Although I didn't much care for Dance Nights, I do like the venue it took place in and was reminded of enjoying shows there in previous years so I had a squint at what else they had on. 

One show that I particularly enjoyed a year or two ago was Are We Not Drawn Onward to New ErA and I found that Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed who did that show were here again with two shows.  So I booked a seat for one of them, Every Word Was Once An Animal.  It was odd but as often is the case Mark Fisher put his finger on it and has reviewed it in the same style as it was played.  I'd give four stars to his review but perhaps not to the show, or at least to my enjoyment of it.

One neat trick was that at one point the audience were asked to look below their seats for a letter.  I did and lo and behold there was an envelope lying on top of the jacket and bag I'd put there.  The envelope contained a card with a picture of a cut onion on one side (the picture above) and a letter on the other side (the picture below).  It relates to a scene in the show in which a letter is received from "Emma" who asks amongst other things what the show is about.  Answers on a postcard please.  Well here's the postcard.

After the puzzlement of that show came the puzzlement as to why Mary Queen of Scots insisted on seeking safety in England against the advice of all and sundry.  That act together with marrying Bothwell was the answer given by one of three writers to the question "What do you wish Mary hadn't done?"   Rosemary Goring's Homecoming is a biography that focusses on Mary's period of rule and places associated with her from Holyrood to Loch Leven.  Sue Lawrence's novel The Green Lady is about the women around the queen particularly Mary Seaton.  Andrew Greig's novel Rose Nicolson which I have read is a historical romance set in the turbulent years following Mary's departure to England.  As well as being a cracking story it is beautifully written as Greig's reading of an extract reminded me.  They had a lively and interesting discussion.

Hard on the heels of that event came Philippe Sands talking about his book The Last Colony.  This is about Britain's expulsion of the inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago to give the USA a strategic base in the Indian Ocean on Diego Garcia and the numerous lawsuits and appeals to the UN that have ensued.  Britain has in essence been ordered by the international community to expedite the return of the Chagossians to their homeland but has consistently failed to do so.  Sands is an articulate and persuasive speaker as befits a prominent QC and is a powerful advocate of the islanders' cause which he has championed both inside and outside courts of law.  In response to a question from the audience about comparisons with the Falklands he suggested that had the Chagossians been white the story would have been very different.

My final Festival event was once again a booky one.  Brian Cox being interviewed by Nicola Sturgeon about his autobiography Putting the Rabbit in the Hat and about his current successes. The session was lively, entertaining and peppered generously with anecdotes.  Nicola's good humoured chiding of his previous allegiance as a "New Labour Luvvie" became something of an SNP lovefest as he professed his support for the cause of Scottish independence. The ovation at the end was undoubtedly a genuine expression of admiration for the man and his work and formed a triumphant fall of the curtain on what has been a wonderful three weeks.  Roll on the 2023 festavals. 

Halfway through the bin strike this is how the city looks.  The refuse workers are amongst the most valuable and least valued of the city's employees and in my opinion should be given what they asked for if not more.  The well-heeled burghers of Edinburgh can afford it.  But am I wrong in believing that the Council said they had a contingency plan that would keep the streets clean?  No matter.  The mess is not self-generated nor the fault of the council nor of aliens from outer space.  It's made by the city's residents and visitors.  Don't the residents have the wit to take litter home with them and keep it there till the strike is over?  Don't they care what the place looks like?  Obviously not.  Harder for visitors but even they could take litter back to their hotels, B&Bs or rented flats.

I don't know how they are doing it but the Book Festival are keeping the Art College grounds litter free.  There's a lesson there.  Swayed by the enthusiastic advocacy of Katherine Rundell I bought her biography of the poet John Donne and have swiftly read it. Not quite so carried away by the book itself though if I ever look at his poetry again I may find it has cast some light.

Thomas Harding and Kojo Koram did a double act discussing their books White Debt and Uncommon Wealth.  Both could be called exposés of British colonial history.  Even though we have increasing knowledge of our past there is still a lot to learn especially of its relationship to the present which is what Koram's book in particular aims to do.

Away from the festivals I went to see the streamed to cinemas play Prima Facie.  In it Jodie Comer gives a brilliant performance as an ace defence barrister specialising in sexual assault cases for whom the tables are turned.

