We’ve been fans of the Bush for yonks and have become especially enamored with the Studio there, since it opened eighteen months or so ago.
This short play, Lands, is exactly the sort of thing we like to see at a place like the Bush Studio.
It is really quite a strange piece. One young woman is obsessively, slowly working her way through a massive jigsaw puzzle while the other jumps up and down on a trampoline throughout most of the play.
Much is left unexplained, but the pair might well be a couple; at the very least there are strong hints that they know each other well and have done so for a long while.
In one early coup-de-theatre, they perform a wonderful synchronized dance to Ain’t That Terrible by Roy Redmond…
…a great track btw, that Daisy and I both remember dancing to in the clubs way back when. It had both of us wracking our brains (unsuccessfully) in our attempts to identify the record.
Ellie at the Bush kindly put us out of our misery with the song title and artist, which helped us to avoid our own domestic the following Monday. Thanks Ellie – otherwise I might have obsessively blogged and Daisy might have obsessively pole-danced non-stop for a week. Not safe.
But I digress.
There were some very funny moments in the play – not least that dance – but also several very poignant scenes. While the play is, in many ways, an absurdist piece, there is enough realism in the scenario and the manner in which the drama pans out to be very affecting.
Both Leah Brotherhead and Sophie Steer perform their parts extremely well; the switches of mood – a couple of times turning on a proverbial sixpence, very deftly done.
In some ways the nub of the play is the domestic drama about the obsessions that seem to be pulling these people apart from each other, but in other ways it is about the causes of such obsessions. Towards the end of the play, the Leah character rants about all the things she doesn’t care about. But of course she must care about those things to some extent if she feels motivated to rant quite so viscerally about not caring. Perhaps Leah’s obsessions (or both women’s obsessions) are ways of shutting out the world because they cannot cope with caring about so much that is wrong.
In truth we weren’t expecting a piece quite as challenging as this one but we agreed that we were very glad to have experienced it once we got home and started chatting about it over our supper.
…I read the programme and was especially taken by Philip Ralph’s essay of dissent. It seemed so relevant to our troubled times. So much so that I wanted to provide space for those thoughts as a guest piece on Ogblog, if Philip was willing.
Philip indeed kindly sent me the notes with permission to present them here (thank you, Philip), together with the following message:
Mike Ward forwarded your request to use my essay from the programme for Casablanca in your blog. I’m happy to oblige. It’s attached.
I should say, for full disclosure, that the phrase ‘Who Do We Choose to Be?’ and the ideas explored in the piece are not my own but are lovingly stolen from my teacher, Margaret Wheatley, whose work, ideas and teachings I wholeheartedly recommend to you. The moment in the film seemed an entirely apposite example of what she explores and describes in her work.
The following embedded YouTube is the short section of the film Casablanca to which Philip refers in his essay. It is one of the more memorable scenes from the film and I took great pleasure in revisiting it, while also having my thoughts well and truly provoked by Philip’s excellent essay:
Your lyrics live on, Ian; we are reviving Casablanca The Musical at The Workshop in the last week of September…
Out of the blue, I received a letter from Mike Ward in early September to the above effect. As it happened, I had a couple of clear days, the Wednesday and Thursday of that week.
I felt very much motivated to see a revival of that show; I had written the lyrics for several songs. Also, to all intents and purposes, that show brought the house down at the old Actor’s Workshop in Halifax; the place was tragically razed a few weeks after Casablanca The Musical’s first production in 2001:
It had been many years since my last visit to The Workshop in Halifax; I think my previous visit was soon after the new place opened, phoenix-like from the ashes of the old place – perhaps 2004.
Anyway, I picked up the phone and called Mike, only to learn that speaking on the telephone doesn’t work very well for Mike any more:
I’m wirtually deaf phonewise, but I think you said you would like to see the wevival of Casabwanca on the Wednesday. Wonderful.
I then remembered why the Rick character is styled, in Mike’s book for Casablanca The Musical, as Wick. I also remembered some only marginally successful attempts at familiarising Mike with the use of e-mail back in the day.
Old style correspondence by post followed, mixed with some e-mails via Richard Kemp, to make the arrangements for my visit.
It was a similar itinerary, I think, to my 2001 visit for the same show, except this time I took an AirBnB apartment in town rather than a night in the Imperial Crown.
I got to the Workshop around 16:00. Mike and Richard (especially the former) looked after me and gave me a guided tour. Whereas on my previous visit the new place looked spanking new but devoid of all the props and costumes that had been lovingly accumulated at the old place…
…now, the new place reminded me of the old place; chock-a-block with stuff that might come in handy for some production or another. Cast-offs from the RSC and some smaller regional theatre companies. All sorts. Ever a theatrical magpie, is Mike Ward.
Then to the house, where Lottie had prepared a most delicious meal of fish soup. Their daughter, Olivia, was there and would join us this evening for the show. I hadn’t seen Olivia since the early days of meeting Mike, through son Adam who briefly wrote for NewsRevue, in the mid 1990s. It was lovely to see Olivia again; of course it was lovely to see all of them again.
Lottie spoke very highly of the revival production, which she had seen when it opened, the night before. In fact, she talked it up so much I think she and Mike were a bit concerned that we might be disappointed after such a build up; but they needn’t have worried.
Mike departed ahead of me and Olivia, enabling us and Lottie to chat, eat and drink some more, before Olivia and I headed off to The Workshop.
I thought the show really was excellent. Better than I remembered it from the first time – perhaps because Mike had edited the book a little – perhaps other elements of the production were just slicker and tighter this time.
Any resemblance purely coincidental?
For sure, I thought the big numbers, such as La Cage Au Wick’s…
The cast performing La Cage Au Wick’s – starting the second half of the show suitably silly
…worked especially well this time around, with more energy and poise, together with a musicality beyond my rememberings from 2001.
I was genuinely delighted and very impressed. Mike invited me to congratulate the cast backstage, which I gladly did. Several members of cast and crew stuck around to chat for quite some time after the show.
I read this play “back in the day” – when I was in my twenties – and had long wanted to see this Cocteau classic performed.
So when the Gate Theatre, one of our favourite places, announced that it would be producing this play, I was one of the first in metaphorical line to snap up tickets.
When this play was first written, the telephone was a relatively novel medium, so the piece will have been seen as exploratory – what might it sound like to be a fly on the wall hearing one side of a telephone conversation between lovers whose relationship has very recently broken down?
Of course, these days you only have to travel on public transport or sit in a cafe to eavesdrop on one side of such conversations all the time. Perhaps with that contemporary reality in mind, this production is performed with a mobile phone, bringing in additional opportunities for call interruption business while eliminating the potential for existential telephone chord business.
Also, to accentuate the theatrical “fly on the wall” sensation, the action took place inside a room-like windowed booth which we, the audience, observed from two sides. The photos below illustrate how that looked, from our seats, before the actress appeared. We all wore headphones to hear the actress as she might sound talking into a telephone. For this play, done this way, I think these touches worked.
Leanne Best did a grand job as the grief and panic-stricken woman who is the only visible and audible character in this play.
Janie concluded that the man was a piece of shit who was trying to drive the woman to suicide. That was not my reading of the play back then nor of this production of it.
We both thought this was a cracking good piece of drama- perhaps too good for us on a Friday evening when we were both tired and not really desirous of being gripped by the emotional throat.
This, our final day, started not so well, when I discovered that I had made a cock-up of our booking and that we were due to check out of our flat a day earlier than I thought; totally my own fault and a first time for me at this level of upcock. As luck would have it, the next occupant had been differently irritating by deciding at the last minute to arrive the morning after rather than that afternoon, so it was easy to make a bullet-dodging arrangement to stay on, as long as we could leave early the next day, which was in any case our plan/desire.
Again it rained in the morning, so we couldn’t play tennis and instead sorted ourselves out and had the last of the hunker-down food from the Farmers’ Market for breakfast. I had most of the splendid smoked trout while Janie enjoyed most of the remaining giant free range eggs.
As it turned out, this day then became a truly excellent day of theatre. We even pretty much dodged the showers; some heavy ones peppered the day today.
Our first gig was The Approach at the Assembly Hall. We faffed around so much over breakfast and stuff that I thought at one point we might miss this play. Instead, we arrived in time to join the back of the queue – only about 10 people behind us, so ended up sitting right at the back of quite a large space – a view to which we have both become unaccustomed for many years.
Not that you could tell that we were at the back from this picture
The Approach is a rather cryptic play about the interaction between three women who had formerly been close but who had drifted apart as a trio, so we might have benefited from hearing it all clearly. Three fine Irish actresses, Cathy Belton, Aisling O’Sullivan and Derbhle Crotty did a superb job open the whole but we struggled to catch every word and nuance at the back. Still, after discussing the play with other people later in the day, I think the play probably tells different stories to different listeners however well you heard the actual words. Well worth seeing; Janie even said she fancied seeing it again if it comes to London – from the aspect of better seats!
