Edinburgh Festivals Magazine 2019

BEST OF COMEDY MUSIC THEATRE BOOKS DANCE ART

NISH KUMAR

ROSE McGOWAN

RHOD GILBERT

ARABELLA WEIR

PAUL MERTON

SUMMER 2019

FLORENCE WELCH

YOUR ESSENTIAL FESTIVAL GUIDE

SEANN WALSH

DANCES WITH DANGER

SIR IAN McKELLEN

RETURN OF THE KING

100

STAND-UP STARS

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

BOOM BOOM! BASIL BRUSH’S FOXY NEW SHOW

EDINBURGH FESTIVALS SUMMER 2019

EDDIE IZZARD

KISSES AND TELLS

STEPHEN FRY SOFIE HAGEN GRAYSON PERRY CLIVE ANDERSON VICTORIA HISLOP

280

£3.99

PLACES TO EAT, DRINK, RELAX, SHOP & PLAY

FIND THE LATEST 5-STAR SHOWS WITH REVIEWS AT EDFESTMAG.COM

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Photo David Wilkinson

Fireworks Concert

Get the best views in the City

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31 JUL - 26 AUG

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OR 20 F W 19 NE

The best mixed-bill comedy shows

LA GALERIE 01 - 25 AUG | 18:00

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31 JUL - 26 AUG | 14:20

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CHORES 01 - 25 AUG | 12:00

DNA 01 - 25 AUG | 15:15

MONSKI MOUSE'S BABY DISCO DANCE HALL 02 - 25 AUG | 11:00 MONSKI MOUSE'S BABY CABARET 05 - 15 AUG | 11:00

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ROSE MCGOWAN: PLANET 9 15 - 18 AUG | 13:00

FRIENDSICAL: A PARODY MUSICAL ABOUT FRIENDS 01 - 25 AUG | 13:00

CHOIR OF MAN 01 - 25 AUG | 19:30

NOISE BOYS 31 JUL - 25 AUG | 18:00

THE MAGNETS: NAKED 90S 12 - 25 AUG | 17:30

PARIS DE NUIT 01 - 25 AUG | 22:30

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AT THE EDINBURGH FRINGE

PRESENTS

UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

11AM (12PM) 31 JULY - 26 AUG (NOT 12)

UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

11.20AM (12.20PM) 31 JULY - 25 AUG (NOT 12, 19)

1PM (2PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB 03 - 25 AUG (NOT 12, 19) ON THE MEADOWS

“Endlessly imaginative... exquisitely beautiful.”

UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

1PM (2PM) 16 - 25 AUG

2.00PM (3.20PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB 3 - 24 AUG (NOT 13 & 20) ON THE MEADOWS

THE NEW YORKER

UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

2.45PM (4.00PM) 31 JULY - 26 AUG (NOT 12)

Will Gompertz: Double Art History

2:45PM (4:00PM)

31 JULY - 26 AUGUST 2019

DO OUR BEST UNDERBELLY COWGATE

(The Sequel)

2.50PM (3.50PM) 1 - 25 AUG (NOT 12)

UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB ON THE MEADOWS

3PM (4PM) 03 - 24 AUG

UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

3.35PM (4.35PM) 19 - 25 AUG

FAGS MAGS and Bags

4PM (5PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB 03 - 24 AUG (NOT 7, 12, 19) ON THE MEADOWS

UNDERBELLY GEORGE SQUARE

4.40PM (5.40PM) 01 - 26 AUG (NOT 12)

5.00PM (6.10PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB 03 - 24 AUG (NOT 7, 12, 19) ON THE MEADOWS

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LE COUP

UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

5.00PM (6.10PM) 31 JULY - 26 AUG (NOT 7, 12, 19)

6PM (7PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB 03 - 24 AUG (NOT 12 & 19) ON THE MEADOWS

LITTLE DEATH UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

8PM (9PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB 03 - 24 AUG (NOT 12) ON THE MEADOWS

7PM (8PM) 12 AUG

7PM (8PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB 02 - 24 AUG (NOT 7, 12, 19) ON THE MEADOWS

8.40PM (9.40PM) 01 - 25 AUG

9PM (10PM) UNDERBELLY’S CIRCUS HUB ON THE MEADOWS 02 - 24 AUG (NOT 7, 12, 19)

UNDERBELLY GEORGE SQUARE

9PM (11PM) 15 - 17, 22 - 25 AUG

11.30PM (12.30AM) UNDERBELLY GEORGE SQUARE 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 22, 23 24 AUG

UNDERBELLY COWGATE

RHYS NICHOLSON NICE PEOPLE NICE THINGS NICE SITUATIONS

UNDERBELLY BRISTO SQUARE

UNDERBELLY CENTRAL HALL

9.30PM (10.30PM) 31 JULY - 25 AUG (NOT 12 & 19)

11.55PM (2.55AM) 02 - 25 AUG

11AM (12PM)

31 JULY - 26 AUGUST 2019 (NOT 12)

CONSPIRACY

ART HEIST UNDERBELLY COWGATE

1.55PM (2.55PM) 01 - 25 AUG (NOT 14)

UNDERBELLY COWGATE

TOKYO ROSE 4.45PM (6.00PM) 01 - 25 AUG (NOT 12)

UNDERBELLY COWGATE

6.55pm (7.55PM) 01 - 25 AUG (NOT 12)

#FollowTheCow underbellyedinburgh

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fun at the festival Fuel your appetite for festival fun with refreshing drinks, tasty bites to eat and handy stores packed with all the essentials, plus a great line up of talent at our FREE monthly music gig, ‘The Waverley Sessions’ - right in the heart of the action.

