The 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Blog (9)

The Edinburgh Fringe

Fringe 2010 Blog - 9

Latitude Day 4 - Saturday 18 July 2010

I am not a cool person. I know this may come as a surprise to many of you, but I'm not. I never have been and in all probability never will be. I don't like the Arctic Monkeys, I enjoy musical theatre, I am a fan of The Lord of the Rings and the prospect of spending an evening in Shoreditch doesn't fill me with delight. In fact, my only redeeming characteristic that prevents me from being a total dork is the fact that I'd rather chew off my own face than watch an episode of Glee.

It was therefore with some consternation that I woke up on Day 4 at Latitude to discover that I had slept through the intriguingly titled, The School of Life: How to be Cool. Oh well. I suppose my fondness for 80s glam rock put me out of competition even before it's begun.

Time for a very quick coffee from tattoo girl/Quentin Tarantino lookalike and, still grinning dementedly after hearing both of them shout out my rude Maltese word, I hurried over to the Theatre Tent. I got there early and so was able to creep in and watch the two acts that were in before us. The first, The Bush Theatre's production of The Great British Country Fete seemed to be hilarious and great fun. I only caught the last bit of it, but the audience seemed to be absolutely loving it. Following that, most of the audience remained to see Daniel Kitson perform It's always right now until it's later. Mr Kitson has been somewhat of a festival find for me. I say somewhat because he's obviously very popular - all his performances were sold out - but I'd never heard of him until now. For any of you who don't know who he is, he used to be a stand up comedian, but gradually turned his act into story-telling sessions. He now writes these beautiful, heartwarming (and funny) stories which he reads aloud at his shows. As far as I know, he's never published any of them because he believes they should be listened to and not simply read.

I stood in the shadows, behind the tiered seating in the Theatre Tent spellbound by the man's linguistic skills and the images he painted with the spoken word. He is obviously a very gifted writer and a master storyteller. He had nothing, absolutely nothing on stage with him to assist him in keeping an audience's attention. He sat at a wooden table, on which stood a microphone, a bottle of water and his laptop. Then for an entire hour he held the huge audience captivated by his words. It was truly remarkable.

We were on next. Nervous after yesterday's unsteady show, we were determined to improve our efforts. There was an air of focused concentration as we prepared to start the show. It paid off. The show was a good one. Everybody was on top form, hitting their marks, pushing the pace, telling the truth of their story, and the audience engaged in our tale. It was huge relief and we were all ecstatic that we had managed to get it right. The only downside to the proceedings was a get-out and van load, followed by a post-show discussion in the Literary Salon.

Post-show discussions are quite a regular occurrence in the life of a theatre actor. In case you don't know what they are, the clue is in the title itself - a post-show talk about the play during which the audience can ask the actors and creatives questions and make any remarks they want. It is a common and popular phenomenon that any actor is expected to do at some point during a run of a play. Most actors hate them. Well, can you blame them? Imagine, as soon as you've finished a three hour epic production of some Shakespearean tragedy and all you feel like doing is having a quick drink before scurrying home to bed, but instead you've got to lug your sorry butt over to the stage and sit for an hour or so fielding questions that range from the ridiculous (What is your opinion of the sub-cultural references in the play with regards to the antediluvian views about minorities expressed in Act 2 Scene 5?) to the even more ridiculous (Do you like the play?)

Actually, I'm being a little unfair. Not all audience members are complete thickheads, but a fair few who attend these post-show discussions inevitably tend to be. At the very least, there's always one. Having said that, I love post-show discussions. I honestly do. I enjoy hearing what people have to say about the play and answer as best I can any questions they might have about it. I generally find that if an audience member bothers to stay behind to say something, they must really want to express it; it must be important to them and that, I think, is worth listening to. Even if the thought expressed is absolute twaddle.

This post-show discussion, however, was different to any other I've participated in. For starters it was held in a different location, a good hour or so after the end of our show. It was also to be chaired by representatives of the Helen Bamber Foundation (who help trafficked women that have been rescued). The discussion would be mainly about the work of the foundation itself and not about the play. Why then were we required to attend? The thing is, news soon reached us that these representatives would, for whatever reason, not be attending the discussion. Why, oh why then, did we still need to be there? Surely it would be cancelled? Nope.

Our audience at the post-show discussion consisted of a small group of women who sat on armchairs in the Literary Salon, fanning themselves and sweating. One large woman in particular looked like she was in extreme discomfort as the expression on her face suggested that she was holding back a massive fart.

The job of chairing the discussion fell to Anna who quickly explained to everyone present that she was not from the Helen Bamber Foundation and therefore couldn't really talk about the foundation itself, but would be happy to talk about the play. Were there any questions? Silence. The women blinked back at us. The ill-at-ease woman shifted in her chair. I thought I heard her stomach rumbling and her face seemed to have turned a slight shade of green. Then someone timidly put her hand up. Anna invited her question.

"Could you tell us something about the history of the Helen Bamber Foundation?"

Like I said, there's always one.