I also went to the dentist for my twice yearly check-up.  My teeth are ok but it's costing more to learn that.

Back at the Book Festival I found myself in a position that I had occupied four years ago when I went to an event featuring an author I'd never heard of talking about books I'd never read and realised that everyone else was an adoring fan with an intimate knowledge of the oeuvre.  Then it was Lindsey Davis and her detective stories set in ancient Rome.  Now it was Abir Mukherjee and his detective stories set in the later years of the British Raj in India.  Then I bought the first book in the series, enjoyed it well enough but didn't proceed to the second.  Now I've bought the first book in the series, A Rising Man, and we'll see how it goes.  The event was fun though.  Mukherjee, a west coast Scot, and Denise Mina, one of our queens of crime fiction and another west coaster, kept us entertained with wit and humour.

Not so entertaining was as british as a watermelon.  I struggled to think of what to say about it, then I read Mark Fisher's review and he says it all.

The programme for When You Walk Over My Grave tells you that the text was written in blood.  This turns out to be an untruth as is much of Sergio Blanco's play.  It is said to be a work of autofiction in which I think the fiction much outweighs the autobiograpy.  I certainly hope so.  It was funny, more chuckle than belly laugh, and intriguing in the way it dipped in and out of the action of the story and a discussion of the writing of the story.  The story itself is that Sergio has decided to commit suicide in one of those discreet Swiss clinics and have his body sent to London to give pleasure to a young necrophiliac.  Wikipedia doesn't seem to have caught up with him but you can learn a little bit about the man and his works here.     

After that show I went off to meet Claire for Night Dances.  The Irish Times declared on some occasion, perhaps after a pint or two of Guiness, ‘Raucous, loud, sweaty… a thrilling hour of relentless dancing and music’  It was certainly loud, so loud that we were given earplugs as we went in. Could they not just have turned the volume down?  It was relentless and I'm sure the dancers were sweaty but I didn't find it thrilling. It lacked anything in the way of narrative or development of ideas and had no emotional content that I could discern.  The dancing had very little grace or precision.  Turning to the Guardian review I see that I have missed the point.

In talking about his book Born in Blackness, Howard W French makes a very powerful case for the Atlantic slave trade having been the fount and source of our modern world.  The wealth generated in countries (the white ones that is) that carried on the trade he argues facilitated the development of industry and the pursuit of knowledge that led us to where we are today.  I look forward to reading the book once it comes out in paperback when it won't be quite so pricey.

French contributed with Dipo Faloyin and Tsitsi Dangarembga to a Book Festival session called "Africa's Rich Diversity" that went well beyond discussion of slavery.  The starting point of their conversation was the need to get beyond the stereotypical views of Africa that tend to be prevalent in European and American minds. It's not all poverty or safaris.  They reminded us that the national boundaries within Africa are a colonial invention that paid no heed to the coherence of the pre-existing communities.  They rejected the "white saviour" attitude that colours some peope's idea and the view that westerners know what's best for the inhabitants of "the dark continent".  Perhaps most interestingly they pointed out that China has crept in where westerners couldn't be bothered to tread.  We're bothered about that situation now though. Dipo's book Africa is not a Country will be out in paperback next year if like me you don't want to stump up for a hardback.  No room on the bookcase anyway.  Tsitsi's book of essays Black and Female is a hardback that won't take up too much room and is correspondingly inexpensive.

You Know We Belong Together is a warm, poignant and touching play that celebrates the everyday lives of people with Down's syndrome.  The writer and main actor, Julia Hales, has Down's syndrome and has long held an ambition to perform in the Australian soap Home and Away. The play is performed in a mock-up of the soap's Summer Bay diner and Julia performs with people on stage though a number of the cast had to cry off because of Covid.  She introduces filmed interviews with friends who also have Down's and who delight us with their humour and determination to be themselves and be independent and to live and most especially love.

My one and only black tied orchestral concert was given by the Helsinki Philharmonic.   They started with Vista by a living Finn, Kajia Saariaho.  It was loud, fast, shrill, cold and slightly terrifying.  Looking her up on Wikipedia I'm not surprised to see her connection to IRCAM.   The second piece was Tapiola by Sibelius. This wasn't terrifying but it's a pretty dark piece and not likely to be one of my desert island discs.  Finally we heard the Piano Concerto 'Gran Toccata' by the Swiss composer Dieter Ammann.  This is very lively. Wild might be a better adjective.  I enjoyed it.  It's on Youtube if you've half an hour to give it a shot.  Or you can listen here to the same soloist and forces as played it in the Usher Hall and if you like buy a recording.

