It’s not often that I post music reviews here because it’s not often that new music absolutely hits me in the chest with its perfection. I’m struggling to find new work these days that hits every level of greatness in performance, originality, musicianship, tunes and deployability. Taylor Swift gets close but I find Indy Music way to hit and miss these days.
Burt this landed at the weekend and I immediately knew I was in the presence of greatness.
Washington’s The Epic (2015) falls under the same category but this took my by surprise. I was initially put off nay its length (90 minutes) but that’s one of its strengths as it wraps you up in its mood and develops (swirls) through some full on jazz to Ethiopian inspired afro jazz into jazz funk and semi classical choral wok that’s simply breathtaking.
It’s underpinned by Kamari’s peerless saxophone playing that you might think could outstay its welcome but is actually the bedrock of this glorious enthralling and happy sound.
Andrea 3000 and George Clinton make appearances along with Thundercat but it’s undoubtedly Washington and his ensemble that make this album of the year by far for me.
Both Alex Garland and A24 Films do it again, although this is quite different to most of Garland’s work because it has no sci fi elements to it, at all. It’s not as flat out action thrills a minute as the trailer might suggest but, for me, this wasn’t a problem. Instead it’s an intelligent insight into war and beautifully captures the role of journalism and in particular photojournalism within that.
The UK’s ITV News ran a truly great piece just after the January 6th insurrection of the White House which both demonstrated the importance of on the site reportage to capture what was REALLY going on and, I suspect, provided inspiration for Garland as it’s in the moment, at the heart of the action, drama was compelling. This too.
Of course you can go back to the Spanish Civil War and perhaps more notably, Vietnam, for gripping photojournalism that changed our attitudes to what is going on in the world. Indeed recently two brilliant documentaries have arrived on our screens from the Ukrainian war that are really getting to the essence of this conflict (Twenty Days in Mariupol and Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods.)
For Garland to make this feel real in a contemporary US setting, in an unexplained war between the unlikely combination of Texas and California (the secessionists) versus the rest is quite an achievement. He is helped in this by a stunning central character duo of Kirsten Dunst (a world weary, seen it all before veteran) and a fresh faced (but shooting on monochrome film) upstart played by Cailee Penny (whom we’ll be seeing a lot more of).
Dunst reluctantly takes Penny under her wing after they are thrown together in a cross country drive from NYC to DC in tow with an elderly journo (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and a younger more daredevil Wagner Moura who’d been hitting on Penny in the NYC journalists party hotel the night before the trip. Dunst is magnificent as the weary Lee (get the name connotation?) and assumes a maternal protective role for the increasingly emboldened youngster in her care.
The movie ramps up throughout and it has to be said what the finale lacks in storytelling credibility it makes up for in edge of the seat tension.
My family thought the ending was a bit OTT, but I forgave it because the characterisation was so fantastic and the performances, especially by Dunst, riveting.
I highly recommend it.
(Oh, and there’s the crazy Jesse Plemons scene, almost worth the admittance alone.)
Luca Guadagnino is one of my favourite directors. If you have not seen his epic TV series, We are Who We Are, set on an Italian airforce base, you need to. I also love his Suspiria and Call me By Your Name that brought Timothy Chalomet to prominence.
Guadagnino loves blurring sexuality and sexual preferences and he does so again in this Tennis movie that has its share of jocks but is anything but Jockish.
It concerns the three way relationship between three tennis players, Tashi Donaldson (Zendaya) whose startling young career is abruptly cut short by a knee injury, her husband, Art, played by Mike Faist and her/their lover, Patrick, played by Josh O’Connor. Art and Patrick are private school buddies that simultaneously fall head over heels in love with Tashi at a tennis tournament and spend the next thirteen years fighting for her affection. She, having turned to coaching her succesful but failing husband, is happy to play each off each other (but subconsciously) she knows that they know that he knows what he knows about him and her.
It’s a non-consenting menage a trois that is deliciously wrapped up in bargaining, treachery and double crossing. The scene in which Zendaya intoxicates the two male leads is a brilliant and in part hilarious piece of sexual trickery that is the highlight of the movie.
It’s all set agains a low level tennis tournament that Patrick, now a journeyman, needs to win to improve his rankings and Art needs to win to restore his faltering confidence. Cue magnificent tennis action set to a pounding score By Trent and Atticus (one that will surely find its way onto my Spotify for regular listening), it’s maybe their best yet.
The cinematography is outstanding with a virtual reality feeling. If you’ve never faced a tennis ball at 140mph before, you will have after this. Just make sure to duck when it comes out of the screen at you (I wonder if there is a 3D version?).
It’s great really. Intoxicating, intriguing and unpredictable from start to finish with the final of the aforementioned Challenger Tour match in New Rochelle anchoring the action in what is a great story.
All three actors carry it off with aplomb and I’d strongly recommend it. Good escapist fun.
He is a one man opposition party to whoever runs this country, but most especially when the Tories are wreaking havoc.
In this film he has a triple attack on racism, poverty and immigration.
As usual, he employs a cast of largely amateur actors, real people, in the North (Durham area this time) and they have grievances.
A run down pit village is being repopulated with Syrian refugees and the largely unemployed and bitter ex mining community do not like the fact that these “Rag heads” are getting access to their benefits and attention of local government and volunteers.
The action centres jon an almost decrepit community pub called The Old Oak. Its manager, our hero, TJ Ballantyne (played by ex-fireman Dave Turner, a Loach regular), is struggling to keep the pub afloat with a small band of bitter and twisted ex miners as locals, racist to the core they resent TJ’s apparent favouring of the new Syrian community that is adding richness to their village.
The movie plays out in a fairly typical Loach cadence. Highs and lows, humour and pathos, atrocious behaviour and acts of great human kindness.
The script is good (by Loach’s regular Paul Laverty) if a little predictable and sometimes a touch fantastical, but that doesn’t matter. Loach’s objectives are clear and the haters will say it’s just left wing propaganda. In a way it is. It needs to be because no-one else is doing it. But Loach draws such humanity from his mixed ability cast that you simply cannot fail to love it.
It sits alongside a canon of work that is remarkable: I Daniel Blake (his rant against the benefits system), Sorry We Missed You (his rant against zero hours contracts), Looking For Eric (Cantona as a postman), Sweet Sixteen (the movie that launched Martin Compston’s career), My Name is Joe (Bitter and brutal observation on alcoholism with Gary Lewis in career-high form), Raining Stones (his polemic against the underground labouring/work system), Riff Raff, Poor Cow and, of course our beloved Kes.
What a director. This is just another solid, enjoyable, moving piece of work from a national institution.
Baby Reindeer has been receiving some great reviews, and I am going to add to that body of opinion.
