Outstanding Theatre at Festival 2012

OUTSTANDING THEATRE AT FESTIVAL 2012 ˘ SILVIU PURCARETE’S UNIQUE BRAND OF SWIFTIAN SATIRE TADASHI SUZUKI BRINGS HIS FAMOUS ACTING METHOD TO EDINBURGH CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN FALLS IN LOVE WITH SHAKESPEARE AGAIN

Great theatre directors at Festival 2012 Joyce McMillan, theatre critic on The Scotsman, celebrates the masters of stagecraft who have left their mark on the Scottish capital

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here are times, at the Edinburgh International Festival, when you can feel a shudder of change run right through the audience; and what shifts, in that moment, is the audience’s understanding of what great theatre is, tilted on its axis by the mind-blowing vision of one of the world’s leading theatremakers. It’s one of the joys of being in Edinburgh in August that, sooner or later, almost all of the mighty game-changers of global theatre will come to a space near you; and in 2012, there’s a rare chance both to revisit some directors who have already made a huge impact on audiences, and to welcome a quartet of world-class theatre-makers whose work has never been seen in Edinburgh before.

Among those returning is the legendary Romanian, Silviu Purcărete, creator of the breathtaking Faust at Ingliston in 2009, who brings his 21st-century response to Gulliver’s Travels. There’s Grzegorz Jarzyna of TR Warszawa, Poland, with his 2008: Macbeth, set in a Middle Eastern war zone; and Guillermo Calderón of Chile, whose sharp political drama Diciembre was acclaimed in 2010, and who now brings two short pieces, Villa and Discurso, about Chile’s long-term legacy of oppression and torture.

And then there are the newcomers, whose impact could be even greater.

Tadashi Suzuki, whose Waiting for Orestes: Electra plays at the King’s Theatre, is one of the great pioneers of east-west collaboration in theatre, and of the intense physical training of actors through his own

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Suzuki method. The Swiss director and musician Christoph Marthaler is a superbly playful post-modernist, based in Basel; his Meine faire Dame – ein Sprachlabor is a bleakly hilarious mid-life response to a conventional My Fair Lady, set in a language school lab. Dmitry Krymov of Moscow, visiting the UK for the first time, is a designer-turned-director whose A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It) demonstrates his method of unleashing teams of design students to create the environment for a production, before adding actors and text.

And at last, Edinburgh welcomes the great Ariane Mnouchkine, whose Théâtre du Soleil has been creating huge, freeflowing radical epics in a factory space on the edge of Paris since the 1960s, and who now arrives at Ingliston with her spectacular show Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores), set just before the First World War. It seems this summer, Edinburgh audiences are set to have their ideas about theatre blown sky-high once again.

Reflecting the ambitious scale and scope of the Festival’s theatre programme this year, six productions are also part of the UK-wide London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad, while three productions are also part of the World Shakespeare Festival.

Visit eif.co.uk/theatre for more information, production clips and images from the theatre programme this year.

Ariane Mnouchkine directing Les NaufragÊs du Fol Espoir (Aurores) Photo: Michèle Laurent

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Photo: Sebastian Marcovici

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Scaling New Heights Gulliver’s Travels A Theatre

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Friday 17 – Monday 20 august 8.00pm Sunday 19 august 2.30pm king’s Theatre, Edinburgh

The Herald’s theatre critic Neil Tickets Cooper shares £30 £24 satire £16 £12 a sneak preview of a Swiftian 2 hours approximately eif.co.uk/gulliver

nyone who witnessed Silviu derived largely from the little-known fourth Purcărete’s epic staging of Faust part of Swift’s book. Purcărete’s typically AFTER JonaTHan at SWIFT Ingliston in 2009 won’t want singular interpretation leaves out familiar to miss the Romanian maestro’s look notions of Lilliput in favour of a visual at Gulliver’s Travels. Jonathan Swift’s dreamscape seen through a child’s eyes. fantastical 18th-century satire is arguably “It is Gulliver,” Purcărete said the day the perfect vehicle for a director who Stanca after his production opened, “but it is also ‘purca˘rete’s mighty show Radu national Theatre works on such a large scale.

