I took a day off from festival going and went to Glasgow.  I had lunch with Andrew in a very nice restaurant called Babs where I had this inspired and delicious Candy Floss Affogato for pudding.

After lunch he went home and I went out to Kelvingrove to see the Mary Quant exhibition.  It was gorgeous.  I never as much as window shopped in the Kings Road but was very aware of Bazaar and her fashion in the 60s.  When she added make-up to her repertoire I'm pretty sure Fiona had it around the house.

My next exhibition was the Banksy show Cut and Run that has broken all records for Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art.  It seems it was there before going anywhere else thanks to Banksy's admiration for the almost continuous appearance of a traffic cone on Wellington's head outside the gallery.  It's been running night and day and I was lucky to get a spot at 8.45pm.

That was a long time after Kelvingrove closed so I took in a film at the GFT.  The Innocent was the story of a son's dislike of his mother's marriage to an ex-con and his suspicion that his new step-father is up to no good.  The son finds himself involved in a robbery that the ex-con is obliged to participate in but it's a very light-hearted film and all ends happily, especially for the son who finds himself in jail but marrying his late wife's best friend who he's realised in the course of the robbery, in which she also takes part, he's in love with.  It filled in the exhibition gap nicely.

As for the Banksy itself, there was lots to see and marvel at.  There was a video of the famous moment at which one of his works set in an old master type gilt frame was knocked down for 800 grand at Sotheby's and then started to shred itself.  Either the actual work or a copy of it showing the mechanism and various earlier versions that he'd tried out were also on display.  Most of his graffiti was (and still is) done by preparing a stencil, holding it against a wall and scooshing an aerosol of paint at it. Lots of these were there, some with light shining through them that showed to great effect how the result looked.  I guess 99% of it was politico-social and none more so perhaps than the animal transport lorry that had animal heads sticking out between the slats and animal noises coming from within.  You can see a video of it here. There are people inside manipulating the heads.

Back at the festivals.

Life is a Dream - Calderon's great play performed in the EIF by CNTC from Madrid in Spanish directed by Declan Donnellan.  In my one and only visit to the Avignon Theatre Festival over twenty years ago I saw a wonderful production of Boris Godunov (the play) performed in Russian and also directed by Declan Donnellan.  He did a great job, quite a man.  This production was very different from the Lyceum's own excellent production of Jo Clifford's English version of Life is a Dream a couple of years ago.  Donnellan's was played on a bare stage across which stood a high green wall full of doors through which the cast dashed back and forth or lingered by.  There was a significant amount of fourth wall breaking and descent into the auditorium, all carried out with relish and energy.  Here's a review.  And here's another with which I am more in tune.

Thrown - The National Theatre of Scotland's contribution to the EIF in the close confines of Traverse 2 is a fast-paced, dynamically played and snappily directed examination of identities. National, racial, sexual, gender and personal identities all feature in a group of five women brought together as a wrestling team competing in Highland Games.  The play perhaps tries to do too much but overall deals well with its subject matter and entertains its audience.

The Insider - This show was part of an invasion of Danish theatre that I wish I'd seen more of.  On stage is a large perspex box containing a desk and chair, a filing cabinet and an actor.  The audience are supplied with binaural headphones.  Through a combination of projections, sounds, voices of the protagonist and others we learn about the Cum-ex scandal.  Our actor is a young lawyer who has turned state witness being interrogated.  He relives many of the stages and events of the scam.  It's terrific and well deserved the Fringe First that it won.  We hear him tell his boss that the dividend tax claiming strategy is illegal but in no time at all he's in it up to his ears, sniffing coke and spending millions.  However I confess to not picking up on the moment at which he tipped over to the dark side.

Andronicus Synecdoche - I was lured by a four star review into seeing this show by Polish company Song of the Goat.  The Guardian is more restrained with only three stars and I agree with every word they say while being disappointed that the show left me pretty cold. 

Follow the Money - A book by Paul Johnson of the IFS.  He's a well known economic commentator but this is his first book.  It is aimed at helping the general public understand how the government raises and spends its revenue which is of course our money.  It was a fascinating discussion of which I retain some small nuggets chief of which was his statement that all that the higher income tax levels in Scotland had done was to compensate for our slower growth rate compared to the rest of the UK.  Must read more.

