Edinburgh
David Kettle
It began with opera – Cecilia Bartoli’s pretty much universally adored Norma from Salzburg. And the Edinburgh International Festival ended with opera, too – Mozart’s Così fan tutte, in a co-production with the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Like Norma, it was an updating to more modern times – but one that in this case prompted the International Festival to send out a letter warning of the production’s explicit adult content.In the end, though, they needn't have worried too much. Director Christophe Honoré – a respected writer and film-maker in his native France, even if little known this side of Read more ...
David Kettle
Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs ★★★★★ Is this even theatre? Hardly – cabaret, more like, as Scottish actor-author-provocateur Alan Cumming sings his way through songs by Sondheim, Weill, Lady Gaga and more, interspersing them with anecdotes about tattoos, Liza Minnelli and a less than happy childhood. It’s one of the flagship shows of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, which has transformed the hall in its own Royal Mile HQ into a sumptuous nightspot for the event, with crowds – including Mark Thomas and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on this particular evening – flocking to Read more ...
David Kettle
Remarkably, Pierre Boulez made his first appearance at the Edinburgh International Festival way back in 1948, at only the Festival’s second ever outing, in charge of music for director Jean-Louis Barrault’s production of Hamlet. He remained a regular visitor across the decades, and following his death in January, the EIF’s Pierre Boulez: A Festival Celebration was a late but clearly necessary addition to the Festival’s already bulging classical programme.And the EIF had exceptional forces to draw on for it, from just across the other side of the country. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Richard Gadd, The Banshee Labyrinth ★★★★★Richard Gadd wryly tells us at the end of Monkey See Monkey Do that he thought it was a good idea to put this thought-provoking show, with its deep seam of theatricality and emotion, in the comedy section of the Fringe brochure. And in truth it could sit easily as a theatre show, albeit one with frequent laughs. But at its heart is a deeply personal and highly revelatory story about an incident in Gadd's life that caused him to re-evaluate who he is both as a person and as a man.It starts amiably enough with a Trainspotting-esque chase through streets Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Bridget Christie, The Stand ★★★★★When Bridget Christie planned this show, it was to be a work in progress about mortality for a tour starting later this year. But then the EU referendum happened, and everything changed. Within the space of a few weeks, she had written this heartfelt polemic about Brexit, and it's an astonishingly accomplished and moving work.She tells us that, with so many bad things happening in the world at the moment, she's going to do a nice, upbeat show about gardening, her new passion in life now that she is allowed to like the pursuit because she is past 40. She is Read more ...
David Kettle
Alix in Wundergarten ★★★★Think Alan Ayckbourn on acid: a commonplace (well, almost) set-up, exaggerated further and further beyond what we’d ever anticipate. In François Pandolfo’s wild, freewheeling and hugely entertaining satire on the acting world, delivered by Cardiff-based difficult|stage theatre company, it’s a gaggle of hammy actors who occupy a studio to make an audio recording of Alice in Wonderland – before the whole thing degenerates into chaos and spins off in entirely unexpected directions. Pandolfo himself is wonderfully nervy and needy as the assistant director, attempting to Read more ...
David Kettle
The big yellow banners proclaiming "Welcome, world" are out. And judging by the seething, heaving crowds, a fair portion of the world has indeed descended on Edinburgh, where the annual August festivals season has now been up and running for just shy of a week.For the Edinburgh International Festival, the city’s big brother event – as opposed to its unruly and far fatter sibling the Fringe – it’s been a very strong start, with a universally adored Bellini Norma starring Cecilia Bartoli (pictured below) kicking things off, and audio-visual son et lumière extravaganza Deep Time illuminating Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Ben Chatwin's music speaks loudly of solitude. He lives and records on the coast of the Firth of Forth, just outside Edinburgh – not exactly the most isolated of spots, but it's not hard to hear in his waves of texture and simple repeated motifs the endless grey presence of the North Sea rolling out into the distance.This is Chatwin's second album under his own name, but his ninth if you include the albums he made as Talvihorros on a number of labels, and it is much the same that he's always done: bowed strings that shimmer and pizzicato ones that echo, grainy guitar textures rising up in Read more ...
David Kettle
Even without any particular pomp or focus for celebration, the 70th Edinburgh International Film Festival has felt like a particularly strong and broad-ranging one, with a programme so big it was a struggle to take it all in.Opening golf drama Tommy’s Honour (reviewed by Demetrios Matheou last week) may have failed to thrill, but there’s been plenty more to entertain and provoke. And as the EIFF heads towards its closing gala – with the Gillies MacKinnon’s remake of Whisky Galore! on Sunday evening – it’s inevitably time for the festival to reveal its award winners.The Michael Powell Award Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
To anyone who says that you can’t make a great film about golf, a film which is funny, sexy, and rousing, I have just two words; sadly, for those who attended the opening night of the Edinburgh Film Festival this week, those words are Tin Cup.That film was made in 1996 and starred Kevin Costner – the king of sports movies, in his goofy prime. The one that kicked off Edinburgh on Wednesday, Tommy’s Honour, has plenty of integrity and good intentions, as it celebrates a Scotsman regarded as the grandfather of golf, and his son, who was one of its first stars; it also confirms the movie star Read more ...
David Kettle
It just goes to demonstrate the breadth and ambition of the Hebrides Ensemble’s work. For its 25th anniversary, the Scottish new music group (although its output delves a bit further back in time than that description might suggest) had commissioned a brand new chamber opera from Inverness-born Alasdair Nicolson, unveiled at Glasgow’s Cottier Chamber Project festival, with subsequent performances at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre and Orkney’s St Magnus International Festival, where Nicolson is artistic director.To be honest, though, The Iris Murder was a pretty mystifying experience, as Read more ...
David Kettle
And so, it’s farewell to Mark Thomson with his final production as artistic director of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre, after 13 years in the job (incoming artistic director David Grieg unveils his new season next week). With Homer’s The Iliad, in a new dramatisation by Clydebank-born playwright Chris Hannan, Thomson is going out with a bang – it’s a big, bold show that tackles one of our culture-defining myths, albeit a lesser-known one (‘the greatest story never told" is how the goddess Hera describes it within the play itself). And while their Iliad has got its flaws, you can’t help but admire Read more ...