Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2016

Needless to say I am a month or two behind updating. Amsterdam was followed by a marvelous and scorchingly hot month in the Midi. After Stephan and Koen had served us a lovely kick-off breakfast, we departed for Aachen in Germany for our first night. Amsterdam itself included Don Giovanni and Shostakovitch’s 8th Symphony as well as the visits of Ralph, Pavel, Gin, Barbara, and Dr. Eddie with his lovely niece Wendy. We also had the hand fasting of Elizabeth and Marco plus time with Jimmy & Amr, Carole, Santima, Carlo and Jean-Christophe as well as Carlo’s daughter Elissa. In addition, we had medical check-ups and a most fine dinner at De Kas. The key event, of course, and a lot of our Amsterdam time was involved with the sale – finally! – of Mother’s condo in good old Narragansett. We did relatively well on that one – thanks ultimately to Joe. And much of our weather in Amsterdam was lovely and occasioned meals and cocktails outside on the terrace or in front of the house on the street.

Aachen’s purpose was the subsequent banking which was successful though uncertain until the last moment. Barbara did virtually all the driving from there. Our second night was in a suburb of Baden Baden. Our third day took us all the way through Switzerland and Italy to home. We had no petrol troubles at all.

The real highlight as well as immediate purpose of the visit to the Provence was Lorna-Lee and Fedrich’s wedding. It rained lightly on the day, but that seemed only to augment rather than diminish. The Mailaender reception was superb. Richard and I were subsequently able to do our midsummer sunrise bathing in the Lac du St. Croix. It was about this point that the weather heated up. Petit Claude got all our cars running. When it was time for her to depart, we took Barbara to the airport in Nice and then fetched Marie-Laure from the train station in Les Arcs on our way back. In all, we had dinners with Pierre and Catherine, Liliane and Renaud, Adele and Pascal, Carol, Penny & Hamish and Stephen. We also had a shortish moment with Micheline and Nicolas. In addition, there was a fun visit by Paul and Darrell, and we all went one lovely afternoon to Toulon and had lunch at Plage d’O overlooking the beach with Douglas and Patrick as well as Tom & Judy’s grandson Myles and three of his girlfriends. In all, this was another highlight moment. After Paul and Darrell, we had Ralph and Francis and Bill and Lilan (who stayed on after us). Museum-wise, there were the Museum for Contemporary Art in Chateauvert, the Musée Granet in Aix (Charles Camoin) and the Granet Annex (Collection Jean Planque).

One bummer during this period was the Brexit vote. This for me as well as many others has been a deeply disappointing and myopic decision. ‘Little England’ reigns, and Teresa May’s re-habilitation of Boris Johnson by appointing him Foreign Secretary became a double whammy. Several of our French friends, however, are just as happy to see the British depart the European Union.

We had scheduled our traditional fireworks party for the 13th of June (champagne and Mont Blanc), but the mistral caused the town to have to cancel the feu d’artifice. All the same, it was a fun gathering with or without the show: Bill & Lilan, Ralph & Francis, Adele, Pascal, Mariam, Natacha, Jeanne and her two darling boys, Guy without Martine, Pierre & Catherine, Daniel with Pat (a story in herself), Carol, Peter and Anne-Marie, Liliane, Cindy and Dieter, Marguerite, and Marie.

As the mistral does not fan out as far as Nice, that city went ahead with their fire works which are held on Bastile Day itself. The disastrous lorry murders that took place that evening once again underscored the menace of our times – or at least one of the plagues that besiege humanity. I am currently reading Luke Anderson’s Genetic Engineering, Food and Our Environment, and although it was published in 1999, it manages succinctly to reveal the equally shortsightedness and death-dealing that evil minds are conjuring either in the name of God or profit.

The shrine we visited in the Place de la République of Paris on the Ides of July evening (the day we had arrived in the French capital) was moving with its candles and flowers in honour of the dead from the day before. Paris was sober and noticeably subdued. But our weather was again excellent, and the four days we had there before returning to London were an extra bonus – relaxed and with a ritual walk along the boulevards. And once more our beloved Marie-Laure.

With our Amsterdam and French weathers, both Richard and I feel that we have had our true summer experience come what now may. But London has had some good weather for us as well, and most of our time in Edinburgh was perfect too – making numerous people comment on how it was one of the best Fringes ever. In London, we have been to the David Hockney show at the Royal Academy (82 Portraits and One Still Life) and performances of Show Boat and the Three Penny Opera. The seriousness of Hockney’s portrait paintings I found curious and mystifying. Show Boat was racially relevant this many years after it had first appeared. And Three Penny was almost shocking with its grime, darkness and removal of all the American sanitization that it had been known to us as before this. We had dinners with Peter and our houseguests Sarah and Rob as well as a lunch with Tom and Doc. And then it was Edinburgh.

