Brief reviews

At the half way mark in the festival I begin to long for a normal life again and just start to run out of steam. This is especially true when certain conditions are prevalent, like the depressing rain or if too many shows/exhibitions/events are bad. Fortunately, or simply through experience I've been to few disappointing shows this year, and have avoided the gloomy venues which bring my enthusiasm to a halt.  I'm just getting tired of hopping on and off buses, braving the crowds and running around between the other parts of my life. They need some attention after all, and when coming home to neglected housework and a foodless fridge is due to fringing, it's time to calm down a bit. So I went to very few shows at this fringely midpoint.

I've not had time or inclination to update the blog on what I have seen and this is reflected in what is a miserly piece on three really good shows that should have more said about them.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary stand up from Mary Bourke, at the free fringe.
Please just take it as read that I have raved on about her. I will spare the repeat from last year where I labour the point that there are some very good women doing stand up in Edinburgh, but the big venues fail to promote them. And I despair of seeing the likes of Mary Bourke on my TV on a Saturday night anytime soon. Rather, it will be the usual continuation of shouty, marchy up and downy blokes all winter when we should be seeing comedy that appeals to a much more intelligent demographic, like feminists!!

Didn't quite avoid repetition of my point about more funny women who do not offend easily offended feminists.


Bosom Buddies with Jack Klaff
A complete change of mood from the above, but enthralling theatre. Thankfully, the audience is given a handout of the characters played in this one hander as there were one or two historical people I'd never heard of.  I came home to google Ottoline Morrell, Margarete Buber-Nueman and Sabina Spielrein. I'd heard of all the male characters, as history is meticulous about recording them and making us search for the women portrayed by Jack Klaff.

I'd need to see it at least twice more before I could really convey how this piece of conversations between the characters, spanning major events in the 20th Century ebbed and flowed around and about the Cuban Missile Crisis, psychoanalysis, relativity, African, Indian, Russian history and probably more that eluded me.

Next time this is performed I'll get another ticket.

Booking Dance Festival: Split Bill
This American company brings dance troupes to the Fringe to showcase excerpts from their shows and assists those in the industry to book the acts. They also have tickets for the public.

I'm afraid I have to rave again, this time about three utterly distinct dance performances in one afternoon, starting with Rhythmic Circus. Described as 'Live Music and Rapid Fire Hard Hitting Tap' this was energy squared backed up by a very good seven piece live band. The ultimate in pretty people entertained a moderate sized crowd in Edinburgh's International Conference Centre. I just clapped my little hands off while they tap danced through hip-hop, funk, blues, and soul music.

Next Damagedance performed their world premier of Glimpses. This powerful performance explored psychological disorders, demonstrating that everyone suffers from something to some extent. We try to hide it.

I was initially cautious about this, but after a few minutes I was completely won over by this amazing group of young dancers.

Finally, Labyrinth Dance Theatre performed Noor.  I liked this, and the complete change of pace contrasted with the previous two dances. However, it did not move me as much as I expected for a story of the tragic heroism of Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan. But I was very happy to be reminded of one of the women who played an important part in WW2 and who was awarded the George Cross.

Warming up the old blog

In a repeat of last year, I intend to reactivate the blog while it is Edinburgh festivals time. Anything and everything I go to will be written up and judgement made on the enjoyment or offensiveness factor. Sometimes things are simply not fun without the frisson of a good feeling of righteous offence.

Just to get in the mood, I've included a report on a recent day out in Liverpool where I played tourist on one of the infrequent summer days.

The highlights were a visit to the International Museum of Slavery and the Tate Liverpool. 

John Lennon peace monument, by artist Lauren Voiers

I spent a long time in the International Slavery Museum learning things I should have known already. Liverpool's history is that of prospering because of the slave trade over hundreds of years. I'd not realised how early on Europeans had been enslaving people from West Africa, although I knew about the fight for abolition.

I could not manage to see round the whole museum because it was so horrifying in laying bare the conditions slavers transported people in. I realise that is a bit wimpish, but I do intend to go back sometime and see the rest. More uplifting were displays honouring the many slave uprisings across the Caribbean and America. Often these were instigated or led by women such as Carlotta in Cuba (1843), Solitude in Guadalupe (1802) and Rebecca in Curacao (1795). Of course, the woman we are most aware of is Harriet Tubman.

Slavery is still with us as was outlined in the campaign section of the museum where the display showed the plight of child domestic workers who've been trafficked to work in slave-like conditions in many parts of the world.

However, I'd particularly wanted to see '42', an exhibition by Lee Karen Stow, who photographed women in Sierra Leone. 42 is the average life expectancy of women there and one in 8 dies because of childbirth and complications.  It seems to me quite extraordinary that women in Scotland take it almost for granted they will live through childbirth, while for many women elsewhere in the world, pregnancy is a death sentence.

There is no need to have this rate of maternal mortality anywhere on earth. Those with the power to do something about it, should do it and stop financing wars and other toxic activities. We should all be blazing mad at this female carnage.

Emotionally zonked by the International Slavery Museum, I had lunch before visiting the Tate Liverpool. I wanted to see the gallery curated by Carol Ann Duffy and this did not disappoint. I spent ages there looking at her choice of exhibits from the whole Tate collection.

Gillian Wearing, Signs that Say at Tate Liverpool.

Duffy has written a sonnet specially for the exhibition

Poem

I couldn't see Guinness and not envisage a nun;

a gun, a finger and thumb;

midges, blether, scribble, scrum.

A crescent moon, boomerang, smirk, bone;

or full, a shield a stalker,

or stone. I couldn't see woods

for the names of the trees - sycamore,

yew, birch, beech -

or bees

without imagining music scored

on the air - nor pass a nun

without calling to mind a pint of one

stout, untouched, seen on a bar

at the Angelus.