Category: Theatre

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.

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.

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.

Another really super day at the Fringe.

All of our photographs from our week away, mostly at the Edinburgh Fringe, can be seen on our Flickr album by clicking here on the picture below: