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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? 

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.   

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.

    

After the euphoria of the summer school gig I got back to being a spectator.

First stop was The Jazz Romantics at The Village off Ferry Road.  A pitifully small audience for an excellent evening of great American songbook classics.  They were competing with half a dozen Jazz Festival events though.  Why were they themselves not part of the festival?

Then the Edinburgh Schools Jazz Orchestra in the pouring rain.  Not exactly in it but the rain beat on the spiegel tent roof throughout.  This was a set of big band classics interspersed with a few solo or duo pieces demonstrating the enormous talent of our teenagers.  One lad in the band has been at a couple of the Napier summer schools so I knew he was a terrific sax player.  He turns out to be no slouch on the piano either.  Destined for greatness.

Since my next concert was only an hour and a few hundred yards away I slipped into The Angel's Share for some lunch.  I ignored their vast (and pricey) range of whiskies and washed down my very tasty steak sandwich and yummy chips with a velvety smooth Merlot.

The restaurant used to be a post office and my next port of call used to be a chapel.  It's now The Rose Theatre in whose basement we had our gig.  This one was upstairs in the main space.  The Baptists moved out because there wasn't enough room for their growing congregation but three hundred seats was plenty for those who assembled to hear Ryan Quigley and Soweto Kinch being Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.  Ably supported by a rhythm section of first class players they gave us an hour and a half of high octane grooves.
 

I snapped a piccie but only Soweto came out tolerably well.

I was released early enough from the Outside Mullingar rehearsal in the evening to have gone to Soweto's other gig and I was keen but.....

Maybe I'd had a surfeit or old age is creeping up on me so I went home and enjoyed Radio Scotland instead. 

Pure dead brilliant is the only possible description of yesterday's Napier Jazz Summer School concert in the Rose Theatre basement.  It's the cheapest of the Jazz Festival gigs and you get a lot for your money.  The 120 seat venue was full, helped admittedly by the presence of the 45 summer school participants.

Ten of those participants were singers.  This is the first time the summer school has catered for singers and they gave a major boost to the concert.  We had five bands playing.  Singers performed in various combinations between the band sets and rounded off the gig singing a vocal version of Take Five as a choir.

The origins of jazz are a bit on the hazy side but it's generally accepted that the first jazz recording dates from 1917.  So to highlight that centenary the repertoire for the week was made up of ten pieces, one from each decade since.  The bands chose a couple each and miraculously there was only one repetition.  The two bands concerned provided interestingly different versions.   

The week itself was good fun, incorporating various group activities as well as the work directed towards preparing the concert pieces.  We had a couple of theory sessions most of which was either just above or far above my head though my eyes were opened to one or two aspects of the fundamental building blocks of the music.

That was doing but I've managed a fair bit of appreciating as well.  Two gigs in particular stand out for me.  One was music by Ellington and the other was music associated with Cannonball Adderley and his band, his greatest hits as it were.

I had to sacrifice a couple of evenings of concert going to meet my Fringe rehearsal commitments but that's life in the culture vulture's cage for you.

The City Art Centre has been running a series of Saturday lunchtime singsongs by local choirs and I went along to one to hear a friend sing.  I got there early and took in the exhibition of the short-listed designs for the replacement of the Ross Pavilion in West Princes Street Gardens.  Like many residents I've always called it the Ross Bandstand but that was demolished and the present structure erected in 1934.

The seven designs vary enormously from a couple that put the emphasis on minimising the built aspects in favour of the garden to those that confidently impose pedestrian flyovers and chunky structures.  All of them have something exciting to offer and I'd hate to be responsible for the final choice.

The Dunedin Wind Band celebrated its 10th anniversary with a concert of pieces chosen by band members past and present from the large number that have been played over that decade.  Several past members joined the ranks for the evening, some travelling up from the deep south to do so.  We were 56 strong on stage which was quite a squeeze.  A jolly good time was had by all even though some of us didn't manage to play all the notes at the right time and in the right order.

