Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Another post I should have put up a while back. I went to the Edinburgh Fringe!! It was Awesome!! So many shows in only a few days. It was definitely an experience I plan to repeat.

Oedipus by Steven Berkoff
An experimental piece of serious theatre to start off.
Great to see a piece actually put on by Berkoff, even if I'm not a massive fan of his style.

The Little Prince
Friend's amateur production of a French modern fairy tale. Very clever use of the round.

Josh Widdicombe
Brilliant stand up comedian in a very small venue. Hilarious.

All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less
Lived up to its name, but was a weak, amateur American high school production. Interesting idea that did not really live up to expectations, although I guess was enjoyable overall.

The Trial by Steven Berkoff
Kafka's The Trial, written by Berkoff, in his style. High quality amateur production.
I now need to read more Kafka

Rose
Fantastic piece of theatre - true emotion tackling relevant topics
It was performed by an actual father and daughter, an idea that could have been a positive or negative: turned out to have a slight symbolic impact and did not hurt the performance.

Chris Martin
Another excellent stand up comedian in a small venue

Shakespeare for Breakfast
Hilarious adaptation of Macbeth, set in a school, with croissants
"Is this a croissant I see before me?"

Phillipa and Will Are Now in a Relationship
Engaging piece made up entirely of Facebook posts, spoken aloud.
Succeeded in being very funny and emotional at the same time.

The Cagebirds
Experimental, they all played birds in a cage with their own individual mannerisms and obsessions

Out of the Blue
A capella music group from Oxford that do covers in an often amusing way
Very enjoyable - although they have one song that they used as their closing piece that is miles better than any others.

Othello?
Attempted to make Othello a dark comedy but was not particularly successful, although generally well performed.
Problem with babies crying in front row and it was the full length of Othello - we only went to the first half.
Still useful as I am now studying Othello.

Silence in Court
Very interesting idea of making the audience the jury at a court case so that we had to make up our minds whether defendant was guilty of rape.
Unsure whether they had a set guilty or not guilty, or whether they always made the jury get it wrong. I hope it was the first.

Acting and Creating a Character
Workshop exploring Stanislavsky's ideas of thinking the thoughts of a character whilst on stage

Phill Jupitus Quartet - 'Made Up'
Hilarious improvisational comedy - a great comedian doing high level comedy, on the spot, with 3 others.

Cambridge Footlights in 'Pretty Little Panic'
Sketch comedy. Absolutely hilarious - I'll be watching for these people in the future.
Very slick performance.

Ed Bryne
Comedy in a large stadium. On another level. Genius.

One Thousand Paper Cranes
Emotional two-women play about a child after the Hiroshima attack
They did have many paper cranes - I hope there were exactly 1000.

Julian Sands in a Celebration of Harold Pinter
Insight into Harold Pinter and his poetry - Sands is an excellent public speaker, giving me an insight into a writer I know very little about.
"This is a beat... This is a pause... ... ... and this ........................................ is a silence"

The Government Inspector

This should have been up a while ago.

I went to see Gobol's The Government Inspector, a production that was completely bizarre. The play lends itself t a degree of absurdness, but this was completely ludicrous. When we first entered the theatre, we took a path that went through the stage, with various characters on stage. For example, an old Russian woman carving potatoes whilst singing... terribly.

One of my main reasons for going was because of the actor Julian Barratt. As a massive fan of The Mighty Boosh, I was anticipation seeing him on stage, and this is the exact type of play he would be a part of: a bizarre Russian comedy. Unfortunately, he was slightly disappointing. He was fine, but nothing amazing. The first dream sequence with the rats was hilarious, but beyond that, his performance was one-dimensional. The actor playing the fake 'inspector' (Kyle Soller) stole the show. He was absolutely incredible, despite taking a little getting used to. Ridiculous amounts of energy. Bizarre mannerisms. (I need to stop using the word bizarre but it just sums up this play so well!!)

Heart of Darkness

Overall, I enjoyed Heart of Darkness; Joseph Conrad is a fantastic writer. The plot was fairly engaging and I definitely got a feel of the location.

Plot overview:
Heart of Darkness centres around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents.

The pessimism was interesting when compared to other modernists such as Evelyn Waugh. We see the true, dark motives of a barbaric civilisation. It plays upon the idea of 'darkness' as a symbol for evil or immorality.
The direct criticism is the hypocrisy of imperialism, but there is a larger criticism of mankind as a whole.

The most interesting thing about Heart of Darkness is the narrative style - a story within a story. This is exactly the type of thing a modernist would do, as it added a layer of complexity and messes with the style and structure. I love these sorts of experiments, where something is unconventional. We even get something of an unreliable narrator, which has always been one of my favourite ideas in literature.

"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness."