Edinburgh. One Day at the Festivals.

Edinburgh Festival Reviews

Every year I try to have a quick run around as much as I can in a day at the Edinburgh festivals. Every year I underestimate how long it will take me to get from venue to venue when the pavements are all choc-a-bloc with people dragging wheelie suitcases or trying to hand out flyers. So as usual I tried to squeeze in too much.

Here are some quick reviews of the shows that I managed to catch, in case you are planning to take in a couple.

Thoughtful

Issues of refugees are being discussed in several shows at the Fringe this year. The Sleeper (by Henry C. Krempels in a pokey space in the top floor of the Jury's Inn Hotel) starts with the testimony of real Syrian refugees. An Englishwoman on an overnight train across Europe returns from the bathroom to find "a pair of eyes" in her couchette. Reporting it to a world-weary staff member on the train he asks her to decide if she wants him to deal with it. They replay the confrontation, to see what choices we can all make in such a situation. The person who seems powerless to determine her fate is Amena, whose voice we struggle to listen to in all this (well played by Aya Daghem with a startled air of confusion). A quick wake up call to your brain in its 10.30am slot in the fringe programme. (Their shows have a later 11.40am time for the remainder of the run).

Angry 

It is difficult doing a stand-up show at noon, when your more sobre audience requires a bit more work to loosen them up, but Eleanor Morton at The Stand gives it a good go. In a show titled Angry Young Woman, she is angry about most things. Particular ire is aimed at the everyday sexism in our world which, funnily enough, female comedians (or comediennes if you prefer) are exposed to on and off stage. It would be good to see more of her, but as TV panel shows already meet their one woman per show quota, you probably won't.

Also apparently very angry is Lucy Porter, with her show Choose Your Battles at the Pleasance Courtyard. However it is the middle-class rage of losing the keys for the Volvo that is the subject of her show. Where Eleanor Morton was earlier talking about faking it by going about on public transport with a yoga mat prominently displayed under her arm, Lucy Porter was talking about her yoga classes. All a bit cosy.

Classy

The one name that jumped out at me when I saw the programme for this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival, was James Kelman's. With a new collection of short stories released this month (That Was A Shiver available now - go buy it at your local bookshops). He was on top form, and I was delighted that instead of reading from his new book he decided to talk to us about his thoughts on literature in general and the position of artists in Scotland today. TV's Brian Taylor was a good host, reflecting on his university studies of Descartes as they talked. Kelman talked about his own learning, starting from the Realism of Zola and moving on to Camus, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, and so it goes on. A curious mind exploring his world, and finding his voice in trying to express the subjective experience of his characters. Nobody else in Scottish (or British) literature comes close to this existential ventriloquism. Good painters start by first observing people and the world around them, and Kelman is a master of his art because of his ability to observe, and to listen, to people.

I bought a ticket for The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk as it is based on paintings I like by Marc Chagall, who often pictures himself and his wife floating over the town. Thinking of Chagall's paintings gives me terrible flashbacks, as my then 2 year old daughter all but managed to crash straight through a 10 foot painting of his when we visited the Musée National Marc Chagall. Thankfully no damage was done to either her or the painting. The play, by Kneehigh theatre company, is a two-header with Marc Antolin as Chagall and Audrey Brisson as his wife Bella, accompanied by two musicians. The fantastic choreography and Marc Antolin's floppy-haired physical similarity to Chagall does make the paintings appear before your eyes. Clever stagecraft throughout manages to carry a love story and a turbulent historical period, without distracting from the storytelling. A lovely way to spend an hour and a half.

Over the Town 1918 by Marc Chagall

Topical

Written by Sabrina Mahfouz (whose essay was one of the stand out's in the excellent book The Good Immigrant) and Hollie McNish, the play Offside benefits from the poetry that both writers excel at, with a rhythm and beat to the script that matches the muscular physicality of the story. On stage Daphne Kouma, Tanya-Loretta Dee and Jessica Butcher tell the real stories of Emma Clarke, a black footballer who played for Scotland in the 1890s and of Lily Parr from the 1920s. Flicking back and forwards to the current day the play tackles issues of prejudice, sexism, mental health, intrusive journalism, body image matters and more, but manages to stay on track by having a story that you want to follow weaving through all of this. The melodrama that real football can generate sometimes translates badly to film or theatre, but my problem  was that Emma Clarke's life sounds so interesting that I wanted to hear more about her, playing in Glasgow in the 1890s, than the imagined England players of the modern phase of the play. If it's true drama that you area after, the Scottish Women's Premier League is about to kick off again after a short hiatus for the Euros there. Glasgow City FC's next home game is against Hamilton Accies on Sunday 3rd September.