Find us on princes street, next to waverley station @WaverleyMallEdinburgh @WaverleyMallSC www.waverleymall.com

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@waverleymallsC

03/07/2019 09:33

EDFESTMAG.COM CONTENTS

What’s Inside 37

“This was the biggest thing that ever happened to me”

24

COMEDY 20 RHOD GILBERT Back behind the mike 24 NISH KUMAR Mashing it up 34 SEANN WALSH Strictly, scandal and me...

37 BASIL BRUSH What the fox?

47 ARABELLA WEIR Mum's the word 55 CLIVE ANDERSON The fest's funniest Macbeth 88 JAYDE ADAMS Funny, funky and feminist 96 SARAH KEYWORTH The Best Newcomer returns 193 PODCASTS From your earbuds to the stage 181 COMEDY GUIDE It's the best medicine

SEANN WALSH, PAGE 34

47 31

MUSIC 31

THEATRE 18

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26 28

40 48 50 74 84 86 166

DANCE

EDDIE IZZARD 38 HAVANA AFTER DARK A fresh take on Dickens Hot Cuban beats IAN McKELLEN 52 THE CRUCIBLE Triumphant return to Edinburgh Ballet meets witchcraft STEPHEN FRY 91 BALLETBOYZ The victory and unspeakable The dancers take control vice of the Greeks 178 DANCE GUIDE OEDIPUS Get down and boogie Thrilling retelling of a classic PETER GYNT Self-obsession and fake news THE RED Marcus Brigstocke's debut play FISHBOWL Swimming against the tide THE SECRET RIVER 98 DRAG & CABARET Pain from the colonial past Superqueens and superstars THE SHARK IS BROKEN 104 CIRCUS GUIDE From the Jaws of death Race to the Big Top 175 CABARET GUIDE THEATRE GUIDE Variety is the spice of life The play's the thing...

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE Ethereal magic in the Gardens 71 ANNA CALVI Audacious and outspoken 100 TEENAGE FANCLUB New direction for Glasgow faves 102 CHVRCHES Lauren Mayberry speaks out 162 MUSIC LISTINGS The sounds of the summer

38

CABARET & CIRCUS

www.edfestmag.com

EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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COME AND JOIN US AT ONE OF OUR FESTIVAL BARS You’ll find us at Pleasance Dome, Gilded Garden, The Edinburgh International Book Festival plus many more locations throughout the city.

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EDFESTMAG.COM CONTENTS

56 32

ART 22 ROSE MCGOWAN Powerful multimedia art and songs from the #metoo artist 32 GRAYSON PERRY

Weaving his magic 72 NICOLE FAHRI

From fashion design to busting

out as an artist 158 ART GUIDE

The best of the Art Festival

121

FOOD

CHILDREN

118 FOODIES FESTIVAL

Our very own "Gastronomic Glastonbury" 121 RESTAURANT GUIDE Food, glorious food

115 ERTH'S DINOSAUR ZOO

Feeding time, but are you on the

menu?

117 THE FINAL FRONTIER

Two shows about women in space 176 CHILDREN'S GUIDE

Take your wee ones on a festival

adventure or two

BOOKS 194

117

REGULARS 42 AWARD WINNERS

Eyes on the prize 56 FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

Big names and big personalities 78 A TO Z

It's as easy as A, B, C 92 ONES TO WATCH

A feast of fresh talent 107 SURPRISE SURPRISE

Well-known faces in new places 194 MY EDINBURGH

Prue Leith shares her favourite

foodie hotspots

76 SOFIE HAGEN

Fat means fabulous 83 VICTORIA HISLOP Her new Greek tragedy 164 BOOKS GUIDE

Reading is fundamental

CITY GUIDE 109 21 THINGS TO DO

Escape the festival madness 153 SHOPPING GUIDE

Hit the Royal Mile in style 156 SPA GUIDE

Relax and pamper yourself

92

153

www.edfestmag.com

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Don’t forget to bsite check our we g.com a www.edfestm ws for daily revie

Tales of the unexpected T “

here is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour,” said Charles Dickens, and he must have been gazing into a crystal ball, because he described Edinburgh in August perfectly. He would recognise some other things too – not least his own words from Great Expectations brought to life by our cover star, the inimitable Eddie Izzard. .

As if Izzard wasn’t busy enough with his one-man theatre show or even his appearance at the Book Festival, he announced exclusive dates previewing his first new stand-up in five years.

Not to be Pipped to the post, a slew of funny folks have spoken to us about their latest shows, be it Rhod Gilbert discussing why he’s finally coming clean about his life, or Nish Kumar explaining how the Fringe turned him into a sharp political satirist. Seann Walsh opens up about his Strictly scandal and run-ins with the press, and Stephen Fry delves into the Greek myths, proving that they’re entrancing, sexy and accessible for every audience.

