Edinburgh Festival 2023: Needs A Different Bit After The Colon

The BBG and I have been running around like blue-arsed flies this summer. Aside from our civil partnership and the ensuing honeymoon - that end-of-part-four cliffhanger will get resolved soon, promise - we've also been to Manchester, Sheffield, Aberdeen, Manchester again (happy birthday Steve), Dublin and South Lanarkshire.

So no, despite that preview I posted here a little while ago, we did not get up to Edinburgh for the festival this summer. But as is usually the case on our gap years, a bunch of Spank's Pals went up there without me, and graciously wrote a few paragraphs about it afterwards. So here are Nick, Diane and Charmian with their reviews of Edinburgh 2023.

Probably need to start planning for Edinburgh 2024 soon, then.

Nick

Suggested title: Is the Fringe just another choking canary in the toxic national mine?

I thought that might get your attention! Taken from an article by Stewart Lee, which made me laugh. There's a certain schadenfreude in reminding my brother I saw Joni Mitchell live (he's a huge fan of hers) at Wembley Arena in 1983, as he never saw her live. Much like I suspect our fave monkey never saw Bo Burnham live when he appeared at the Fringe in 2013, but thanks to one of Rhian’s recommendations, I did.

With that out of the way, let’s roll back to the start of our week, when some unfortunate person decided to end their life under a train, causing us a 3hr delay. But with me and the Muse (Cha) on organising duties this year, we still managed to make our first night show, The Duncan and Judy Murray Show. The audience were unaccountably falling off their seats with laughter - Judy Murray has a gift for playing the straight person, but her youngest son seemed embarrassingly unprepared, which only seemed to inspire the audience to greater bouts of laughter. Next day queuing up for a show, the couple in front of us revealed the truth, it was a spoof. Judy Murray doesn’t have a third son Duncan, he is in fact played by the comedian Chris Forbes, who completely fooled us, well done them.

So to my three fave shows. Number 1 by a street mile was Kravitz, Cohen, Bernstein and Me, by the comedienne Deb Filler and directed by Sarah Louise Young (who appeared as Kate Bush in An Evening Without Kate Bush last year). A truly masterful show, with some great stories, jokes and music about her meeting all three Lennys, at sometime or another. Number 2 was Funeral, a lament for the passing of a friend or loved one, in a secular age. We spent the first 10 minutes of the show in the foyer of the theatre, learning a hymn in Esperanto, to be sung at the end of the ritual. Each of us gave the name of a friend or loved one we wished to remember: it seemed appropriate to remember our old pal Sylvia, and the show truly delivered on ritual, respect and gravitas to honour her memory. Number 3 went to the comic/poet Rob Auton, for a marvellously crafted show of comic stories and poetry. About as far removed from killer put down lines as you could get, this was a warm, inclusive and life enhancing show.

I included the link to the Stewart Lee article as a reminder of how things have changed in Edinburgh since Brexit. Our fave Italian on Lothian Road (Bar Italia) closed at 11pm due to staff shortages, unheard of in the old days when they stayed open until 1am. So for the first time in 20 years, we were forced to eat elsewhere after our first night show ended at 22.20. Restaurant of the week went to David Bann - we felt slightly foolish we had not tried this restaurant before, but to be fair to us we only ate vegetarian once during our Ed week and that was always going to be at Henderson’s, for their legendary trifle. But with Henderson’s canteen closing down and reopening as a restaurant, we decided to try David Bann, and turns out it was everything The Belated Birthday Girl had told us it would be. A fab restaurant, so this is now on our list of must visit restaurants.

Beer of the week went to Bristol's Left Handed Giant brewery for their hazy pale, closely followed by the Swannay Brewery Orkney IPA I had at the Cloisters pub in Ed. The hazy pale was a totally unexpected find in a micro pub (Curfew, Bridge Street, in Berwick) which we visited on our usual day off from the festival on Wednesday. We were blessed with lovely weather, so after a walk around the town's walls, we adjourned to the Curfew.

Our fave monkey will no doubt concur with this, but after the Branson years of Virgin running the east coast line and us getting ripped off one way or another, I was nervous about us getting home on the Saturday when the RMT called another strike. As LNER could not guarantee our seat reservations would be honoured, I switched our train to a Lumo service the day before the strike. You can probably guess what happened next, our Friday train was substituted by a similar train from another operator, which not only didn’t honour our seat reservations, but was a shorter train than the usual Lumo service. Fortunately we all found seats for the journey home, phew!

Look forward to our fave monkey's return next year. [Hopefully that's not just because I'll have to organise the trains next time - Spank]

Diane

I have to say that this year wasn’t a vintage one for me as far as the shows I saw. Some years you just make the wrong choices, and I found that many of the plays I saw were flawed, although the performances usually transcended the material. Here are my top 5.

1. Wiesenthal by Tom Dugan (Pleasance Courtyard). Dugan won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for this play and it’s well deserved. We meet famed Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal on his last day in his Vienna office. As he packs up and prepares to leave, Wiesenthal (played by American actor Christopher Gibbs) tells us of his dedicated campaign to bring the Nazi War Criminals to justice. It’s difficult for one actor to hold the audience’s attention for 75 minutes, but Gibbs kept the audience riveted with his tales of determination and persistence. In spite of the sombre subject matter, Dugan was able to inject some humour into Wiesenthal’s interactions with his audience. One to catch if it transfers.

