Festival Round Up and Other Assorted Stories
The Edinburgh Festival officially ends tomorrow but the Fringe and Book Festival finished last Monday so it is remarkably more quiet already. I had various domestic dramas going on last weekend but being the trooper I am I got on with my festival activities anyway!
Last Saturday kicked off with Arcadia. I'm not sure who the company was but the acting was somewhat variable. It was overall enjoyable though and the actors plays Septimus Hodge and Thomasina Coverly made a decent stab at it. In the afteroon I fought my way up the Royal Mile to see Honest Iago and other Shakespeare Villains. The photo in the programme implied this would be a comedy. It turned out to be just two bad actors doing scenes from Shakespeare. I left after ten minutes reducing the audience by a third as there were only the three of us there to begin with!
On Sunday I kicked off with Happy Never After which was another two actor show but very well observed and acted, it was produced by the Old Vic's New Voices. I had tickets to the Book Festival later that day so to kill some time I dropped into the Scottish National Gallery to see there exhibit Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands. I'd never heard of Doig before but his work is a mix of very reminiscent of the 1920's and very reminiscent of the 1970's. I liked it.
The afternoon and evening was the book festival and talks with Margaret Atwood (along with Valerie Martin and Naomi Alderman) and Neil Gaiman. Atwood is fantastically droll and a fan of The Tudors, I loved her. Gaiman takes himself far too seriously.
To finish a couple of brief film reviews. I watched Hanna the other week and thought it was fairly dull. It's basically like someone tried to make an arty Dark Angel and that is not a good thing. I have also recently seen Django Unchained which I thought was great but I was a bit disappointed Kerry Washington's character was basically nothing more than a plot device.
Last Saturday kicked off with Arcadia. I'm not sure who the company was but the acting was somewhat variable. It was overall enjoyable though and the actors plays Septimus Hodge and Thomasina Coverly made a decent stab at it. In the afteroon I fought my way up the Royal Mile to see Honest Iago and other Shakespeare Villains. The photo in the programme implied this would be a comedy. It turned out to be just two bad actors doing scenes from Shakespeare. I left after ten minutes reducing the audience by a third as there were only the three of us there to begin with!
On Sunday I kicked off with Happy Never After which was another two actor show but very well observed and acted, it was produced by the Old Vic's New Voices. I had tickets to the Book Festival later that day so to kill some time I dropped into the Scottish National Gallery to see there exhibit Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands. I'd never heard of Doig before but his work is a mix of very reminiscent of the 1920's and very reminiscent of the 1970's. I liked it.
The afternoon and evening was the book festival and talks with Margaret Atwood (along with Valerie Martin and Naomi Alderman) and Neil Gaiman. Atwood is fantastically droll and a fan of The Tudors, I loved her. Gaiman takes himself far too seriously.
To finish a couple of brief film reviews. I watched Hanna the other week and thought it was fairly dull. It's basically like someone tried to make an arty Dark Angel and that is not a good thing. I have also recently seen Django Unchained which I thought was great but I was a bit disappointed Kerry Washington's character was basically nothing more than a plot device.