Best of the Festivals
The latest interviews, news and reviews from Edinburgh. Plus, keep up to date at heraldscotland.com/arts_ents.
SCOTTISH actor Maureen Beattie is the star guest at the final Herald Angels award ceremony at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre this morning as she receives an Archangel for her performances in the capital’s summer arts jamboree.
Beattie is currently appearing, until Monday, in the third of a trilogy of one-woman shows by Quebecois writer Jennifer Tremblay that have been the latest milestones in a distinguished career. The Deliverance, at Assembly Roxy on the Fringe, completes the cycle of works directed by Muriel Romanes and presented by her Stellar Quines company, following The List and The Carousel. This tour de force by Beattie, described by theatre critic Neil Cooper as “a tale of everyday estrangement that transcends the ordinary to become something epic” in which the actor displays “an astonishingly vibrant mix of vivacity, vulnerability and anger”, continues a presence on the UK stage in Stratford as often as Scotland that also includes a celebrated Medea with Graham McLaren’s Theatre Babel at the Assembly Rooms during the Fringe.
Beattie will be joined at the awards tomorrow by Angie Darcy, whose performance as the rock singer in Peter Arnott’s play Janis Joplin: Full Tilt has been a significant event in her career. Darcy’s barn-storming turn as Joplin has gone from a lunchtime theatre slot at Oran Mor in Glasgow to a Scottish tour following its Fringe run at the Queen’s Hall, with interest in Cora Bissett’s production - which features a full live band - beyond that.
An Angel will also be presented to veteran traditional musician Cathal McConnell, player of the flute and whistle, singer and storyteller, and the heart of celebrated band Boys of the Lough. The Edinburgh resident has been performing with fiddler Duncan Wood and cellist Christine Hanson in an afternoon session at St Mark’s Artspace that is a potent reminder of what the overused phrase “tradition bearer” really means.
In the International Festival two inventive theatre productions win Herald Angels. The much- anticipated adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s seminal novel Lanark, co-produced by Glasgow Citizens and the EIF at the Royal Lyceum has been a triumph for the reunited Suspect Culture theatre company team of playwright David Greig, director Graham Eatough and composer Nick Powell with Sandy Grierson leading a very fine ensemble cast. This production is not only glorious, playful theatre, but also a remarkable faithful reflection of a challenging book.
With a much shorter run at the King’s, En Avant, Marche! by Alain Platel’s Les ballets C de la B from Belgium was also an unmissable event. Featuring local recruits from the Dalkeith and Monktonhall Brass Band, Platel’s ensemble is led by a similarly inspirational performance by Wim Opbrouk as the dedicated percussionist in a community band whose dedication to one another speaks eloquently of the human condition and supportive relationships under threat everywhere.
The final week’s Little Devil award goes to last week’s Angel winners, the cast of Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour. The National Theatre of Scotland’s adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel The Sopranos faced a radical rethink at the Traverse last week, when a major technical failure afflicted the performers’ vocal amplification.
Undaunted, the women in the cast prepared unaccompanied versions of the songs as the audience waited and the backstage team worked to address the problem. An eleventh hour solution was found, but either way the show was certain to go on.
Today’s ceremony will also include the naming of our Wee Cherub winner from the Young Critics from Edinburgh schools whose reviews of EIF shows have appeared in The Herald’s Festival pages. The last of these, of The Magic Flute by the Royal High’s Lillie Teden, appears below. Her work is on the shortlist alongside that of Jasmin Duncanson of Boroughmuir’s review of the European Union Youth Orchestra, Linzi Devers of Holyrood’s review of Robert Lepage’s 887, Jo Stapleton of Broughton’s review of FFS at the Playhouse, and Bella Baillie’s of Ballett am Rhein’s Seven at the same venue.