It was one of the most painfully long hours of my life. Very much aware that a festival was going on outside, I sat with the rest of the fidgety cast listening to what had turned into a very stilted discussion about sex trafficking. Now I'm not saying that discussion is not important - it is - but there's a time and place for it and that time and place is plainly not at Latitude Festival whilst one of my favourite bands from my teenage years, James, was playing the main stage. The worst thing was that none of the people present at the discussion had seen the play! They hadn't even heard about it! Let me put this in plain language: they were there to listen to a bunch of people who hadn't shown up, and we were there to speak to a bunch of people that had seen our play! It was death. The universe was obviously punishing us for something.

Finally, just when I thought things were wrapping up (and a good thing too as the gaseous woman was now the colour of a ripe apple and seemed about to explode), another woman piped up and began talking about a show she was writing about sex trafficking. She then went on to speak for a further twenty minutes about her show. This is the worst kind of person to have at a post-show discussion. She wasn't even talking about our show! Our post-show discussion had turned into another discussion about another show that hasn't yet even been written! It was almost too much to bear and yet, she rabbited on about it completely oblivious to the fact that the fart woman had appeared to have passed out and that what looked like streams of toxic gasses were escaping from her ears.

When there finally was a slight lull in the conversation, Anna quickly brought things to an end and we hurriedly left the tent (the gassy woman had recovered and was now about half her original size) and rushed to catch the second half of James' set.

James is one of those bands you think you don't know but you do. They're a strange lot. For starters nobody in the band is actually called James. Also, their lead singer dances in a way that brings to mind a person being struck by lightning. I didn't know whether to cheer or call a paramedic. Still they played a cheerful set with all their hits so I was happy.

I then dragged Anna into the forest (there I go sounding dodgy again) to the Lavish Lounge to see Jarmean in action. Their audience had doubled in size compared to yesterday's gig and there were about ten young kids dancing frenetically in front of the stage. The band played an excellent song about Prince Harry. It's all about him being ginger, which is a recessive gene, and their mystification about how he ended up that way. As the song goes, "There ain't no ginger in the House of Windsor!"

After the show one of the band, who introduced himself as Ben (the barefoot clarinettist) came over to speak to Anna. He'd just been to watch Fair Trade and recognised her from it. We spoke a little and he gave us a CD which Anna generously let me keep.

That evening, we trooped over to the Obelisk Arena - the main stage - to watch Belle and Sebastian. Not my cup of tea, but they put on a decent, up-tempo show. We left early however to join the huge queue outside the Theatre Tent to watch the RSC show, The Thirteen Midnight Challenges of Angelus Diablo. The tent was stuffed to capacity. People clung to the rafters (or whatever is the circus tent equivalent). From the outside, the tent must have seemed to be visibly bulging. Then, with a loud blare of deafening choir singing the opening bars of Orff's Carmina Burana, the show began. What followed was one of the weirdest, most random and yet most fun shows I have seen in a long time. Featuring a fantastic performance by Sandy Grierson, the play told the story of an actor who fails to find any work due to a spitting problem he has when he speaks. Therefore he makes a pact with the devil which expires tonight at midnight. It was strange, rather insane, didn't make much sense, but very good fun.

When that was over, there was just enough time to dash to The Waterfront Stage to watch Daniel Kitson (he of the spoken word) and Gavin Osborn perform Stories for the Starlit Sky, a story about the (fictional!) Ministry of Love and the two people who work the night shift in it. It was chilled out, relaxed and a perfect way to round off the day (or so I thought). All I needed was a mug of hot chocolate. Gavin Osborn's musical interludes, however, stole the show in my opinion. His songs are witty, touching and utterly brilliant. I especially liked the one about the stealth gardener.

After a break in the performers' bar, I then decided to go to the Les Enfants Terribles' masked ball, which was being held in the Cabaret Tent. I never got there. On the way, I decided to make a slight detour to explore the venue enticingly known as The Enchanted Forest. It is set in a wooded area on a rather steep slope. At the bottom of the slope is an old fashioned stage that looks like it's just been knocked together out of bits of driftwood. On that stage was a trio of musicians collectively known as Suitcase Royale. They were my other find of the festival. All three musicians dressed and looked like they came from the deep South in the US. They even sounded like they come from there (in fact they're from Melbourne, but don't tell anyone). They play a genre of music that I can only describe a hillbilly rock. One guy on a guitar and vocals, another playing a suitcase that has been transformed into a double bass, the third a drummer. They were excellent. They sang songs about Jack Daniels and about getting drunk. The drummer played a solo on a kazoo. Please look them up, they're worth watching.

On my way back to the tent after the show, I passed by a small group of people surrounding a person dressed from head to toe in a space suit. The spaceman's (or woman's) suit lit up in bright neon colours. He stood on a platform that also lit up and was surrounded by many little gadgets. He moved around twiddling knobs and pressing glowing buttons here and there. All this was accompanied by futuristic electronic music of the kind that aliens from Planet Zog might listen to. Strange? Yes, but that's what makes somewhere like Latitude so great. I mean where else could you legitimately claim to have seen that and not risk being taken away by men in white lab coats?

Christopher Dingli

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