It was written by, and stars, Richard Gadd but with a supreme supporting performance by Jessica Gunning as Gadd’s stalker Martha. In the stage shows, which provided the inspiration for this 7 part Netflix series, Gadd makes it crystal clear that it is an autobiographical story, in the TV adaptation this is less apparent. But it is all true
We saw the Edinburgh Festival Fringe productions of Monkey See Monkey Do in 2017, at Summerhall, and Baby Reindeer in 2019, also at Summerhall but in the Roundabout.
My wife is not always the most likely to join a standing ovation at a theatre show but at Monkey SeeMonkey do she was the first on their feet. I gave both productions five stars and this nearly gets the same, apart from the fact that Gadd as a stage performer, telling his life story, is arguably better than Gadd as an actor playing a character, based on him, but actually is him, Donny Dunn. This subtle change takes some of the edge off his performance and requires him to act rather than perform. They are different things. I’m niggling though.
A big difference is that the stage shows were both one man monologues, albeit with AV back up, whereas he is graced with a supporting cast here, not least the miraculous performance by his stalker Martha who inhabits this sweet-as-sugar character with a dangerous she-devil interior that only raises its head when she’s not getting her way, and her way would be to own and ravish Gadd.
Gadd’s second nemesis is the theatre impresario Darrien played impeccably by Tom Goodman-Hill who subjects Gadd to massive trauma and was the main antagonist in Monkey See Monkey Do.
The combination of Darrien and Martha, and their collective trauma, create a stultifying inability for Gadd to do anything about his situation. His pathetic attempts at stand up comedy make any positive interest, from anyone, yes anyone, appealing at a subconscious level to Gadd and that may be why he rolls with the punches for so long against enemies that seem, to the viewer, so obviously easy to unlock himself from – but this is the way poor mental health and low self esteem can manifest themselves.
Whilst most of us could easily disassociate ourselves with these two monsters Gadd simply cannot and finds himself descending into blacker and blacker territory.
His only escape is through the fourth key character, the Mexican trans-actress Nava Mau, who plays Gadd’s sort of girlfriend, although it’s not easy. Gadd’s sexuality is so confused that he simply doesn’t know what he’s looking for and it makes for a pretty challenging relationship.
It’s billed as a black comedy and there are comedic moments, and yes, Gadd, is a professional comedian. But don’t come to this looking for laughs. It’s a profound, original and true exploration of the stultifying impacts of poor mental health and it’s performed with sensitivity and great skill.
Surely the year will end up with this on all the top ten lists, in much the same way that “I May Destroy You” did.
It’s funny how a programme can be so different from season to season and yet hold up its quality threshold and dramatic intensity.
Unlike the UK’s Boiling Point which is a one-paced act of unremitting rage (but great all the same) The Bear has many gears in its armoury and in Season Two, more so than one, it finds time to test drive them and show us serenity, rage, humour, regret and hope.
As it develops it has a zen like quality that introduces us to the characters of Season One that were just parachuted onto our screens in the midst of a war zone and left to get on with it. Whereas Season One was tricky to decode Season Two does all of the heavy lifting for you and week by week properly defines its characters.
Carmy (who we knew all about from S1) is given space to breathe as he plans how to position his new restaurant in Chicago and to experiment with the wonderful Sydney as she revels in her education as a fine dining (star) chef. Although how she survives her food orgy of Episode 3 is anyone’s guess.
Richie reinvents himself as a front of house magician and cultivated and cultured gastrophile. Marcus has an amazing sojourn in Copenhagen with an odd Noma-like guru chef. It’s as zen as the series gets, before the series centrepiece Fishes (that gets the full 60+ minute treatment) blows us all away.
Then Richie has his starring moment in Forks.
Along the way both Nat and Matty are filled out, character-wise, and without spoiling its conclusion for you we are ultimately teed up for another entirely unpredictable Season 3.
The writing, direction and performances (not to mention the music) in this production are magnificent. It’s not quite on the highest ever plateau of Succession, but I tell you what, it’s not far off. Wonderful TV that resonates as true to me and its many, many fans.
This gets compared to the wondrous Stoner (an undiscovered novel of the 1960’s) by John Williams which I cannot recommend enough. It’s compared because like Williams’ classic this is the story of one man’s unremarkable life, told in an unremarkable way. And whilst this too is a beautiful (and recommended) read, it does not have quite the same depth, or class, of Stoner. Nevertheless it packs a punch like Barry McGuigan, light but lethal.
Unlike Williams’ opus this is a little read with a great deal of droll Germanic humour sprinkled throughout, despite the fact that it tells the story of a life of a largely sub-optimal life underpinned by frustration.
It’s Germanicness is at the heart of its appeal, because it feels so unlike most things I’ve read. And it packs a great deal into an almost tiny offering. Only 149 large-type liberally-spaced pages in and it’s done. Leaving you with a whiff of satisfaction and a little regret.
Its title is entirely descriptive, the whole life in question is that of an uneducated labourer in a German/Austrian lumber region that gradually transforms into a ski resort and walking hotspot. Our hero, Andreas, takes spartan opportunity and turns it into passable satisfaction with great dollops of misfortune (in the form of a bullying stepfather and a delightful wife who expires too early to make him truly happy) along the way.
It’s fundamentally bleak and yet, like Stoner, has an air of uplift in it, and it’s this effortless parable-telling that raises it up from almost mediocre content into a thing of pastoral beauty.
This might be his slightest novel, weighing it at only 205 pages, but it’s his densest.
Another unreliable narrator – an old Japanese painter and teacher – Masuji Ono tells part of his life story, often repetitively (maybe he has dementia) and full of false modesty. He’s actually an arrogant old fuck.
It’s set in an unnamed Japanese city between 1948 and 1950 as the Empire is setting about post WWII rebuilding and the country is on its knees.
Ono-San was a celebrated pre-war artist, seemingly of a propagandist bent (and maybe in the pocket of the Emperor) but his star has faded and it’s causing some trouble in selling off his youngest daughter into arranged matrimony.
The book dwells fastidiously on the customs and mannerisms of a horrifically mannered and often obsequious Japanese cultural set of mores.
For a western reader (even though Ishiguro has long been a naturalised UK citizen), this makes for tough reading. There are many Japanese place names to contend with and his cast of characters is vast for such a small tome. What’s more, given the episodic, and sometimes rambling nature of the prose they pop up sporadically but with important things to say. It’s a laborious follow.
Like anything Ishiguro turns his hand too it’s quite brilliant in the quality of the writing and the slow release of information that just keeps one on track plot-wise, but it has none of the empathy of his other novels and certainly no playfulness at all. So it makes for a n endurance test, albeit a shortish one.
It was the least enjoyable of his books for me. But a weak(ish) Ishiguro beats 9/10 writers into a cocked hat and for that I recommend it. Just don’t make it your Kazuo debut.
We were late to this as we didn’t have Disney +, except we had, thanks Natasha. Anyway, I’d read all the hype and last night we set out to watch it, and this afternoon we finished it.
