Books & Paintings: A Visit to Edinburgh

Mount Adams, Pacific Crest Trail

A few days down south in Edinburgh recently included a meeting with a publisher, an art exhibition and a talk at a book festival as well as time with family.

The publisher was Sandstone Press and my meeting with head man Bob Davidson and designer Heather MacPherson of Raspberry Creative Type was to finalise details for my book on the Pacific Crest Trail, Rattlesnakesand Bald Eagles. I now know the format, how many words (I’d better start writing!), and the picture requirements. My photos are all Kodachrome 64 slides, the walk taking place long before digital, and I’ve just spent an evening sorting out 200 to send to Bob and Heather so a cover and around 150 for inside can be selected and scanned. For hours now I’ve been back in 1982 on that glorious walk.

Two days after my book meeting I was talking about wilderness writing and reading from Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams at the Portobello Book Festival. I shared the event with Kellan MacInnes, author of Caleb’sList, and it was interesting hearing how another writer works – not so differently it seems, except that he’s writing before I’m usually awake. After the event a stroll along the sea front and a pint in a pub with fellow outdoor writers David Lintern and Phil Turner was a good way to unwind.

Between the publisher and the book festival I visited the Peter Doig exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery. I didn’t know much about this artist but I was attracted by the big banners and painted pillars outside the gallery. Doig is an artist who does big, bold paintings with dense deep colours and solid powerful images. He’s a very ‘painterly’ painter in that whilst his works aren’t abstract they aren’t naturalistic either and you can see the daubs of paint and the trickles where it has run. This exhibition was about his work since moving to Trinidad in 2002 and the landscapes were lush and tropical. I liked the colour and the power and the size of the paintings. He’s an artist I’ll look out for in the future.

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 International Festival: St Kilda Island of Birdmen

Last night I went to see one of the star events at this years Edinburgh International Festival,the multi-media St Kilda Island of the Birdmen,which involves film, acrobatics, dance, music and song. The production tells the story in symbolic form of the people of St Kilda in the years leading up to the evacuation of the island in 1930. Visually it is stunning with acrobats climbing and hanging from ropes to show the St Kilda men collecting birds from the cliffs. The films, projected behind the cast throughout most of the performance,are a fascinating mixture of old films from the early twentieth century shot on St Kilda and modern film of the show performed there in 2007 plus pseudo-documentary sections of film makers returning to the island with a man playing a descendant of former inhabitants. The black and white film of the 2007 performance is cleverly merged with the old films of the actual islanders. Sombre music, much of it cello-based, adds atmosphere and the singing of Althy McCormack, who plays islander Catriona, is haunting and beautiful. There is also wonderful film of St Kilda with dramatic shots of sea stacks rising into misty skies. Some of this was filmed from a boat and the swaying of the water and movement of the islands adds to the realistic feeling.

Whilst I enjoyed the production and would certainly recommend it I did have one problem and that was the language, which was a mix of French, Gaelic and English. My ancient O level French was not up to more than a fraction of the French singing and my Gaelic is non-existent, though I did know a few words. This meant that following the story was difficult and some of the longer sung passages with no visual displays did have me starting to feel restless. Subtitles would have been welcome!

Four of us went to see the show and the reactions afterwards were interesting. My partner Denise thought it was wonderful. I thought it was good as did my stepdaughter Hazel whilst our friend Pat disliked it as too sentimental (a love story lay at the heart of the drama)and not a true reflection of what life would have been like on St Kilda.

Photo info: Adam Smith looks down on the festival crowds on the Royal Mile. Ricoh GRD III, 1/60 @f9, ISO 64, raw file processed 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

Memories & Iron Men

Last week I returned to the flat Lancashire coast where I was brought up for a family gathering. Here on the vast beaches and amongst the sand dunes and pinewoods – without a mountain in sight – my love of nature and wild places developed. On this visit I discovered an old journal, perhaps my first, kept in the 1960s and headed “Outings” and recording outdoor trips, mostly local. Many of the entries are lists of birds and plants – I had a hankering to be a field naturalist – and there is little to suggest what I was feeling. That I kept going back is all there is to show how important these walks were. A touch of excitement and pleasure does show in an account of a school trip to the Lake District, where we climbed Scafell Pike, which must have been one of my first ascents, in late March. I record that from Angle Tarn “we were walking on snow that covered the whole ground and it was very, very hot …. so hot that we had taken to eating snow and rubbing it over our hands and faces”. I thought the view from the summit “magnificent” and regretted that we couldn’t stay longer but did write that “happy and weary, we set off down the mountain”. My joy in climbing hills began early and has not abated in the slightest over the years.