While this about Swift, because he really is Gulliver.” delivers a visual and of Sibiu, Romania brand new production is housed in a With regular collaborators, including aural experience so jaw more conventional theatre space thanin Romanian thewith amazing Ofelia Poppy, who played performed english supertitles droppingly bold that it Faust, which featured a huge ensemble, Mephistopheles in Faust, returning to Silviu purca˘ rete director makes pyrotechnics most attempts and a pulsing avant-rock fold, and featuring a live score from Dragos¸ Buhagiar Setthe designer at immersive theatre Shaun DaveyatMusic legendary Irish composer Shaun Davey score, previews of his new show seen seem like a paddle the Sibiu TheatreinFestival nevertheless driving the action, this is a haunting and the shallows’ retained many of Purcărete’s visual tics politically pertinent spectacle that will After the Festival triumph of Faust in 2009 director Silviu Purca˘ rete in an impressionistic tableaux delight Purcărete aficionados.

The Scotsman on Faust,series of returns with the Radu Stanca national Theatre of Sibiu, Romania and

Festival 2009

the world premiere of his version of Gulliver’s Travels.

Irish writer Jonathan Swift’s savage political satire is seen through

the eyes of visionary theatre maker Purca˘ rete with an original score Gulliver’s Travels

by Irish composer Shaun davey. driven by davey's musical journey, Friday 17 – Monday 20 August 8.00pm & Purca˘ rete’s production gathers cultural and social aspects of Sunday 19 August 2.30pm contemporary society and explores themes of voyage, dream, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh exile, immigration, emigration, solitude and togetherness. eif.co.uk/gulliver £12-£30 Please note this show contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children.

Supported by Supported by

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Enter Stage Fright Deborah Shaw, Director of the World Shakespeare Festival, on a Russian master of visual poetry

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n a half-built theatre, a group of actors struggle to get ready for their big performance. Among the sawdust and chaos of a theatre that isn’t ready yet, the mechanicals are rehearsing to perform in front of a specially invited audience that includes members of Britain’s ‘theatrical royalty’. There are songs to rehearse, acrobatics to master and lines to learn, but with their big performance looming, they are starting to get nervous. And they haven’t even begun to train their acrobatic dog…

Russian director Dmitry Krymov presents his unique version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, taking as his starting point the pressure of performance – whether it’s the audacity of Krymov himself, daring to bring his production of Shakespeare to its spiritual home, or the on-stage antics of Shakespeare’s mechanicals preparing a show for their king.

The World Shakespeare Festival has commissioned contemporary theatre

artists from around the world who are pushing the boundaries of theatre, taking Shakespeare as their inspiration.

Krymov’s work is devised with his company, in a series of striking, poetic visual metaphors that are constructed and deconstructed in front of our eyes.

They are dream-like, phantasmagorical spectacles; the workings of the brilliant imagination of this visual artist and theatre designer turned director. In Russia, his work is feted by festivals, critics and audiences alike, and seen as being at the forefront of contemporary theatre. In partnership with Chekhov International Festival, this production has been specially created for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the World Shakespeare Festival at the Edinburgh International Festival. Where better to introduce the work of this Russian visionary to British audiences?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It) Friday 24 & Saturday 25 August 7.30pm & Sunday 26 August 2.30pm King’s Theatre, Edinburgh eif.co.uk/midsummer £12-£30

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Photo: Natalia Cheban

Photos: Michèle Laurent

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Lights, camera, action!

The Guardian correspondent Fiachra Gibbons reports from Paris on an extraordinary company

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riane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soliel is the nearest we are ever going to get to pure theatrical utopia. Each show takes years to develop and rehearse, with everyone from Mnouchkine to the cleaning lady paid the same tiny wage so they take as long as it takes to get it just right. For 40 years they have been giving audiences goose bumps at every epic performance at their Paris base at la Cartoucherie in the Bois de Vincennes.

Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) – The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises) – could almost be a metaphor for their own idealism. It’s the story of a foolhardy colonial expedition

to Patagonia that a socialist pioneer of early cinema is trying to shoot in a dance hall by the Marne in the spring before the Great War, using the cooks and waiters as his cast. The ship, the Fol Espoir, inevitably runs aground on Cape Horn, and soon high idealism and base motives are vying for the souls of all on board.

There’s a gold rush, Indian hunters and commando nuns, and a runaway AustroHungarian archduke who should have taken that bullet at Sarajevo.

At three hours and fifty minutes it is mere amuse bouche compared with past Mnouchkine voyages, that can last ten hours or more. But you won’t regret a minute.

Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) Thursday 23 – Saturday 25 August & Monday 27 – Tuesday 28 August 6.00pm Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre eif.co.uk/folespoir £30, £35 Lowland Hall bus link ticket £6 Supported by

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Method in the Madness The Scotsman feature writer Chitra Ramaswamy welcomes a company with a visionary method

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greek revenge tragedy set in a psychiatric unit, performed in Japanese and Korean by a company trained in one of the most influential acting methods in contemporary theatre. It could only be the Suzuki Company of Toga.