I had to go back and rewatch Episode 1 because on first viewing I was a bit trailing in its wake because the loud music bed, deep Chicagoan patois and rapid fire (some sotto voce) dialogue meant I wasn’t really picking up on its nuance. If I’m honest it was probably not till Episode 5 that I was fully invested but then, 7 and 8. Fuck me.
Christopher Storrer has written and directed a big bad beast. I love the way its title “The Bear” encompasses mental illness, Chicago ( key component of its magic) and the main character’s name (Carmy Berzatto).
I love its love affair with food and that battle between good and evil (pretentious or wholesome can both be great, and this series manages to marry the two effortlessly). It’s kind of like Pygmalion in reverse, or maybe The Great Gatsby, also reversed, where knowledge and superiority, and wealth, are levelled by the reality of Carmy’s situation – a dead brother and an inherited Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares restaurant.
Jeremy Allen White, him of the great Calvin Klein blow up, is majestic in the lead role but he’d be nothing were it not for his fellow restaurant employees. An ensemble cast that’s magnificent from the get go, none more so than his fangirl Sydney played with conviction by Ayo Edibiri. There’s a really touching moment in Episode 8 where she entertains Marcus in her home that really hit the spot for me, and her relationship with the feisty Tina is a thing of wonder – a thing that could have been truly hamfisted in the wrong hands.
The music score is beast and the comedy (while only evident in short bursts) is laugh out loud funny.
All in all, a complex bundle of fun and pathos in equal measure. From an uncertain start (for me) it rapidly transmogrified into a production that does indeed merit the plaudits that have showered it. Very much looking forward to Season 2.
I keep hearing good things about Maggie O’Farrell, the Irishwoman living in my native Edinburgh, and so I’d picked both of the above up in a charity shop some time ago, but left them languishing in my ‘to do’ pile. A conversation with my friend Victoria prompted me to start reading, and I’m glad that I did.
Both books share a strong sense of style. O’Farrell densely plots her novels so that there’s quite a long bedding in period in the story to establish exactly what’s going on. In that respect she writes like a crime/thriller novelist. But that effort is rewarded with depth of character and intriguing and clever stories.
In Heatwave we follow a family’s journey to uncover why their elderly father has simply upped and went one morning, right in the middle of the notorious 1976 UK-wide heatwave. O’Farrell captures the sweltering oppression of that one-off summer vividly and the story unfolds in very thin layers as we discover what both bonds and splinters this intense family. It’s a great read, although at times I felt she outstayed her welcome.
In the superior This Must be The Place another disappearance sets the story off, and another family saga. Again much of the action takes place in Ireland. But don’t think that makes her novels formulaic, they are anything but.
This time a stunningly beautiful and famous film actress with great artistic integrity (think Jennifer Lawrence) simply disappears overnight with the speech-impeded son of her and her auteur film-director partner. She flees to remote Ireland where she reestablishes her life before being stumbled upon by an American linguist with a troubling romantic life and a drink and drugs problem.
The attraction is instant but not eternal.
What follows is another heavily interweaving story covering the couples lives (including their past) and that of their own and shared children.
Each character is brilliantly drawn and the book’s multiple time lines gradually fall into place so that we are eventually left wondering if this is a romance with any real chance of making it through.
It’s a lovely story with real depth and quality of writing.
Clearly O’Farrell has an acute eye and ear for family life in all its complications. Both novels deconstruct the complexity of familial rivalry, sibling love (and the lack of) and the hierarchy of decision making in that unit.
It seems to me her writing is maturing with experience and that she continues to increase her personal writing ambition, with her latest, Hamlet, picking up many plaudits and book of the year nods. I look forward to reading that but, for now, she’s made a solid impression on me and I can recommend both books quite strongly, especially This Must Be The Place.
It’s yet another morsel of evidence that Irish writing is on fire just now – many of my favourite recent reads have come from that Isle (including Anna Burns, Colin Walsh and Paul Lynch.)
Graeme Macrae Burnet rose to prominence with his Booker Shortlisted, His Bloody Project – a genuinely original historical crime novel, of sorts, that was transfixing from start to finish. He’s followed it up with this Longlisted Booker contender.
Again you could say it’s a crime novel of a sort in which no real crime takes place, but may have been autosuggested by the psychiatrist who plays one of the novel’s two central characters.
Arthur Collins Braithwaite is a brilliant lothario that stumbles on a career in psychiatry in the 1960’s in Oxford and London. A rule breaker, he actually has no formal qualifications but has some celebrity status and notoriety that keeps him in patients for a while. One of those patients, Victoria, is the sister of our second (and third as it happens) main protagonists – Victoria’s mousy sister, (unnamed throughout the book) and her alter ego Rebecca.
Victoria is the autosuggested victim, having thrown herself to her death from a bridge after a session with Braithwaite. Unnamed sister decides to visit Braithwaite to suss him out but undercover as a patient that she calls Rebecca.
What follows is a quite brilliant study of, I would say, Schizophrenia. So different are unnamed sister and Rebecca in so many ways that we have a clear Jeckyl and Hyde situation, although without the horror.
It’s a fascinating story based around Braithwaite’s case study notes of Rebecca and unnamed sister’s ferocious battle with herself to define her true identity.
In parts hilariously funny, but always with an undertow of sinister mental health issues it makes for a unique and unputdownable read.
Four movies into his very slowly expanding movie CV (Sexy Beast, Birth and Under The Skin) Jonathan Glazer once again lands a punch that no-one could see coming. I mean, how could they?
It’s been ten years since the sublime and shocking Under The Skin (from a source novel by one of my favourite authors, Michel Faber) now he’s done it again with a novelistic source from Martin Amis. Having read a little about this it would seem that the movie and the book are barely related. Same theme and location, yes, but story-wise very different.
For a start it would be a push to say the movie’s narrative led. There is a slight thread holding it together but this is really an exercise in stylistic horror like you’ve never seen before.
The psychology of the holocaust has long fascinated me. How could an entire country apparently sign up to a dictator’s whims when his charisma, to me, seems so indecipherable. But worse, how could so many of his followers carry out such atrocities seemingly without question?
But this movie goes a step further still. How could the families of these monsters knowingly reap the benefits of this accursed man’s activities?
Sandra Hüller (who might win best actress at the Oscars for the incredible Anatomy of a Fall) stars as that very woman (Hedwig Höss). Living a life of privilege in an unattractive house with a cultivated, but not exactly stunning, garden in the lee of Auschwitz. Her husband, the camp Kommandant, played by Christian Friedel, is a snidely little creep who sleeps in a separate bed (his work done having sired five children to his despicable wife). At night he takes his pleasure with the Jewish housemaid, who’s always one dropped crumb away from the gas chambers that brood ominously just across the garden wall. Höss’s more than happy to remind her of that.
Höss takes her pick of fur coats, new blouses, diamonds concealed in toothpaste tubes as the apparent spoils of genocide filter regularly into their home. They party, they feed sumptuously, they swim in the river, they cough up the ashes of dead Jews – only a small blot on an idyllic lifestyle
Höss’s mother arrives, but soon leaves in disgust at this heinous way of living.