We had only ourselves to blame for that seating business and would really have only had ourselves to blame if we had failed to get from the Assembly Hall to Summerhall on time, with about 100 minutes between shows to stroll that 20 minute walk. By then Janie was very much into “we need to be at the front of the queue” mode in extremis, so I talked her out of the idea of queuing outside the Roundabout from the very start of the previous show, especially as it seemed to me that there were likely to be showers still during that hour. So we went inside and had some very decent coffee and shared a chocolate brownie in the shabby-chic cafe at Summerhall.
It’s the cafe that was shabby-chic, you understand.
That still gave us time to join a small, orderly queue for Tremor quite early. We chatted to a nice couple and their drama student daughter in the queue. The queue never got all that long; a few dozen of us sparsely populated the Roundabout auditorium for Brad Birch’s latest play, Tremor. We’ve seen two excellent Brad Birch plays before: The Brink and Black Mountain, both at The Orange Tree. We’d spotted this one, Tremor, while at Summerhall a few days ago and had wondered whether it would be all that different from Black Mountain when we read the synopsis. In fact it was very different play; the only similarity being the gripping and suspenseful nature of Brad Birch’s writing.
Tremor is a two-handler about a couple who survived a bus crash in which most of the passengers died. But their relationship had not survived and their physical health had recovered more readily than their mental health. Each had struggled in very different ways. The play opens with the young woman Having tracked down the young man who has made a new life for himself in another town. The drama plays out in a single scene of just under an hour.
We both thought Tremor was a really superb piece of writing and acting. We chatted afterwards with several people who had been in the auditorium, including a nice pair of South African women who I’m sure we’ll see again at the fringy-venues in London.
Part of my purpose in booking Tremor was to find ourselves in the right place at the right time to try and get returns for Extinguished Things, also at Summerhall, which was one of only a couple of productions we were especially disappointed to have found were booked out when we tried to book them. Tremor finished about two hours before Extinguished Things; i.e. about an hour before you could even try and queue for returns for that show.
We made ourselves known to a very sweet-looking young woman on the box office who promised that she would remember us as “first in the queue” for that show and/but advised us to return in 45 minutes or so. It was sunny by then, so we went into the courtyard, had a drink, watched a rather charming short puppet show by Strangeface, named Beached.
Strangeface were doing this mini-show really to promote their main show, The Hit, which sounds rather interesting. We then sat and finished our drinks, getting the opportunity to congratulate the “A Fortunate Man” team, which I recognised sitting at the next table.
Then back to the Box Office for some intricate timing to ensure that we were at the front of the queue precisely one hour before Extinguished Things. We had been promised nothing; our sweet girl had informed me that some days a few tickets come back, on one occasion just one had come back and yesterday none had come back. But her eyes lit up as the returns position was revealed – precisely two tickets had come back for this evening and we were there to snap them up. Sweet success.
In the happy intervening hour (which Janie considered passing by forming a ludicrously early queue) we had a look around some of the free exhibitions at Summerhall, including a closer look at the Jean-Pierre Dutilleux tribal photographs room – one of many unlisted treasures at Summerhall. I also booked us a table at Roseleaf for our last night meal.
Was it worth all that effort to see Extinguished Things? Well, once you have set yourselves a mission like that, the answer is “yes” by definition; it would have seemed like a failure had we not seen it. In any case, we both thought it was a charming miniature piece, written and performed by Molly Taylor, about a couple who went off on holiday never to return and the narrator’s reminiscences/imaginings when she enters their now permanently deserted nest.
In truth it is a miniature piece; not the greatest piece of writing or performance we have seen. But it is beautifully written and charmingly performed by the writer. The piece gave us plenty to think about and talk about afterwards; again we found ourselves chatting with fellow audience members after the show. I’m really pleased we got to see it in the end.
Then off to Roseleaf, where Janie wanted to repeat her dose of satay prawns and skank. I shared the prawns with her and had a monkfish burger (unusual). We washed that down with a very nice Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc. Janie indulged in an Irish coffee afterwards too, which I think she might be regretting slightly as I write on the following morning just before we set off back to London.
The weather really has mostly smiled on us for this visit to Edinburgh and in a way this day was no exception. Although it was drizzling hard in the morning, preventing us from playing tennis, the forecast said that the day would brighten up for our festival visit; which it did.
So we stayed home in the morning, making the most of the flat and having a cooked breakfast at home, using up some of the provisions we had bought in for hunkering-down purposes.