Brief notes on what I saw on the final weekend of the Film Festival:

I Dream in Another Language - a Mexican film in which a young linguist engages with the last two speakers of an indigenous language who have not spoken to one another in any language for fifty years or so thanks to a falling out.  It was a nice little story that ended happily enough with the two old boys joining the spirit world in the cave where all the dead speakers of that particular tongue end up.  A touch of magic realism there.

The Last Men in  Aleppo - a documentary about the so called White Helmets who pull bodies from the rubble of that pounded to death city.  There was no commentary or analysis, just observation and eavesdropping.  Disgracefully I missed large chunks by nodding off periodically.  Not that it was boring, I was just tired.

Demonio tus Ojos -  I've forgotten the English title of this tale of a man who takes an unhealthy interest in his half-sister.  I expect all sorts of intellectual bullshit can be advanced in support of the mix of voyeurism, incest and violence against women displayed in the film and there may well be some merit in the loss of innocence theme but on the whole it gets the thumbs down from me.

Time bandits - pure delight and fun from the Monty Python stable of writers, film makers and performers.  A young boy and half a dozen dwarves, former employees of the supreme being, romp through time in pursuit of treasure to steal. They encounter Napoleon, Agamemnon and Robin Hood, go down with the Titanic and enjoy sundry other fantastic adventures.

The Quiet Earth - science fiction from New Zealand.  A scientist who has played some part in an experiment that I didn't entirely understand, or rather entirely didn't understand, wakes up to find himself alone in the world.  Well, not quite alone.  He encounters a young woman and then a young Maori.  They potter about this empty landscape.  The scientist works out that the sun is about to explode.  They decide to save the world by blowing up the installation where the experiment was taking place.  Scientist sacrifices himself in doing so so that the young couple can be together.  Or maybe not since the closing shot is said scientist apparently reviving on a beach as the saved sun rises. Not my cup of tea really but harmless.   

Somewhat oddly the first event of the Film Festival that I went to was actually a jazz gig with Tam Dean Burn reading various poems and other writings by Tom McGrath while the SNJO played Ellington and Miles Davis and others.

I knew of McGrath as a playwright and as something of a dramaturg at the Traverse and the Lyceum in the 80s or 90s but didn't know of his jazz interests.  Nor of any involvement in film.  Indeed I don't think he had a lot to do with film.  This evening was a celebration of him as a much admired Scottish cultural icon.
 

In terms of films I've since seen an excellent one directed by and starring Danny Huston, (son of John). The Last Photograph, a very poignant story of loss. Huston did a Q&A afterwards and came over as a really nice guy.

Hostages is a Georgian movie about failed young hijackers hoping to flee to the West. The episode was true but the film was drama rather than documentary.  Only one of them escaped execution. The sad coda was that if they had waited only eight years they would have been able to lawfully leave the USSR. 

Newton was a delightful little comedy about a young Indian civil servant zealously trying to set up and run a polling place for a tiny community in the middle of a jungle plagued by Maoist insurgents. 

Another film with an Indian as star, set this time in Sligo, was Halal Daddy.  It's a lovely romantic comedy with multicultural humour and inter-generational conflict.  Naturally there's a happy ending.  See it if you can.  It's fun.

I can't say the same for The Pugilist.  It's not at all a bad film but I thought it rather a run of the mill story of gangland violence and a good man's struggle against it.  The sort of thing I might watch on TV when I was too lazy to do anything else.

I couldn't resist this beautiful bow tie at less than half its original price in the Scottish National Gallery shop a couple of months ago.  As is often the case I had gone in looking for a present for someone else and came out full of self indulgent guilt.

Guilt turned to frustration as its delicate soft silkiness defied my efforts to tie it.  Proud as I am of my tie tying prowess, demonstrated to the world in 1992 when unaided by mirrors I tied a bow tie on stage in the course of a performance this little beauty refused to be tamed.

But last week I managed it in response to an invitation to a party where dressing up was encouraged.  Disappointingly, apart from the hosts the only people making a sartorial effort were the theatrically connected.  The rest of you - pathetic.