Peter Howson -  I wandered down to the City Art Centre after listening to Paul Johnson, fortified myself with a coffee and brownie and then walked round the Peter Howson retrospective.  It's a super exhibition.  I haven't always been too keen on his work while admiring the tremendous skill with which he creates his mammoth canvases of muscled bodies but this exhibition blew me away.  There is so much about the artist as well from a number of videos.  There must be about an hour and a half of video content instead of the usual ten minute saunter through the artist's background.  Disappointingly neither of the canvases I particularly relished, The Last Supper and Barrier Sunset were available as prints or even postcards so I settled for fridge magnets of two self portraits painted thirty years apart. 

By then it was lunchtime so I had lunch in Princes Street Gardens at Contini's restaurant in front of the National Gallery.  Then it was time to wander back to the Art College for more literary sustenance.

Free Speech - This Book Festival discussion with Elif Shafak and Kübra Gümüşay is descibed in the brochure as being a nuanced discussion of free speech.  It was too nuanced for me thanks possibly to that glass of Trebbiano I had at lunch.

A Short History of Language - is how the Book Festival billed its last event which was also my last event of any of the festivals.  Not it seems to me a very accurate description.  The discussion was more about the use of language to reinforce or undermine hierarchies and stereotypes, to exercise control and the supposed role of language in setting one's view of the world and its peoples.  Much was made of the fact that some language or other has a range of pronouns beyond our he, she and it.  So for example when speaking of a tree you use a particular pronoun.  Does this somehow increase one's kinship with the tree?  I think not.  It seems about as unmeaningful as the prefixes that distinguish Swahili's nine noun classes or the different counter words used in Japanese for long thin things, flat things, machines etc.

A very eye-catching embellishment to the King's Hall renamed House of Oz for the nonce.  It hasn't drawn me inside so far but there is yet time.

More reports on what I've seen.

The Road to Turangalila  and Turangalila - EIF concerts.  The former, introduced by Simon Rattle and Nicola Benedetti was a curtain raiser for the LSO's performance of Messiaen's enormous Turangalila Symphony.  As influences on that work they presented a fanfare by Dukas who had been Messiaen's teacher; Milhaud's La Création du Monde as the first classical work to fully embrace jazz, the spirit and indeed chords of which Rattle said run through the symphony; and Debussy's La Mer which they said took music in the direction that led to Messiaen.  Turangalila itself is long and contains much that is loud and played at a furious pace which is just the sort of thing I like.  For a more informed and informative report read this review.     

Adults - The Traverse scored again with this wonderfully funny contribution to the Fringe.  A male teacher arrives at an Edinburgh brothel to find that the young lady who greets him is a former pupil.  He has actually come in search of a male prostitute who is the girl's business partner.  Farce, comedy and tears ensued not to mention an exquisite political analysis of Thomas the Tank Engine.  Neither The Guardian nor The Stage thought much of the play but The Telegraph loved it as did I.  Does that mean I'm really a Tory at heart?

East Germany - Beyond the Myths -  In that inspired way it has the Book Festival brought together two totally different books that sprang from the same soil.   Jenny Erpenbeck grew up in the German Democratic Republic.  All her writing reflects that and Kairos, the novel featured in this session draws deeply on her personal experience and paints a picture far removed from the dark and dismal prison camp that we in the west imagined the GDR to be.  Katya Hoyer is a historian who came west when she was still a child but has a substantial connection with the east.  Her grandfather was one of the ten men who founded the GDR at the behest of the soviets.  Beyond the Wall is a history of that state in which she said that she refrained from judgement but laid out the facts for readers to draw their own conclusions.  Asked about the reception the book had had she said, amongst other things, that for the first time in her life she took issue with a positive review of her work on reading the Daily Mail's review.