After brunch, off to town to collect tickets and then get to our first show of the day; Vessel at Bristo Square. Vessel is an excellent two-hander, performed by the writer, Laura Wyatt O’Keefe together with a fine young actor, Edward Degaetano, whom we bumped into and chatted with briefly after the performance.
We thought this piece, about the abortion debate in Ireland and the effect the strong views on the issue can have on real women’s choices/lives, was a really excellent short play. It deserves a wider airing and it was a real shame that the auditorium was not full.
Our next show was at the Teviot with just over an hour between shows; plenty of time to pop across the way to Checkpoint for some reasonably refined refreshment and for me to start getting interested in the Middlesex score as the chance of a highly unlikely win started to emerge.
On to the Teviot (what a grand looking Students’ Union that place is!) to see Sitting by Katherine Parkinson. This auditorium was full; probably because the play is by a known actress and had some exposure on the BBC. In truth, this was a rather contrived piece of writing about three life model sitters, apparently unconnected (although naturally connections emerge) and their relationship with an unseen and unheard artist.
The performers; James Alexandrou, Grace Hogg-Robinson and Hayley Jayne Standing all did their best to rescue the rather slow, tame and at times predictable script. The audience whopped and applauded wildly at the end; perhaps because the BBC had endorsed the production…or perhaps it was one of the better things that many in the audience had seen.
We emerged from that experience feeling a little irritated that, of the two things we had seen today, the production with bigger names behind it was getting the bigger audience and plaudits, despite being the lesser production in our view.
Irritation that Middlesex still needed a wicket to secure a win turned to joy at that win, before we moved on to have a stroll across town…
Then we wandered around Charlotte Square for a while looking at the Book Festival and taking an ice cream in the sunshine.
Then on to the Royal Botanical Gardens for some more irritation as we were told that we couldn’t see the garden ahead of our 19:00 concert there; we would have to walk all the way round the outside from the East Gate (where the fringe app had sent us) to the West Gate. This seemed ludicrously jobsworth-like to me during the weeks of festival if the gardens choose to play host to a venue. Being told that we weren’t the first to voice this grievance did not make us feel better.
I snapped some genuinely dire cricket in Inverleith Park across the road while we waited for the Gardens to let the #Pianodrome Live audience in.
The Pianodrome itself is a fascinating piece of construction, made from 50 recycled pianos, five of which can still be played within the venue. It seats about 50 people reasonably comfortably and another 50 uncomfortably. We had made sure to get there early to get relatively comfortable seating.
A young woman in Edwardian drag with an infeasibly waxy false-tash acted as compère quite well.
Janie and I already knew that we were to see a folk musician named Sam Gillespie (one half of The Brothers Gillespie) as a substitute for a prog rock band named The Brackish and were quite happy with the swap. He was joined by Siannie Moodie who turned out to be an especially fine exponent of the Celtic harp (clàrsach). In fact they both turned out to be good instrumentalists but my goodness Sam Gillespie’s songs are dirgy and derivative. Imagine Donovan and Pete Seeger, both in a bad mood, writing songs together.
Meanwhile additional people entered late (we guessed mostly the entourage of the substitute musicians) and some of them sat just under our feet. One young man who was clearly in with the in crowd made an especially redolent impression on us. What is it about people who hang around musicians and negligence with regard to personal hygiene?
There was also another musician involved briefly who played a glockenspiel-type percussion instrument but whose name seemed to be unlisted. Janie had unwittingly snapped him during warm up, so if anyone reading this recognises this man and his instrument, please message in his details.
The act for the second half of the evening was also unlisted and the compère merely mumbled that name as we left for the interval; in our case not to return.
We fancied a nice dinner tonight and felt that we could get one of those if we were back in Leith at a reasonable hour, so I made a last minute booking of a table at The Chop House for another good red meat meal.
Again Ignascio looked after us very nicely as did the very sweet and attentive (if not the most efficient) waiting staff. One young waiter, on his third day, took a particular interest in helping us out with ice cream, so I invented a word for the equivalent of a sommelier for ice cream: Ísbíltúrier. Remember where you encountered the word first.
The weather was much improved again today; yesterday was a weather blip. So we played tennis again at Leith Links in the morning.
Then off to have lunch at Marie and Joe’s new apartment in the south of Edinburgh, not too far from Summerhall and The Meadows. It took just over 45 minutes to get there door to door with a change of bus.
