In the 2023 Fringe I performed in an Arkle show about Osgood Mackenzie who built the gardens at Inverewe in Wester Ross. In the Autumn we took that show up there. In this year's Fringe we did another show set in Wester Ross, The Kelpie, the Loch and the Water of Life and had the great good fortune to be invited to take both shows north this Autumn. The picture above was taken from the gardens and shows a wee bit of Loch Ewe.
Six of us travelled up in a people carrier and met up in Torridon with Rob and Mel, who were already there. We set up the space and had a short rehearsal before a delicious fish tea in the Community Hall restaurant and then performed both pieces. After a swift half (just me) and a brief chat with some of the audience we set off for Poolewe and found our accommodation. Even in the dark it was quite easy to find the National Trust seasonal staff accommodation where some of us were to sleep but a bit harder to work out how to get into the Gatehouse where others were to spend the night. The instructional video that Rob had made had been filmed in broad daylight not in total blackness!
On the Saturday morning we gathered for breakfast in the Gatehouse and then pottered about the village. The chap who runs the local cafe was one of the many people you meet in the area who have chosen to leave more urban areas for the undoubted peace and beauty of the Highlands. His skill and artistry in photography were on view on the cafe walls (and as I dicovered later, in a display in the National Trust restaurant at the Gardens). His partner and her daughter also turned out to be arts and craft practitioners with their work on display in the cafe.
In the afternoon upwards of 50 people turned out to see the plays. Judging by their response and conversations afterwards they felt their time had been well spent. After the performances we had the use of the National Trust restaurant to heat up the food that had been brought up from Edinburgh and later repaired to the Gatehouse with a few bottles.
Back home on the Sunday through beautiful countryside and in reasonably fine weather.
Had I not gone up north I'd have spent my Sunday afternoon at Kings Buildings where we're rehearsing the Grads Christmas show. They haven't done one for a while but for their 70th anniversary Claire has written a show based on the Baba Yaga character from Russian folklore. Called simply Baba it's a fun show with a large cast and a live band. I've got a couple of parts the nature of which I will not reveal here but they both qualify as comedy roles.
I went not quite so far north in October when I went to Perth to visit the new museum that opened there quite recently. It's not a large museum but it has much of interest. Its impressive pièce de resistance is a display of the Stone of Destiny. When Michael Forsyth was Secretary of State he organised the return of the stone to Scotland. It was placed in Edinburgb Castle but I never got around to checking it out in the 20 odd years it spent there. I do recommend a trip to Perth to see it though. Not that the stone itself is much more than a lump of sandstone but it's well presented. Before you see the stone there's a historical video about it that begins with archival footage of its earlier return to Scotland when it was liberated from Westminster Abbey in the 50s by a group of students. Then in the stone room there's a projection around the walls of how a crowning ceremony at Scone might have looked in the 12th or 13th century.
After that excitement it was good to be able sit down with a coffee and a nibble in their comfy cafe.
I've missed a couple of concerts in recent weeks from misadventures of one kind or another but got to a fine SCO concert last week that featured Grieg's Piano Concerto and Sibelius's 7th Symphony.
No Other Land which I saw at the Cameo is a documentary made by a pair of young filmmakers, one Israeli and one Palestinian that portrays Israel's systematic eviction of Palestinans from parts of the West Bank on the pretext of their setting up a training area for the Israeli Defence Forces. The film shows a sequence repeated throughout. A train of military vehicles and bulldozers chugging along a winding dirt road to a straggly collection of breezeblock buildings as people struggle to rescue their belongings before they arrive, the dozers ripping the buildings apart under the less than sympathetic gaze of the soldiers, the disconsolate dispossessed residents perched on piles of rubble, the vehicles disappearing back the way they came. It's grim.
Grim too is the story of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. A four part dramatisation of the novel first screened in 2008 popped up on BBC4 the other week. The channel specialises in extracting jewels for the BBC's archives and this was a particularly bright jewel. It seemed to me very faithful to the novel and I loved it. I also enjoyed Jude, a film version of Jude the Obscure they ran around the same time although I can't say if that varied much from the novel which I don't think I've ever read.
