Planet Lem: A Sci-Fi Theatre Extravaganza

The most visually extraordinary show I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe was a production called Planet Lem by Polish theatre group Teatr Biuro Podrozy who I had seen give a stunning version of Macbeth in 2007. (See this post). Based on the works of Stanislaw Lem the show took place out of doors in a courtyard where the company were able to use lights, smoke and flares to create an unreality as convincing as any in a big budget film. The story was somewhat confusing as there was little dialogue, though a black and white recording of an interview with Lem that appeared on one of the screens explained some of what was unfolding. I still had no idea what some of the scenes were about though! This didn't really matter though as it was a visual feast. Non-flash photography was allowed  so here are some of my photos of this amazing show. (Note for photographers - these were all taken with the Sony NEX 7 and Sigma 30mm lens at 3200 ISO).

Edinburgh in Festival Mode

Photos taken while wandering Edinburgh during the Festivals, all with the Sony NEX 7 camera and most with the Sigma 30mm lens, which is ideal for street photography.

Essential refreshment

Menus & Rain

Venues are Everywhere

Grecian Lighting

New Usage

Johnny Blues

Poster Man

Optimim on the Royal Mile

A Meeting of Minds

Empty Space, Crowded Space

In the Grassmarket

Artwork

Famous Son

Conversations

Edinburgh Festivals: Music

The cast of This Land giving an encore on the steps of the venue.

At my almost annual urban interlude at the Edinburgh Festivals ('almost' because other activities, such as the Pacific Northwest Trail, do sometimes intrude) I've been to several musical shows, my attendance at one of which surprised even me. All of them are worth seeing though only one is still on in Edinburgh. My review starts with this.

This Land: The Story of Woody Guthrie

Described as a musical rollercoaster this is an exuberant, enjoyable and inspirational celebration of the life of Woody Guthrie, undoubtedly one of the most significant figures in American popular music of the last century, from Interplay of Leeds. The versatile cast play a variety of characters and swap instruments regularly. All seven male cast play Woody at different stages of his life with the lone woman member playing everyone from his mother to both his wives to a BBC presenter. Using a basic but effective set the cast conjure up freight trains, hobo life, houses and hospitals. The music is great of course and much of it familiar -  I knew most of the songs despite not owning any Woody Guthrie music (a defect I have now remedied). The singing and playing are both excellent and really capture the feeling of a time when folk music really was popular music of the masses. Whilst mostly energetic and upbeat there are poignant moments - deaths, divorce, illness - but Guthrie is always shown as being strong and positive right up to the time when near his death after years in hospital he is shown handing on the spirit of his music, not this time to the next stage in his own life but to a successor - Bob Dylan.


The Makropulos Case

I am not an opera lover. In fact it's fair to say that I've spent most of my life with a strong dislike of opera. So  my ever attending a full opera seemed unlikely. However a friend in Opera North was playing violin in a production of Janacek's The Makropolos Case at the Edinburgh International Festival so I surprised my partner, who does like opera, by saying I would go along, even though an opera about a legal case didn't  sound too promising. What I found was that actually going to an opera both confirmed and confounded my prejudices. The music was dramatic and thrilling with great dynamics. It surged and rolled and faded and really powered the production along. The singing was, well, okay. I didn't dislike it but it's not a style of singing I warm to - it sounds rather emotionless to my ear. The acting and melodrama conveyed the feelings well however. The sets were surprisingly interesting, given they consist of a lawyers office and a hotel. The story, which I didn't know, was strong enough to hold my interest. I appreciated having the words displayed as I couldn't always follow the singing and anyway sometimes I concentrated more on the music and let the words run as background. The audience and my companions were all enthusiastic so for those who like and understand opera it's obviously good. I guess I was pleasantly surprised but not so much that I'll be dashing off to more opera anytime soon.

Richard Thompson

If there was one performance I'd have been very surprised and disappointed if I hadn't found enthralling it was this solo show by one of Britain's greatest songwriters and guitarists of the last forty plus years. Somehow I'd managed not to see Richard Thompson since the early 1970s, on his farewell tour with Fairport Convention, so I was very pleased to finally manage to attend a concert and even more pleased that it was even better than I expected. Over the years Thompson's voice has grown in depth, range and emotional intensity and he is now a very good singer indeed, which was shown especially on the slower, sadder songs. As to his guitar playing, well, it's always been good but on this occasion it was really stunning, especially when he let rip on the uptempo numbers. At times I could swear I could hear bass, rhythm and lead at the same time, all from one acoustic guitar. The songs were a mix of old favourites from his now vast back catalogue and four good-sounding new ones from an album coming out next year. It was a good range of songs too - everything from the pathos of Beeswing through the rock'n roll of Valerie to the humour of Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands. A brilliant hour and half's music.