On this return visit my brother John drove me and my partner Denise past the still familiar pinewoods and sand dunes to Crosby beach, where the wide expanse of sand stretching out to the distant sea under a gigantic spreading sky also felt familiar, as if I had been there just yesterday. We had come here to see Anthony Gormley’s Another Place installation, which consists of 100 life size iron figures cast from the artist’s body spread across two miles of beach and all facing out to sea. Initially I couldn’t distinguish these figures from the dog walkers, joggers, families and other people scattered on the sand. Then I noticed that some of the people were strangely rigid and still. Approaching the Iron Men – as they are popularly known – showed them to be strange indeed, and becoming stranger with every tide. The tidal range is huge here with the sea almost disappearing into the horizon at low tide. The Iron Men are scattered between the high and low tide marks. Each one is covered by the sea for different lengths of time and this has had a marked effect on how they have changed in the three years they have stood facing the ocean. All of them are slowly becoming part of nature and less like statues. Barnacles and seaweed are colonising these new rocks. Creeping around the lower legs of those close to the high tide mark, shrouding the heads of those out at low tide. Some are slowly sinking, their feet vanished, as if in quicksand. Faces are fading and smoothing on others, the features dissolving into rust. They reminded me strongly of the dead sailors on the Flying Dutchman in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, human figures that are merging with the creatures of the sea, a curious connection between Anthony Gormley’s artworks and a Hollywood blockbuster. The presence of the Iron Men on the beach creates an air on unreality and strangeness. What are these silent figures looking for, endlessly staring out to sea?

The photo of the Iron Man was taken on a Ricoh GR-D, f8@1/320, ISO 64, raw file converted to JPEG and processed in Photoshop Elements 5.

Between Two Worlds: Glenmore Forest

Dusk was falling along with the rain as I descended into Glenmore Forest after a wintry day on Cairn Gorm. The narrow muddy path was overgrown, steep and greasy with wet fallen leaves. Slithering down this slick trail I used trees and shrubs as handholds as I struggled to keep my balance. Far below a line of orange lights traced a bright line through the now dark forest. Then strange music echoed through the trees, a repeating snatch of tune played on what sounded like bells and flutes. Emerging on the wide track on the floor of the glen I discovered that this was part of Between Two Worlds, a Forestry Commission Scotland event for the Highland Year of Culture.

A few days later I returned to experience the event in full. Between Two Worlds was created by sculptor and environmental artist Diane Maclean and light and sound artist Malcolm Innes with music by Bob Pegg to “celebrate the beauty and mystery of Glenmore Forest”. The event involves a two mile walk along a track and some purpose-laid boardwalks past various lighting installations while eerie acoustic music ripples through the trees. A river of silver light led out to a pool of light in an open boggy area, coloured lights turned trees red, purple and green, lights playing on a concrete bridge gave the illusion of walking on the water flowing beneath, lights shone through pine needle fronds to create curious patterns on the track. The centrepiece of the event took place at lovely An Lochan Uaine – the Green Lochan. Spotlights dimmed and coloured fountains and water spouts to erupted like liquid fireworks, creating fast moving patterns of light, while ethereal and unearthly music range around. Here the two worlds were meant to be our world and the world of faerie, there being a legend that fairies living in the hill above came here to wash their clothes, which turned the water green.

