animals, children, oil rigs, and a man in a skirt

When we arrived in Edinburgh last year, after five days driving across Europe with our baby in her car seat behind us and our dog curled in the tiny footwell below her and every other square inch of the trunk crammed full of our possessions, we were all of us seeing the city for the very first time ever.  That night, as we unpacked boxes and tried to feel familiar in an unfamiliar home, an explosion of fireworks erupted in the sky beyond our large, sash windows.  The sky was alight with them.  It was as if the city was celebrating our arrival. 

Last night, exactly one year later, the Edinburgh sky was again alight with fireworks, and again we're surrounded by moving boxes.  It's slightly odd to recognise that circularity of time passing.  It makes me very conscious of all that has happened and the many experiences we've had, of how the baby we arrived with has transformed during this short year into a little girl, and it makes me also appreciate the friends we've made during this time who we're now so sad to be leaving behind.  Each move feels like a new start, but this time we have the comfort of knowing that it is also a return, back to Berlin and a city that already feels like home. 

Enough reflection.  What I have to admit is that on neither occasion have the fireworks been in our honour.  It was just coincidence that they've marked our arrival and departure.  They actually mark the end of the Edinburgh International Festival, set up in 1947 to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War.  I'm ashamed to say I didn't manage to see a single EIF performance, although I really did try to squeeze in a theatre adaptation of Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which looked brilliant, but time ran away with me.

To be honest, it took me a while to work out the distinction between the International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  The Fringe was officially founded in 1959, in part by my friend Jim Haynes who I mentioned a while back, and was intended to be a little bit more 'off-beat, radical, and crazy' (to quote Jim) than the main festival.  I'm not sure that I saw too many performances that would have stood up to the founding dogma, but I did see some amazing theatre.  I also saw some truly terrible theatre, but I won't dwell on that - by all accounts, a dud here and there is par for the course at the Fringe.

So what were my highlights? 

Well...

The Animals and Children Took to the Streets by 1927

Bitingly witty and dark, I can't tell you how much I loved this show.  Drawing influence from German Expressionist cinema, 1920s cabaret, Svankmajer's animated movies, and maybe also the horrible tales of Edward Gorey, The Animals and Children Took to the Streets was so intricately and intelligently put together it took my breath away.  The three actresses were white-faced like silent movie stars, while around them the projected hand-drawn set was in constant animation.  It was all just so clever, even if the world it portrayed of the Bayou tenement block was so beautifully depraved and cockroach infested, you felt you needed to take a good bath on exiting the theatre!  The writing was also fantastic, the story told part in song, part in rhyme, and with its rioting children seemed aptly pertinent following recent events (the play's solution to unruly youths was sedation through medicated gumdrops).  Oddly enough, I actually sought out this show following the recommendation of former Booktrust resident Polly Dunbar (thank you, Polly!).  If the show comes anywhere near you (it's touring at the moment), beg, borrow, or steal to see it.

The Animals and the Children took the Streets, Trailer from Paul Barritt` on Vimeo.

Simon Callow in Tuesdays at Tescos

Simon Callow actually passed me walking down my street during the festival, looking very jaunty, and I had to hold myself back from gleefully exclaiming, 'Mr Beebe!'  My family have loved him, you see, ever since he played the role of the Reverend Mr Beebe in the 1985 Merchant Ivory film adaptation of E.M.Forster's A Room With a View.  So this performance was a natural Fringe choice when my parents were in town.  In Tuesdays at Tescos, however, he plays a very different character, one which necessitated two hours in make-up before each performance as well as high heels and a long wig.  Here Callow takes on the role of transgender Pauline in a solo piece adapted from French playwright Emmanuel Darley's play Le Mardi a Monoprix which has apparently been a huge hit in France.  Well, the play generated a lengthy discussion around our dinner table that evening.  Callow, you see, was good.  He conveyed the vulnerability of Pauline sensitively and resisted the urge to ham up the performance - it was brave of him to take on the role.  But ultimately, I felt the script was lacking, portraying only one facet of a character who could have been fascinating; the problem was that in the end it just didn't really say much, and what it did say was absent of spark and could have been condensed into a third of the length.  I couldn't help wondering what Alan Bennett, an absolute master of the character monologue, might have been able to do with Pauline.

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical

I missed out on seeing any stand-up comics, but Showstopper! The Improvised Musical brought a hell of a lot of laughs.  I happened to have an actor friend visiting who took me to this show because he knew all the cast.  The idea is simple - at the start of the show the audience suggest a setting, a style, title, and different themes for a musical that the actors then make up on the spot and perform to hilarious effect.  The show is different every night, but on the night I was there we got a musical called She's Gonna Blow set on an oil rig, with songs in the style of Johnny Cash and Noel Coward.   It seems miraculous what the cast can come up with - so clever.  In the bar before the show, my friend gave me a quick lesson in improvised theatre - 'basically,' he said, 'it's about accepting all offers'.  One actor will make an offer/prompt/suggestion to another and they work from there.  I'm still sure it's not as easy as all that, and such expertise only comes as the result of a lot of hard work.  'They might not know what they'll be thrown on the night,' my friend said, 'but they still rehearse every single week.'

Last but not least,

The Man Who Planted Trees by the Puppet State Theatre Company

Based on the book of the same name by Jean Giono, The Man Who Planted Trees was an enchanting, hilarious and touching piece of theatre.  It's the story of a man who takes it upon himself to transform a community through planting a forest acorn by acorn.   Created with children in mind, Atlantan actor Rick Conte, who plays opposite the main character Jean, noted that they tend to play to an audience of 70% adults, such is the play's universal appeal - 'But I like to have some children in the mix for the giggles,' he told me.  Again, the writing was brilliant - gentle when it needed to be, quick-fire and funny at other points with lots of improvised wordplay.  Likewise, the set was simple but beautiful and engaged all of the senses, literally wafting the scent of lavender, pine and mint across the audience as birds swooped over our heads.  But what really made this piece was the dog, a dry-humoured button-eyed puppet who takes a starring role (no, not a sausage roll!) and absolutely stole the show.  Again, this performance is touring - France this month, London next - do look out for a performance near you, I guarantee you'll be charmed.  And in the meantime, here's my suggestion for the Fringe directors - give the dog his own stand-up show next year.  Go on, you know it'll be a hit!