Across town at the King’s Theatre, director Robert Icke gets to grips with one of the most powerful myths, the story of Oedipus, retold as a fastmoving thriller. Icke isn’t the only one shaking up a classic play: David Hare talks to us about reinventing Ibsen’s ‘unwatchable’ play into a thoroughly modern Peter Gynt, and Sir Ian McKellen tells us why he decided to stage some of his favourite Shakespeare moments, from King Lear to Richard III, and how his first appearance in Edinburgh nearly 50 years ago nearly landed him in prison. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something brand new, Rose McGowan transports us to Planet 9 with a performance of her cutting edge album.

With so much packed into this year’s issue, we haven’t even mentioned The Crucible reinterpreted by Scottish Ballet, music from Chvrches and Florence + The Machine, or exhibitions from Grayson Perry and Nicole Fahri. “I see a beautiful city and brilliant people,” said Dickens, prophetic as always, so read on to make sure you get the best of everything at the festivals this month.

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Idil Sukan

International Festival 2nd – 26th August Box Office: Hub Tickets, Castlehill Tel: 0131 473 2000 Web: eif.co.uk International Book Festival 10th – 26th August Box Office: Charlotte Square Tel: 0345 373 5888 Web: edbookfest.co.uk Jazz and Blues Festival 12th – 21st July Box Office: Hub Tickets, Castlehill Tel: 0131 473 2000 Web: edinburghjazzfestival.com Military Tattoo 2nd – 24th August Box Office: 1-3 Cockburn Street Tel: 0131 225 1188 Web: edintattoo.co.uk

NISH KUMAR

ROSE McGOWAN

RHOD GILBERT

ARABELLA WEIR

PAUL MERTON

SUMMER 2019

FLORENCE WELCH

YOUR ESSENTIAL FESTIVAL GUIDE

Edinburgh Art Festival 25th July – 25th August Box Office: Institut Francais d’Ecossee, West Parliament Square Tel: 0131 226 6558 Web: edinburghartfestival.com

SEANN WALSH

DANCES WITH DANGER

SIR IAN McKELLEN

RETURN OF THE KING

100

STAND-UP STARS

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

BOOM BOOM! BASIL BRUSH’S FOXY NEW SHOW

EDINBURGH FESTIVALS SUMMER 2019

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Gayle Anderson, Kelly Apter, Stephen Armstrong, Kate Copstick, Mark Fisher, Sarah Crompton, Craig McLean, Dominic Cavendish, Lyn Gardner, Jay Richardson, Fiona Shepherd, Claire Smith, Jean West

Festival Fringe 2nd – 26th August Box Office: 180 High Street Tel: 0131 226 0000 Web: edfringe.com

BEST OF COMEDY MUSIC THEATRE BOOKS DANCE ART

EDITORIAL Editor Sue Hitchen Art Director Vicky Axelson Sub Editors Anna Rieser, Judy Diamond, David Robinson, Caroline Whitham Advertising Sharon Little Production Sarah Hitchen Editorial Assistant Louise Hutton Advertising Design Stephanie Finlay

HOW TO BOOK

EDDIE IZZARD

KISSES AND TELLS

STEPHEN FRY SOFIE HAGEN GRAYSON PERRY CLIVE ANDERSON VICTORIA HISLOP

280

£3.99

PLACES TO EAT, DRINK, RELAX, SHOP & PLAY

FIND THE LATEST 5-STAR SHOWS WITH REVIEWS AT EDFESTMAG.COM

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Foodies Festival Edinburgh 2nd – 4th August Inverleith Park Web: foodiesfestival.com Edinburgh Summer Sessions 7th – 18th August Princes St. Gardens Web: smmrsessions.com

Edinburgh Festivals Issue 1 7 Published annually by The Media Company Publications Ltd, 26a St Andrews Square, Edinburgh EH2 1AF. 0131 558 7134. www.edfestmag.com Printed by Buxton Press. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is strictly forbidden.

All prices and offers correct at time of going to press but subject to change. ISSN 1478-9078

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DIARY DATES EDFESTMAG.COM

Mark up your calendar – there are unmissible moments every day in August!

31 JULY Frank Skinner Live Assembly George Square The comic legend returns to Edinburgh with outrageous laughs.

1 AUGUST Russell Howard Assembly George Square Studios Good news and bad, but always funny from the West Country comedian.

2 AUGUST Ronni Ancona & Lewis Macleod Gilded Balloon at the Museum Perfect silly and satirical impressions from the comic pairing of Ancona and Macleod.

3 AUGUST

6 AUGUST

9 AUGUST

Omid Djalili The Stand New Town Theatre Burgeoning national treasure Omid returns to the festival with his intelligent and warm comedy.

Akala Gilded Balloon Debating Hall Musician and political voice Akala discusses his Sunday Times bestseller Natives.

Stewart Lee The Stand New musings from the cult comedian.

4 AUGUST

7 AUGUST

LA Philharmonic Usher Hall In a European premiere, Gustavo Dudamel joins the orchestra to play Barber, Tchaikovsky and John Adams.

Amadou & Mariam + Blind Boys of Alabama Usher Hall The Malian musicians are joined by American songsters.

Splash Test Dummies Underbelly's Circus Hub Wet and wacky circus for kids big and small from the stars of last year's Trash Test Dummies.

5 AUGUST

8 AUGUST

Colin Cloud Pleasance Courtyard – The Grand Sinful magic as Cloud charms your inner demons.

Shappi Khorsandi The Stand – Stand 1 Fighting the good fight through the comedy club scene of the 90s.