Another two worlds touched on were those of humanity and wild nature. Two square lights set against darkness gave the illusion of a cottage, lit from within. A woman singing rang out from the forest dwelling. And from deep in the trees came the sound of wolves howling. Away from the cottage into the depths of the forest pairs of bright orange-yellow lights flicked on and off, the eyes of the wolves. Behind them a long shaft of pale light mimicked the moon shining through the trees. The last sight brought back memories of walking and skiing through a moonlit forest without any lights or cottages. I’d prefer that to this event but it was entertaining and atmospheric and imaginative and worth seeing. I hope that when it is over all traces of it vanish from the forest though – 18 days is long enough to have long cables, generators and the rest of the paraphernalia intruding into the natural scene. I also hope that those who have enjoyed the event will venture out into a forest at night and experience the real mystery and wonder found there.

The photo shows lights playing on pines. Photo info: Canon EOS 350D, Canon 18-55mm IS lens at 28mm, f4@1/15, ISO 1600, raw file converted to JPEG and processed in DxO Optics Pro. The shot was taken handheld. Without the Image Stabilizer lens I doubt I could have taken a sharp image. Even with IS I still underexposed by three stops.

Edinburgh Festival Review Part 3

Gormenghast

This adaptation of Mervyn Peake's weird and macabre Gormenghast trilogy, written by playwright John Constable, was exciting, noisy, colourful and, appropriately, mysterious. It's a promenade production with the actors moving round and through the audience between different stages. The venue was moved at the last minute. I don't know what the original one was like but the replacement seemed too small and too low without the space and high stages needed for such an energetic production. Even moving round with the actors it was difficult to see everything. Despite this it was a fine production, visually stimulating and well acted by the young female cast. Some of the acting and costume design seemed influenced by the excellent and under-rated BBC TV Gormenghast series, which is no criticism. Peake's story of a decaying aristocratic family - the Groans - and their downfall at the hands of sinister young upstart Steerpike was portrayed as much by action as words and it would probably be difficult to follow for anyone not familiar with the story. Although there was the occasional lapse into mere recitation the lines were mostly delivered confidently and with passion. I was particularly impressed by Amelia Peterson as the seductive and manipulative Steerpike and Alice Hodgson as the Wild Child, who gibbered and cried furiously, while Camilla Thompsell as Swelter the evil cook was suitably disgusting.

Escaping Hamlet

The last theatre production we attended begged the questions as to how many interpretations of Shakespeare there can be. An unlimited number it seems but I doubt many are as unusual and original as this Italian production by Teatro Dei Borgia / Compagnia Delle Formiche and Andy Jordan Productions, directed by Giianpiero Borgia and written by Natalia Capria and featuring an Italian/British cast. It's set in a surreal world that slips between Shakespeare's Denmark (the Swedish army is approaching throughout the play) and the world of today(actors wearing iPODs, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and different versions of "My Way" ringing round the theatre). The themes of the play are duty, destiny and the nature of theatre. Two of the principal characters are transvestite performers who don't performer (played well by Alessandro Sciusco and Antonello Taurino) but whose image of themselves as on the stage is central to their identity. Rather than avenge his father Hamlet wants to run away from the alcohol fuelled debauchery of Denmark to Paris and become an actor. The tone of the play shifts from comedy to pathos and tragedy and back again, sometimes with confusing speed. The costumes and set are splendid and the acting confident and compelling, drawing the audience into the mad dream world of this fantasy Denmark. Jessica Sedler is excellent as Kate, a servant who is also a voice of sanity, and Charlie Palmer is suitably doubting and uncertain as Hamlet.

I Served The King Of England

This was reckoned to be one of the highlights of the Film Festival. Based on a novel by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabel the film is directed by Jiri Menzel and set in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It's a satirical film that tells the story of Dittie, whose ambition is to own a hotel and become a millionaire, and who works his way up to this position, mostly as a waiter. An innocent in many ways Dittie is happy to accommodate anything that aids his dream, including the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, until the Communist takeover after the war sees him sent to jail. The story is told by Dittie as an older and wiser man, after nearly 15 years in jail, but the key character is him as a young waiter. The film is lavish and opulent, beautifully shot with echoes of Peter Greenaway. The lushness, the graceful choreography, the light-hearted piano music contrasted with the cattle trucks full of prisoners and the war imagery gives the film a moral ambiguity that is disturbing (one of our party hated it, feeling it was a deeply immoral film). Is Dittie a hero? Should the film maker evoke sympathy for someone who joins the Nazis (though without any real understanding of what they are) and doesn't oppose the war? Perhaps Dittie should be contrasted with the head waiter at the hotel he works in when the Nazis take over who is eventually taken away, head held high, as he refuses to salute Hitler and accept the Nazi dominance. That the film raises such questions and challenges the viewer gives it a depth that belies some of the pretty filming and tinkling piano.