Don Roberto - This was a cracker of a conversation between Ruth Wishart and Jamie Jauncey the author of Don Roberto a biography of R B Cunninghame-Graham whose great great nephew he is.  I heard him talk about Cunninghame-Graham a few years ago and everyone at that talk said "you must write a book".  And now he has and there is every indication that it's a corker.  A 19th century Liberal MP who agitated against child labour and for the rights of women; an MP who called for the abolition of the House of Lords and declared the Royal Family to be parasites; a toff who championed the working classes and co-founded the Scottish Labour Party with Keir Hardie; a man who was first president of the National Party of Scotland; a writer ; an adventurer who lived with the gauchos in Argentina and who was held to ransom in Morocco.  There is so much to be told about him.  Surely Hollywood will ultimately call.  

The Threepenny Opera - Audience and critics alike lauded this production but I was disappointed.  The more so in that Fiona and I had had a very pleasant lunch beforehand with old friends and I was in a benificent mood.  But the glitzy, showy nature of the production seemed to me quite the reverse of what Brecht had in mind so I took against it quite quickly.  A deliberate irony perhaps?  They played it too in a very knowing and self aware fashion that grated.  Their idea of Brechtian alienation perhaps?  On a practical note the elaborate steel grid that filled the stage looked good but partly hid the actors who crawled up and down it. In my line of sight as well was a double bass shaft (not the right word I'm sure) thanks to the band having been raised up in the orchestra pit.  I could go on but I won't.  Claire left at the interval and I don't blame her. 

Tartan - At the Book Festival.  Leonie Bell, director of the V&A Dundee discussed tartan with Jonathan Faiers who has been heavily involved in creating the must go to exhibition of that name currently on in Dundee and running till January.  It was a discussion that ranged widely over the history and cultural significance of tartan.  Faiers has also written a beautiful looking volume called Tartan that I shall give myself for Christmas.  As befits a professor of Fashion Thinking he had obviously thought about his appearance.  He wore a well cut black suit, a black polo shirt with discreet red trimmings at the neck and the most gorgeous red shoes.  I might give myself those for Christmas as well.

Waiting for a train at the bus stop -  I was drawn to this Summerhall Fringe show by a phrase in the programme blurb "Inter-weaving spoken word theatre with Zambian oral traditions."  It was a well performed production, technically very efficient and effective.  The acoustics of the performance space could have been better but that's not the company's fault.  I didn't think the phrase about Zambian oral tradition was borne out though.  It seemed completely and conventionally structured in the western theatre tradition.  The story was a not unfamiliar one of a person struggling to find herself, falling into a controlling relationship and ultimately not coming out of it well.

Showing Up - The Film Festival was caught up in financial travails last year putting its future in doubt but was rescued by the International Festival and was able to present a six day programme for the 2023 edition.  I signally failed to get my act together early enough to book and then clashes with the International and the Fringe meant that I had only one evening and one morning free to see anything at all.  So I saw this quiet and strangely compelling feature about an artist preparing her show, her broken down hot water supply, her slightly mal-functioning brother and the rescue of a pigeon with a broken wing.  I quietly enjoyed it.

The First Slam Dunk - I didn't enjoy this film at all.  It was Japanese which is why I chose it, despite it being an animated manga about which genre I generally hae ma doots.  It consisted of an interminable basketball game between the hero's school and the best basketing school in the country.  Short flashbacks interrupted the game to fill in the back story.  The hero's big brother was tall and a basketball wizard but he died in a fishing accident.  The hero, short and not such a wizard  was determined to fill his place.  The hero gets duffed up by bullying basketeers but this makes him more determined. Etc, Etc. The film ends with a one point last minute victory for the hero's team and he, having grown unaccountable taller, meets his mum on the beach, thanks her for letting him play and gambols in the shallows with his little sister. I could hardly understand a word of it either.  Hiss, boo. 

Alvin Ailley American Dance Theater -  A beautiful show, especially the last section called Revelations which was dancing to spirituals.  It looked gorgeous, sounded gorgeous and was worth the quite a lot of money.

Thanks to Photoshop and Bev's expertise Ernie and Kathleen have made it to Rome as agreed in crackers,  separate rooms of course.  The show went well and audiences were most appreciative as were those for the show I did the following week, The Curious Case of Osgood Mackenzie. We've been asked to take that show up to Wester Ross where Osgood developed the gardens now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland at Inverewe.  I think we are all keen provided a suitable date can be found.