A young girl sneaks out at night to hide apples for the Jewish labourers – a death defying act that is momentously captured on night vision film. This stunning technique turns her into a lurid white spectre against what looks like a nuclear background, to the sound of an outrageous soundtrack by Mica Levy. Underscoring the score the Kommandant reads Hansel & Gretel to his younger children (it’s no coincidence that the evil witch is burned in the oven – although the story “cooks” her to soften the blow). Who this mysterious figure is is not revealed, but perhaps it’s the Kommandant’s oldest daughter. The one with a conscience. The only one. The Kindly one. 
It’s truly remarkable moviemaking.
The star of this colossal piece of work though is Johnny Burn, the sound designer, who brings Auschwitz to life without ever really seeing it. other than its rooftops.
On a side note. I’ve been to Auschwitz (which is actually three death camps not one) and the one that features in the movie, Auschwitz III is now a museum. These days it’s impeccably manicured and the buildings are entirely surprising, two or three story high red brick constructions that could be schoolhouses if we didn’t know better. It’s very disarming. The muddy, filthy wooden huts we all remember from the movies and the newsreels are in Auschwitz I, a short drive away. So this clean, Teutonic death factory is disarming and Glazer captures that strange orderliness of the setting as we often see the well-kept rooflines of the houses beyond. (Albeit with smoking chimneys and glowing fires)
What Burn does though is pull the rug away. The air of semi-respectability that we are seeing is subsumed by endless industrial groans suggesting boilers (certainly machinery we don’t want to think about too much) working at full blast. Gunshots echo out, but subtly in the distance, muffled shrieks, distant dogs barking, at one point a cold blooded murder. The steam train arriving with fresh cargo. 
It all adds up to make Auschwitz a looming threat, playing out a murderous background soundscape, like a satanic orchestra, whilst in the foreground we see a sort of Utopia at play.
The movie is shot as a series of beautiful tableaux, often reminiscent of classical paintings, but interspersed with empty screens, red or black, and the mind-boggling night vision work. (it’s searingly black and white, not green, as you’ve come to expect). This creates a sense of tranquillity and opulence, and yet it’s backgrounded by the worst atrocities ever committed in Europe.
Jonathan Glazer has created his masterpiece. Few would imagine he could top his first three movies and yet this comes from a place that only he can truly understand. It’s not clear why he’s made this movie. It’s not actually telling us anything new and yet it feels like the most original take on a familiar tale we will ever come across.
Why this has so many Oscar nominations is beyond me. Admittedly it’s a poor year, although the winner will be a good one. This will not be that winner.
Paul Giamatti dials in his performance as a grumpy (actually not THAT grumpy) teacher of Greek History in a second rank American private school. 
He has to look after a bunch of kids during the Christmas/New Year holidays alongside the school cook.
Most of the kids f*ck off and he’s left with one sensitive sixth former (looking suspiciously older) and, of course, they all bond.
It’s such a movie of tropes that I found it tiresome from the get go and entirely predictable.
Nothing is BAD about this movie, but nothing is good either. A Beautiful Mind and Dead Poets Society are both better exemplars of the genre and I didn’t especially love either of them really.
If movies by numbers is your thing then this is your movie.
Tickets were selling in Edinburgh at an unprecedented £175 face value. This is frankly ridiculous.
Indira Varma does a good Lady MacBeth. 
But Ralph Fiennes is too old, too decrepit to be a believable ambition driven monarch. He looks more like a nice wee spot in a care home would suit him quite nicely. (My pal said he was like Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp and I have to agree.)
As we enter the theatre (makeshift and terribly short legroom) we pass through a modern war zone (could be Syria, could be Gaza) it makes us think we are in for a modern reinterpretation of the greatest ever play. 
We are, but in costume only, as it transpires.
What follows is a competent (but no more than that ) retelling of the story of Scotland’s greatest King(s).
We await greatness but it seems it will only come tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow.
I thought it was a bit of a mess really with its Star Trek whooshing doors and its slightly distempered stage.
The witches are boring, Fiennes is boring. Thank God for Indira.
Fine, but pedestrian. 
If you are in Washington and hoping for the greatest English Shakespearian production of your life…save your money. Go watch Rising Damp on YouTube. Save yourself a few bucks.
First off, I have to state that I adore Yorgos Lanthimos. I adore Emma Stone. I adore Mark Ruffalo and I adore Willem Dafoe.
That’s it then. Slam dunk. Movie of the year. (Or is it?)
I also have to say that I am a great admirer of Alasdair Gray who wrote the source novel in 1992 and won the Whitbread Prize for his efforts.
The novel is described as a post modern take on Frankenstein in which Dr Godwin Baxter (there’s a pun in the name) creates a very different and lovable monster that he essentially adopts – Bella Baxter – a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant.
Bella is played with outrageous abandon by Stone and as the (long) movie unfolds, she evolves from a ‘beautiful retard’ that can barely speak and has dysfunctional locomotion (plus is keen on a terrible twos tantrum on a regular basis), to a fully fledged young genius and palatable member of Victorian(?) society.
But the journey she takes is eventful, colourful and stunning as she visits reimagined Paris, London, Lisbon and Alexandria in houses (and brothels) that merge Willie Wonka with Wes Anderson and a bit of Jules Vernes thrown in for good measure.
Three suitors attempt to unravel Bella’s being with varying degrees of success but the stand out is Mark Ruffalo’s outrageously posh gigolo Duncan Wedderburn. Rufallo’s sublime English accent more than makes up for Dafoe’s in and out Scots Frankenstein and he steals the show repeatedly as he seduces Bella before falling on hard times.
Stone is remarkable, but I was troubled by the sexual politics at play here. In a book written by a man and a movie directed by a man the male gaze is on Stone throughout and her route to success is through prostitution. I’d be interested to know what my female friends think of this strand of the movie. Is it objectification or is it liberalised feminism boldly and proudly on show? I found it hard to decide at the time, although surely the latter is Lanthimos’s objective.
It’s a tough movie to capture the essence of. The story is actually a little thin and quite unremarkable, but the styling and much of the script is extraordinary, truly extraordinary. If, for nothing else, the succession of mutant hybrid farm animals – a duck with a full sized pig’s head for example. And all of the central performances are notable (especially Ruffalo).
But, I think it’s a movie to admire, not to love. But, as a piece of art, it’s sublime.