Martha McBrier: so you think you're a good heckler?

Edinburgh was awash with comedy shows (are there that many funny people around?) and I was assured that going to a late night comedy show was an essential part of attending the Festival. On the somewhat flimsy basis that she apparently once knew John Manning of TGO magazine and TGO Challenge fame we went to see Martha McBrier, a Glaswegian comic with a show with a rather provocative title. For some of the audience it was a bit of a challenge though sitting at the back of the cavern like room (with drips falling from the rough brick roof) we mostly missed her attentions. McBrier was everything I expected a late-night stand-up comedian to be - crude, rude and (mildly) shocking. The show wasn't so much about heckling as audience participation with McBrier getting us to vote and comment on her jokes (some good, some appalling). The humour, and much of the show was very funny, lay in her interaction with the audience rather than the jokes themselves and she did find a few people who delighted in sparring with her. The show was light relief after all the rather serious drama we saw but enjoyable and worthwhile for all that.

The picture shows a street scene in Edinburgh during the festival. Photo info: Ricoh GR-D, f9 @ 1/640, ISO 400, raw file converted to JPEG in Photoshop Elements 5 and processed in DxO Optics Pro.

Edinburgh Festival Review Part 2

Babble

Arriving in Edinburgh at Waverley Station we made our way through the sudden and startling throng to the Half-Price Hut on Princes Street and bought tickets for a play called Babble that my partner had marked as sounding interesting in her Fringe guide and about which I knew nothing. Within a few hours of arrival we were in a small, dark, almost claustrophobic room listening as a strange, dark, somewhat claustrophobic monologue unfolded. Babble is about a world consisting of an endless library full of books no one can understand, a nightmare world of futile quests for meaning. A disturbed and disturbing Gothic figure welcomes us in and tells us, haltingly and with many asides, about his tragic and seemingly futile life. This sounds potentially depressing and possibly dull but in fact the play is engrossing and thought-provoking and there's an excellent performance by Jonathan Clarkson as the at times sinister, at times pathetic Librarian. The play was written by Eric Conway, based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. As an introduction to the Fringe it was a serious and intense work, presaging much of what was to come.

The Last South: Pursuit of the Pole

A few days later we saw another play that was, in its own way, about meaning and purpose. This tells the story of Scott and Amundsen's race for the South Pole and was adapted from expedition diaries by GM Calhorn. The two protagonists, played by Adrian Lukis (Scott) and Jamie Lee (Amundsen), describe the planning and execution of their journeys, at times directing comments and looks at each other. Lukis and Lee, dressed in appropriate polar costume, even down to old ski boots, are superb, capturing well the different personalities of the two explorers and their feelings of trepidation, exhaustion, excitement, wonder, triumph and despair. The final tragedy is poignantly told. The world of the Antarctic is captured well too and at times I expected to see the audience shivering, as I was inside. An excellent interpretation of one of the epic stories of exploration that made both men more human and sympathetic than they are often portrayed in books.

Richard Long: Walking and Marking

This exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was the only show I had planned on seeing in advance. Ironically it was the only one I found disappointing. Fascinated by the idea of walks as art works and liking the idea of art that explores relationships with landscape I really wanted to like this exhibition but it just didn't make any significant impression on me. I went round twice, in case I'd missed some vital clue or connection, but to no avail. I saw some nice patterns and some intricate circles and spirals but these had less effect on me than a well-made dry-stone wall let alone a rock face or a tree. The photographs, snapshots in the main, left me unimpressed. Many had words about the walks and the places written on them and some of the art works were just words. None of these conjured up anything. Some just seemed statements of how many days Long had walked and how many miles in a day. I can see that some of the works were fun to do. Throwing muddy water at a pristine gallery wall and letting it drip down to form streaky patterns was probably entertaining. The result left me cold though - to my eyes it looked like what it was, muddy drips on a wall. A map of Britain consisting purely of rivers did stir me a little. If that had filled a wall I might have been impressed. And at the end of this extensive exhibition there was a short poem that touched me. Finally the artist had succeeded in communicating a love of wild places. I'm sure Richard Long enjoys his walks and they are meaningful for him. But if I want to be inspired or made to think about walking and wild places I'd rather look at photographs by people like Colin Baxter, Colin Prior, Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell or read the works of Colin Fletcher or Edward Abbey.