Edinburgh Fringe on Arthur's Seat/ Images of Arthur's Seat

One of the great joys of Edinburgh is the miniature mountain of Arthur's Seat. Anytime the traffic, crowds, buildings and urban intensity become too much you can wander up this rocky volcanic remnant and feel a touch of the wild. Usually you can escape the festivals too. But not this August as every day during the Festival Fringe, whatever the weather, comedian Barry Ferns is up there with his show This Arthur's Seat Belongs To Lionel Ritchie. On a sunny day it's a pleasant if surreal way to spend twenty minutes. In a storm it could be quite bizarre. To enter the 'venue' the audience passes through a wooden door frame then Ferns entertains with gentle humour, audience banter and some information on just where we are - sitting on top of a 350 million year old volcano. Then it's back through the door and the show is over.

There's no dashing off to the nearest bar or cafe though. There isn't one. Instead you have the crags, flowers, grass and sky of Arthur's Seat. Any outdoors lover who finds themselves in Edinburgh should go up there. I spent a few hours wandering round this surprisingly complex little hill reveling in the unusual feeling of being in wild nature yet with a city spread out before me.

An Urban Diversion at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Emerging from Waverley Station into the urban roar of Edinburgh is always somewhat disorientating after the quiet of the hills. The noise, smell, traffic speed, crowds and buildings all amount to an overwhelming sensory onslaught. This is even more so during the festival season, when the throngs multiply and there are buskers, entertainers and stalls crying for attention, not to mention the hordes of leafleters thrusting flyers for a myriad shows at you. But it was for the Festival Fringe that I had come to Edinburgh, for a few days dose of theatre and entertainment. And the carnival atmosphere is exciting and there is a feeling of creativity and imagination that ripples everywhere.

Choosing a tiny sliver of shows from the many hundreds available is a difficult task. Luckily my partner Denise likes going through the Fringe catalogue to see what catches her eye – and I am happy to go along with her choices. There are some companies whose productions we’ve seen before to look out for but overall it’s good to see new people. This year we saw several excellent shows and one real stand-out. The latter was The Girl With The Iron Claws by The Wrong Crowd, a powerful and atmospheric version of an old Nordic myth that involved puppetry, music and the clever and effective use of some simple props. This is an enthralling production that hung in my mind long after it was over. There’s an outdoor angle too – the iron claws are needed so the heroine can climb the Glass Mountain.

Also good, though not quite as compelling, was River People’s Little Matter, another show involving puppets and music. With elements of quantum theory and mythology included this play told the story of one man’s struggle to overcome his apparently miserable and dull life. The setting was interesting in itself – a wagon theatre set up in a cobbled courtyard. The tent-like covering for this little travelling theatre can be seen in the photo above. It was held in place with an interesting structure of poles and ropes. During the show there was a storm with rain and wind rattling the canvas, which added to the overall atmosphere of the play.

Shakespeare always seems to be a dominant presence at the Fringe and we saw four shows derived from his plays. Macbeth made up two of these, a fairly straight production by Flatpacktheatre that reminded me of how powerful the language of this great play is and Shakespeare for Breakfast, an entertaining version of the same play as a high school musical (and with free coffee and croissants). Also less serious was Shakespeare Bingo, a fun look at Titus Andronicus with bingo cards and some very good acting. Different again was Backhand Theatre’s acrobatic The Tempest with performers on ropes really creating the feeling of a magical world.

Perhaps the strangest show we saw was Belt Up’s Outland, an intense play about Lewis Carroll and the effect of his fantasy world on his health – or was it the other way round? Performed in a small room with most of the audience sitting on the floor round the walls it had a claustrophobic and slightly disturbing air, jumping abruptly from manic action and humour to quiet seriousness and sadness. There was an excellent rendition of The Hunting of the Snark but rather too much of Sylvie and Bruno, a work I hadn’t read and doubt many others have either.

Away from plays I was pleased to have a ticket for a recording of a favourite radio show, Just A Minute, courtesy of James Baster, whose Festafriend looks a good way to meet up with others if you’re in Edinburgh alone or would just like a companion for shows your friends don’t want to see. Just A Minute was excellent, as expected, and I was delighted that Paul Merton was on the show, as his sharp wit is always one of the highlights when he appears. It was good to share some of the humour that doesn’t make the radio version too!