This won the Booker Prize a few months ago and in quality terms sits alongside Colson Whitehead’s deadly duo of The Underground Railroad and Nickel Boys that won him the Pulitzer back to back. None of the three of them are what you would call easy reading, but each shares a love of humanity that shines through human anguish and strife like glorious beacons. In Lynch’s book, set in Ireland, a totalitarian government has rapidly insinuated the culture of the nation, turning its citizens into either patriots or rebels. Eilish, our central protagonist is a middle class mother of four married to the leader of the Irish teacher’s Union. The book opens with the Gardai at her door seeking the whereabouts of her spouse. Only a few pages later he is incarcerated, we know not where for, presumably, crimes against the state. And so begins a nightmare that threatens the whole substance and meaning of her life. Eilish, certainly not a patriot, finds herself shunned by her community. Slowly but surely the book ramps up Ireland’s descent into mayhem and the implications it has on all of Eilish’s family, including her newborn Ben who reaches toddler stage by the time of its heartbreaking denouement. The story is really about familial love in the midst of war torn chaos. It is directly inspired by the Syrian conflict that was the catalyst for the English Channel’s boat crossings but this is only one conflict in a constant global shifting sands of outrageous political, and religious, fervour. How a state as solid and secure as Ireland can implode quite is rapidly as it does is not really the point, but it’s shocking. The point is that poisonous aspects of nationhood and tribalism can spring up anywhere, any time. There are echos of the Wehrmacht that fully kicked off on Kristallnacht; it’s subtly portrayed in a horrifying passage half way through where it’s car windscreens, rather than Jewish shop windows, that take a battering. But the analogy is clear. Lynch’s prose is beautifully poetic and this conflict’s place in time is regularly referenced when he spells out that although we are reading a story set in Eilish’s present, it is rooted in both the past and will well-up again in the future, such is the certainty of the human condition. Lynch uses no para-breaks (see what I am doing here) nor quotation marks which renders the story breathless, echoing the turmoil and lack of headspace Eilish finds herself in, unable to make clear decisions because events constantly pile on top of each other. What’s more, her father is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is crumbling. Like many older people he is doggedly independent and in denial of his condition. And living on the other side of Dublin, across various frontlines, visiting him is a treacherous, verging on suicidal, undertaking. There is absolutely no let off in the accelerating heartbreak and injury that befalls Eilish and her brood as she seeks safety in some form or other. But ultimately that safety comes at a great price. It’s heart wrenching redolent of The Road but with less time for contemplation or consideration. It deserves to join the highest echelon of Irish novels, indeed any novels. I was broken-hearted that it had to end.
I’ve now seen all three of Mia Goth’s extraordinary A24 movies this year. In each one she has singlehandedly carried the movie to ridiculous heights of greatness.
All three are billed as horror (X as a slasher, Infinity Pool as an unhinged psychopath study and Pearl as another psychopath gestational study).
All three deepen A24’s reputation as the distributor of the year/decade, the greatest signifier of quality in moviemaking right now.
All three mark out Goth as the leading horror female actor in history if not, increasingly, one of the great female actors of her generation full stop.
It’s Pearl that that confirms this most potently as her performance is jaw dropping throughout.
It’s the origin piece for X, but the two movies could hardly be less similar, even though the central character is the same person (60 years apart) and shot on the same farm location in Kansas.
This tells the tale of young married Pearl with her husband labouring in the European trenches of WWII, her father a wheelchair stricken quadriplegic – a victim of the Spanish Flu which is a clever reference as it was written by Goth and Director Ti West during lockdown – and her raging mother, a German immigrant trapped by her crippled husband in rural America and resentful to the back teeth because of it.
Goth (Pearl) wants to escape this and become a dancer but is thwarted at auditions for not being blonde enough. This triggers her inner psychopath and whilst we don’t get a rampage on the scale of X we do see her nascent evil emerge.
It’s Goth’s startling performance and Ti West’s dazzling direction that marks this out as a horror of sheer class, although in truth it’s not really a horror at all: not a single jump scare and very little in the way of butchery.
Two scenes stand out, both featuring Goth, a long monologue to her friend and the closing credits which are reminiscent of Sinead Connor’s classic pop video.
This is movie making at its finest and a must see in my opinion.
I didn’t know of Sylvia Patterson, she was never really a big name music writer like Barbara Ellen or Miranda Sawyer but, as it turns out, she had quite the CV behind her.
Raised in Perth by an alcoholic mum and adoring dad her life story (Published in 2016 but evading me until now) is diaphanously explored through this wonderful book’s pages.
She’s a bit of a sorry soul in most respects; addicted to weed, a very heavy drinker and unable (mostly) to forge a real relationship, her housing situation in London is sub-optimal to say the least and she barely had two pennies to rub together – life as a music journalist, especially a freelancer, may be glamorous but it sure isn’t financially rewarding.
The book sort of evolves as it emerges into the light, starting out at the lite end of glamour in Dundee on Etcetra before graduating to Smash Hits (Ver Hits) in London then NME before Glamour magazine (fits your lifestyle and your handbag) as music editor, before going freelance.
We get real insights into all of these magazines as Patterson charts the gradual and terminal decline of the music press. My beloved NME being the most remarkable implosion.
But the meat of this extraordinary, and yes it is extraordinary, story is the interviews which she retells in forensic detail. She’s clearly kept the tapes which allows her to transcribe them in all of their gory glory.
Madonna, Prince, Spike Milligan, Blur (wankers especially Damon), Coldplay, Kylie (12 times), Spike Milligan, Eminem (utter cunt), Cypress Hill, Marc Almond (wanker), New Order, Oasis, Pulp, The Manics (bevvie merchants extraordinaire), Led Zeppelin, The Beckhams, Beyonce (as Destiny’s Child), Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Adele…The list is endless and all killa no filla. Most have at least a chapter each dedicated to them, all are analysed as artists and human beings. Some do not fare well.
The writing is brilliant, unique in style, relaxed, a bit gossipy but never show offy. This feels like a true expose of the music industry, a bit Kenneth Anger I suppose.
Patterson herself comes across as brave, bold, maverick, non-conformist but vulnerable and scatterbrained, so in no way is this a “look at me” self aggrandisement, but a slightly sad, slightly regretful summation of a career that feels terribly overlooked. If her journalism was as good as her book-writing she should have been the most famous music journo in the biz. Maybe spending too long at Smash Hits, which people like me sneered at, was part of her problem – although writing stars emerged from that stable. Perhaps her lack of ambition stimied her. I don’t know, but what I do know is I’d love to meet her and admire her tremendously.
Well, this is by a distance the best movie I’ve watched this year. It actually feels more than a movie experience as it’s so writerly, almost so theatrical that it becomes much more than the sum of its parts by the time you emerge from two and a half hours of spellbinding storytelling.
It’s a French courtroom procedural at its heart.
But it’s a marriage breakdown story at its heart
But its a tragedy at its heart, as the son of our main protagonist loses his sight as a result of his father’s momentary lack of attention (in this respect it reminded me of The Child in Time by Ian McEwan in which a simple lapse of concentration leads to a lifetime of anguish).
This is to prove pivotal at the climax of a densely multilayered script that keeps you guessing from start to finish. Not that it’s a whodunnit.