Now pathetic is an adjective you might well apply to Willie Loman, hero of Miller's Death of a Salesman but that would be cruel.  The American dream hasn't worked out for Willie or for his sons and the story is gut wrenchingly told in a very fine production from the Royal and Derngate theatre currently touring the country.  I'd forgotten just how harrowing it is and reflecting on Arthur Miller's other plays, or at least those I know, I marvel at his capacity to enable us to experience catharsis through the tragedy of his protagonists.

Music is Torture was an entertaining idea that rather lost its way.  The story is of a guy who runs a little recording studio where he's been trying unenthusiastically to produce an album with the same band for years and is just scraping a living.  In the past he'd had pretentions as a musician himself and produced a record but didn't make the big time, or even the not too small time.  Now he works and sleeps in his studio and is on the verge of being evicted.

A letter comes from a lawyer who tells him that his long ago recorded number is being used by the CIA in their enhanced interrogation sessions and offering him the chance to sign a contract to recover royalties.  His scruples don't take too long to be overcome given his dire need for a new pair of sneakers.

So far so amusing but subsequently we have a narrative that dribbles along fairly aimlessly.  The band behind the glass appear in orange jumpsuits as eventually does our hero but this denouement if that's what it was didn't make much sense to me.  But the show on the whole was fun.

The RSNO's penultimate concert of the season was not torture.  Indeed it was very good and I especially enjoyed Jennifer Johnston singing Mahler's Rückert-Lieder.  That was a pleasant surprise because I wouldn't say it's my thing.  Thomas Søndergård, who conducted, was announced as the successor to Peter Oundjian as music director.  He'll take over at the end of next season and judging by the applause from both audience and orchestra is a popular choice.

Scotland's most written about monarch is surely Mary Queen of Scots.  Just have a glance at this Wikipedia article to see how much there is.  It's a torrent that shows no sign of abating; one of the latest is Linda McLean's play, Glory on Earth, which deals with her relationship with John Knox.

Encounters between the vivacious young catholic queen and the priggish protestant reformer would seem fertile soil for cutting dialogue and lively drama but for me this production fell flat.  It looked lovely though and having Mary's four Marys (of whom there were actually six) playing various Scottish lords was an interesting idea.  Having said that a friend suggested the female voices didn't help provide the contrasts that the show sorely lacked. 

Edinburgh enjoyed more than its average June rainfall all in one 36 hour period last week.  Here's Princes St Gardens the morning after.

The rain stopped handily in time for QMU's open air As You Like It.  The play was presented in a delightful garden in Dunbar's Close off the Canongate.  They gave us a suitably nasty usurper, a cheerful usurpee, an engaging fool, a kind and honest hero and a jolly smart Rosalind who is of course the real hero of the piece.

It was very well done but the tiny plastic stools that we were given to sit on were very uncomfortable and come the interval I couldn't bear the thought of  further posterior punishment so I left.

That made it the first of  three shows that I have failed to see through to the end this month.  That's three more than in the last decade or so.  I was tired when I went to La Bohème and didn't much like it or the glass of  plonk I couldn't finish, so I left.  Milonga on the other hand was good but I felt that the second hour of a tango show was not going to be radically different from the first and that perhaps my fill had been had.  After all it's only five years since I spent a tango watching evening in Buenos Aires.

Far from the Pampas is this lovely farmhouse where I spent a weekend with several chums and various teens belonging to them.

Here's the view of the Cumbrian countryside from the garden.  The little castellated tower is, or rather was in the day, an outside toilet.

It was an eating and drinking weekend but we managed a walk or two and an excursion on a local heritage railway.  I was back in a different part of Cumbria the following weekend for a saxophone course that also involved eating and drinking but no walking.

The closing words of Jo Clifford's play War in America were "Be kind!"  Now one knows that one has to be cruel to be kind but perhaps not to the extent of the nastiness, cruelty and sado-masochism culminating in death and invasion by terrorist gunmen that had gone before.

We'd gone to see the show to support the excellent scheme for young actors that is The Attic Collective and to get a peek into the Old Royal High School which is threatened with conversion into an unlovely hotel, though it may be be saved from the forces of mammon to become the new home of St Mary's Music School.

Let me share that peek with you.  First the space in which the performance took place.