Goalkeeper Emma Clarke, in the back row here of Mrs Graham's XI in 1895

Oddity

Described as an "experimental opera" and written by Roddy Bottum, keyboardist with Faith No More, I found Sasquatch: The Opera a lot of fun. As a rock-opera the live music from Bottum himself on keyboards, accompanied by electronic beats, timpani drums and brass was very impressive, and far more dramatic than the story playing out in front of the musicians. I did not ever expect to see an opera where a drug-addled hill-billy family con tourists with their fake Sasquatch, before the chained up daughter of the family flees into the woods and falls in love with the real beast, who it turns out is a real pussycat with a falsetto voice. The surprising chorus working the forest meth lab in the second half of the story help hunt down the beast and...well you can go and see it if you want to find out what happens. Bass-baritone singer Joe Chappel should have his own show on at the fringe whilst he is here, as he has a great voice. It's a strange hotchpotch of ideas and maybe needs stronger direction and better acting to knock the story into shape, but if you want entertained you should see it now in case it gets the rough edges knocked off of it.

Stuffy

Part of the official Edinburgh International Festival, Had We Never, Robert Burns: Chains and Slavery, was a late night concert performed in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The museum currently has two fascinating exhibits that offer a dialogue between Robert Burns's idealised character as demonstrated by the white marble statue of him in the main hall here, and the truer, more flawed character, who was on the verge of heading to Jamaica to work on the plantations before his poetry took off. Douglas Gordon has copied the white marble statue, in black marble, and as a literal iconoclast, has thrown its broken parts onto the hall floor at the feet of Burns. Graham Fagen has a video installation of reggae singer Ghetto Priest singing a new version of Burns's The Slave's Lament  by composer Sally Beamish.

Reflecting on these works an evening of Burns's poems and songs was promised, with new works by Jackie Kay and a live performance by Ghetto Priest and musicians from the Scottish Ensemble. It was a terribly Edinburgh affair, stilted and old fashioned. Instead of trying to see Burns differently much of it was based around old fashioned, churchy performances of Burns's works from bass singer Brian Bannatyne-Scott and counter-tenor David James. Away from the Caribbean angle, the international works were a bit dry. I like Avro Part's version of My heart is in the Highland's but like much of his work it feels very religious and churchy. I know the Shostakovich Burns stuff in Russian as I heard many earnest renditions of them at the Scotland-USSR Friendship Society, but again that took me to the late 1970s/ early 1980s. Jackie Kay brought fresher moments with her playful poems on Douglas Gordon's sculpture and on Burns, such as Resume The Plough, where she spoke of Burns getting "Awa frae polite society/ And Edinburgh literary soirees". I bet she was thinking the same thing. I have never been to a Jackie Kay reading which wasn't filled with laughter and applause and I have never, ever heard such a fussy rendition of A Man's A Man, in which I seemed to be the only person wanting to join in. All in all it was a very strange programme.

I was maybe getting a bit tired by midnight when it finished, but I was now ready to go back to Glasgow, where audiences are a bit more bawdy.

Edinburgh Festival 2016 - Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2016

Edinburgh Book Festival now runs for two weeks each August in Charlotte Square, and get 220,000 visitors in that time. Their bookshop is always worth a visit as it tends to be a bit different from the usual set up, and if you aren't coming to the ticketed events, the Square still makes a good place to eat your picnic on a sunny day during the festival. I saw three events during the festival this year (for £39 in total, before you buy the books). Here are some quick reviews of a couple of book festival events that I went to.

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Alice Oswald ***

I enjoyed Alice Oswald's previous book, Memorial, an unusual invocation of Homer's Iliad. It starts with a list of the 200 soldiers who die during the Iliad, then recounts their fates, from Protesilaus to Hector. She read from her new collection Falling Awake, which features poems reflecting her education as a classicist to her observations on the minutiae of nature from her work as a gardener. For Alice Oswald poetry is a serious business and her reading was earnest and full of portent. The rhythms of her poems were clear in the rhythms of her reading, and death was an ever present part of life. She then revealed that she does have a lighter side, which her editor kept out of the latest book, reading Living Under the Digestive System. I hope that this brighter aspect of her poetry gets room to breathe in the future

James Kelman  *****

A full house awaited James Kelman, including Liz Lochead, Tam Dean Burn and other well kent faces, as he read from his exceptional new novel Dirt Road. He gave us a passage from early in the book, that told of 16 year old Murdo and his dad settling into a cheap motel for the night on their travels to meet American relatives, a break from their travails in Scotland. They are both recently bereaved and alone, after the death of Murdo's mother and sister. As Murdo heads out to the local shop to seek breakfast for them both he comes across Queen Mozee-ay, her music and the music of the south that will drive him and the story onwards. Like Alice Oswald it was good to hear the rhythm of Kelman's reading, the rhythm of the music that Murdo has a drive to make. There are clear echoes of Kelman himself in Murdo, the artist as a young man. I hadn't realised that as a 17 year old Kelman traveled with his family to America as they planned to emigrate there. Immigration/emigration and the mixed up origins of America and American music, from the Gaels to Mexicans feature as a background to the personal journey Murdo and his dad make in the book.