We stayed in the Overseas House on Princess Street. Our first venue on the day we arrived was Adam Kay’s piano variations in A minor. We were expecting cabaret jazz, and there were a few off-colour songs he sang while playing the keyboard interspersed with not so funny (to me; the audience roared) hospital jokes as he narrated from his journal as a doctor. But the performance culminated with a surprising and tearful climax that had resulted in Kay’s leaving the heartbreak of the medical profession along with a fierce rejection of Jeremy Hunt. Monday night concluded with a chilling and late performance of Five Guys Chillin’ by EM-Lou Productions on the gay chemsex scene. This was powerful and brutally sobering.

Stefan Warzycki started us off on Tuesday with his Absolutely Amazing! recital of left-hand piano music. I did not understand Immer City’s interactive, audio-immersive Blood Will Have Blood show that we went to next and kept my eyes shut (and myself on the floor) during Fleance’s avenging of his father’s murder by Macbeth. But the Fox and Hound Theatre Company’s excellent rendition of Tennessee Williams’ 27 Wagons Full of Cotton compensated for me. Our Tuesday concluded with the Cannonball Glengoyne Whisky Supper for which, beside Richard and me, there was only one other couple. Delicious food, nice whisky and a good time in which we also got to see the festival miliatry parade exiting from the stadium.

Wednesday began with the North East Theatre Company’s performance of the futuristic 2044 in which Scotland is independent and England has been destroyed by floods. The three characters are English refugees. Another powerful and grim bit of theatre. What we encountered next, Young Pleasance’s Alice Unhinged, was one of the best events of all – an energetic and intricately choreographed “phantasmagorical reinvention” of Lewis Carroll’s Alice revisiting Wonderland. Perhaps equally as excellent was our next venue: Kings Head Theatre’s F*cking Men – a more palatable but also moving look into contemporary gay life. Full-frontal, funny and “Fan-f*cking-tastic” in which three actors portray ten men searching for sexual satisfaction. Our next venue, Bubble Show for Adults Only, was cancelled and replaced by four stand-up comics. But then we enjoyed Private Manning Goes to Washington by the Representatives. We wanted to go to the discussion that followed this political play afterwards but were too exhausted and, for us, it was too late.

Thursday began for us earlier than usual with Sarah Laing singing the music of Doris Day. This proved to be a refreshing was to start the day. Aaron Calvert’s Mind Games followed, and this was a marvelous mind-reading magic cabaret performance in which I was brought to the stage and hypnotized. Tom Skelton’s 2061 in which he played his posthumous son in an Orwellian world in which Maggie Thatcher was Big Sister. Tom was incredibly entertaining, a quick-witted ad libber whose own warmth and intelligence radiated out most adorably. This inventive odyssey may have been the most memorable of all. Cat Loud and the Blueswater presented an enjoyable musical narrative next and before Christine Bovill’s Paris in the Famous Spiegeltent during which Bovill presented me a rose from the stage. Wonderful French songs from the 30s and 40s, this was a good old-fashioned show. Richard and I concluded with an excellent meal at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society on Queen Street.

On Friday, I was too tired to get much into either the Curved Edge Theatre’s political production of Caesar in a Lift (Julius Caesar stuck in an elevator during the during the 1984-85 UK miners' strike with a Tory, a union member and liberal young female socialist – and a Brutus female narrator ouside the lift) or the Tobacco Tea Company’s presentation of the Accidental Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which was, frankly, silly, though the actors were good in both plays. Friday was also the day the weather changed, and it rained – ending what everyone was previously saying was an exceptionally speical Fringe Festival. The American High School Theatre Festival’s Almost, Maine was more engaging than what we had just seen earlier, but some of the ensemble could not project or speak understandably clearly. This last was also the case with the Sally Bowles character (Taylor Aragon) in Cabaret (Kab-uh-rey) which concluded the day for us. She could at least belt, but the rest of the California Musical Theatre Ensemble cast were fantastic. I had not realized we were to see the Cabaret musical itself. I had seen the original Broadway production that included Joel Grey and Lotte Lenya, but this was equally enticing and riveting, and the Master of Ceremonies character played by Cole Wachman was simply superb.

Our last day, Saturday, began with Avalon Promotions Ltd’s Erik Satie – Faction presented us with mesmerizing music along with a narrative by Satie. It was another great way to begin the day. Nick Cassenbaum’s Bubble Schmeisis was a humorous and entertaining offering on East London Jewish life. Jesper Arin’s one-man narrative of the brutality he endured through both his father and sadistic gangs in school was once more something sobering and deeply emotional. Pam Lawson’s Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers – A Celebration in Song was highly restorative and much fun. Both Richard and I got to dance at points with Pam, and Colin Steele, the trumpet player, could not have been better or more enjoyable. Our day’s conclusion, our Fringe conclusion in fact, was the Ghost Quartet which was not the classical music I had expected but a contemporary Edgar Allen Poe-type narration that was different, musical and entertaining.

Taxi service helped us between some of the venues and in the rain which was rarely itself bothersome. Edinburgh continues to become an urban centre that is more and more a favourite. Streets above streets, old buildings and a most vibrant artistic and culinary life, it is a fun and engaging place. It is time now, as we are heading back to London on the train, to re-assess and focus on what, hopefully, has just been learned. In all, a thrilling and exceptional experience.