Then two views of the same room as it was at two earlier points in time. 

And finally how it might look if the hotel development goes ahead

Now back to the show.  It was in many ways an excellent production.  The debating chamber was absolutely ideal for a play about political machinations and the company used it brilliantly and imaginatively.  The cast attacked their roles with vigour but there was a missing element.

The actors delivered the words well and there could be no complaint about their committment but I never had the impression that this was a possible world populated by real people.  There was a distinct lack of tension in scenes where we should have been gripped and, for me, a distinct lack of being engaged by the argument.  Did it seem just too far-fetched or did the writing fail to flesh out the characters sufficiently?  Or, as some of our party felt, did it really need age appropriate actors with a deal more life experience than these young people?

It was nonetheless worthwhile seeing a neglected play (reckoned too offensive by The Lyceum who commissioned it twenty years ago) and I look forward to the Collective's third outing which is The Threepenny Opera in September.

The Dissection Room at Summerhall is not as classy a space as the Sculpture Court but the costumes that swept through it last night proved that QMU has students as inventive and skilful as any in the city.  One of the most interesting aspects of the show was seeing how different students had visualised the same character.  They showed a couple of Mrs Peachums and at least three Lucy Lockits from The Beggars Opera.  One of those (alas no picture) was a decadent looking Lucius Lockit.

No picture of Lucius because as at the Art College snapping was a bit of a distraction from simply enjoying the show.  But I did take some and here are one or two that I particularly liked.

Lavinia from Titus Andronicus.  A trio of lads in Regency costumes rushed out after her to wipe up the blood that dripped from her mouth and dress onto the floor.  They performed a similar service for those who cast off some of their garments as they paraded, like the Marquise de Mertueil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Of the forty three students whose work was featured only two were male, an imbalance that maybe needs to be addressed just as efforts are made to encourage girls into STEM subjects. Maybe.

Anyway here's one boy's dance outfit.

Suitable for all forms of dance he reckons.  As long as you don't need to see where you're going.

At the show I picked up a flyer for an open air production of As You Like It by QMU Performing Arts students and staff, including I imagine the costume students.  It's in early June.  For my comfort if not safety from being rained on I've chosen a seat rather than a spot on the grass.

Inspired by Claire's enthusiasm over Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead I cast about to find an encore screening that I could get to.  Too full a diary to get there without foregoing a Friends of the Queen's Hall freebie concert but it was well worth it.  Tom Stoppard's play is a feast of wordsmithery and ingenious invention around the Hamlet story, and the Old Vic's production on an essentially bare stage abounded in fine acting and clever stagecraft.

The Grads had a greater staging challenge in presenting The Ladykillers in Assembly Roxy but rose to it.  Their excellent tumbledown house on stage spilling forwards into the centre and sides of the hall most effectively.  Each member of the criminal band led magnificently by Lawrence Waring was a piece of spot-on characterisation.  We had a slightly bewildered but morally firm and thoroughly believable old lady plus a host of delightful cameos.  Costumes and props (those musical instruments!) deserve a medal of their own.  A very good production slightly spoilt for anyone not in the front row by the lack of raked seating.

The Art College Performance Costume Show teemed with medal deserving outfits.  It opened with a bang as third year students poured into the sculpture court in richly coloured costumes inspired by the Hindu festival of Diwali. Diwali is a festival of lights and when the main lighting was dimmed lights incorporated in the costumes gleamed and shimmered as the students danced.

It was a spectacular start not equalled in the course of the hour but the imagination of design and skill of construction shone brightly from every piece that appeared.  I snatched a few blurry pics with my phone but mostly sat in awe at the talent on display.  Here's one of my better snaps, an example of costumes and puppets for James and the Magic Peach.

Will the Queen Margaret University students do as well?  A visit to Summerhall will be made to resolve that question.

Charlie Sonata at The Lyceum, Breakin' Convention and The Red Shoes at the Festival Theatre are shows I've enjoyed recently.  Fortunately I don't have to wrack my brains to describe them because Claire was of the company on each occasion and has written far more accurately, perspicaciously and entertainingly than I would so follow the links to learn more.

In the concert hall the SCO gave an excellent Missa Solemnis by Beethoven which I almost missed because I went to their usual home, The Queen's Hall, instead of the Usher Hall.  Fortunately I was a bit early and even more fortunately a combination of buses ran in my favour and I entered the auditorium simultaneously with the conductor.  I almost did the same for the next concert, getting on the wrong bus to start with.  That was Beethoven again, a superb and exuberant 7th Symphony.

The Usher Hall is the RSNO's Edinburgh home so I'm not likely to get on the wrong bus for their concerts and I enjoyed a Russian evening of Scriabin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky from them a couple of weeks ago.

The SNJO was also in action in the Usher Hall on the eve of International Jazz Day. They played Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain and his version of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.  On the day itself there was a big shindig in Havana and thanks to Youtube here it is.


The critics have generally been more enthusiastic than me about the films I've seen in recent weeks but I was pleased to see The Telegraph limit itself to two stars for The Handmaiden.  Melodramatic, verging on the ham, codswallop beautifully costumed and filmed that told me far more than I needed to know about lesbian sexual gymnastics. It had a well merited happy ending though.

The Sense of an Ending on the other hand rather petered out but on the way through told a not entirely unintereresting story about a letter unwisely written in his youth catching up on its author in later life.  I did sympathise with the protagonist or perhaps pitied him, even to the extent of not deploring his stalking like behaviour.

Even though he cuts a somewhat ridiculous figure it would be hard not to sympathise with the middle-aged doctor bewitched by a beautiful young tourist on the Greek island where he has washed up after what has clearly been an unsuccessful and unhappy life.  But that's an old man's perspective.  Younger cinemagoers might be revolted.  Suntan was I thought worth the four stars it got from The Guardian.

I couldn't be bothered with The Student though.  Not that there was anything wrong with the film I suppose but my antipathy to the bible beating scripture spouting character at the centre of it made it hard to enjoy.

Definitely the film I've enjoyed most is Lady Macbeth and here the critics are at one with me.  In a dankly oppressive country house somewhere in the north of England comes a young bride, purchased we are told by her father-in-law for a son who we quickly learn is unable or unwilling to consummate the marriage.  Father and son require her to do nothing more than wait indoors day and night to do their bidding.

It's no surprise that she breaks out of this prison in the absence of the two men to take deep breaths of fresh air in the open moorland.  No surprise either that she lusts after a healthy young groom nor that she gives way to that lust.

So we are set up for nasty happenings when first father-in-law then husband return.  And we get them.

The film's genesis is a Russian novella of 1865,  Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District that gave rise to the better known opera of the same name by Shostakovich.  I'm told the film has a different ending but I've neither read the novella nor seen the opera and I love this ending.

The film, as the Spectator said is "plain terrific".

This is Gartmore House near Aberfoyle where I spent the Easter weekend with a score of sax players.  We did a lot of playing and filled in the rest of the hours of the day with agreeable socialising.

The house has some lovely large rooms each decorated in individual style.  I particularly liked the one with a cornice formed of a pattern of ships in relief, arising no doubt from its period under the ownership of a shipping family.  It's also associated with Robert Cunninghame-Graham who delighted in the name of Don Roberto when he enjoyed the gaucho life in Argentina prior to riding into Scottish political life weaving through Liberal and Labour till ending up as first president of the Scottish National Party.

 

The following weekend I spent in Elie with old schoolfriends.  The sun shone all weekend though it was fairly cold much of the time.  We walked about the beach and admired the views across the Forth to the Lothians.

My chums are into fine dining so we did some of that. The food was delicious but I'd have enjoyed larger portions and smaller bills.  That's my brutish and uncultured side showing through. We also wandered about the various East Neuk villages and enjoyed a show at the Byre in St. Andrews in which Liz Lochead entertained us with her poetry underscored here and there by a chap on a tenor sax.

In Crail, which is possibly the loveliest of the villages, we came across this warning sign and a tankful of the beasties. Undeterred a dead portion was purchased for taking down south for Monday's tea by one of the party.