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10 AUGUST

11 AUGUST Craig Ferguson Edinburgh Playhouse Cheerful meanderings from the Late Late host, who's bringing home his first UK stand-up in over 25 years. www.edfestmag.com

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EDFESTMAG.COM DIARY DATES

24 AUGUST 12 AUGUST Lost Voice Guy Gilded Balloon at the Museum The award winner may not have a voice, but he has plenty to say.

13 AUGUST Trying It On Traverse Playwright David Edgar confronts his 20-year-old self.

14 AUGUST Lewis Capaldi Princess Street Gardens Scottish singing sensation plays the Summer Sessions.

15 AUGUST

to bring back his award-winning 2018 show for three nights only.

18 AUGUST Ruby Wax Pleasance – The Grand Ruby explores mind and body in a show based on her new book.

19 AUGUST Hear Word!

The Lyceum Shattering the culture of silence for Nigerian women.

Camille O'Sullivan Pleasance Courtyard – One Her new exploration of the music of Nick Cave.

26 AUGUST Virgin Money Fireworks Princes Street Gardens The EIF finishes with a bang.

Connan Mockasin Leith Theatre New Zealand multi-instrumentalist brings his dulcet tunes to EIF.

21 AUGUST Mariella Fostrup Charlotte Square Open Book presenter talks about her new writing on women’s travel.

16 AUGUST

22 AUGUST

Danny MacAskill Underbelly's Circus Hub YouTube sensation MacAskill leads a jaw-dropping stunt show.

Tracey Chevalier New York Times Main Theatre The Girl with the Pearl Earring author on her newly embroidered tale.

17 AUGUST

23 AUGUST

Daniel Sloss Edinburgh Playhouse Taking a break from Netflix specials

Luisa Omielan Gilded Balloon Debating Hall Politics for bitches.

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25 AUGUST

20 AUGUST

Eugene Onegin Festival Theatre Pushkin's verse, Tchaikovsky’s score and the Komische Opera Berlin meet.

www.edfestmag.com

Rite of Spring Festival Theatre Tibetan interpretation of Stravinsky's ballet.

EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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THEATRE EDDIE IZZARD

PIP PIP HOORAY! What the Dickens is Eddie Izzard doing this August playing all the roles in Great Expectations?

We interrupted rehearsals to ask him WORDS JEAN WEST PHOTO OLIVER ROSSER

Y

ou are definitely one for a challenge. What keeps you going with such diverse ideas and genres?

Eleven years of failing as a performer and actor inspired me to keep pushing forward, once a bit of success started to come my way. Acting was my first love and comedy my second. I just got them going back to front.

Why Dickens and why this particular work?

I was born 150 years to the day after Charles Dickens.

This seems to resonate in some crazy way. So, as a dyslexic person who had never fully read a work of literature, I recorded an audiobook (now on iTunes) of Great Expectations to encourage myself to read the whole book.

Now I want to perform an abridged version of it that will combine acting and stand-up skills.

Like Billy Connolly, you have made that fairly rare crossover into the acting world and worked with some of the best. Was the transition tricky and did it take time for people to appreciate your versatility?

Billy Connolly is a great actor, and he should have been nominated for an Oscar for his role in Mrs Brown. But the

“I’m inspired by Dickens’ own journey through life. He worked early at Covent Garden and then later toured Britain and America. I seem to have accidentally been following in his footsteps” transition is tricky. Some critic once wrote about me, “Why does he want to be a so-so actor, when he’s a really good comedian?” My answer was, “Because I used to be a so-so comedian.” I’ve worked very hard over the years and now I seem to be getting better and better film roles to play.

Politics is your other passion. Dickens would surely have had a field day with the major players on the world stage just now. Do any of his characters remind you of our political representatives?

I don’t really do those comparisons, but I do feel you could find all his characters in today’s politics, as we as human beings have not changed much over the last 150 (or 150,000) years.

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Versatile Izzard has a huge following as a stand-up performer

You were not orphaned like Pip in Great Expectations, but you did experience tragedy and related difficulties early in life. Was this personally inspiring?

I think he did write these characters who suffered early but achieved later, to inspire all citizens of that time to hope and strive for the Enlightenment dream of a better life – which he achieved. But I must admit that I didn’t see myself in these characters when I was growing up. I think I do so more now.

And I do find I’m inspired by his own journey through life: he worked early at Covent Garden and then later toured Britain and America. I seem to have accidentally been following in his footsteps.

Of all the characters in Great Expectations, who do you like best?

I think I like the character of Jaggers best. I identify with his precision and his intelligence as being the best way to survive and progress in the 1800s.

Social justice, wealth and poverty, and triumph over evil are all themes in Dickens’ works. Do they strike a chord with your own politics?

Absolutely. I think we have progressed from the 1800s to the 2000s, but sometimes it does seem less than we would have hoped.

On a more serious note, what do you make of Miss Haversham’s frocks?

I push back on the word ‘frocks’. As for Miss Haversham’s dress, it does actually seem rather impractical to keep wearing the same dress for 40 or 50 years. There seems to be a washday section missing from her life at Satis House. Or did she have two wedding dresses that she swapped between?

What else is on your personal and professional list?

My list is very small, actually. When we were all younger, each of us had a few ideas of what we wanted to do in life. It took so long for anything to work for me that I just decided to do all four: comedy, drama, endurance sport and politics. So I just want to continue trying to get better at all of them.

How do you find Edinburgh these days – better or worse than when you first visited? Any favourite places you’d like to share?