Basic story is this. Mum, famous writer being interviewed by a sexy young French literature student whom she maybe fancies because she is bisexual has to abort interview because Dad (failed writer and home carer for the son he blinded) starts to drown out the interview by playing P.I.M.P at full volume on the stereo. Mum seems unconcerned; semi-sighted son takes beloved dog for a walk in the snow. When he returns dad is dead having either jumped or been pushed by his wife from the top floor of the chalet.
We now embark on a slow (reminded me of Michael Haneke direction) unravelling of a pre-trial build up with Mum’s old friend (flame?) before the trial itself shift shapes endlessly as the story unfolds.
It’s set in the French alps where French husband Samuel has forced his German wife Sandra to relocate. She speaks perfectly good French but insists they converse in English.
At the trial the court insists on French (but she drops often into English) and this ambiguity and fluidity of language is a powerful metaphor for the rules of marriage, how relationships are brokered, where the power lies.
At its core sits the simply incredible, often inscrutable, Sandra Hüller who’s barely off screen. She has a script to die for, written by the director Justin Triet and Arthur Harari . In many ways it’s the star of the show because it’s so clever, moving and labyrinthine.
Then there’s a mesmerising performance by 11 year old Milo Machado Graner, the semi sighted son who is the key to the whole story, but keeps his cards well hidden until the breathtaking denouement.
Frankly, the beautiful blue eyed pet dog deserves a mention too. You’ll need to watch it to see why.
All in all it’s a remarkable movie. The Haneke reference is deserved. The performances outstanding. perhaps too slow in the first act, but by the end you’ll be wanting more.
Don’t go for popcorn entertainment. Go for philosophical human insight and intrigue. You’ll thank me – if that floats your boat.
Morna Young’s very Scottish adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen is a delight from start to finish. We watch as if through a mirror to a beautiful rendering of the Lyceum’s Grand Circle recreated on stage into a clever two-level set crafted with much detail (we were in row A of the stalls so got a pretty close up view). The costumes are beautifully crafted too.
The tale is a pretty closely followed retelling of the classic fairy tale, but moved to Scotland which affords us a grand opportunity to mix modern and auld Scots with a fair bit of the Doric. This leads to several good one liners in what is a funny but not pantomime script.
In fact it’s not panto at all, which is the way with the Lyceum’s Christmas shows, but this, more than most, is primarily concerned with storytelling and performance than ‘she’s behind you’ and lewd innuendo, although Richard Conlon gets a chance to successfully air his comedy chops as a camp unicorn in act 2.
It’s directed by Cora Bissett but doesn’t particularly feel like a Cora show. I don’t know why I say that because she has a pretty broad repertoire. It somehow feels more constrained than I’d expected Cora to be with this. That’s not to say her work is not up to scratch because it very much is. She teases excellent performances out of the entire cast, led by a newcomer to me, Rosie Graham as Garda.
One young child sitting next to us was clearly scared to bits by Clare Dargo as the Snow Queen and had to leave after 20 minutes, but it’s not a scary show and should be good for most kids, although it is quite long. Maybe a touch too long if I’m honest.
It’s really quite a lovely performance. Touching and sentimental without being gushy and I for one would highly recommend it.
I wonder if you share my enthusiasm for what at first seemed to me to be a gimmick release but turns out to be rather moving and beautiful. Although my Unbcle Rab declared it “a bit mushy”. And my wife Jeana said, “The trouble is I don’t like Paul McCartney’s voice.” Nicely spotted Jeana.
Me? It’ll be on my best of the year list because, quite simply, it’s one of the best of the year.
David Greig has written some of my favourite plays. I will never forget his Macbeth addendum, Dunsinane. And The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart is a play like no other you have ever seen. Add to that The Suppliant Women (after Aeschylus) Solaris and Yellow Moon and you have a writer of significant importance. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg).
I bumped into him on Monday lunchtime on Lothian Road, and after chittery chattery he asked me if I was still writing this largely undiscovered colossus of writing magnificence. “Yes”, I humbly replied.
“Well, you’ll regret meeting me today” he proclaimed as he fumbled in his rucksack to fish out a copy of Columba’s Bones and thrust it into my hands. With that he disappeared into the fog.
It wasn’t foggy.
Gulping with fear I strode to Sainsbury’s for my Red Pepper and Lentil Soup, a bargain at £1.50 in these days of crippling extortion. Fear, because the thought of ploughing through a religious tale set in Iona in 825 was my idea of hell – I’d read the publicity and had abandoned the idea of purchasing this novel.
Fast forward 5.5 hours, to whence I sit on the #43 Lothian County Bus to South Queensferry. People are looking at me like I’m a leper as I guffaw at page three of this magnificent jewel.
It’s only 180 pages, it’s A5 in size, pocketable, and has big type for the hard of reading, so if it was going to be a chore it was going to be a manageable chore.
It’s not a chore.
Yes, it’s set on Iona. Yes, it’s 825AD (or whatever they call it now). Yes, it stars a monk, a viking and a widow. No, it’s not a turgid bag of fleapiss.
What David Greig does, and this cues me up to blow voluminous smoke up his beardy arse, is conjure up (based on an existing story I think) a truly great thing. Firstly, it’s hysterically funny (think Monty Python meets Mary Beard, pissed). Secondly, it’s properly engaging. In so few words Greig creates three characters that are at once unique and at the same time familiar. Thirdly it’s unputdownable.
It’s a story about revenge, love (of God, man and woman) and values. But mostly it’s just a right rollicking read. I’ll say no more because it’s easy to spoil it.
By Wednesday teatime, as I rolled off the #43, it was done. I will be extolling its virtues to all and sundry for many moons.
This is the 19th Martin Scorsese movie I’ve seen. It settles firmly into the upper quartile of this remarkable director’s work.
His range is immense and this sits closer to some of his American History documentaries than it does to, say, Gangs of New York or Wolf of Wall Street.
But it actually has its roots in Casino/Goodfellas territory, because it’s a kind of mafia film, in that it explores a very one-sided gang attitude to clansmanship (and in a small part Klansmanship).
It’s actually a story of genocide/ethnic cleansing, as Robert Di Niro’s (rarely better, certainly not in the last 40 years) rich, ranch-owning, Oklahoman one-man dynasty sets out to wrestle away the oilfield rights of the Osage tribe of Native Americans by hook or by crook – mainly by crook.
The Osage are mightily rich because oil has been found slap bang in the middle of their land and Di Niro’s William Hale is jealous and determined to get his greedy mitts on the money.
He does this in a pincer movement. Firstly by marrying his returning WWI war hero, a dim-witted nephew Ernest Burkhart (phenomenally played by Leonardo DiCaprio) into the Osage. His willing wife Mollie (a star turn by Lily Gladstone) is unaware of Hale and Burkhart’s long term ambitions and simply falls in love with him. Truth is, it’s mutual.