The lunchtime before we left gave a dose of scientific humour from Robin Ince and others at a free event (part of the PBH Free Fringe) called Carl Sagan Is My God, Oh and Richard Feynman Too. This was a good mixture of comedy and science and very entertaining. There were even experiments!

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Reviews

Part of the delight of being in Edinburgh during the festival month of August is to roam the streets watching the jugglers, musicians, singers and actors performing, advertising their shows or just wandering about in costume (sometimes it’s unclear whether the gaudily dressed person ambling by is from a show or not – maybe they always look like that). Amongst the mostly vigorous and noisy performers there are always “living statues” dotted around, posing stationary on bollards and chairs. This year being painted head to foot with silver or gold paint was popular with many of them, as was occasionally moving, often to the surprise of observers. The highlight of the street entertainment for me this year was blues singer Richard Blues, who mixed sharp patter with neat guitar work and soulful singing. A few weeks before I heard him someone videoed him and uploaded it on to You Tube where there are several other videos of him in Edinburgh and London. He’s been in Edinburgh in previous years but somehow I’d managed to miss him. I shall look out for him in future.

Apart from the outdoor themed shows I’ve reviewed in my last three posts I saw eight other shows. (I must here give credit to my partner Denise for spending time going through the Fringe programme and selecting shows she thought I would like – she does enjoy doing this!). All were classified as theatre rather than comedy though several were funnier than comedians I’ve seen at the Fringe – this year we decided not to bother with comedy shows as too expensive for what they are unless you happen to hit on one that is really funny amongst the myriads claiming to be hilarious.

Having enjoyed it last year we again went to Shakespeare for Breakfast, where you get a hot drink and a croissant to go along with a lively and amusing interpretation of a play, this year A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream popped up again in Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies, an amusing story of elves, witches and wizards that references Shakespeare frequently. Performed with gusto by a student theatre group from Southampton University this was a fun show with Terry Pratchett’s wit, humour and imagination providing good entertainment as always, with just that edge of disturbing seriousness that makes the stories more than just good romps. The performances were enthusiastic and lively. Magrat, one of the witches, and the totally balmy Dean of the Unseen University were played particularly well.

Long before Terry Pratchett another fantasy writer mixed humour with grimness. As a child I always found Lewis Carroll’s Alice tales disquieting and dark though I still loved them. In their stage version of Alice Through The Looking Glass Daysleeper Productions brought out some of the paradoxes and possibilities of the story and added touches of Victorian vaudeville and decadence. The small set consisting of a revolving wardrobe and various flaps and boxes worked well, allowing the excellent cast to conjure up the various scenarios of the story. The sense of mystery of the original was well caught along with the incipient cruelty and bullying. Never have flowers seemed so sinister!

Bullying turned up again in another version of a Victorian Classic. Broken Holmes by Robin Johnson has Sherlock Holmes as an arrogant and abusive drug addict who treats the sensitive and thoughtful Dr Watson appallingly. The play is a very funny farce, well-acted, especially by James Bober as the manic Holmes, and with many references to Holmes stories.

Moving back in the history of English literature Geoffery Chaucer Lives features two of the Canterbury Tales as told by actors playing four immortal alchemists who are travelling through the ages with Geoffrey Chaucer’s unconscious but still living body. The production is witty and entertaining and the crudity of the Miller’s Tale is a reminder that some of the “shocking” comedians at the Fringe are perhaps not as modern as they think!

Returning to myth and fantasy but without much in the way of humour Siege Perilous’s King Arthur was a serious play about political power. Written in blank verse by Lucy Nordberg it was at times hard to follow, partly due to the unclear and hurried diction of some of the cast. The story is fairly true to the Arthurian legends and only the modern dress suggests a link to today’s politics. I quite enjoyed it but felt it could have been done much better. It has received good reviews so perhaps the cast were having an off day.

The highlight of all the shows I saw was a modern drama about a very serious and depressing subject. In Search of Miss Landmine tells the story of an Angolan girl who loses a leg when she steps on a mine and then goes on to win a beauty contest for land mine victims. Woven around this are facts about landmines and the story of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. This doesn’t sound promising material for an enjoyable play and we probably wouldn’t have thought of attending if it hadn’t been for the company putting it on - Teatro Dei Borgia- who we had seen and been impressed by at the 2007 and 2008 Fringes. The high quality continued with Miss Landmine. The acting was superb – powerful, emotional and gripping. I’d be happy to see this company in just about anything.

