.
Such a date fell the other day. Since Rockvilla, for so is their converted cash and carry shed named, is a little distant from the city centre I did an internet recce for eating places in the vicinity and ten minutes away found Ocho.
With Google's help we navigated north from Buchanan Street to Speirs Wharf on the Forth and Clyde Canal. The area was formerly a hive of industry and a transport hub but the offices of the canal company and associated warehouses have been titified up into fancy flats. If you don't fancy a flat you can rent a mooring for your yacht and there's a spa adjacent to the restaurant as an alternative to a cleansing in the canal.
Lunch was fine although the wine was a bit warm. But its fortifying effect came in handy when Rockvilla hove into sight. It was ten minutes walk up the canal but separated from our bank by a ten foot fence behind which was a bridge leading from the other bank to a pathway to Rockvilla on our side.
On investigation I found that I could move out above the canal on a couple of piles to the end of the ten foot fence, squeeze in between it and the bridge, climb over the bridge balustrade and bingo I was on the path. The wine had not fortified Andrew to the same extent so he retraced his steps to cross the canal at the other end of Speirs Wharf and twenty minutes later caught up with me.
Inside the shed, converted beautifully for around seven million quid, we found just what you might expect. Offices, workshops, costume store, lighting store, props, rehearsal rooms etc. All very impressive and enthusiastically presented by our guide. Connecting us both firmly to the enterprise was meeting a fellow langtonian in the person of their Head of Stage. A good excursion.
Saturday, July 29, 2017
The City Art Centre is running an interesting exhibition called An Edinburgh Alphabet that brings together items from all of the city's museums. There's a programme of talks and so forth associated with it and I've been to a couple.
This week I gathered with others around a display case of glassware and learnt something of the history of glassmaking in Edinburgh. It's pretty much all gone leaving a few traces such as the relief panels on a Holyrood hotel rescued from the glassworks that stood on that site and showing glass makers at work. There is also the intriguing thought that the converted church that is the Glasshouse Hotel is named for the association of Greenside with the industry, not that I can find any proof.
Hotfoot from history I went to what may be the future. Whist is a virtual reality show. Three punters pitched up for the 1pm show in one of the Festival Theatre's bars in which a number of oddly shaped objects stood. We were invited to familiarise ourselves with the space then equipped with big chunky VR headsets and headphones and let loose to wander focussing on what were called trigger points on the objects.
When you hit a trigger point a scene then appeared in front of you, or all around you actually. That's rather the point. It was pretty realistic. I did feel I was in the space in which the action was taking place although since the action in each case was on the surreal side you could hardly call it reality.
It reminded me a bit of putting on red and green plastic glasses at 3D films years ago where the action of the film was subordinate to the technology. 3D films have never really caught on and 3D TV died a death. I think the same could be true of VR unless the material presented is a good deal more worth watching than Whist was.
There's been a series on Radio 4 recently exploring the meaning of some of the terms you see in the list of credits at the end of a film. Terms such as Best Boy and Key Grip. Whist's credits had Amazing Development Guy in their list. Quite an accolade.
Before moving from VR to plain old R let me tell you that at the end of the experience, before the credits roll a number is displayed which is said to have been calculated in response to what bits of the various scenes your eyes were drawn to which when looked up on their website will reveal your personality.
Now just as fortune telling weighing machines deliver a wee card that tells you what a splendid chap or chapess you are I didn't expect to be classed as in any way nasty however much my eyes may have concentrated on the more dubious aspects of the VR vignettes.
But it turns out that I am altogether splendid. So for the enlightenment of my readers and perhaps the puzzlement of those who know me I quote the assessment in full: -
The elements that captured your attention during your VR journey may point to your sensitivity, curiosity and openness to the world around you, which can captivate you without demanding answers. You can be capable of appreciating beauty and contemplating unknowingness and staying open to experience without the need for an immediate closure.
The elements that captured your attention during your VR may suggest that you are sensitive to the suffering of others. Your empathy and compassion make you notice things which often pass unnoticed – in yourself and others. Under certain circumstances, other people’s suffering may matter more to you than your own joy.
This week I gathered with others around a display case of glassware and learnt something of the history of glassmaking in Edinburgh. It's pretty much all gone leaving a few traces such as the relief panels on a Holyrood hotel rescued from the glassworks that stood on that site and showing glass makers at work. There is also the intriguing thought that the converted church that is the Glasshouse Hotel is named for the association of Greenside with the industry, not that I can find any proof.
Hotfoot from history I went to what may be the future. Whist is a virtual reality show. Three punters pitched up for the 1pm show in one of the Festival Theatre's bars in which a number of oddly shaped objects stood. We were invited to familiarise ourselves with the space then equipped with big chunky VR headsets and headphones and let loose to wander focussing on what were called trigger points on the objects.
When you hit a trigger point a scene then appeared in front of you, or all around you actually. That's rather the point. It was pretty realistic. I did feel I was in the space in which the action was taking place although since the action in each case was on the surreal side you could hardly call it reality.
It reminded me a bit of putting on red and green plastic glasses at 3D films years ago where the action of the film was subordinate to the technology. 3D films have never really caught on and 3D TV died a death. I think the same could be true of VR unless the material presented is a good deal more worth watching than Whist was.
There's been a series on Radio 4 recently exploring the meaning of some of the terms you see in the list of credits at the end of a film. Terms such as Best Boy and Key Grip. Whist's credits had Amazing Development Guy in their list. Quite an accolade.
Before moving from VR to plain old R let me tell you that at the end of the experience, before the credits roll a number is displayed which is said to have been calculated in response to what bits of the various scenes your eyes were drawn to which when looked up on their website will reveal your personality.
Now just as fortune telling weighing machines deliver a wee card that tells you what a splendid chap or chapess you are I didn't expect to be classed as in any way nasty however much my eyes may have concentrated on the more dubious aspects of the VR vignettes.
But it turns out that I am altogether splendid. So for the enlightenment of my readers and perhaps the puzzlement of those who know me I quote the assessment in full: -
The elements that captured your attention during your VR journey may point to your sensitivity, curiosity and openness to the world around you, which can captivate you without demanding answers. You can be capable of appreciating beauty and contemplating unknowingness and staying open to experience without the need for an immediate closure.
The elements that captured your attention during your VR may suggest that you are sensitive to the suffering of others. Your empathy and compassion make you notice things which often pass unnoticed – in yourself and others. Under certain circumstances, other people’s suffering may matter more to you than your own joy.
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