I have seen Kelman talk many times before and every time he gently shares his knowledge with the audience, on subjects as diverse as the Clearances, Russian literature, the co-operative movement, the Newport Folk Festival or the history of the Gaelic language. Whether you notice it or not you will always come away from one of his books or his talks having learnt an awful lot of stuff, mostly about people.

He also revealed a lot about his writing technique here, and talked about scenes he had written then cut out of the final book - a "director's cut" of a James Kelman book would clearly be a fascinating read. I hadn't noticed the name of the elderly Creole singer, Queen Monzee-ay, hints at her Menzies hinterland and in the book various tiers of Scottish immigration to America are apparent. When asked about his ending for this book he said that "the best type of ending takes me by surprise", then when he looks back at it there is not any alternative ending. It just fits.

Wi' the Haill Voice *****

As well as being renowned for his own works as a poet, Edwin Morgan was also a translator of the works of Mayakovsky, Racine and Pablo Neruda among others. Soviet poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky is a controversial and complicated figure. He lived through the Russian Revolution and worked as a playwright, poet, artist, propagandist and was a prominent Futurist. He committed suicide in 1930 aged 36. His poem "Talking With The Taxman About Poetry" gave its title of Billy Bragg's third album. I have read some of his works before, but like many poems in translation, you are never sure how much of the original sense and feeling you are getting reading it in English. The book I have has the Russian version on the page opposite the translation, and it was clear that there were rhythms and shapes, repeating sounds that you could see in the Russian, that weren't happening on the other side of the page that I could read. Edwin Morgan felt the power of the poems evaded him, translating them into English, so for his translation he brought them into the Scots language.

Try these couple of lines as an example and I think you can see that this was a good decision. In English the lines are rendered as...

Pineapple, pheasant's breast, 

stuff till you vomit, for that is your last feast

or as Edwin Morgan has it in his Scots translation...

Stick in, douce folk.-Pineaipple, feesant's breist: 

stuff till ye boke, for thon is your last feast.

Already you can hear the sounds and anger missing from the first version, and to me this feels more like an angry Russian revolutionary's voice. To celebrate the re-printing of Morgan's poems we had Tam Dean Burn and the improvisational musicians of Ferlie Leed (double bass, harp, electric guitar and keyboards) taking us through a selection or poems from the book. With an energy and enthusiasm they brought the words off of the page to be looked at in a new way. If this had been a standard poetry reading, somebody standing up and reading from the page, this would have had niche appeal to these fluent in Scots. I had read through the poems in the days before attending this, using the glossary in the book to get the sense of the poem then reading through the sounds and feelings on the page. As Edwin Morgan is no longer with us to read his own words, this performance was a great way to give them a novel force. Tam Dean Burn definitely read them wi' his haill voice, and with all of his body. I am very sure Edwin Morgan would have whole-heartedly approved.

Tam Dean Burn gie'ing it laldy

Edwin Morgan's beautiful book, now re-issued by Carcanet is well worth getting. I managed to find another piece of Edwin Morgan's poetry on show at the Edinburgh Festival. I made my first visit to the Scottish Poetry Library, just off the Royal Mile. They have a small exhibition of concrete poetry, including some of Edwin Morgan's concrete poems, alongside those of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Vaclav Havel. There's a nice wee shop and, of course, their lending library for all your poetry needs.

Scottish Poetry Library, just off the Royal Mile

12 Hour Blitz of Edinburgh Festival 2012

Over the past few years I've annually tried to spend a day or two through at the Edinburgh festival. So, buoyed by a successful trip through on Saturday to the mysterious eastern side of Scotland to watch Partick Thistle beat Dunfermline 1-0 in Fife, I was back east again today, this time to do a 12 hour blitz around the festival.

First up something for the younger children, Petya and the Wolf, by Theatre Pushkin at the Assembly Roxy. My children's reviews of it suggest that they found it interesting but ultimately rather bamboozling as a pair of Russian clowns act out the well known story. It is maybe something that more appeals to 42 year olds like their dad, brought up on Czechoslovakian animated short films on BBC2, and I think the demographics of the audience reflected that with slightly more unaccompanied adults than children present.