Photo info: Living statue on the Royal Mile. Ricoh GRD III, 1/800@F5.6, ISO 64, raw file converted to JPEG in Lightroom 2.4

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Walden

Henry David Thoreau’s writings, especially Walden, his account of living in a cabin in the woods, have achieved iconic status amongst wilderness lovers and conservationists. His writings in the mid nineteenth century marked a transition point in attitudes to the wild. In Wilderness and the American Mind (essential reading for anyone interested in the development of ideas about wilderness, even if not American) Roderick Nash says “Thoreau led the intellectual revolution that was beginning to invest wilderness with attractive rather than repulsive qualities”. (Of course this had started earlier in Europe with the Romantic Movement and writers like Rousseau and Wordsworth).

Walden is an unusual book, a mix of autobiography, natural history and philosophy. Nothing much actual happens. Thoreau builds a simple cabin, grows beans, goes fishing and, mostly, watches the pond and the woods, observing the water and the wind, the birds and the animals, and meditates on every aspect of human existence. This does not seem a good basis for theatre so I was curious when I heard that Edinburgh company Magnetic North were putting on a production at the Fringe. Adapted from the book by Magnetic North’s artistic director Nicholas Bone the play is a solo performance by Ewan Donald. The setting is unconventional and designed so the actor can see and be in contact with all members of the audience. Indeed, he starts out as a member of the audience. Curved wooden benches form an oval that is open at each end. A pile of sand sits in the middle of the oval. With no rows of seats and no separate stage the feeling is one of community and closeness. Wherever you sit you are looking across at other members of the audience and never far from the actor.

Speaking lines from Walden the actor playing Thoreau (the notes for the play say “the actor should not think that he or she is playing Thoreau himself” but they clearly are with lines like “I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond”) addresses the audience some of the time and at others appears lost in a reverie, talking to himself or pausing to reflect. Using simple props – a wooden staff, the pile of sand, the benches – Ewan Donald acts out Thoreau’s life at Walden. The sand becomes the rows of beans and then the surface of the pond. The staff becomes a hoe and then the paddle of his boat as he strikes it against the end of a bench, which has become his boat. There are pauses and periods of silence when the words can sink in and the quiet of the room becomes the silence of solitude and thoughtfulness. The performance is slow, contemplative and immensely powerful. There in a room in the heart of a busy city the wilds are conjured by the words of Thoreau and the intensity of Ewan Donald’s acting.

Walden left me feeling relaxed and peaceful. Emerging from the theatre onto the noisy, crowded Edinburgh streets was a shock. Somehow the traffic, the buildings, the din, the smells, the hardness of urban straight lines didn’t seem real and I drifted through them towards the railway station. Walden was my last show of the 2009 Edinburgh festivals and I was returning home to my house in the woods and fields. After listening to Thoreau’s words it seemed the right thing to do.

Photo info: My old copy of Walden and the script of the Walden production. Canon EOS 450D, Canon EF 50mm 1:1.8 II lens, 1/60 @ f2.5, ISO 1600, raw file converted to JPEG in Lightroom 2.4

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: The Tao of Everest

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: The Tao of Everest

Listed under theatre in the Festival Fringe guide and described as “an emotional and uplifting storytelling experience” the Tao of Everest is basically a climbing lecture and something I would more expect to find at a Mountain Festival than at the Fringe. Or perhaps performer/speaker Ian Woodall is just ahead of the field and we can expect to see a plethora of outdoor talks at arts festivals in the future. Andy Kirkpatrick would certainly raise more laughs than some of the comedians I’ve seen in Edinburgh.

Ian Woodall was leader of the controversial 1996 South African Everest Expedition and reached the summit of Everest via the South-East Ridge. Since then he has climbed the mountain again from the north side and been back there to lay to rest the body of a friend who died high on the mountain. There have been a number of failed attempts too and next year he’s going back to try an ascent without bottled oxygen.

Looking at the Tao of Everest website it appears that this presentation is usually designed for corporate events to inspire “leadership” in business people. There are somewhat over-the-top comments from organisations from Microsoft to the Atomic Energy Authority and Greater Manchester Police. I wonder if Ian Woodall has altered his presentation for an arts audience rather than a business one. The quotes on the website were all in the Edinburgh talk so maybe every audience hears the stories the same way. Only a few people had wandered through the rain to the talk on the night I went (it is a rather out of the way venue) but maybe other shows were better attended. The walk away from the bright lights of the city centre was worthwhile though as Ian Woodall gave a good performance, using a few simple props plus snippets of music, recorded speech and slides. He’s a demonstrative and entertaining speaker, moving around and using his body to show distance, slope angles, emotions and more. The stories of the climbs were interwoven with his personal love story (which was perhaps a little too sentimental – my stepdaughter certainly thought so) and the emotional effects of losing friends on the mountain. There was some humour mixed in with the seriousness and tragedy too. He puts a great deal into the performance, which lasts two hours plus extra time for questions. Doing this for 25 nights without a break, as he is, sounds exhausting. But then so does climbing Everest. The mountain looks wonderful in the pictures of course but hearing about long snow slogs up and down, up and down, carrying gear, installing camps, building a structure to allow for a summit attempt, doesn’t make me want to be there. I’ve trekked to Everest Base Camp and climbed Kala Patar at dawn to watch the sunrise but that’s as far as I would want to go. I have great admiration for those who go further, whether experienced mountaineers or paying clients. Ian Woodall makes it all to clear what the risks are and how hellish big mountain climbing can be. It’s clearly addictive though. It must be. He’s going back.