Having disposed of the Film Festival in my last post I'll get back to a more chronological review of my festival going including the Book Festival which for the second year running is, as you can see in the photo above, at the Art College.

After the Grads' shows my next theatrical experience was Room in the EIF.  This show really does defy description.  The stage crew come on at the end to take a bow with the cast and thoroughly deserve it for their slick management of the complex manipulation of the set demanded of them throughout.  This interview with James Thierrée, the creative genius behind it, gives you an idea of the show.  My comment - fun, incomprehensible, on the long side.

The following morning, a Sunday, I rose early enough to get to the Art College by 10.30 to hear Henry Marsh the brain surgeon in the Book Festival.  Unfortunately thanks to an incorrect placement of the event in my diary I was 24 hours too late.  The silver lining to this cloud was that I was able to pop over to the Filmhouse and see one of the Kinuyo Tanaka films.

That evening I went to Leith Theatre to hear the Sons of Kemet.  A sort of jazz band with the unusual combination of saxophone, tuba and two drum kits.  The saxophonist also plays beautifully on a flute like instrument.  The tuba player is unbelievably skilled, bending his instrument to produce sounds soft and sweet and harsh and loud by turn.  They can play quietly but generally they didn't.  Such amplification seems unnecessary to me but luckily I had earphones in my pocket which kept the volume tolerable otherwise I'd have had to leave and miss 90 minutes of wonderful music making.

Muster Station by the site specific masters Grid Iron was brilliant.  We waited initially in what seemed like a tropical greenhouse but was in fact just the entrance corridor in Leith Academy. When the show got underway we were marshalled harshly through passport control like booths in the school sports hall that split the audience into four groups that were subsequently herded separately around the school and exposed to various scenarios.  The premise revealed itself to be that the UK was about to be submerged by a giant wave and we were seeking refuge.  The final destination was back in the sports hall which had been transformed into the sort of temporary refuge that you see on news report with blankets strewn on the floor for people to huddle together on.  I have to say it was rather more beautiful and tasteful than anything you'd see on the news.  Thanks to my correct answers to questions about Finland at an earlier stage (where refuge was being sought) I and some others had earned a special status.  We were given life jackets and moved to a special enclosure in a corner of the hall.  Unfortunately I then lost most of the ongoing development of the show because of the acoustics of the hall.  But it was a great experience.

Olga Wojtas is an Edinburgh writer of whom I had never heard who has written a number of comic crime novels featuring a time travelling incompetent detective, a graduate of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. (That may spark a memory for some).  Miss Blaine makes an appearance in the novels too I learnt at Olga's talk at the Book Festival.  I bought her latest to check whether I find it as funny as her fans do.  Apparently her books were not accepted by a German publisher who declared them too zany for the Germans.

Coppélia from Scottish Ballet was superb.  It's a complete reworking of the original that preserves the essence of the plot.   I expected the setting and choreography to be different, and by jove they were, but I thought to myself very early on that surely the music had never been so powerful.  It hadn't. A new score that incorporates some of Delibes as well as all the tricks of the synthesiser age. The Guardian called it "...a successful stride into ballet's future".  Keep your fingers crossed that it is and read their review.

Anything connected to Cuba generally attracts my attention so no surprise that I went to hear Karla Suarez talk about her novel Havana Year Zero.  It's set in 1993, a year of economic crisis in Cuba, and is about the search by a disparate cast of characters for a document that will prove that the telephone was invented in Cuba.  There is apparently a strong argument that it was but that's not the point of the novel which amongst other things the blurb tells us is about "how people cling onto meaning in a country at its lowest ebb".  Coincidentally I recently bought a book (not yet read) which is the real story of how seven ordinary Cubans born in the 70s and 80s have coped with life there.  It's called How Things Fall Apart which chimes well with Suarez's novel.  As for that, it was a pleasure to listen to the vivacious Karla's Spanish quite apart from learning about her book.