My advice for favourite places is to run, walk or stagger to the top of Arthur’s Seat and also to visit Waverley Gardens, the Meadows and Brodie’s Close (where I first performed 38 years ago). Also try visiting Edinburgh on a winter’s evening.

Arrive at Waverley Station and then look up to the Castle, the Bank of Scotland and the High Street. That’s how I first saw Edinburgh back in March 1981 – a sight that has stayed with me ever since. And I think and hope that Edinburgh is always getting better. It has always had an international and positive outlook and that is what I believe in.

www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 13:25

EDDIE IZZARD THEATRE

Marathon man Izzard shifts out of his comfort zone to bag 27 epic runs in succession for Sport Relief

“I first saw Edinburgh on a winter’s evening in 1981. It’s a sight that has stayed with me ever since”

Shock of the new...

In a suprise announcement, Izzard revealed that Edinburgh audiences will be the first to get an exclusive look at his next stand-up spectacular, as he previews Wunderbar, his first new show in five years. Spanning the 100,000 years since humans learned to talk, Eddie says he is going to, “keep giving audiences around the world the best stand-up shows that I can at a time of Brexit-hate and Trump-hate.” Grab tickets now before he takes off on another marathon tour.

WHERE & WHEN Eddie Izzard: Expectations of Great Expectations Assembly George Square Studios 2, 7-25 August (not 12, 13 or 20), 2pm (11.10pm on 19), £17.50, assemblyfestival.com. He also reads from and talks about Great Expectations at the Book Festival on 10 Aug, 5.45pm, pay what you can, edbookfest.co.uk Eddie Izzard: Wunderbar Gilded Balloon – Debating Hall, 12-14 Aug, 10.30pm, £25, gildedballoon.co.uk, then Glasgow King’s Theatre 2-6 Oct, Edinburgh Festival Theatre 19-20 Oct

www.edfestmag.com

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COMEDY RHOD GILBERT

R

hod Gilbert knows how to command a stage.

Fringe regulars were blown away by the power and majesty of his outrage in 2009’s Award-winning Mince Pie as well as his masterful audience work – his sell out tours The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst and The Man with the Flaming Battenberg Tattoo were titles picked by the audience before he’d written a word. Others will have seen him hosting Never Mind the Buzzcocks, acing Live at the Apollo, riffing on 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and generally seeming like an upbeat, positive force-of-nature comedian.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

“I’m so shy I think I went to two out of sixty lectures in my first year at Exeter University,” he recalls. “You know they say when you get to university, ‘Just knock on the guy next door, the person next door in the halls of residence.’

I couldn’t even do that. I still probably couldn’t do it to this day. So I just sat in my room. In the end, the university had to intervene and move me to a different hall of residence and put me in the care of this bloke who would be my friend and mentor.”

So, obviously, he chose stand-up comedy as a career – nothing could be easier for a shy person than standing on stage and making a room of strangers laugh, right?

“It wasn’t a career choice,” he explains. “I had no desire to be a comedian. I wanted to be a lorry driver. But I was encouraged to do

anything true, apart from the mince pie itself,” he gives a wry grin.

“Largely everything was fantasy. The Flaming Battenberg Tattoo was all about a make-or-break holiday when I was planning on proposing to my girlfriend. None of it happened. I can remember Barry Castagnola giving me a right old ticking off once because he said he felt cheated. But recently, that’s changed – I’ve learned how to talk honestly on stage about my life. Largely.”

His new show is the result. The Book of John is about the six difficult years he’s had since he last toured his stand-up. His mother died after being struck by Alzheimer’s, his father had a heart attack, he had a ministroke himself while sitting on the toilet, and he’s facing up to the fact he might be infertile.

“I hadn’t written for years, I don’t know why – I did telly and some charity gigs but no new material,” he explains. “Everything’s so visceral and angry these days. It just seemed like fiddling while Rome burns to be talking about duvets while all around us the world got angrier and more and more divided, so I started writing about more serious things.

“I actually set off to write a show about Brexit. Back in 2017 there was a phrase that was used all the time: ‘more that unites us than divides us.’ You don’t hear anyone saying that any more.

I tried to write a show around that idea and I wanted to talk about my mum’s death and my dad’s heart attack and my stroke and

“I’m so shy I think I went to two out of sixty lectures my first year of uni”

LIGHTNING

RHOD comedy for eight years by a girlfriend who just wouldn’t let it ride and for eight years I insisted, “No. Leave me alone. You’re stressing me out just talking about it.” So I ended up doing this to keep her off my back and I’m very glad I did. And in fact, the comedy has really helped the shyness.

That and the slow passing of the years as we age and die.”

Perhaps his shyness is down to coming from Carmarthen, a provincial market town in Wales with a population of 15,000.

When he finally caved and started doing stand-up, stories from Carmarthen popped up in his fictional Welsh village of Llanbobl, around which he wove his largely fictional early shows.

With Mince Pie, he seemed to have shaken off his caution and Hosting Never his fiction and learned how to Mind the speak from the heart – raging Buzzcocks against the petty stupidity of consumer culture. He looks a little guilty.

“I don’t think there was

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Six years on from his last stand-up tour, Rhod Gilbert is back to talk honestly about his life – at last WORDS STEPHEN ARMSTRONG PHOTO ANDY HOLLINGWORTH

the trying for kids, all with the overall theme that there’s more that unites than divides us.”