So much for my shows.  Now for a quick run down on what I've seen since I last posted.

Shakers - the Grads other production.  A sparkling comedy by John Godber set in a cocktail bar.  Four actresses played a multitude of parts male and female to well deserved full houses.

Emmanuel Ceysson and Friends - an EIF concert in the Queens Hall.  He proved that the solo harp in the right hands can produce exceptional sonic beauty and in combination with strings and woodwind delighted the audience with a range of French pieces. 

Tutu - men performing both badly and well while clothed in tutus and other female dancing gear.  Impressive en pointe.  Less impressive was some of their humour.  The Stage didn't care for it much .   The Wee Review was slightly kinder.

Andras Schiff - EIF at the Queen's Hall.  This was great music played by a great pianist.  He overran the declared duration of the first half to such an extent that when the second half started we were within ten minutes of the normal end of those morning concerts.  By that time I was listening from the landing at the top of the stairs so that I could get off to my next show without creating a disturbance.

The Life and Times of Michael K. -  I loved this dramatisation of J.M.Coetzee's novel.  Despite the length and wavering focus, commented on in this review,  I was held by the artistry of the staging and performances and the tragic tale that we were being told.

National Youth Choir of Scotland -  The EIF in the Usher Hall.  Gorgeous listening.  No more to be said.  In a curtain raiser before the concert Christopher Bell gave a little background to the why and when of the founding of the choir and demonstrated, with audience participation, some of the teaching techniques that he uses with the choir and that are associated with the name Kodaly. 

Old God's Time - A novel by Sebastian Barry.  At the Book Festival he read a chapter from the novel in which the protagonist is listening to a cello being played.  His chum Steven Isserlis supplied the music to accompany the reading.  Chaired by Nick Barley the outgoing festival director there was a lively and interesting discussion of the book.  The reading was magnificent so I was not surprised to hear that Barry's mother had been an actress.  I was also intrigued to discover that her sister was Mary O'Hara whose folk singing to her own accompaniment on the harp was part of my record listening in the 50s.

The Court - I went to see this because one of my fellow cast members from crackers was in it. I wasn't overly impressed though it was reasonably entertaining. The audience, who were asked to reach a verdict in the case put before us had no real evidence on which to base a judgement.  It was one party says X while the other says Y so choose the one you find the more convincing.

Ayanna Witter-Johnson - an EIF event at the Hub. Ayanna is an English musician of Jamaican heritage who has a long association with the LSO and sang and played most engagingly with members of its percussion section in a programme mostly of her own compositions.  

A Portrait from the Archives -  At the Book Festival Iman Mersal (an Egyptian poet I'd never heard of) discussed her book about Enayat Al Zayyat (an Egyptian writer I'd never heard of) in front of a pitifully small audience. I'd never heard of any of them either (nor they of me) but the important point is that the event was very, very interesting.  To the extent that I bought the book and queued to have it signed, probably because I like to see my name written in Arabic script.  While in the small queue an Omani girl who'd been at the talk urged me to read Mersal's poetry and recommended a starting point. Pity I didn't make a note of it.

Lilies on the Land - Arkle's early evening show.  I enjoyed this well performed and directed story of the lives of the girls who replaced men in agricultural labouring roles during WWII.  My enjoyment was a little marred by some diction problems that should have been ironed out in rehearsal.

The Importance of Being Earnest - Arkle's second show.  Impossible not to enjoy Wilde's wonderful wit and the skilfully contrived plot despite not all the performances quite hitting the mark.

Talk of the town -  Two books, Who Runs Edinburgh and Edinburgh's Festivals discussed by their authors and the rector of Edinburgh University.  I didn't find the discussion particularly illuminating, perhaps because I already knew a fair bit about the early years of the festivals and because only stereotypes featured much in the picture drawn of Edinburgh's high heid yins.  I hope the books, which I felt obliged to buy, will give me more.