Hale’s second strategy in this pincer is the straightforward murders of Mollie’s family and many more Osage besides. There are numerous cold blooded killings that pepper the movie and yet it never feels gratuitous (cold blooded and shocking, yes, but not especially repellent – like it might have been in Tarantino’s hands.)
It’s a study in racism and of greed but that doesn’t mean Di Niro, DiCaprio and Gladstone don’t win you over with their overwhelmingly great performances – expect all three to feature at next year’s Oscars (I expect Di Niro to pick up his 9th nomination, DiCaprio his 8th and Gladstone her first – maybe a first ever Oscar for a woman of Native American descent?)
Gladstone is a silent but steely presence. Much of the film documents her suffering at the hands of Hale and Burkhart, and it’s truly shocking how DiCaprio treats her, despite his undoubted love for her.
It’s widely documented that the film is extraordinarily long (3h26mins without a break is a bladder challenging sit through) but although it features murders galore, it’s no action picture. Do not go looking for any Marvel escapades in this one folks. But it’s manageable, riveting and entirely justified in its length.
One other thing to point out. The soundtrack is an almost imperceptible blues bass thrum by Robbie Robertson that builds tension at an almost inaudible level but is like a heartbeat throughout. Sinister and compelling it quietly drives the story along. Bravo Robbie.
The movie is a savage insight into a part of American history that was not familiar to me and it deserves to be seen by a wide audience. Judging from the low availability of seats in Edinburgh’s cinemas this weekend that ambition at least appears to be coming to fruition.
In which Curtis writes a truly romantic novel that is laugh out loud funny. but it’s not a romantic comedy. Oh no. that would be vulgar.
Instead she writes a heartwarming love story about a mousy looking mid-thirties TV sketch show writer for Saturday Night Live who finds herself in a relationship with the hottest pop singer in the United States whilst writing a sketch for SNL about an unattractive man pulling a hot woman. (This is a common occurrence, usually linked to money. She appropriates it and calls it The Danny Horst Rule , which states that men from SNL can date way out of their league, but the same isn’t true for the women working on the show.)
Except, of course, they can, and she does.
Kinda meta.
Also it’s a favourite of writers to write about writing/writers but it’s the first time she’s done it and I think will land her her first movie. Just don’t call it a romantic comedy.
So that’s the premise. Hot musician pulls dowdy spinster.
It’s told in three acts. The first is a wonderful exposition of what goes on behind the scenes in a week at SNL (OK it’s called The Night Owls) and involves a guest host, Noah Brewster, of multi million selling Making Love in July fame who hosts the show and briefly falls for one of its best writers, Sally Milz.
Then Covid hits and their relationship is renewed via email in Act 2 before fully consummating itself IRL in Act 3.
The whole book wrestles with The Danny Horst Rule and explores the unlikeliness of this megastar falling for this ordinary woman. Except she’s not ordinary, she’s whip smart, experienced and very, very funny.
The whole basis of what grounds relationships, spoiler, it’s not looks, is explored over 300 page turning leaves.
I loved it. My seventh and now complete back catalogue of Sittenfeld’s (although the first signed one I have). It’s not her best, although it’s not far off, but it could be her most succesful when the movie goes stratospheric.
I seriously hope that Andy McGregor’s sublime Battery Park gets a longer life than its 12 or so show tour of Scotland, because it’s fantastic.
Andy wrote, composed and directed this gig theatre show about a fictional band from Greenock that might have made it in the BritPop era if circumstances had conspired.
In two 45 minute acts, the first hilarious, the second melancholy, we follow the rise and fall of this extremely talented bunch of misfits through a grudgingly acceptant reminiscence of the older Tommy (in his 40’s) looking back on his complicated heyday in conversation with Chloe-Ann Tyler’s Lucy. He’s buried a past that she wants to unearth and it spells trouble.
Everything about this excellent show delights; from a pitch perfect soundtrack performed magisterially by a pitch perfect ensemble cast (Charlie West, Chris Alexander, Kim Allan, Stuart Edgar and Tommy McGowan, alongside the aforementioned Chloe-Ann Tyler) to a pitch perfect script that had me in stitches with its accurate Brit pop references and just plain funny dialogue.
Charlie West gets the laughs as the moronic drummer Biffy (get the name ref?) but Chris Alexander as the older Tommy holds the show together with his profound reminiscences. The girls in the cast have the job of bringing reason and sobriety to the mix. Kim Allan’s Robyn is clearly modelled on Shirley Manson and carries it off beautifully.
A brother in law of Cora Bissett’s glorious “What Girls are Made of” this show deserves to echo that one’s undoubted and deserved success.
Look out for its revival. Hopefully at The Traverse at The Fringe next year.
In which Curtis follows up her dream debut, Prep with a bid of a dud. It follows the relatively uninteresting fantasy, and then real, love life of Hannah, starting when she’s fourteen and never been kissed.
It’s like Curtis took a breather after Prep which, as fairly obvious auto-fiction, was a book bursting to get out of her. But this, the difficult second novel, was something to keep her publisher happy. It’s unoriginal, uninspiring and fairly insipid. So bad is it, in fact, that I’m even struggling to remember the plot a month after reading it.
The boys and men are all cads of course and the only good one gets away. All a bit fucking Mills and Boon. (Certainly not Penguin standards although my copy was Picador published).
One to resist. I mean, the title kind of sends out big red distress flares, doesn’t it.
Go instead for her fabulous later canon which has established her at the top of living American women writers.
I’ll bore for Scotland about Curtis Sittrenfeld, just not this one.
In the pantheon of great Scottish vernacular writers Graeme Armstrong has joined the podium. He stands alongside James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Ely Percy and Anne Donovan.
Maybe he is the gold medalist, but let’s see what novel #2 brings.
My only criticism of this amazing book is it could have been edited a little more tightly.
That critique aside, in the meantime we have a belter in The Young Team which is an auto-fictional story of life in brutal, and I mean really brutal, gang culture in Airdrie and the surrounds (Coatbridge, Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton).
Whatever, they’re awe shite.
The Young team tells of Azzie’s life as a wannabe gang leader through the ranks, to…well, you’ll have to read it
The grit in this story is that Azzie has a brain. Trouble is he uses it infrequently as his gang-inspired rage too often rules his heart over his head.
At times you grit your teeth so hard you can barely breathe as this horrific story unfolds. It’s not quite Glasgow’s Jimmy Boyle-esque razor gangs, but it’s not far short.
Life in North Lanarkshire’s schemes is awful, although interestingly Armstrong rarely suggests that, it’s just life.
Aggro, violence, wine (Buckfast) drugs and motherly love are the soothing embraces that make this land home. No matter what.
The drugs (or is it the violence – there’s plenty of that) centre the book. Azzie is close to being a junkie, but he’s also close to being a murderer (OK, manslaughterer).
He’s smart, but he’s also mental.
