Free show - 4 comedians taking turns at poking their heads through a sheet and going into their spiels to make us laugh - 2 stars.
Day One
Free show in Royal Mile - Knife Juggler up a ladder - he was quite clever and amusing as well as good at balancing and juggling, but these guys spin out their shows for too long - 3 stars
Scottish National Gallery. Lovely: to see the paintings I am familiar with - like members of your family that I don't often see. - 5 stars
Drag Act with miming - downstairs in a pub - very interesting as the face had lots of black plastic needles sticking out of a stockingnette cover, while the hair part of the head was covered in plain stockingnette. I think needles all over the head would look better. Fun. - 2 stars
Nina Conti - Ventriloquism - big theatre at the Edinburgh Conference Centre - I don't know why she does her act with the monkey, as the act with the people from the audience is so much funnier. - 5 stars
Free show - 3 magicians in a downstairs room - all good. 4 stars
Paid for show at the Underbelly - Your Ever Loving by Martin McNamara - this was on during the day and did well, but the cast hung on for another week and did a midnight show for tiny audiences - It was about Paul Hill whose "confession" got the Guildford Four and the Maguire family banged up. Poor bloke. He speaks aloud the letters he wrote to his mum from prison as well as telling his whole story. This play is fast and furious and the two actors (Stefan McCusker and James Elmes) were excellent. and the Director had done a great job. (Sarah Chapleo).- 5 stars -
Your Ever Loving uses Paul Hill’s letters, mostly sent to his mother from prisons up and down the country. They’re brought simply and charmingly to life by Stefan McCusker. He is a man enduring crippling restriction and loneliness and yet we see him for the most part in his element, attempting to keep his mother’s spirits up and arranging presents for a daughter he has never met. His situation is rendered sympathetically, but McNamara’s play doesn’t gloss over the faults of the man himself, made violent, taut and spiky by years in prison. https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2016/your-ever-loving-review-at-theatre-n16-london/
Day Two
Climbed Arthur's seat. 5 stars for the view.
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| Amanda |
Free Show - Joe Wells, stand up comedian. He is really good and I predict he will be well-known one day. He did a routine about someone's attitudes changing with the passing of time. He took the audience into his world and took us on a journey. We were in a safe pair of hands. He also wore a T-shirt that said YOKO WAS THE BEST BEATLE. You gotta respect that. - 5 stars.
Expensive ventriloquism show at the Pleasance - Nina Conti supposedly talking to a psychiatrist. Very disappointing as the ideas led nowhere. Dull. - 2 stars
Free show at the Cowshed on Cowgate - Scottish Blues band - these old boys (and one of them, who played guitar and harmonica, was really old) knew their stuff and they were amazing. Enjoyed it so much. - 5 stars
Free show comedians - somewhere on Cowgate - forgettable. 2 stars
Expensive show - Room 29 - Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales at the Proper Festival, King's Theatre. We got the tickets at the last minute so the seats were awful - we were actually higher than the ceiling and I could only feel "connected" to the show by leaning very far forward - the music was lovely - piano music written by Chilly, and lyrics by Jarvis. It would work better in a cabaret venue than in a practically vertical theatre. The idea is that we are entertained by Jarvis in his Hotel Room. "Help yourself to pretzels" he says, in his dark and intimate voice. "Room 29 is where I'll face myself alone", he sings, in a croaky but affecting voice. You can hear this track on Youtube It is a very confessional piece. He castigates himself for not being able to hold down a real relationship with a girlfriend, preferring something less personal. (Tearjerker.) It looks at the allure of Hollywood, and it considers what the habit of staring of screens has had on us. It considers Hollywood's preoccupation with sex and what effect that might have had on Jean Harlow and Howard Hughes. There is a strange song about Mark Twain's daughter - mocking her because she became an alcoholic. (Why mock her? She was not a talented writer or player but - is that a reason to mock someone?) Jarvis considers the wonderful allure of film and latterly, TV, and how it turns out to be a sham god, an illusion. One song about this disillusion with TV is called "The Other Side". (Unfortunately he went off stage for this bit and appeared in a telly on stage - which was not original and was too static to hold the attention.)
Then he becomes quite distressed with a song called "Trick of the Light" how he fell in love with "life with the boring bits taken out" - "I wasted my life on a trick of the light" - Then there was a dancer in red who twirled around to a strobe light - this was simply beautiful and we were in the best place to see it - from way up high. There was a string quartet to fill out the music - whirling around to fade out in sadness.
I thought - "Oh this is a work of art" - because it was a considered work that didn't hang together quite right, but it united a number of elements - music, dancing, speech, a screen with pictures and some film, even some audience participation - this wasn't very good either - in a way that hasn't been done before. I was very glad I was there.
Then another song about how the stars of the thirties were genuinely cool and how the people of today don't compare - no class. The stars of the thirties mixed with genuinely cultured people - refugees from Europe. This is called "Ice Cream as Main Course" and was more resolved - a salute to the past.
After this Jarvis and co did an encore - a Leonard Cohen song called "Paper Thin Hotel" which was very affecting and a high point of the evening.
A Guardian review is here and the album review is here
And that was Edinburgh, which was looking lovely.
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