Janie insisted on taking some pictures along the way
We had a guided tour of the new place, including the new kitchen and en suite bathroom, which we were thus seeing before Linda Cook gets to see them; which is sure to be a source of much consternation.
Joe cooked a rather wonderful fish pie as the centrepiece of the lunch. We had a cherry roularde and some cheeses to follow, so that was us pretty much sorted for food today. Nice wines too.
It was really good to see Marie and Joe in their new home environment; when I saw them in Edinburgh last year…
We had some very interesting conversation about the festival, Edinburgh generally, politics generally, death, siblings, niblings, isms and anti-isms. You get the idea.
When lunch came to a natural end, I announced that I wanted to seek some indoor tennis shoes from Bruntsfield Sports in Morningside on our way back to Edinburgh. Marie and Joe volunteered to walk off lunch with us and chat some more.
It turned out that Bruntsfield Sports in Morningside doesn’t do those shoes; it is their branch at David Lloyd that sells them.
Still, we were by then near a convenient bus stop for central Edinburgh, so said a fond goodbye to Marie & Joe while stepping onto a bus to Princes Street.
We sought out the Apple Store on Princes Street in a vain attempt to get Daisy’s iPhone re-batteried (takes hours, we’ll need to do that in London). But I did procure the very iPad keyboard upon which I am typing right now, which should make my travelling blogs easier to write (i.e. wordier) in future.
On the way to Apple I spotted a show, Let’s Talk About Porn, at C, which looked interesting; a troupe of youngsters and plenty of time to faff around at Apple. Once I realised that’s we needed very little faffing time at Apple, I spotted another performance, The Roots Of The Blues, near to the C show (theSpaceTriplex) and just about enough time to pick up the tickets and fit both shows in.
So we ended up doing the very thing we promised we wouldn’t do; ran around like mad things fitting in a couple of shows at near-breakneck pace.
Both shows were worth it. The Roots Of The Blues was a mix of lecture and performance by Toby Mottershead. Charming, informative and he’s also a very able guitar player/blues singer. Toby’s slide guitar playing was exceptional and a new live experience for me and Janie.
Then up to C for the play Let’s Talk About Porn. This was a verbatim theatre piece, performed in a physical style by a very young troupe. “Sadly” we didn’t see the dour bar-tenders at the upstairs bar, but we did grab some water and did see the Flamenco duo from the previous evening sitting around before and after the play.
The play was good; we’d seen a fair bit of material on this topic before but it was an innovative, thoughtful, physical and interesting piece.
Then home, where we fancied little food and no booze – so we relaxed with just some toast and juice. Daisy managed to set off the smoke alarm by burning some toast – mercifully those things switch them selves off quite quickly and it was still reasonably early when that happened!
The promised deluge mostly dumped its load overnight, leaving a drizzly, mizzly morning.
We’d already rescheduled the Falkland Palace/real tennis outing to Tuesday and/but there was no hope of modern tennis either in the murk, so we had a very pleasent, quiet morning hunkered down with our provisions.
We watched the start of the test match while grazing, then set off to the City to collect our tickets…
…and then go out to Summerhall. There we saw A Fortunate Man, a two-handed play adapted from the book about a rural GP, in the rather apt setting of a former veterinary college lecture theatre. It was a very moving piece.
Then on to Flamenco Global at C. This had been a more serendipitous choice; I simply wanted to find some music (for variety) at that hour when we found that we couldn’t get tickets for Extinguished Things.
We had a glass of wine at the bar before the show, served by the most disengaged, humourless young people we have so far encountered in Edinburgh, which, together with the rather dour queue management at C, didn’t seem to auger well.
But as it turned out, Flamenco Global was a stunningly good act. Ricardo Garcia is a superb and seemingly very sweet guitarist. His playing was accompanied by some fine dancing by Nanako Aramaki.
We chatted afterwards with a nice Scottish couple who were fans of Flamenco and of Garcia in particular.
Then the bus home…
…for a quick freshen up and then off to the Roseleaf for dinner.
Great grub and friendly staff. daisy started with satay prawns & went on to a chunky Cullen Skink (a sort of smoked haddock chowder), while I started with an excellent mushroom soup followed by a trout dish. A fruity Viognier wine. We even had deserts – Janie had affogato (all the fashion I am told) while I tried a banana parfait with ice cream & chocolate named Bananarama.
All the music was similarly late 1970s early 1980s with various retro feels in the crockery and a collection of mad hats around the walls for mad hatter tea parties, apparently. For a short while we had a strange couple next to us – she had no volume control, occasionally speaking so loudly and strangely it was hard nor to look. They ate incredibly quickly and mercifully moved on at pace too.