At the heart of the show is John, a driver who picks him up from TV appearances and big gigs and they have rambling, often outlandish conversations on the journey home. John’s dumb logic and preposterous notions on everything from George Michael to the Icelandic fishing industry weave throughout the show, providing a rich comic counterpoint to Gilbert’s heart-rending confessions.

Gradually, the two men start seeing eye to eye and they even end up liking each other.

“John was a bit of a godsend,” Gilbert admits. “I was trying to do stuff about my mum’s Alzheimer’s and I just couldn’t find a way to make it funny. It’s actually only really John I’d say all these things to and his answers really helped.”

He’s been touring the show tentatively and the response has astonished him. “In the past all I’ve ever had people say is, “I find you funny” or, “I don’t find you funny,”” he explains with a grin.

“That’s all the feedback. Whereas now I’m getting bombarded with stuff. I’m getting a lot of comments about strokes, Alzheimer’s, trying for kids, IVF – it’s really touched and affected people, much more than the comedy,” he laughs. “But I’m happy about that.

It’s why I’m hoping that Brexit will settle down, because – which is my point – even if we disagree about everything, there are bigger things like health and life and death where we can empathise.

It’s just about being kind to one another.”

www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 10:22

RHOD GILBERT COMEDY

“I had no desire to be a comedian.

I wanted to be a lorry driver”

WHERE & WHEN Rhod Gilbert: The Book of John Pleasance at EICC, 14-25 August (not 19, 20), 8.30pm, from £22.50 pleasance.co.uk

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ART ROSE McGOWAN

“Hollywood is a very antiquated place.

It’s not progressive in any way”

HEALING THE WOUNDS After walking away from Hollywood and a traumatic past, #Me Too’s ‘defining face’ Rose McGowan has found a safe space in her own art WORDS LYN GARDNER PHOTOGRAPHY LAURENT VITEUR, PAUL GROVER

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03/07/2019 19:34

ROSE MCGOWAN ART

W

hen Rose McGowan was ten, she made up a planet that she could visit in her imagination and christened it Planet 9. “It was a place I could go to in my head, a place where I felt safe and could be happy, where I could be me,” says the actress turned artist and activist.

McGowan may be familiar to many from the TV series Charmed, about a sisterhood of good witches, and indie movies such as Scream and Grindhouse. But she is best known as the woman who was one of the first to call out the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein for alleged sexual misconduct, leading to her being dubbed ‘the defining face’ of the #MeToo movement.

Now she adds another string to her bow with her Fringe debut show, Rose McGowan: Planet 9, which will be at Assembly Mound for four performances just weeks before Weinstein is due to go on trial in New York on charges of harassment and assault. Does it bring her any satisfaction that the man she accused of sexually assaulting her in 1997 will finally be facing in court some of the 80 or more women who have also made allegations against him?

“Satisfaction is not a word that I can hang onto,” McGowan replies. “I think it is going to be brutal for those women who will be up against him in the trial. I worry for their health and wellbeing because I know what it’s like. But this needs to happen. There is no satisfaction because it’s not yet done. But there’s now something on the record that says this kind of behaviour is not okay.”

Planet 9 – a multimedia performance inspired by her music album of the same name, featuring projections of her artwork and interspersed with McGowan talking about her life – is part of her own journey of self-healing.

She says that acting is now behind her and that one of the good things to have come out of her exposé of the way that Hollywood has traditionally seen and treated women is that it has made her develop as an artist in her own right.

“For a long time, I saw myself only in the way that Hollywood saw me. Behind the scenes I was always making visual art and songs, but I viewed myself only as a commodity because that is how Hollywood saw me. Finally, after Weinstein and #MeToo, the only way I could keep my sanity through an incredibly difficult time was by making art. It was the only thing that brought me solace, the only thing I had left. Art has a

power. I know it’s healing me and I know I’m not unique, so if it can heal me, it can heal others too. I hope that Planet 9 can do for others what art has done for me.”

McGowan was once described as, “the angriest woman in Hollywood”, but when we talk on the phone she is quiet and thoughtful, measured rather than furious. Yet she has every reason to be angry. After all, what ten-year-old needs to make up an imaginary place where she feels safe and which offers her, “an antidote to everyday life and the weird stuff that was going on”?

McGowan is a survivor in every way, born in Escape to the stars: Italy into an American family embroiled in the Rose McGowan’s Children of God cult from which they eventually interstellar safe-zone escaped. Her childhood and adolescence were chaotic. As a young teen, she was living on the everything. Which I have. I have always wanted streets, and as an older teenager she became the world to be a better place. I thought that anorexic in a coercive relationship. when I was ten when I invented Planet 9, and I She escaped that by becoming an actress think that now. and falling into what she describes in her “Maybe it would be easier if I didn’t lean devastating memoir Brave as, “one of the into the headwinds, but I can’t help myself. I’m biggest cults of all: made that way. So yes, I would do the same all Hollywood”. It’s a over again. Of course, there are things I’d do cult that she has differently, but at the time it hadn’t been done been determined to before so there was no way of gauging what it expose, even though would be like to speak out and break the silence. the personal cost has It was brutal. But it’s been rewarding because been high. it’s helped set a lot of people free. I have to take “Hollywood,” comfort from that.” she says, “is a very antiquated place. It’s not progressive in any way. Being a good girl in Hollywood and behaving how it wants you to behave is very much in play, even now.”