Tadashi Suzuki’s world renowned troupe has been based, since the 70s, in a thatched-roof house in a tiny village deep in the mountains of western Japan. The work that comes out of this remote and snowy spot is as universal and avant garde as the

location is specific and steeped in tradition.

The company has adapted Shakespeare, Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Ibsen, and, of course, Euripides. Meanwhile, Suzuki has taught his famous acting system, comprising movement and recitation with a focus on body control, in schools including New York’s Juilliard and the Moscow Art Theatre. Some Suzuki signatures to look out for?

Nimble feet, fast/slow rhythms, immobile torsos and expressionless faces. Rigorous and visionary stuff.

Waiting for Orestes: Electra Saturday 11 – Monday 13 August 8.00pm King’s Theatre, Edinburgh eif.co.uk/electra £12-£30

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Photo: Ellie Kurtz/RSC

Gulliv Trave AFTER JonaTHan SWIFT

Concord of Sweet Sounds

‘purca˘rete’s mighty show delivers a visual and aural experience so jaw droppingly bold that it makes most attempts at immersive theatre seem like a paddle in the shallows’ The Scotsman on Faust, Festival 2009

The Guardian critic Mark Fisher looks forward to a meeting between classical tragedy and torch song

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The Rape of Lucrece

’ve fallen in love with Shakespeare all over again,’ says Camille Wednesday 22 – Sunday 26 August 9.00pm O’Sullivan with a look of wonder. The Irish chanteuse is more usually Royal Lyceum Theatre to be heard singing the praises of Jacques Brel, Bob Dylan and eif.co.uk/rapeoflucrece £10-£30 Supported by Leonard Cohen, but there was something about the range and intensity of her performances that made director Elizabeth Freestone think she’d Sponsored by be ideal casting for a staging of The Rape of Lucrece.

Produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, this 1594 poem is about a rape committed by the king of the Tarquins, whose lust is ‘borne by the trustless wings of false desire’. It is performed by O’Sullivan as a mixture of dramatic monologue and impassioned Supported by torch song. With composer Feargal Murray, she has set a dozen of Shakespeare’s most heightened passages to music, bringing new textures to the tragic story.

‘It felt like the poem could be explained better through song,’ she says. ‘And when the songs take over to explain a scene, they come to life in a really modern way.’

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Photo: Stefan Okołowicz

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Full of Middle Eastern Promise Guardian critic Mark Fisher relishes the return of Poland’s TR Warszawa

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rzegorz Jarzyna is the brilliant talent who staged a mesmerising version of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre in 2008. In his interpretation of Shakespeare’s play, re-titled 2008: Macbeth, he reflects the terror of war in the Middle East in a violent high-tech production that takes great liberties with the original. The New York Times called it a ‘brash, aggressively violent and very free adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy’.

Nine months in the making, the show was rehearsed in an abandoned factory in a bitter Polish winter, with the director delivering his instructions by megaphone.

It gave Cezary Kosiński, in the lead role, a visceral induction into the world of the tyrannical Scottish king.

‘Cold, dirt and permanent exhaustion accompanied us all the

time,’ he says. ‘Instead of the stage, we had a concrete bunker; instead of the auditorium, we had metal scaffolding. It was really hard to live in Macbeth’s world, the world of crime. I remember this nine months as a period of drowning in ugly and disgusting reality.’

The extreme conditions helped him develop an interpretation of Macbeth that broke with convention. ‘We came to the conclusion that the tradition of performing this character as a weak and insane person susceptible to his wife’s suggestions is very strong but also limits us,’ he says. ‘The secret to Macbeth’s personality is somewhere else. The most important thing was to find the impression of the permanent nightmare that Macbeth lives in – not sleeping, not even resting, planning his cruel crimes.’

2008: Macbeth Saturday 11 – Monday 13 August, Thursday 16 – Saturday 18 August 7.30pm & Wednesday 15 August 2.00pm Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre eif.co.uk/macbeth £30, £35 Lowland Hall bus link ticket £6 Supported by

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Photo: Marcelo Montecino

Lasting Impressions Neil Cooper, theatre critic for The Herald, reflects on Latin American politics

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heatre in Chile can be a dangerous game. Ask Guillermo Calderón, writer and director of Villa + Discurso, an intense double bill of plays that are explicitly influenced by the atrocities committed under Augusto Pinochet’s military rule. Where Villa is set in Pinochet’s main torture centre 30 years after his demise, Discurso imagines the farewell speech of outgoing Chilean president Michelle Bachelet.