Sunny morning at the Edinburgh Book Festival venue

Over at the Edinburgh Book Festival I went to see Michael Grant with my 12 year old son. He is the author of piles of books but has found recent success with his teenage fiction, the GONE series and his new series BZRK which he revealed has got Sam Raimi lined up to direct the film if/when it gets made. I haven't ever read his books but my son devours them. Michael Grant has clearly lead an interesting life and was an engaging and honest speaker, a big shaven headed guy who manages to call people "dude" with a straight face and it doesn't sound odd. He tries to temper his language for the age of the audience and almost succeeds but would clearly be good company discussing cigars and whisky.

Quick dash along to the Pleasance in time to see Horrible Histories Barmy Britain, based on the popular books and TV series, a light hearted romp through British history, jammed with gory stories and facts in the usual Horrible Histories manner. The two performers through a variety of costume changes go from the Roman diet as "Manky-Chef" characteers, to WWI with Earl Haig reporting back to Lord Sugar on the Apprentice. The show is an adapted version of the longer one running in England just now and they've played up the Scottish stories for playing in (Jessie King baby farmer, Burke and Hare, William Wallace) but it is funny how a show about British history jars a bit when the Scottish vs British vs English bit gets a little hazy.

City Art Centre's exhibitions this year are a bit disappointing after David Mach's dramatic show there last year. The Leslie Hunter and Scottish Colourists are a bit of a safe option and very familiar. The top floor has "Human Race", an exhibition allegedly "Inside the History of Sports Medicine", but its a bit of a jumble of disparate items and feels more like a cash grab for Lottey funding in an Olympic year.

More memorable and as mad as a sack of badgers are Harry Hill's paintings, My Hobby, up on the second floor of the clothes shop White Stuff on George Street. If I tell you it has everything from a coconut painted with the face of Jarvis Cocker to a painting of a multi-headed Chris Tarrant running about on the surface of Mars, you'll understand that his work has something for everyone.

Past the sale rack and upstairs to Harry Hill's stuff

Walking about I now had Bruce Springsteen playing in my ears to get me in the right mood for the next show, Sarfraz Manzoor doing 'The Boss Rules' at the Assembly Rooms. As I am ages with him, his stories of living through the80s, finding Bruce's music, starting a family and finding song lyrics chiming with what is going on struck a chord with me. He makes great play in the opening that he's not a comedian, but it is a humorous and warmhearted show and I was inspired to buy his book afterwards. I don't know why I bother as I feel foolishly self-conscious at these things ("yes, sign it to Paul, nobody else would thank me for it") and you can always get the books cheaper on Amazon. It just seems polite.

As the rain was now pelting down outside I decided to try and stay in one building for a couple of hours. Last time that I was at the Assembly Rooms on George Street I think was at a fundraising ceilidh to help the Eigg islanders buy out the landowner. The space which I was in back then now seems to have become Jamie Oliver's restaurant in Edinburgh so I had a wild rabbit tagliolini where last I'd done a Gay Gordons.

Arranging what shows to see sometimes was more to do with what was on at a free slot I had than any great plan, so it was good fortune for me that Stewart Lee's show at the Assembly Rooms was on at 6pm as it was one of the best things that I saw all day. He appears prickly as he delivers a fine monologue/rant about not having any material for a show and complains that half the audience aren't knowledgeable enough to get the jokes anyway. But it is comedians that are really the subject of his gaze. People tweeting and those emailing abuse also get it in the neck as he nicely lands back at the Carpet Remnant World of the show's title at the end.

Finally I'd saved the thing I'd been looking forward to most of all for last, James Kelman and Liz Lochead back up at the book festival in Charlotte Square. Familiar faces such as Irvine Welsh and Jackie Kay were in the audience too. I've long been an avid reader of Kelman's books and Liz Lochead's plays are some of the best I've seen in recent years. Her poetry I've only come to recently. Kelman is promoting his new book "Mo Said She Was Quirky" and gave a good reading from it. It was great to hear him read his stuff. In my head I find his writing makes perfect sense, it just sounds like real people's thoughts, ideas, actions and voices and he reads it as I envisage it when reading. I cannot equate that with some of the uncomprehending and sniffy reviews his books get. When asked about reviewers he breezily shrugged it all off. His early influences maybe explain my affection for his work as he basically read off my youthful reading list when asked; Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Zola and Camus. Interesting too was his comparison with the visual arts in how he works and admiration for Cezanne, Rodin and Modigliani. Also nice to hear the Pewter Pot and Rubiyat bars getting a name check. I swallowed my pride again and bought his book to get it signed, he feigned signing my book "to Pall", one of those occasions you think of the witty retorts on the drive home. Also the only time anyone has ever made that funereal pun with my name - dark humour, eh? Back to Glasgow.