She adds sadly: “We send girls out into the world to be polite, and that ties their hands behind their backs. My hands were tied. It’s a damn shame we’ve had to wait so long to figure out that we don’t have to be good girls and we can be ourselves. We can be free. I think the young women of today are getting that a lot faster, but it’s still an issue. What #MeToo has done is to cause a cultural reset. Structural change still needs to happen, but it has given survivors a language in which to talk about what’s happened to them.”

I ask whether she’s had any regrets about telling the world about her encounter with Harvey Weinstein in a hotel room in 1997 – which made front-page WHERE & WHEN news when she went Rose McGowan: public about it ten Planet 9, Assembly years later. “I would do Hall, 15-18 August, 1pm, the same thing all over £22 again, even though assemblyfestival.com I know it would be brutal and that I would have to give up almost

“It’s a damn shame we’ve had to wait so long to figure out we don’t have to be good girls. We can be free”

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COMEDY NISH KUMAR

“In my early shows I was called ‘likeable’.

People tend not to use that word anymore”

R E T S N MO H S A OF M Nish Kumar credits the Fringe with his transformation into a political satirist, leading to his presenting role on The Mash Report WORDS STEPHEN ARMSTRONG PHOTO IDIL SUKAN

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04/07/2019 16:33

NISH KUMAR COMEDY

N

ish Kumar is not only, according to GQ, the nation’s cleverest dissector of politics, he is also, according to the Guardian, the face of combative British satire.

These descriptions will have come as no surprise if you’ve seen Kumar deftly hosting BBC2’s The Mash Report or taken in his blistering, and beautifully named, stand-up shows from 2015’s Long word… Long Word… Blah Blah Blah… I’m So Clever or 2016’s Actions Speak Louder Than Words Unless You Shout the Words Real Loud. What might be a surprise is that the Fringe itself moved his comedy from cheeky observational riffs to sharp social commentary.

“Every good thing that’s happened in my career has come out of Edinburgh,” he explains. “I did some college revues at Durham University that kickstarted my comedy, then a double act with Tom Neenan from 2009 to 2011, then my first anecdotal stand-up in 2012 and everything seemed to be trudging along quite nicely, when suddenly my face became a meme – so I wrote an Edinburgh show about that, which became the most important show of my career.”

The meme in question, called ‘Confused Muslim’, had Kumar looking deep in thought, with the words, “Angry that Christians insulted my Prophet… Cannot insult Jesus as he is a profit too.”

“I’m not a Muslim,” Kumar explains. “They didn’t ask if they could use my image – they just stuck up a brown person with a racist epithet. The show I wrote – 2013’s Nish Kumar is a Comedian – was a mess but the beauty of a month-long festival is that I worked out how to communicate anger in a way that was funny on stage. That’s been my journey – in my early shows I was called ‘likeable’. People tend not to use that word anymore.”

2015’s Long Word refined his style – satirical and yet selflacerating, meaning he’s the butt of more of his own jokes than anyone else. That show got him The Mash Report – “or at least the producer claims that he decided he wanted me on the basis of that show,” he grins. “I think it was a bit more complicated than that. I think they would have liked someone famous, but all of them said no. So we made a pilot and then The Mash came out of that.

As he prepared the show, 2016 saw the country torn to pieces by the EU referendum. Suddenly Kumar was the poster boy for half the country and the sworn enemy of the other half. “I hadn’t previously attracted racists online,” he nods carefully. “It’s difficult for me to know if the country is more racist or my profile has raised in line with the post-Brexit fallout. It definitely feels worse and there are organisations that gather data suggesting hate crimes have worsened. But I’ve done things like Question Time so I open myself up to it.”

He pauses and thinks for a second. “What’s really odd is that I’ve become like a father confessor to regretful leave voters. I’ve had to console journalists who work for pro-Brexit titles and punters who

Ripping into political rhetoric on The Mash Report

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“It’s difficult for me to know if the country is more racist, or if my profile has raised in line with post-Brexit fallout” come up after shows saying, ‘I voted leave, but I didn’t think this would happen.’ Why am I consoling these people? What’s happened here?

How come I’m the guy to make these people feel okay about their choices?”

Perhaps it’s that blend of very finely crafted political comedy with the engagingly self-deprecating view of himself that makes him so approachable to mournful leavers. Or it could be that he’s not just a ranter – he takes his job seriously. On The Mash Report he was instrumental in getting Tory stand up Geoff Norcott on as a regular.

“I completely respect the need to have some level of impartiality and I’ve got huge respect for Geoff.”

Curiously for such a radical preacher, Kumar and his comedy generation – much like the first wave of punks – come from the tedious London suburb of Bromley. Josie Long, Tom Allen, Rob Beckett and Matthew Crosby all hailed from there and his career has either followed or risen with them. The men of this generation – including James Acaster, Josh Howie and Romesh Ranganathan – have all been credited by women comedians as supportive colleagues keen to collaborate with and support the funny from as diverse a group as possible.

Kumar’s latest show is a case in point. Called It’s in Your Nature to Destroy Yourself, after a quote from a Terminator movie, it ranges from Brexit and Trump through male violence, male comedians in the aftermath of #metoo, racial profiling, the cultural impact of white violence and asking, ‘Is it enough to say I don’t do terrible things, or should we take action to stop them?’