Outside the gallery is a lawn leading to sculpted grass terraces reflected in curving pools. This is an art work by Charles Jencks called Landform. I found it soothing and graceful, a modern reminder of the great landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century. The image above shows part of Landform.

Photo info: Ricoh GR-D, f9 @ 1/200, ISO 100, raw file converted to a JPEG in Photoshop Elements 5 then processed in DxO Optics Pro.

Edinburgh Festival Review Part 1

Urban landscapes are not my favourite places but as cities go Edinburgh is one of the most diverse and interesting. And it has the Festival, a summer of art and entertainment. I'd never visited the Festival until this year, always preferring the hills, but invited down by friends and with my partner going I decided to risk a few days of city life. I went open-minded, with no real idea what to expect, and came home replete with artistic satisfaction and delighted with most of the shows I had seen. There are many festivals of course - official, fringe, film, book, art. The Fringe is the big one, with over 2000 shows, of which we saw six - five theatrical, one late night comedy. One art exhibition and one film added brief visits to those festivals. There was an outdoor element - one play was about Scott and Amundsen, the art exhibition about walking.

Edinburgh itself becomes part of the event, with crowds wandering its old and twisted streets and gathering to watch street performers. Characters in costume amble out of their venues for sustenance, barely meriting a glance. Posters, often plastered with reviews, scream for attention and show promoters thrust leaflets at you constantly, the most vigorous and determined street sellers I've seen outside Kathmandu. It's all very colourful and exciting but eventually I did find pushing through the hordes and the roar and smell of the traffic wearing and I was glad to seize an hour away from the clamour and climb Arthur's Seat in the rain to look out on a misty Edinburgh fading away into greyness. This little 250 metre rocky volcanic remnant had been my first ever Scottish hill back when I was eleven and here on a school trip. I'd sneaked off with a friend, drawn by what seemed a huge mountain, and we'd found our way to the top, returning to a telling off by worried teachers that washed over me. Nothing could crush the feelings of wonder and triumph. Brought up on the flat Lancashire coast and never having climbed anything higher than a 20 metre sand dune before I was astounded at this little hill. All I remember now is how good it felt to climb it, to be there on a summit, above everything else.

Of the shows I saw one had the same stunning effect on me as Arthur's Seat all those years ago.

Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man? Biuro Podrozy.

Held in the open air in the cobbled Old College Quad this Polish theatre production was an astonishing sensory feast that has left strange images floating in my mind that I suspect I'll never forget. Black robed witches, their faces hidden by white veils, stalked the cobbles on stilts, sinister and powerful. Macbeth and Banquo were gun toting soldiers roaring round on motorbikes. Snatches of Shakespeare floated in the air at times and there was some powerful singing but overall this was a visual show. Fires flared from posts and walls, gun shots rang out, tall poles toppled and fell, representing deaths. Lady Macbeth went to pieces, seen hazily naked as she tries to wash out all that blood. Earlier a naked prisoner in a cage symbolised the victory of Duncan. Macbeth and Banquo, on foot, shoot the witches, now down from their stilts, repeatedly only to find them leaping back to life. Banquo's son tempts Macbeth with a crown rolled along the ground on a stick as a child's toy, a strangely unsettling image. At the finish the tall poles appear again, now as Birnam Forest come to Dunisinane, and Macbeth burns in his blazing castle. Intense and absorbing, this surreal drama drew me in and held me spellbound. I'd love to see it again.

The photo shows people watching a street show in the drizzle on the High Street. Photo info: Ricoh GR-D, f9 @ 1/320, ISO 400, raw file converted to JPEG in Photoshop Elements 5 then processed in DxO Optics Pro.