Quirky place, superb food, excellent service, rounded off our day very nicely.
We rose late by our standards and pootled around first thing. We played tennis around 11:00 – the courts were deserted on a formerly-drizzly, albeit Saturday, morning.
We took some brunch at Mimi’s Bakehouse on Shore, then went off to get some provisions. Found Great Grog for wine & coffee. Then a sports shop for some training troos, then Leith Farmers’ Market for some brunch provisions for tomorrow, as the weather is set very poor.
Then we went in to Edinburgh proper for our shows, both recommended by the nice family in Let Me Eat Too. First up, Harpy – a one woman play with Su Pollard. Very good performance but the play was a bit slow and all over the place. It has been pretty well received though – reviews can be found here.
In need of refreshment and reasonable comfort, we eventually found an Andalusian tapas/wine bar place happy to let us sit outside and drink some wine. There was a curious incident with a pair of drunks and their Yorkshire terrier dog and I got shat on from a great height, literally. Good job I was wearing my vinyl (imitation leather) jacket.
Then on to Wu Song – The Tiger Warrior. The recommendation lady had described it as musicians from North Korea but actually it was an extraordinary mime/dance show from Taiwan.
We probably wouldn’t have booked it had it been described to us more accurately but we really enjoyed it, so that lady’s confusion proved to be our friend. It was pretty well received in formal reviews too.
Home for a wash/change and then on to Ship On The Shore for dinner. Excellent fish meal.
We shared a crab salad starter. Daisy tried lemon sole while I went for seafood linguini.
Massive portions but superb food. We got home before the rain started…just.
We rose quite early, to be greeted by the sight and sound of miscellaneous gulls outside our window and even a bevy of eight swans, which graced our view daily throughout our stay. They even came to say goodbye just as we were leaving, a week later.
We found our way to Leith Links on foot (less than 10 minutes walk away) and played tennis there. Three courts in good condition; quite similar to our regular arrangements at Boston Manor.
Then we returned to the flat to wash, change and sort out bus/tram passes. Once we were “appy” with that, we set off into Edinburgh. First stop, to collect our tickets for today at the High Street Fringe ticket shop.
Then we headed towards Underbelly, to get our bearings & find some lunch. An Underbelly usher recommended Let Me Eat Too, where we had giant “Balmoral” panini wraps of chicken, haggis & cheese. There we met a nice English family – the son was in a show & the parents had some good ideas/suggestions for us.
We subsequently decided that places like Let Me Eat Too and their portion sizes were a bit “over belly” for us at lunchtime ahead of shows at Underbelly and the like, so we lightened up our subsequent post-tennis/lunchtime arrangements.
We saw the only play I had pre-booked for the trip: Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner. It was a superb piece, very well acted by Donald Sage Mackay, whom we had seen quite recently in White Guy On The Bus at the Finborough. Angry Alan has been very well received, on the whole, in formal reviews. By chance, we got to meet Donald Sage Mackay & Penelope Skinner afterwards in the Underbelly cafe.
Then we hunted down tickets for the shows that nice family recommended, &/but took sanctuary in the Checkpoint cafe on Bristo Place. I went on a bit of a fool’s errand from there to try & get tickets in person – app/collect works much better and cheaper it seems.
Then we strolled on to George Square to see NewsRevue; the other show I had pre-booked before we set off for Edinburgh.
I have been hanging around NewsRevue since the early 1990s and had material in the show, including the Edinburgh “best of” shows, for most of that decade. Of course I had often seen previews of the Edinburgh show at the Canal Cafe, but this was the first time I had ever seen the show in Edinburgh. The show has a different vibe in a 500-seater auditorium with the performers miked up and the audience in “early evening Fringe” mode rather than “late night cabaret” mode.
But it is still a very good show, as it has always been; and oh boy was it packed the day we saw it; probably the case every day. NewsRevue really has become an Edinburgh Fringe institution now.
Then we strolled back to High Street to collect those appy show tickets for tomorrow. Then back to Cowgate for quick drink at Underbelly & then on to Three Sisters (Free Sisters) to see Michael Keane (a friend of mine from the real tennis community) & his pals in a comedy improv. show named BattleActs.
Not really our sort of thing; improv. shows, but this one was done very well and had packed out a fairly sizeable room at the Free Sisters.
We bussed back to Leith, stopping for dinner at Chop House Leith for some excellent aged steaks and a couple of glasses of very quaffable red wine.