I wouldn’t want to meet him (although I would love to meet Graeme Armstrong). We read of his life from wannabe gang master to sensible 22 year old retiree. But the needle still skips.
It’s, to be honest, terrifying. But it’s written with the mind of a philosopher.
Azzie can escape, unlike most.
This makes it sound like a cliche but it’s anything but. Ignore comparisons to Trainspotting. That’s lazy and predictable. This is a far more serious, and more important, book.
“It’s shite being Scottish”, yes it is – in this den of iniquity.
The stories of rave culture add a bit of levity (but even these are horrifying in places). I wasn’t one of them (thankfully reading this) but levity is not a tonal reference of this book.
Many say it is funny like Irvine Welsh. (It isn’t). OK, it has funny moments. But it isn’t a comedy book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s much more Alan Warner than Irving Welsh in this respect.
So, don’t buy this for a laugh.
Buy it to , I dunno, I’m so middle class that I don’t want to say/admit it – feel better about your life?
Actually, naw, just revel in Graeme Armstrong’s writing skills.
It’s a belter. And it’s coming to a TV near you soon so get it read first.
His latter career has actually escalated him to a higher status than Vic Reeves (Gone Fishing and Atletico Mince), but oddly the latter stage of the aforementioned is the most uninteresting part of this, in places, great book.
The first act, his childhood and early career is by far the most successful section of the book as he recounts his slow clamber out of painful shyness that cripples his ambitions. Once succesful, and telling the story we know, he tries too hard to write his way though it rather than simply storytelling. It exposes his weaknesses as a writer pretty badly.
Early on, his similes are laugh out loud funny, but they dry up. The real strength is his descriptions of laddishness and naivety that populate his early years.
The shyness he experiences feels a little laid on too thickly for me, but when he concludes the book he comes back to it and urges readers to overcome their own feelings of inadequacy, so maybe it is for real.
Either way it lurches from laugh out loud funny (the shoe waterfall) to banal.
I doubt I could cope with his novel which I fear would suffer from trying to be funny rather than naturally being so.
OK, I have an excuse for my profound exhaustion. I’m 61 and I’m holding a job down whilst taking in exactly 60 shows.
God knows what it must be like for performers doing multiple shows, there are plenty of them, me and my wife’s favourite being Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland (And then the Rodeo Burned Down and What if They Ate The Baby), who put on two shows and, when we talked to them, told us they were taking shows in too.
It turned out to be the fifth biggest Fringe ever in terms of ticket sales, but it was a stripped down official EIF and an uninspiring programme, apart from the dance which was excellent. What theatre I saw was sub-optimal. That said Nicola Benedetti is an inspiration.
So, as said, 60 shows with a big mix of comedy, theatre, dance and music.
What stood out?
Much, I have to say.
I get accused of gushing about what I see, but I spent months planning (advance planning) my itinerary and that paid off well with experience playing a role.
Certain venues are more likely to offer quality than others and that forms the basis of my summary.
Before I start I have to say that week one was banging with those in the know taking advantage of lower ticket prices, the second weekend saw Edinburgh simply overwhelmed, but it tailed off rapidly after that. The cost of the Fringe is scary , although I believe there is astonishing value to be had in ticket prices, even at full price. It really is a bargain if you can find good value accommodation and is surely the greatest place to be on planet Earth for culture lovers like me, in August..
The shows/Venues
Roundabout with Paines Plough at Summerhall provided England & Son (utterly stunning), Daniel Kitson and Strategic Love Play all of which were brilliant. Lady Dealer was good and so was Salty Irina, but Bangers disappointed.
Summerhall itself always inspires and Mass Effect, Ben Target: Lorenzo, An Interrogation, Klanghaus: Inhaus and Club Nights were all amazing. I didn’t see a bad show at Summerhall. I just wish I’d got Gunter and Woodhill tickets.
The Traverse had a mixed bag. Bloody Elle and No Love Songs (you need to see this in Dundee) were both gig theatre inspiration, but The Grand Old Opera House Hotel disappointed, despite the inevitable hype. After the Act was truly awful.
The surprise pick of venues (although it has been rising in my opinion) was Zoo Venues, it picked up three brilliant Fringe First and I saw them all, the Danish Insider, Funeral by Ontreroed Goed and Beasts(Why Girls Shouldn’t be afraid of the Dark) but also a great show from Belgium called the Van Paemel Family. They punched above their weight.
In dance I was blown away by EIF shows Rite of Spring, L-E-V and Alvin Ailey in that order but also the aforementioned Summerhall dance spectacle, Mass Effect.
The Pleasance delivered for me with great shows like Hello Kitty Must Die ( although still a WIP in my view) and the five star Lucy and Friends and the ever reliable Showstoppers (I also hear Icehouse was amazing).
Assembly definitely delivered. Mythos Ragnarock (Death metal Norse mythology wrestling), Baby Wants Candy, Party Ghosts and Tutu,
And even Underbelly had some quality with Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder and the quite good Choir Choir Choir.
Space nailed it with the aforementioned Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland (And then the Rodeo Burned Down and What if They Ate The Baby).
And then, right at the end I saw Singing Sands a new Scottish play by Our Theatre at Greenhill. Magically heartwarming.
On the Festival, official, Food delighted but the theatre programme was gash.
All, in all a brilliant Fringe with one life changer. Funeral.
I only took in one show today. the beast that is the Fringe has broken me. We bailed on Gustavo Dudamel because Wagner’s 1st Symphony seemed a step too far, especially after spending three hours with my great friend Alex in the bar at Summerhall.
Anyway my one show was well worth the effort of travelling into Edinburgh. It takes an hour and a half each way in August so that makes the days even longer and more arduous.
But today’s absolute treat was Singing Sands at Greenside Ivy by a new company called Oor Theatre. My first ever visit to this old school venue.
Aside from the cramped seating and uncomfortable chairs everything else about this little gem of a venue was outstanding, especially the show.
Set on the tiny Scottish Island of Eigg a brother and sister have been arranging and attending their Gran’s funeral, whilst unbeknown to them their cousin Ali has set up home at Gran’s house. The show opens with Ali (Hugo Shack) rummaging through a box of Gran’s belongings which leads to a hilarious imagined conversation between them with only an old pair of Gran’s spectacles as a prop. It works brilliantly and sets the tone for this new piece of theatre which is hilarious and a little poignant too.
The writing by Shack, Eilidh Park and Sean Russell (the other two performers in this three hander) is terrifically on point and every single joke (there are many, and some particularly subtle) land perfectly. I laughed out loud many times.
It’s fresh, original, funny and beautifully crafted, deserving another life outside of this short, but sold out, run in Edinburgh.
The show explores the relationship between the siblings and their black sheep cousin, taking them back through childhood memories to the Singing Sands of the title, (a natural phenomenon in several locations in Western Scotland) and whilst death is the construct on which the show is based, and leads to some great gags, it’s really about familial love, loyalty and the power of blood ties.
gibberish 