A week in Edinburgh…

18 August 2011

I first came to the festival when I was 20. I was a student and we did The Boy Friend in converted hall. There were fourteen of us in a three bedroom flat, so we simply laid mattresses next to each other on the floor and made two enormous beds: one for the girls and one for the boys (mostly…). We wore rugby shirts with our names on, sang loudly in the street without a trace of embarrassment, and it was all very jolly. I have no idea whether or not we got good reviews, or what the ticket sales were like, because it didn’t seem terribly important at the time. Since then I have been back six times, involved in ten shows, of which seven I produced myself. I’ve had triumphs, been hailed as the next best thing, invited around the world, and attended posh networking breakfasts where I nervously ate shortbread and wondered what on earth I’m doing.  I’ve also had, simultaneously, heart-and-bank-breaking disasters, been hailed as a pretentious disaster, threatened with legal action, and lost everything. A reviewer once described a show I produced as ‘poetic emetic’. None of us knew what ’emetic’ was but we do now: it’s something that makes you vomit. Hurrrah.

So it’s been strange to visit the festival without any of that stress. I’ve been asked to look for companies that might work at The Watermill, and it’s with a sense of great excitement and privilege that I study the programme’s list of over 2,000 shows. ‘I actually am a punter’, I find myself saying on the train.

The train arrives at Edinburgh half an hour late which is a shaky start – I’ve only got twenty minutes until my first show starts. I trundle into a tiny underground venue, suitcase and all, and watch a new musical as the paint peels slowly  off the venue ceiling and somewhere a tap drips. This is what it’s all about. This is it.

I love Edinburgh – not just the festival, but the city – it feels somehow gutsy and brave and vital – I love walking everywhere and watching the lights on the castle. I love the total arts immersion. The conversation everywhere is about the movement style of a particular company, or the acting in such and such a play. The binge on theatre is like a drug – I’ve started taking on a show before breakfast, going to see them alone, and at the end of the day I find myself thinking, ‘Oh go on, just one more before bedtime …’

So what did I see? Translunar Paradise – a play without words but nevertheless a thousand words in every gesture, during which we watch a woman’s ghost try to help her husband move on after her death. He forgets and puts out the teacups for two – she helpfully puts one away for him. He remembers their courtship and she dances with him in happier days – practically everyone in the theatre was crying. Other highlights were Elegy – a beautiful one man play based on true stories about persecution in Iraq – and a bonkers musical about a mad taxidermist living on a cliff called Constance and Sinestra. And a great ensemble piece called Shutterland, about a man who realises his every move is being watched by the powers that be.

I enjoyed the wierdest shows the most – even though I never intentionally went to them. One morning I was blindfolded, led into an underground cellar and told I was going to go swimming. The actors were really into it, but my back was giving me a lot of jip so I sort of wandered about stiffly, waving my arms and trying to look helpfully enthusiastic. This was a show in which audience interaction proved unintentionally funny. ‘What shall the sister sacrifice to prove the depth of her love?’ a hapless man was asked earnestly. ‘Um, her iphone?’ he suggested.

During the last four days I have watched seventeen shows: one of them twice. I have watched brilliant plays and awful plays, musicals, mask plays, comedies and tragedies. I have cried, laughed, and, on one shameful occasion, slept through the brightest efforts of the brightest young things. I have drunk more coffee than I have drunk during the past year together, and become addicted to the crepe stall outside the Gilded Balloon. I have watched a play in a wagon, an art gallery, a tunnel, and a hotel room. I have watched a man eat an entire watermelon onstage (some of the juice got on my trousers). It’s been an immense privilege, I’ve learnt a lot, and met some great people. I’m glad to be coming home (I really ought to eat some vegetables at some point) but also I want to stay in theatreland for a while longer. Go on, just one more show, just a quick one …