Photo info: Everest from Kala Patar. Canon EOS 300D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm @28mm, 1/100@F8, ISO 100, raw file converted to JPEG in Lightroom 2.4

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2008

Rather than head for the hills I spent last week in Edinburgh attending shows at the famous Fringe. Given that this has been the wettest August on record and I had spent a day in torrential rain on Beinn Eighe just a few days before heading for Edinburgh I was not unhappy to forego the wilds for a while. Especially as it rained heavily much of the time I was in the city, my rain jacket seeing more use than it often does during a week in the hills. I went to fifteen shows at the Fringe - three serious and grim Lorca plays, free and excellent folk music in the National Museum, the amusing Shakespeare for Breakfast (spot the references!), an energetic and intense solo performance of Beowulf, a rather less intense though still good solo version of Candide, an entertaining play based on Terry Pratchett’s Mort, two thought-provoking plays with music called Who’s Afraid of Howlin’ Wolf (one of my favourite singers – though none of his music was played) and Kerouac and All That Jazz (bringing back memories of a writer who influenced me greatly as a teenager), the strange and intriguing Henry IV by Pirandello, and one show by a star, Simon Callow’s engaging telling of two little known Dickens stories.

Unlike last year shows with outdoor themes were rare. One of the few was stand-up comedian Mark Olver’s Ramble On. As Mark walked 500 miles from his home in Bristol to Edinburgh I felt I really couldn’t miss his show if only to show support for another long distance walker. The show was based around the walk, which had clearly been a challenge for someone who hadn’t done any long distance walking before. Mark Olver was sponsored by Berghaus (and he thanked them profusely during the show) and there’s a blog on his walk on the Berghaus website. Some of the show was very funny. I loved the rant about using his tiny one-man tent for the first time in pouring rain, though I’m not sure which tent has so little room that you have to get in your sleeping bag outside! However some of the exchanges with the audience were a little too long and a bit predictable (is it required for stand-up comedians to question audience members on their sex lives?). Mark did say that some of his audience expected more about the walk (and I guess I might fall into that category) whilst some expected less so he had a balancing act to do to try and keep everyone happy. I wasn’t asked about my sex life but I was picked out as a serious rambler – and there was me thinking I looked the part of a sophisticated, urban arts lover (perhaps I should have left the rucksack and fleece jacket behind).

I also saw one show in a tent, albeit a big top, and the play was A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, which is set in a forest. The production by the travelling Footsbarn Theatre Company was magical, with excellent acting, beautiful and strange costumes and banners, a lovely set, intriguing and atmospheric music and a sense of wonder and mystery. By the finish it was easier to believe there was a forest outside the tent than a city.

However the drama that had the most impact on me was Lorca’s Blood Wedding by the Colet Players, a young all-female company. This bleak and shocking story of love, revenge and death was portrayed with power and passion with a stand-out performance by the actor playing the Mother, one of the central figures. So compelling and potent was this actor that my partner and I felt overwhelmed and privileged to have experienced such a performance. We had a feeling that we had seen a great actor in the making. The rest of the cast were good too, especially the actor playing the Bride. Blood Wedding is the first in Lorca’s trilogy of rural tragedies and we saw the other two plays as well – Inside Yerma and The House of Bernando Alba. Both were good productions but neither had an actor with the presence or authority of the one playing the Mother in Blood Wedding. There were only 15 or so people at the performance of Blood Wedding and little information was available about the cast or the production with no promotional flyers or advertisements. It would be a shame if this production vanished due to this as it really was magnificent.

The photo shows Calton Hill, where the Footsbarn Theatre pitched their big top. Photo info: Canon EOS 450D, Canon EF-S 18-55 mm IS@55mm, f8@1/320, ISO 100, raw file converted to JPEG in DxO Optics Pro