The members of Teatro en el Blanco, which produced his last Edinburgh International Festival show, Diciembre, were Calderón’s contemporaries, but Teatro Playa, the company he’s working with now, is a generation below him and only aware of Pinochet’s legacy secondhand. “It was fascinating for me,” says Calderón, “because I lived through that time, and it deeply affects everything I do. Now there is a generation who have grown up without Pinochet, but it is important that those times are remembered.”

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Villa + Discurso Monday 20 – Tuesday 21August 7.30pm The Hub eif.co.uk/villadiscurso £25 Supported by The Director’s Circle

A Perfect Match Peter Crawley, theatre critic on The Irish Times, reports on a sublime meeting of minds

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sked once if he was English, Samuel Beckett simply replied, ‘Au contraire.’ That response – pithy, witty and somehow wide open to interpretation – might sum up the riddle of his work, contrarian combinations of wry words and stark experiences in drama, prose and poetry. Beckett discouraged adaptations, but Barry McGovern, one of Beckett’s foremost interpreters in acclaimed Gate Theatre Dublin productions of Waiting For Godot, Endgame and his own one-man adaptation of Beckett’s Trilogy, I’ll Go On, respectfully suggests

that Beckett is better watched than read.

Written towards the end of the war, Watt is a novel of experiment and mordant play, detailing the protagonist’s service to an unseen Mr Knott, where life is a succession of sounds ‘that demand nothing, ordain nothing, explain nothing, propound nothing’.

That line rings with an unmistakably Beckettian cadence and under Tom Creed’s sparing direction McGovern’s voice becomes its natural, indelible partner. Reading Beckett afterwards, you’ll always hear McGovern.

Watt Saturday 11 – Tuesday 14 August 8.00pm Royal Lyceum Theatre eif.co.uk/watt £10-£30

Photo: Jeff Clarke

Supported by

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Life Through a Lens The Scotsman theatre critic Joyce McMillan takes a trip down the rabbit hole with Glasgow’s Vanishing Point

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ow do we live with a portal in our homes that can take us wherever we want, whenever we want? That’s the question at the heart of Wonderland, the latest show created by Glasgow-based director Matthew Lenton; and it led Lenton and his Vanishing Point company back to the rich source material of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, the story of a young girl whose curiosity leads her down a rabbit hole – or perhaps, now, through a computer screen – into a chaotic world of strange and disturbing encounters.

Jointly commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival, with

Wonderland Wednesday 29 August – Saturday 1 September 7.30pm Royal Lyceum Theatre eif.co.uk/wonderland £10-30 Please note this performance contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children Supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund

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Tramway Theatre and the Naples Theatre Festival, Wonderland forms the third part in a trilogy of semi-wordless dramas – including Interiors (2009) and Saturday Night (2011) – in which an international ensemble of actors explore the idea of dramatic action seen through glass, as if by an intruder or voyeur. This time, though, the sheet of glass between us and the action also becomes one of the screen surfaces through which we now experience so much; including the possibility of voyeurism on a scale that some internet users find irresistible, and that may be changing our real-life relationships, for ever.

Photos: Francesco Squeglia

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Lost in Translation Joyce McMillan reports on an extraordinary reworking of a much-loved classic

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he Swiss musician-director Christoph Marthaler is nothing if not playful; and when he and his brilliant, laconic international ensemble of singeractors heard the sounds of a production of My Fair Lady ringing out from the main stage of their home theatre in Basel, they were moved to create a sceptical 21st century response to the romance of the musical.

The result is a hilarious, melancholy, and fleetingly beautiful piece of music theatre, set in a run-down language school lab where – in what looks like an elegy for European civilisation – a group of mid-life losers timidly rebel against once-received ideas of linguistic and musical excellence.

Meine faire Dame – ein Sprachlabor Tuesday 14, Wednesday 15 and Sunday 19 August 7.30pm & Friday 17 and Saturday 18 August 2.00pm Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre eif.co.uk/fairedame £30, £35 Lowland Hall bus link ticket £6 Supported by Ewan and Christine Brown With additional support from

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Scottish-born actor Graham Valentine stars as Professor Higgins, in a show with a gloriously promiscuous playlist of songs, ranging from lieder and opera to Bryan Adams, with a brief, sad nod to Lerner and Loewe. ‘This show was conceived as a kind of echo-chamber to the Lerner and Loewe musical, and the Higgins in Meine faire Dame represents the empirebuilding, controlling element of humanity,’ says Valentine, sitting in the Cafe La Bastille, Valence, on a cold January morning. ‘Christoph has a great instinct – a musician’s instinct – for knowing how much to repeat, how much to exaggerate, and exactly when to finish.’