2. The Old Man and the Pool, a one man show by American stand up Mike Birbiglia. Although Birbiglia is big in America most British people haven’t heard of him, so he wasn’t filling Edinburgh’s McEwan Hall. But those who missed him now have the opportunity to catch him at the Wyndhams Theatre in London, where he’s on until 7 October. Birbiglia is a great storyteller and the current story he is telling is about the health problems he’s encountering, which sounds grim but it isn’t. After a doctor’s appointment where he fails to impress with the breathing tests, he’s encouraged to take up swimming, but childhood visits to the local rather grim YMCA pool have put him off returning. Graphic descriptions follow of rancid changing rooms and the old man of the title sitting in the changing rooms and ---- well you’ll have to see the show to find out, as it’s rather gross! We discover (via more tales of sleepwalking, family relationships, high school wrestling and trying to tackle the mould in his apartment) how Birbiglila eventually conquered his fear/dislike to return to the YMCA pool. An engaging manner and a way with words means that the audience was riveted and the 80 minutes flew by.

3. Adults by Kieran Hurley at the Traverse. I was attracted to this play by the presence of the versatile Irish character actor Conleth Hill (recently seen on TV in The Power of Parker, but probably best known as Lord Varys in Game of Thrones). In this play he was schoolteacher Iain, whose embarrassing first visit to a brothel is made even more embarrassing when he discovers that the establishment is run by a former pupil, played by the excellent Dani Heron. The trio of actors is completed by Andes Hayward as Iain’s sexual partner for the night. Embarrassment, confusion and farce ensues with a bit of social comment thrown in to give the story a bit of gravitas. The play was very entertaining and well acted. Not perfect but a good 90 minutes of entertainment.

4. Heart by Jade Anouka (Roundabout at Summerhall). Jade Anouka is an accomplished actor who I first encountered in Chef, a Fringe First winning show at Edinburgh back in 2014. Since then Anouka has gone from strength to strength, playing leading roles at the Donmar, in the West End and on TV. Heart is Jade’s debut self penned play, performed with great assurance and charm. It tells the story of her failed first marriage, her depression at the break up and her happy ending with a new love - her wife Grace Savage, who accompanies Jade’s poetic piece with beatboxing and an electro pop soundtrack. An uplifting show which should have debuted at the Kiln theatre before Covid raised its ugly head, so hopefully Jade will eventually bring this to London.

5. Mervyn’s 30th Year Charity Gala, Pleasance Grand. This year we swopped our usual Sunday visit to Mervyn Stutter’s show to Monday afternoon so that we could catch the Gala. Who would perform? Would we see some of those who’d made it big since we witnessed their Stutter debuts, such as John Bishop or Romesh Ranganathan? As it happened, the biggest names to show up were Ed Byrne and Jo Caufield, who did a great piece about gatecrashing her husband’s lads night out. Nevertheless, it was a good show with compere Mervyn on top form in spite of creaky joints (he’s waiting for a second hip replacement!), a longer show than usual and a proliferation of dance acts from Ireland, Cuba and South Africa. Our ticket money was going to a charity that helps young South African performers, so an entertaining afternoon in aid of a good cause – and I discovered this great piece of music that the South Africans danced to, which apparently went viral 3 years ago but it’s the first time I’d heard it!

Charmian

Well, back in the swing of things again after last year’s much welcome post-pandemic return to the Festival, we ventured up again with Nick and myself in the organising seat this year. Even though the travel gods did their best to disrupt things, with RMT announcing a strike resulting in us returning a day early, and a heavily delayed journey up there, Edinburgh’s magic had not diminished and it was another really enjoyable week, with the well-appointed Napier University flats again providing our base.

It’s always reassuring in such a changing world that some things still remain, including many of our favourite restaurants and pubs, all as good as ever, if not better in the case of Bar Italia (despite the earlier closing time, no doubt a sad consequence of the Brexit impact on hospitality). It’s also good to have success with a place we hadn’t tried before – in this case David Bann - a more than worthy successor to Henderson’s as a vegetarian option.

A sad farewell, however, to the Filmhouse, a long-running institution with a very comfortable and relaxed café and bar where many of Spank’s Pals used to congregate over the years. This actually closed at the end of last year, presumably a victim of the general decline in cinema audiences. [I've got an update on this: the Filmhouse is on its way back, and it needs your help - Spank]

We did also fit the odd show or two in of course (after all, it is the Festival!), and I think the stand-out has to be Kravitz, Cohen, Bernstein and Me, directed by Sarah Louise Young, (which is what originally prompted me to see this). Deb Filler gave a highly accomplished performance, with stories told with great warmth and gusto which stayed with you after the show ended. Two others worthy of special mention for me were The Ice Hole: A Cardboard Comedy – a very original piece of storytelling in which you never realised cardboard could be used so creatively - and also the very talented comic/poet and artist Rob Auton, whom we would probably never have seen had it not been suggested by a helpful Fringe steward we encountered in George Square.

And a further accolade should go to the comedian Chris Forbes, who had me and Nick totally deceived that he was the third Murray brother in The Duncan and Judy Murray Show, so convincing was he.

Several other shows were definitely worth seeing (not least the ever-reliable and politically astute Andy Parsons), and a very comprehensive Grayson Perry exhibition at the National Gallery. However, probably for me the most disappointing was The Grand Old Opera House Hotel at the Traverse Theatre. I had high expectations for this as it had won a Fringe First award, but after a promising start I found my attention wandering, it didn’t really engage me.

For a day out from Edinburgh, Berwick on Tweed proved a great choice. About 45 minutes’ train journey away, it is very picturesque and manageable in size, housing a great pub serving Nick’s favourite beer of the week, from Left Handed Giant brewery hailing from none other than Bristol – will have to do some research into its availability here now I’m back! [LHG's Bristol taproom is absolutely delightful, and you need to go there - Spank]

All in all, another Edinburgh satisfyingly concluded – here’s to 2024!