Tag: Donald Sage Mackay

Edinburgh Day One: Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner, NewsRevue, BattleActs & Dinner At Chop House Leith, 17 August 2018

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We’d had a super first day at the fringe.

If you want to see all the pictures we took on this Edinburgh trip, you can find the album by clicking here or the picture (Flickr Album link) below:

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White Guy On The Bus by Bruce Graham, Finborough Theatre, 6 April 2018

We’ve mostly been very impressed by the stuff we’ve seen at the Finborough Theatre. We started trying the Finborough less than a year ago and this piece, White Guy On The Bus, was our tenth visit in that short time. Again we were most impressed.

We thought we must have seen US playwright Bruce Graham’s work before, until we realised that we were both probably making an amalgam of Bruce Norris and James Graham. The best of those two would make a pretty formidable amalgam as it happens and Bruce Graham’s piece, while perhaps lacking some of the flair of either of his semi-namesakes, was an excellent piece of writing.

Add to that Finborough’s ability to assemble a quality team of actors and creatives to pull together a low budget production that punches well above its weight…

…this was a very good evening of fringe theatre.

The themes of racial tensions, social inequality and political correctness seemed absolutely pertinent for our times. In truth the play is a bit of a slow starter, but by the interval we found ourselves hooked on a thriller with lots of issues and by the end we felt thoroughly entertained and thought-provoked. Two hours well spent.

Click here for a link to the Finborough on-line resource for this play/production. It includes some press quotes from the original production(s) of this piece in the USA – the Finborough production is a European premier.

Below is a trailer from one of the US productions – Curious Theatre Company:

Below is an extract from another of the US productions – Northlight Theatre – which gives a better feel for how the play comes across on a small stage:

Click here for a link to reviews and other stuff connected with the Finborough production, which has mostly been very well received so far.

Other memorable moments from the evening:

  • as Janie and I we were walking up the stairs to the theatre, the man in front of me turned around and said “hello Ian” – it was Kim Ridge. I wondered out loud whether Kim and Catherine were regulars at the Finborough, but it turned out that they were there quite by happenstance having decided to give the place a try for the first time;
  • after the show, “The Ridges” disappeared rapidly, but Janie and I stuck around and chatted briefly with a very nice Canadian lady who had been sitting next to us. It turns out she goes to many of the fringe places we go to – I didn’t recognise her face but suspect we’ll run into her again. Next to her was a really pleasant young woman who also chatted with us about the play. It was that sort of theatre experience for us – we wanted to talk about the issues afterwards;
  • a yummy meal in Noddyland taken away from Mohsen’s – Janie and I continued to mull the issues over dinner.

A really good evening.