Heck, a group in front of me even were even discussing the merits of the city\u2019s various private members\u2019 clubs, and the intricate exclusionary processes for admission, while waiting for their evening entertainment \u2013 apparently a \u2018radical retelling\u2019 of Shakespeare\u2019s pastoral comedy \u2013 to begin.<\/p>\n
Except this wasn\u2019t quite going to be Shakespeare as anyone was expecting it. Instead, South Dakota-born, Toronto-raised actor Cliff Cardinal appeared sheepishly from behind the stage\u2019s red curtain to deliver a land acknowledgement. Were we all aware of what that was? He\u2019d explain anyway, in case anyone wasn\u2019t up to speed: an acknowledgement of the earlier residents and custodians of the land upon which the show had been created, now commonplace in certain more liberally minded establishments in Australia and North America. Except\u2026 who was that land acknowledgement really serving? As a man from the Lakota nation, born in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, how did Cardinal feel about giving what was essentially white people\u2019s acknowledgement of the appropriation of land from groups to which he belonged? And what did he think about that kind of support from non-indigenous \u2018allies\u2019, and the purposes it served?<\/p>\n
And from there, As You Like It: A Radical Retelling spiralled increasingly venomously into questions of imperialism and colonialism, privilege and deprivation, as what was apparently going to be the show\u2019s real content slipped further into the distance. \u2018Where\u2019s the Shakespeare?\u2019 came an exasperated cry from the back of Morningside\u2019s Church Hill Theatre. Cardinal responded with a wicked grin and an admission that he\u2019d never even read As You Like It, pulling back the red curtains to reveal \u2013 nothing. Well, just a random collection of tech equipment on an empty stage. \u2018I lied to you, and I took your money,\u2019 he admitted gleefully. There was never going to be any Shakespeare at all.<\/p>\n
As settlers had stolen indigenous lands from their earlier peoples, so he had stolen our time in an act of reverse colonisation. How did it feel? Cardinal\u2019s central ruse \u2013 he begs the audience not to give the game away, but we\u2019ll press ahead since the show\u2019s short International Festival run has ended \u2013 is blunt and brutal, but it\u2019s powerfully effective, bringing a privileged Edinburgh audience up close to the lived experiences of being lied to and exploited. (Yes, there were numerous walk-outs \u2013 though for anyone seriously furious, Cardinal explained, he\u2019d be happy to refund their ticket money.) And as such, it\u2019s a bold, deeply provocative show for the International Festival to put on so near its close, and \u2013 surely significantly \u2013 in a small theatre in one of the city\u2019s most well-to-do areas.<\/p>\n
Not everything works. Some of Cardinal\u2019s specifics get lost in translation between North America and Scotland, sometimes because Europeans (specifically Brits) shamefully know next to nothing about our forebears\u2019 involvement in colonial exploitation, but sometimes because we\u2019re simply not clued up on cultural figures more familiar to Canadian audiences. Some of his wider leaps in logic leave his central thread difficult to follow. There\u2019s an argument, too, that the show might have been modified slightly to spotlight the more distant relationship we have with imperialism \u2013 and, let\u2019s face it, the wealth and privilege it\u2019s brought us, so that decades down the line an event like the Edinburgh International Festival can even exist (as Cardinal himself pointed out). But Cardinal\u2019s longer, angrier closing section on Canadian church residential schools, and the murder of thousands of children stolen from their families (whose mass graves are still being discovered), ensures a far darker, more universal relevance, one whose very humanity transcends international boundaries.<\/p>\n
But As You Like It: A Radical Retelling is a breathtakingly audacious, deeply shocking work of righteous fury, delivered with Cardinal\u2019s witty, slippery charisma that keeps its audience perpetually on their toes. Its unapologetic determination to say difficult things and shine a searing light of accusation straight at its audience might shock and offend many \u2013 including, perhaps, those more used to the genteel discussions of Edinburgh private members\u2019 clubs. But its scream of anguish and rage nonetheless demands to be heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heck, a group in front of me even were even discussing the merits of the city\u2019s various private…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-371245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115087084633850731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}