Photo: Judith Schlosser

Book your return bus trip to Festival shows at the Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston 06

Royal Highland Centre

Royal Highland Royal Royal Centre Highland Highland 2008: Macbeth Photo: Stefan Okołowicz

06 06Royal Royal Highland Highland Centre Centre

To ensure your journey to Festival events at the Lowland Hall is as smooth as possible, we’ve teamed up with Lothian Buses to offer ticket-holders return journeys from Edinburgh’s city centre to Ingliston.

For only £6, this direct express service will pick you up from the east end of George Street near St Andrew’s Square and drop you off at the Royal Highland Centre.

Tickets be booked in advance from ‘‘I ammust in blood Hub Tickets.

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Centre Centre Book your Festival 2012 tickets

The Lowland Hall at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, is transformed into a theatre space hosting three vastly different shows impossible to present in conventional theatres. An enormous three-storey construction with multimedia screens is the set for 2008: Macbeth; a special studio space is needed to allow the audience to be up close and personal with the characters in Meine faire Dame; while Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) was originally created for theCentre, Cartoucherie, du Soleil’s TheThe Lowland Lowland HallHall at the at the Royal Royal Highland Highland Centre, Ingliston, Ingliston, isThéâtre transformed is transformed intointo a theatre a space hosting hosting three three vastly vastly different different shows shows impossible to to home in a theatre hugespace converted munitions factory on theimpossible outskirts of Paris.

now and enjoy a spectacular summer of world-class arts!

present present in conventional in conventional theatres. theatres.

AnAn enormous enormous three-storey three-storey construction construction with with multimedia multimedia screens screens is the is the setset forfor 2008: 2008: Macbeth; Macbeth; a special a special studio studio Three of Europe’s greatest theatre directors – Grzegorz Jarzyna, space space is needed is needed to allow to allow thethe audience audience to be to be upup close close andand personal personal with with Christoph Marthaler andfaire Ariane Mnouchkine each transform, in their thethe characters characters in Meine in Meine faire Dame; Dame; while while LesLes Naufragés Naufragés dudu FolFol Espoir Espoir unique ways, this vast open space into places ofThéâtre reverie and (Aurores) (Aurores) was was originally originally created created forfor thethe Cartoucherie, Cartoucherie, Théâtre du du Soleil’s Soleil’s make-believe. home home in ainhuge a huge converted converted munitions munitions factory factory onon thethe outskirts outskirts of Paris. of Paris.

Three of Europe’s of Europe’s greatest greatest theatre theatre directors directors Grzegorz – Grzegorz Jarzyna, Jarzyna, TheThree Lowland Hall can be reached by bus– from Edinburgh city centre, Christoph Christoph Marthaler andand Ariane Ariane Mnouchkine each each transform, transform, their in their followed

by Marthaler a 10-minute walk, orMnouchkine by car. There will be a in food and bar unique unique ways, ways, thisthis vast vast open open space space intointo places places of reverie of reverie andand service so why not come in time for a drink and a snack or to see make-believe. make-believe. two shows in a day? Full directions can be found on page 72.

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Standby – half price

50% off all tickets citizens, unemployed twotwo shows shows in ainday? a day?

FullFull directions directions cancan bebe found found onon page page 72.

72. people, Young Scot, Equity and card holders.

This This very very special special project project forfor 2012 2012 hashas been been supported supported by by theMU the City City Wed 1 Aug Visit eif.co.uk findbyus on The The Lowland Lowland HallHall cancan beor be reached reached by busbus from from Edinburgh Edinburgh city city centre, centre,

followed followed by by a 10-minute a 10-minute or or by by car.car.

There There will will bebe a food a food andand barbar This very special project walk, forwalk, 2012 has been supported by the City for senior service service so so why why notnot come come in time in time for for a drink a drink and and aEventScotland. snack a snack or or to see to see of Edinburgh Council, Creative Scotland and

of Edinburgh of Edinburgh Council, Council, Creative Creative Scotland Scotland andand EventScotland.

EventScotland.

Royal Highland Centre project supported by

Under 18s and all students in full time education.

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Access discounts

Pay only £8 on the day for selected performances.

Call the access booking line on 0131 473 2089 or visit eif.co.uk/access.

Charity No SC004694.

Front cover: 2008: Macbeth Photo: Stefan Okołowicz

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