Edinburgh Fringe - third day out on the streets

Working it on the Royal Mile

A typical August day at the Edinburgh Fringe seems to be slightly warm and wet but that doesn't stop those who need to sell a show on the Royal Mile from coming out and doing what they do. Not so many punters though on day 3 of our trip so we had breathing space to think about what to do next without too much bustle.

The next on our 'to-do' list was Musical Theatre as Edinburgh together brings Musical Theatre Societies from all over the country.

Members of CUMTS when not in costume...

Most are very young (students still at uni) and they bring bags of enthusiasm and energy to Edinburgh and often showcase from one of the two stages set up for the purpose on the Royal Mile. We didn't see these guys here but who can resist a Stephen Sondheim musical we asked ourselves when we came across the Cambridge University Musical Theatre's Society (CUMTS for short) production of The Assassins on the app. 

This is a bit of an odd musical, telling the story of a nine of those who across the centuries have attempted (and sometimes succeeded) in assassinating a US President. Chronologically Assassins is a bit of a mess but you can't blame the cast who not only sang their hearts out (Sondheim is challenging) but often left the stage to pick up an instrument - what an annoyingly talented bunch. It was a bit raw in places and voices not always as strong as they should be but the two girls in the cast were worthy of extra praise as they were very good indeed. Nice to hear some great music sung with gusto in the afternoon!

Following a musical theme we checked out 'looping artist' Adam Page all the way from Australia. Adam uses looping pedals to record and playback, effortlessly recording the sounds he makes or plays and layering others on top of them to create a wall of musical sound and beat. He also has an extraordinary beard which, with the use of a small microphone, he 'plays', recording the scratchy sounds and layering them into the music.
If you want to catch a bit of Adam yourself then check out the following video...




A brief stop to fill up on pizza and we were off to our third show of the day. The Peculiar Tale of Pablo Picasso and the Mona Lisa is a new piece of absurdist comedy performed by the talented Fourth Monkey Theatre Company. They have been working very hard to establish themselves on the Fringe over the past few years and I have to say this was genuinely one of the best things we saw this year.

Fourth Monkey from Colin Hattersley Photography

Taking Picasso's early life, this tells the story of an outrageous theft of the Mona Lisa and the muses who inspired the young Pablo. Using a simple white set, beautiful costume, this play brought to life the spirit of Paris in the early twentieth century. It's visually arresting and great fun with tons of artistic license and an appearance from the Desmoiselles d'Avignon to help and hinder Picasso throughout the story. It's all a bit mad, farcical and shows Picasso as the egocentric bastard that we can all imagine he was. Gertrude Stein and Georges Braque also make an appearance. We loved it for it's energy, sense of fun and absurd storyline and came out of the theatre smiling and uplifted - what more can you ask?

Final stop of the day was to This is a Damage Manual, a piece of dance with physical theatre thrown in for good measure from BONEdanse. It sounded really interesting, using vintage instruction self-help recordings from the 1950s (all on scratchy vinyl record) to explore how universally damaged we all are and how many of us simply stay that way. All with a lot of satire and wit thrown in.

   

The Book Of Mormon - what a blast!

Last night along with a  friend and my daughter, I went along to see The Book of Mormon at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Piccadilly. It was a long awaited treat - I'd booked the tickets months ago as they'd virtually sold out the minute this 'hot ticket' show hit the box office. And I can see why. If you ask me 'are you a fan of musicals?' I will always say 'no'. It's not top of my list for an expensive theatrical night out, although if I'm really honest I have enjoyed all of the musicals I've seen recently, so maybe I'm a closet musical fan after all.

The Book of Mormon will be going near to the top of my most favourite musicals next to The Producers and The Lion King. Okay it's a bit blasphemous and you could throw the race book at it if you so desired but you would really be missing the point, and if it put you off going altogether then you'd certainly be missing out. Remember the first time you saw The Life of Brian? Shocked a lot of people at the time, but it's now considered a classic and this show, I'm sure, will be exactly the same. If you're a fan or are aware of South Park, created by the same writing team, then you really shouldn't be shocked at the edgy language and occasional lapse into extreme bad taste - it's all par for the course.

And how easily offended are you really? Let's put it this way, there were two Mormon missionaries in the row in front of us (distinctive haircuts, pink shirts and clean faces) who seemed to find it thigh-slappingly funny. It is sweary - not many would break that comedy taboo of mixing the 'C' word happily with the 'G' word (and by that I mean God) and setting it to music. There are jokes about female genital mutilation, not a subject for comedy surely, but in this context it worked. But if you're easily offended then stay away.

If however, you want to breath in the sheer joy of great performance and learn a little about Mormons, then this really is worth the wait and the ticket price.

I loved every brilliantly slick, perfectly timed, anarchically written, creatively choreographed second from the moment the curtain rose to the moment it fell.

The cast were wonderful - the all American style boys playing the Mormons were all white toothy grins and exaggerated mannerisms. While the cast playing the villagers and illegal army in Uganda were loud, strong and owned the stage with their song and dance.

Musically they've stolen from many a standard musical and sent it up. The set switches from the USA to mud huts in Uganda with ease, but what impressed me most was the feeling of absolute joy that you come away with for hours afterwards.

Taking away the songs about everyone having AIDS or maggoty scrotums for a moment (and to be honest it's not overwhelmingly like this, being more sweet than sinful) and you have a lot of food for thought. The underlying messages and debate that this brings to the surface are those that have been going on for decades at least.  The premise that all religions are made up of stories and legends and change over time, becoming relevant for the people wanting to take part is the overarching theme. The fact that religions give hope and structure and meaning is a strong storyline. The fact that the downside of religion can be where it becomes over-controlling and replaces free thought is also referred to. I did laugh, a lot, but couldn't sleep for looking at the bigger picture and the points being made through swearing and song.

It's also a little bit bonkers which you'd expect from this comedy writing team. Darth Vader, Hitler, The Devil, a flight deck member of Star Trek and even Yoda all make an appearance even if only in the background but they all easily add to the theme of myths, legends and culture without just being there to be silly.

Don't dismiss The Book of Mormon, it's a love story and a story of human endeavour - go and see it to join in the debate. If the Mormons themselves laugh along then what's to stop you?

The Book of Mormon, Prince of Wales Theatre, Coventry Street, London.

Sonos - music to my ears

So it may sound like we're a bit gadget mad in our house but really we are just playing catch-up and we do tend to have spurts in buying gadgets when everything seems to come to the end of it's lifecycle all at once. So it's often the case that the vaccum cleaner will die at roughly the same time that the freezer conks out too and a week later it'll be something else... it's known as the law of Sod.

These all have to be replaced as they are, to my mind, household essentials of vital importance. However there are some gadgets that are there for the sheer pleasure of having them, and the Sonos is one such gadget.

We heard our first Sonos on a trip to visit husband's sister and her man in Yorkshire. It was obviously a fairly new toy for him too as he took great delight in playing what we now refer to as 'the Sonos game'.

'Go on, what song would you like to hear?' he asked. The normal response would be 'what have you got?' or somesuch, but this time an Apple Touch was thrust upon us with the request to 'put in any song you would like to hear...'.

Which we did - and miraculously said track immediately started to fill the house with it's melody. And that was it - we were hooked and what followed was two hours of trying to catch the thing out.

Now to some people reading this, they will know exactly what a Sonos is and how it works but for the uninitiated I will explain.



The 'Sonos' box is a speaker and receiver which downloads tunes directly from Napster (for which you pay a monthly subscription) and plays them back. By using a special handheld control or something like an Apple Touch, you can search for tracks or artists and create playlists so you don't constantly have to be fiddling around if you'd rather be doing something else.

We bought one for husband's birthday and (after a few false starts getting Napster to work, why are things never as simple as they are meant to be?) we now have 100,000 tracks at our fingertips. We have just the one box but you can add others throughout the house too. And for those of us which grew up with a Dancette and 6 inch singles the leap into the 21st century is not just the immediacy of all that music but, and this is something us children of the sixties have to understand, you don't actually own the music, but are just fleetingly downloading and playing a track from a site.

You don't own the CD or the vinyl or anything tangible like that. So even though it's a wonderful toy with a great sound, if you love something enough you will still go out and buy it to physically 'own' the piece. What it does do, if you like discovering new music or rediscovering old stuff, is allow you to trial out a far wider range of music than you would normally do without the cost - and that is something you can do, in the privacy of your own home.

Music can be streamed through a variety of music sites like Spotify and itunes too. Prices start at around £300 for the Sonos system. You can add your own stereo and your own speakers too - it really is that versatile.

Kate Bush's New Album 50 Words for Snow

Kate Bush 2011

I always was a Kate Bush fan - she had a similar look to me as a young woman and kind of mad the frizzy hair and soulful eyes acceptable when everyone else was going for a more New Romantic glam. Not really a hippy, definitely not a New Romantic, Kate Bush was a performer who sang songs like no-one else and wrote them all herself. She was the original 'Florence and the Machine' really. And then she disappeared into the life of a reclusive and was not really heard from in the mainstream, for 17 years, and her last live performance was in 1979.

Until this year that is, with the launch of Director's Cut which came out to critical acclaim in May and her brand new album, 50 Words for Snow.

The voice is more mellow - she is after all 53. The album is full of myths and stories - she creates worlds that are 'other worldly' but are still  relevant to very human emotions and feelings. The stories are simple - we do all hanker after the simple these days. Her arrangements are lovely and moody. I loved the album, Hounds of Love, back in the '80's' and this has a similar feel - haunting, melancholy, beautiful.

Here is a sneak preview...