Sunday 16 August 2009

My First Edinburgh Festival


On Thursday myself and Chloe travelled up on the Megabus to Edinburgh. When we arrived we were pleased to see the sun shining and we were looking forward to spending a few days enjoying the sun and shows. Oh how we were wrong! By Friday it began to rain and it did not stop until Saturday afternoon. However, this did mean lots of coffee drinking and huddeling under umbrellas. We saw St Mary's own Destination GB on Friday. I have only seen it once before and it has developed well. The show itself is mostly improvised and this I like about it. Although at times it was clear the actors got a little lost in the action and had to quickly get back to the main storyline. I did enjoy watching the show and the audience loved it, however as(although I am generalising) with much of Kasia's work I felt the message was far too drummed into me. I understood what they were trying to acheive quite early on and I think they could employ some more subtle techniques to acheive their message.



After Destination GB it was time for Metamorphosis, a play based on the story by Franz Kaftka. I thouroughly enjoyed this performance by Cambridge University. It was a very stylisied piece of work and the choreography was spot on. The atmosphere they created as an ensemble was chilling. I liked that they used the family of Gregor to tell the story rather than basing it all around Gregor himself. Halfway through the performance the make up on the actors began to dramatically deteriorate, I am not sure if this was deliberate but it worked extremely well. It showed the deterioration of Gregor's humanity and I loved this. In fact there was not much wrong with this show, although my only niggle is that they started to take down the set as soon as the show was over and having a good old chat with their families and friends. This is a pet hate for me!



On Saturday Chloe and I had theatre for breakfast, which consisted of weak coffee and a stale crossisant and some very bad comedy! I am not sure if I want to waste anymore time talking about this performance apart from to say if you like cheap humour with no sub-text this is the show for you. The Bite-sized Breakfast on at the Bedlam Theatre.



My last show in Edinburgh was Ritter, Denne, Voss. It is a play about the famous 20th century philospher Ludwig Wittgenstein. It was a very eerie performance with some good dark humour but at times it was hard to keep up with the story. I wish I had read the programme before watching the show because I would have understood it more. Ludwig has returned to his family home where his two sister's live, from a mental institution. For me I felt the play was exploring the inside of his mind and this was reflected in the set design. I think I need a bit more time to consider my opinion on this performance but I would recommend it.



Overall I had a wonderful time at the festival. I met some great people and loved having a massive dose of theatre after a few months of not seeing any theatre. Tomorrow I start working for The Space Theatre Company in the Isle of Dogs which is in south-east London!

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