Began the day at the Gilded Balloon (this time the right one) meeting up with Ann to attend a presentation/performance by a once wildly popular television personality Esther Rantzen. In her heyday 20 million Britain’s watcher her every Sunday night. An entertaining, but utterly forgettable, series of anecdotes and video clips that were not of more than passing interest to this Yank.
“Sitting” cast and set.
Ann traipsed off to another performance and I went down the hall rather than hiking over the mound to a wonderful little piece titled “Sitting” by Katherine Parkinson. The set was a room full of artists canvases facing the wall and three blank ones sitting on easels. A man enters and strips to his birthday suit all the while talking with an unseen artist behind the audience. He soon learns that he was hired to sit but NOT nude. A one sided conversation begins only interrupted by another model, a middle aged woman, who enters and takes a chair and begins her own sitting and conversation with the artist. Lastly a young girl bursts into the room and apologizes for being late. She too begins her conversation with the artist. Each take alternate turns apparently unaware of each other’s presence. The talks become increasingly intimate and revealing about model-the. Artist never speaks – and, it becomes clear that the two women have an intimate connection with the artist while the male model reveals emotional conflicts with his wife and hope for his soon to be born daughter. None of these connections are resolved as the session end and they depart. Leaving us to wonder if they ever will or could be.
The two women were well acted and their emotions well drawn. The man less so. Still, very captivating and as the play concludes three very well painted portraits of the actors are projected onto the blank canvases at the back of the state. A visual desert for this captivating performance.
I walked out to get some air only to realize that my next play “Games” started in 10 minutes. I found myself at the very end of the Que when my position moved up by one when Alyesaha who I met only yesterday joined the line. I had company for this very powerfully acted play about two young German Jewish athletes hoping to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. A tall, blond, blue-eyed fencer with a Jewish father insists she is uninterested in politics which has no place in athletics. The other is a dark haired Jewish high jumper who hopes to get to compete and win a medal by her skill and shear force of will. Both are ultimately disappointed. The fencer competes but only wins silver, shakes hands with Hitler, and raises the Nazi solute ultimately regretting it all. The high jumper never competes but retainers her honor. Powerfully acted on a virtually blank stage. Captivating, but the two or three lines aimed at a Trump/Hitler comparison were unnecessary and the theme was in the end too obvious.
Friday and Saturday: 29,000 steps!
Had dinner with Ann at a fish restaurant literally next door to my air B and B. The food was excellent but the conversation proved even better; both of us catching up on the weeks events and also 40 years of friendship. We walked around the corner to the Hilton hotel where we saw a satire about Brixit staged in a hotel room. A very amateur production that was rarely funny and predictably one sided. One hour long it felt like two. Still a good day of theater and friendship.
Waiting for an Uber
Saturday my last full day in Scotland began with meeting Ann at her place and then getting an Uber to a reprise visit to the modern art museum. Ann wanted to see the Nolde’s and how could say no to seeing some lucious paintings one more time?
Ann NOT expecting any miracles.
We then went back across town to see my last play of my Frindge festival experience.
“Revenants,” in yet another gilded balloon venue, was well done for the first hour where we found England’s Queen Mary on a picnic in the woods with another kind of queen and her Indian chauffeur. They are discussing the tragedy of the war taking place across the channel. Mary tears up as the names of her sons, killed in the fighting are mourned. Suddenly a black American soldier burst onto the scene and points his tommy gun at the queen and her entourage mistaking them for spies. (not very plausible looking at everyone’s dress and age) Things settle down and the plot focuses on the injustices inflicted on African.
Cast of “Revenants”
Americans both home in America and just down the road in the army camps controlled by racist NCO’s and officers. The gay friend of the queen tries to compare his situation with the soldier’s but the play tries too hard to address too many problems and the last half of the production fails to gel. Too much to resolve in one little play. Good acting by Queen Mary and the soldier and a cleaver set.
Not the best piece with which to end to my week but a darn good try.
It just confirmed what I said on the first day. Great Art is damn hard make. But it was wonderful to watch the many honest attempts at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
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