That evening I was at the Usher Hall to hear Jordi Saval and his group of musicians give a programme of the type of music that Ibn Battuta, the medieval Moroccan traveller, might have heard on his extensive travels through Asia and Europe.  It was a good listen.  I had a ticket to hear Saval present Turkish music of the same sort of period at the Queen's Hall the following morning but couldn't go though I've subsequently heard the concert thanks to BBC Sounds.  It was lovely.

I went to Arkle's two shows.  Silent Night was the story of a family spending Christmas Eve in an Anderson shelter during the London Blitz.  It was reasonably well performed and staged but was the sort of play you might pick out from a list of available plays suitable for amateurs who need to deploy 3m, 2f.   Their other show, Tay Bridge by Peter Arnott was better material, the back stories of seven individuals on board the ill-fated train.  It was very well performed and staged with superb tableau moments as the cast were buffeted by periodic jolting of the train and then cast into the sea.  The accompanying light and sound effects were excellent.  Standout performances from Esther Gilvray and Therese Gallagher.

International Theater Amsterdam were due to bring three plays to the EIF which they would perform in Dutch.  All three were based on books so I determined to read the books in advance to get a Fosbury flop over the language barrier.  I got some way through The Magic Mountain yawning the while.  Then the show was cancelled so I didn't need to finish the book.  A Little Life turned out to be a convenient and appropriate birthday present so I didn't even start that one.  I did read The End of Eddy and I suppose it helped me to understand what was going on in the production.  However I much preferred the book and I am sure that was because as Hugh Simpson wisely says in this review -  "It is all done with the maximum of enthusiasm, but the lack of light and shade does mean that a certain profundity is lacking."

As for A Little Life language was not a problem except to the extent that I found it difficult to differentiate between the voices and found myself quite often checking the actor's mouths to see who was speaking.  Was that because they were speaking a foreign language?

The play was great, all three hours and fifty minutes playing time.  Even the twenty minute interval was enjoyable because most of the cast stayed on stage and pottered about doing things in character.

The play centres around the lifelong trauma suffered by Jude, one of the four friends whose relationship is the lifeblood of the story.  Blood there is in abundance as Jude self harms, the result of the horrific abuses he suffered as a child and young man.  These are shown in all their graphic detail in flashbacks.  Ramsey Nasr who plays Jude meets and transcends the extraordinary physical and emotional demands of the part triumphantly.  It's no wonder that he was given Holland's highest acting award in 2015 when he first played the part.

Over the weekend at the Book Festival I heard Marc David Baer talk about his book The Ottomans (which the library have obtained for me more quickly that I either expected or wanted), Abdulrazak Gurnah talk wisely and well about his life and work, Gulbahar Haitiwaji (with help from her daughter) talk about her internment by the Chinese in one of their so called re-education camps and Alan Cumming give an entertaining and humorous insight into his activities and attitudes.

After a couple of hours chatting with old friends in a pub on Sunday afternoon Fiona (here for a chum's golden wedding do) and I went to the Hub to see Liz Lochead's Medea.  It was an interestingly staged production with the bulk of the audience standing around a narrow thrust stage. The principals provided fine declamatory performances and the chorus, who at some stages mingled with the audience, gave the insightful commentary on the action that is their responsibility in Greek theatre (ancient that is).  I enjoyed it but as I admitted to Fiona I felt nothing.  My withers were not wrung.  So we can't give it more than three stars however generous we feel.

Festival crowds filling up the High Street once again, here to sample the 3000 odd shows on offer.  I've sampled a few more since I last posted.  Life being short I shall make only the briefest of notes on them.

I started the first full week of the Festivals having lunch with some friends up from the south.  It was a lovely day and after lunch they went of to board the Royal Yacht and I had a wee wander in the sunshine.

To the Playhouse in the evening to see Pulse which as I said before was the main constituent of the EIF free opening event.  I had a much better view in the theatre but the show was 99% the same.  The other 1% was the buiding of a tower of 4 people standing on one another's shoulders.  Astonishing.

Counting and Cracking the following evening began in 2004 when we met a 20 something first generation Australian of Sri Lankan origin and his Aboriginal girlfriend.  The play then takes us back to Sri Lanka in the 50s and follows the fortunes of his family through the tensions, upheavals and bloodshed that culminated in the arrest of his father and the flight of his mother from the island.  It was a good production.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, even the somewhat contrived revelation that the young man's girl friend's DNA analysis suggested that her forebears came from South Asia.  Sri Lanka perhaps?

Taraf de Caliu billed as legends of Romanian folk music played in the lovely but sadly underused Leith Theatre which could also do with a lick of paint.  They turned out to be a highly amplified electric lot who played at the extremes of dynamic and tempo.  Mercifully they stopped for breath after 40 minutes or so and I left.

The Grads presented The Merchant of Venice and Bloody Wimmin.  Shakespeare's play needs no introduction but Bloody Wimmin is less well known.  Its action starts with the peace camp at Greenham Common set up by women protesting against the coming of American Cruise missiles to the base there.  Protests that went on for nearly 20 years.  The play goes on to explore other protest movements, the role that women played in them and the significant impact on male female relationships that ensued.  Both productions were very good.  The Merchant's silent opening scene in which Shylock is taunted and demeaned by the Venetians was chilling.  A brilliant idea whosever it was.

The Film Festival has returned to August which adds to the delights of the season but also to the difficulties of choice.  I have rather neglected the Fringe to take in several films.  The opening gala film (which I saw at a cheaper re-screening) was Aftersun, the excellent debut feature of young Sottish director Charlotte Wells.  I'll quote the IMDB summary of the "plot" which sums up the bones of the film very well - "Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't." and direct you to Peter Bradshaw's five star review.

Kinuyo Tanaka was a very successful Japanese film actress who for about a decade beginning in the early fifties turned her hand to direction. The Film Festival are showing all six of the films she directed in newly restored and digitised prints.  I managed to see five and hope to see the sixth when the films are shown in Glasgow next month.  They are all different, ranging from sweet comedy through social realism to historical epic and all place women at the centre of the film.  I thought they were all brilliant.  Mind you, to the modern viewer much of the acting is somewhat "heightened".  I list them here without commentary as an aide-memoire to myself and in honour of my ongoing attempt to learn it, their Japanese titles. 恋文 ( Love Letter), 月は上りぬ (The Moon has Risen), 乳房よ永遠なれ（Forever a Woman),　流転の王妃 (The Wandering Princess) and 女ばかりの夜（Girls of the Night).

Official Competition is a Spanish comedy about the making of a film or at least the acting rehearsals for it.  We never see the cameras rolling.  It will be released in cinemas shortly and should entertain especially the amateur theatre practitioners amongst us.

I've always enjoyed short films so I put a couple of screenings into my schedule.  New shorts from Scotland were:

The Barber,   a refugee in Glasgow discovers something troubling about the man who cuts her son's hair.

Infectious Nihilism and Small Metallic Pieces of Hope,  is a gang the answer to a young man need to belong somewhere?

Kafia, love for the filmmaker's grandmother as she approaches death.  With Wrinkled Years she made an earlier tribute to her grandmother who recounts her son's death.  

Maureen, is a comedic tussle between aunt and niece over the ashes of the former's sister, aka the latter's mother.  It could also be looked on as a tribute to Tupperware.  The link takes you to its crowdfunder page though obviously they got the money.  However it's an interesting read.

Too Rough, is a tense drama but has moments of humour as Nick tries to conceal the boyfriend he has been foolhardy enough to take home for the night from his alcoholic and dysfunctional family.

Who I Am Now, tells the story of two trans refugees who having had to leave their birth families form new families from their friends.  Adam Kashmiry whose story was brilliantly brought to the stage by the NTS a few years ago is one of the principal protagonists.

The festival also featured short animation films.  I enjoyed the selection I saw at the time but for fear that I forget them and that the records of the 2022 film festival disappear I'm copying the programme blurbs.

Bird in the Peninsula, 
Children are dancing to music under the supervision of their teacher. A young lady witnesses the scene and disrupts their rituals. 

 

Holy Holocaust, explores an unusual relationship between Noa, a white Israeli woman and Jennifer, a black German, who for 22 years believed that their friendship could easily rise above historical and political obstacles, until horrifying family secrets are revealed and explode right in their faces. Jennifer discovers that she is the biological granddaughter of a notorious Nazi commander, while Noa is exposed to the untold Holocaust tragedy of her grandmother’s family. So now what? Can they overcome the horrors of the past and go on as usual?