Quartet for the end of time -  EIF event at the Hub.  Composed in a wartime prison camp to suit what imperfect instruments and players he could find Messiaen's piece seems to me quite bleak, particularly the solo clarinet movement.  I don't mind bleakness when I've got a comfy home to go to afterwards.  Not everyone feels the same about it.  Read Steven Osborne's piece about it in the Guardian (nothing to do with this particular performance).  

Geology and Hope - Two books that provided an interesting discussion between their authors and Scotland's Geographer Royal.  Christopher Somerville walked from the Butt of Lewis to Wallasea Island in Essex focusing on the changing geological landscape. His book Walking the Bones of Britain records that journey and he sees hope for the future in the efforts that are being made today to harness nature to mitigate climatic and ecological change instead of relying on man's technological brute force.  Jay Owen's Dust  looks at dust everywhere : the skin flakes under your bed, the creation of the dustbowl in the American plains, the continuing health impact of the atomic test dust particles from decades ago et al.  She sees hope in the ongoing restoration of the Owens Lake in California which had been turned to dust in Los Angeles's thirst for water.  Both books underline man's ability to turn his world to dust but at the same time herald his attempts to do better.

Wild flowers looking splendid in St Mark's park as I strolled through en route to Newhaven for a breath of sea air.  I had a rather longer expedition to the sea recently.  A friend was up visiting relatives in Burntisland and I nipped over there and joined them on a day out to Elie.  The objective was to find the red quartz stones that Isabel remembered from her youth and which gave one of Elie's beaches its name - ruby beach.

Unsurprisingly we didn't find any but we'd had a pleasant run along the coast of Fife and following our fruitless search a tasty soup and sandwich lunch before wending our way back to Burntisland where we settled into a pub for a while till I caught an early evening train back to Edinburgh.

The main show I'm in, crackers, opened on Monday.  It went very well and we've already had a complimentary review.  My other show, The Curious Case of Osgood Mackenzie, opens next week and we're obviously hoping for a similar reception.

A while ago the Traverse produced a play called Sean and Daro Flake It 'Til They Make It. They've reprised it for the Fringe, perhaps to satisfy the disappointed who missed it.  It's an entertaining comedy about the ups and downs of friendship and quite a lot of people came to see it at 10pm on a Saturday night.

I'd come from a rather more ambitious project in the International Festival round the corner at The Lyceum.  Dusk is a reworking and reimagining of the ideas expressed in the film Dogville by Lars von Trier.  I haven't seen the film but that was no barrier to my enjoyment of this powerful and intriguingly presented production.

Equally intriguing was another EIF show, FOOD.  There's a very extensive desription of it here but I'd advise against reading it till after you've seen the show.  Before seeing it suffice to know that it's something of a riff on man's ascent from sea dwelling blob through hunter gatherer and farmer to where we are now.  There's humour, conjuring and audience participation en route in the first part when the members of the audience seated around a giant dinner table are served by the single actor.  The second part is fascinating and so so cleverly presented but that's all I'll say.  Go see for yourself.

Talking of food, friends and I had a tasty vegetarian meal at Kalpna before going to the show.  I recommend it before any show. 

Much good playwriting dissecting the human condition has come out of Ireland but it's perhaps surprising that when sexual assault is put under the microscope the result is an engaging comedy, albeit dark edged.  That's Lie Low at the Traverse by Ciara Elizabeth Smyth who I was told came from Portobello but is in fact a Dubliner.  I'm sure one fine playwright from Portobello is enough and we already have cmfwood.

The McEwan Hall which is normally home to douce graduation ceremonies reverberated to the noise and energy of a Cuban dance troupe in Havana Street Party.  Beautiful, colourful, demanding choreography faultlessly performed with dynamism and enthusiasm.

Morning concerts at the Queen's Hall are an EIF institution.  The first one this year featured the music of James MacMillan, Charles Ives and Brahms played by a chamber group led by American violinist Stefan Jackiw.  I enjoyed the modernity of MacMillan's Violin Sonata, the quirky eclectic mixture of Ives' Piano Trio and the luscious tones of Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 with it's exhilarating gypsy style final movement.  In a puff for the concert elsewhere Nicola Benedetti revealed how as a17 year old she had been impressed by Jackiw's ability to produce vibrato with his pinkie, the weakest finger for any violinist.