If I appeared to be slacking off in my productivity in the last few weeks, I’ve been keeping myself busy at the Edinburgh festivals; I’ve been covering these since 1989, and August wouldn’t feel like a August if I wasn’t run off my feet with coverying musicals, theatre, film and comedy. I’m covering these for cultural authority The List, still THE big name in Festival coverage; I used to read this paper magazine as a teenager, and it still looks better-than-good on paper and on digital today.
So a quick run-down; before the festival started, I tracked down comic/human rights lawyer Sikisa for an interview about her show at the Monkey Barrel; she’s got a USP and knows how to use it to good effect. I’ll get round to The Edinburgh International Film Festival in good time, but one key pick was Dead Lover, a oddly theatrical, Gothic-comedy take on Frankenstein by Grace Glowicki. It’s a low-budget, arthouse affair, but it’s certainly promising as an idiosyncratic calling card for the writer/director.
The fringe proper is always an insane stramash of entertainment; I created my own avatar and enjoyed playing Robo Bingo for Kids with Foxtrot Studios, dug the tunes at an ambitious musical about death entitled Falling in Love with Mr Dellamort and savoured a trip back to the emo-kid 90’s with Laurie Stevens’ comedy David’s One-Man Band.
Probably the most relevant show for blog readers was a one-man tribute to the John Wick films, a good laugh when that man is Woody Fu (yes, that somehow is his real name). Getting the audience to stand and dance in slow motion while a fight scene unfolded is the interactive tribute to John Wick we didn’t know we needed; it’s the kind of show that works best with the carnival, anything-goes atmosphere of the Edinburgh Fringe, and Fu even gave me an embossed pencil as a souvenir. Thanks to all the PR’s who made all this work, the essential-eaterie Piemaker for vital supplies, and to my long-suffering editor and staff at The List for publishing these words.