Inglorious Liasons,
Tonight is the big night for Lucie, Maya and their friends. Even Jimmy came: he is here for Maya, and everybody knows it. But at the moment when everything is supposed to happen, Maya and Lucie discover they have hidden feelings for each other, tender and confused, and they struggle to find their footing in this evening punctuated by alcohol that flows freely, music that rocks and hormones that boil.

Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics dives deeply into the innate contrast between the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Pride and Envy) and the Seven Sacred Teachings (Love, Respect, Wisdom, Courage, Truth, Honesty and Humility), as embodied in the life of a precocious Métis baby. Brought to life by Terril Calder’s darkly beautiful stop-motion animation, Baby Girl’s inner turmoil is laid bare with unflinching honesty. Convinced she’s soiled and destined for Hell, Baby Girl receives Anishinaabe Teachings from Nokomis that fill her with strength and pride and affirm a path towards healing. Calder’s tour-de-force unearths a hauntingly familiar yet hopeful world that illuminates the bias of colonial systems.

 

 Well Wishes My Love, Your Love , A boy lends his friend a prosthetic arm for the day.

Yugo Testimonies from relatives trace the course of a woman and a man forced to leave their native countryside for the outskirts of Bogotá to work on the industrial manufacture of decorative pieces for trucks. On a lifetime scale, Yugo questions the capitalist and liberal economic development of Latin America and its consequences to humans beings, through the environmental and societal changes it generates.

I spent a little while at the Foodies festival today.  Laura MacDonald, the saxophonist, gave some tickets away at her gig in the Jazz festival.  In her other life she's been a Masterchef finalist and was booked to do some demos at the Foodies.  Unfortunately she wasn't there today.

I wandered round, watched the kids being face painted and doing cooking, munched on free samples, listened to music, imbibed free samples and generally relaxed in the sun.  Found the food outlet with the smallest queue (Slumdog from just up the road) where I bought a tasty plateful for lunch.

I didn't count them but there were probably two booze stalls to every food one.  I sampled a rather tasty whisky liqueur at one but at over thirty quid a bottle refrained from making a purchase.

At twice as much as I paid in Italy just a few weeks ago I likewise refrained from making a purchase at this aperitivo bar where spritzes of all sorts were on offer.

In Glasgow this week I had quite a decent lunch with Andrew at a place called Gloriosa.  We went on to see the John Byrne exhibition at Kelvingrove.  It made a very distinct contrast to the Vettriano in Kirkcaldy.  The art works were much more varied, though it has to be said Byrne does rather favour the self-portrait, but of course his work as playwright and stage designer and involvement in screen adaptations of his writing puts him into a different catagory.  The exhibition runs till mid September and is worth a visit.

The EIF's free opening event, MACRO, took place under this large canopy at Murrayfield stadium.  It consisted mostly of the extraordinary acrobatic building and disintegration of structures made from human beings by the Australian physical theatre company Gravity & Other Myths.  Under each of the spotlights in this picture is a tower of three people.  I shall have a second chance to enjoy their work at the Playhouse this week.

So far I've seen three Fringe productions:

Exodus - an amusing, indeed farcical tale of a Home Secretary aspiring to be PM, her SPAD, an asylum seeker who takes on the task of pretending to be her mother and a journalist who wants to interview her.  Dealing with the plucking of an infant from the sea at Dover by a politician who wants to put an anti-migrant thermonuclear barrier round the UK provides the situation from which the humour flows.

The Last Return - a comedy built from the behaviour of people queueing for a sold-out theatre performance in the hope of a ticket being returned.  It's very funny, very well performed and staged and very daft.  I loved it.

Bloke and his American Bantu -  a show constructed from the correspondence between the Afro-American writer and activist Langston Hughes and the South African journalist, writer and actor Bloke Modisane.  Hughes, albeit remotely from his home in Harlem, seems to have been a big support both materially and emotionally to Modisane who had left South Africa and was scratching a living in London.  I had the impression perhaps wrongly that when Modisane had some success he didn't fully repay that support.

I wasn't terribly excited by it, certainly not as much as the South African reviewer who saw the show before it left for Edinburgh.  But I was interested enough to order a copy of Modisane's book recounting how life was for a black man in the South Africa of the 50s.  The book was of course banned in his home country.