“It really is just four twenty minute routines about everything that’s been happening in the last two years,” he smiles amiably. “Alongside a bunch of stuff about my own culpability by blurring the lines between comedian and political commentator. Is that helpful and something that I have a responsibility to do as somebody with a media profile?

Or is that actually ultimately counter-productive and the other side of a coin that features Donald Trump hosting Saturday Night Live and Boris Johnson on Have I Got News WHERE & WHEN for You? Am I, in other words, just Nish Kumar: It’s in part of the general coarsening of Your Nature to Destroy our discourse?” He gives a short, Yourselves, Assembly dry chuckle. “It wouldn’t be me if I George Square, 19-25 didn’t give myself a hard time.”

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THEATRE IAN MCKELLEN

A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER On tour to celebrate his 80th birthday, Sir Ian McKellen has a good reason to recall his first starring role in Edinburgh 50 years ago WORDS JEAN WEST PHOTO OLIVER ROSSER

E

dinburgh matters to Sir Ian McKellen. Fifty years ago, when he played Edward II at the Assembly Hall, his onstage kiss with the actor playing the king’s lover caused a certain amount of civic apoplexy. One councillor objected – homosexuality between consenting adults had only recently been decriminalised and this was the headquarters of the Church of Scotland, after all – and the police were summoned to check out whether Marlowe was becoming too subversive for the Festival to handle.

A couple of constables turned up for the next performance, and even though the king’s death by redhot poker was portrayed more graphically than normal (onstage not off), wisely decided that there was no problem. The controversy, however, ensured full houses for the rest of the run.

McKellen had been an actor for eight years already, but that summer – in which he also played Richard II with the Prospect Theatre Company – was when he made his name as a leading Shakespearean actor. Just before he came up to Edinburgh, there had been another artistic connection of sorts with the city, when he had directed a stage version of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for the Liverpool Playhouse. But after Edinburgh,

his place in the limelight was firmly secured, and one of the most stellar careers on the British stage was well and truly launched.

The Burnley-born actor turned 80 in May, and to celebrate he started an 80-venue UK tour which ends in Orkney later in August. For Ian McKellen On Stage, which showcases some of his signature roles, he has made a point of returning to the scene of his success 50 years ago.

For four nights at the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, the

“The evening starts with Gandalf and will probably end with a chance to act with me on stage. In between there will be anecdotes and acting” twice Oscar-nominated star will be telling anecdotes and performing excerpts from some of his most famous roles. And what an amazing career it has been. From his 1976 Macbeth in Trevor Nunn’s production to his worldtouring Richard III (first at the National Theatre, then on film) through to his 2017 King Lear for the Chichester Festival Theatre - which he has said was his final big Shakespearean role – he has dominated the British stage Shakespearean royalty at Edinburgh International Festival, 1969

Playing Edward II at Edinburgh International Festival, 1969

As Richard II at Edinburgh International Festival, 1969

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03/07/2019 19:20

IAN MCKELLEN THEATRE

“My return is a chance to remember the old days and reprise Shakespeare and other roles”

like no other actor. Of course, it’s not just Shakespeare either: in 2001, he extended his fame to all corners of the globe by accepting the role of Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and in 2005, achieved a lifetime’s ambition by appearing as a regular in Coronation Street. Somehow, he has not only managed to do all of that and more, but also to be one of the country’s most prominent and effective campaigners for gay rights.

As with the rest of his tour, Sir Ian is donating proceeds of his touring show to local theatre-linked charities. In Edinburgh, he’s setting up a bursary to study performance and he will also be contributing to the refurbishment of the drama studio at Leith Academy – a collaboration between the International Festival and the city council. Many other places on the tour have already benefited from his generosity: even at its halfway point, the tour had already raised £500,000 for Sir Ian’s chosen causes.

“My return to Edinburgh is a chance to remember the old days and reprise Shakespeare and other roles,” he says.

“The evening starts with Gandalf and will probably end with a chance to act with me on stage. In between there will be anecdotes and acting.”

Sir Ian returned to the International Festival throughout the 1970s, notably with his newly-formed cooperative, The Actor’s Company in 1972. Performances of Ruling the Roost and ’Tis a Pity She’s A Whore featured Sir Ian and Felicity Kendal in supporting roles as a page and a maid, allowing fellow company members to take the starring roles.

“Live theatre has always been thrilling to me, as an actor and in the audience. Growing up in Lancashire, I was grateful to those companies who toured beyond London and I’ve always enjoyed repaying that debt by touring up and down the country myself.”

WHERE & WHEN Ian McKellen on Stage.

Assembly Hall, 22-25 August £40 assemblyfestival.com

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THEATRE STEPHEN FRY

ABSOLUTE LEGENDS Stephen Fry explains why the Greek myths still speak so powerfully to us across the centuries WORDS MARK FISHER PHOTOS DAVID COOPER

S

tephen Fry is remembering the early days of the Internet. A bit of a tech geek, he was not just an early adopter of this new way of communicating but also an evangelist.

“I was incredibly naïve,” he says. “I thought it would solve the problems of the world. I thought, ‘Boundaries will dissolve and tribal divides and hatreds will disappear and we’ll all suddenly understand each other, and people who have unusual and different hobbies will be able to contact each other across the world instantly rather than relying on quarterly fanzines.’”

The actor, writer and comedian wasn’t exactly wrong, but what happened next puts him in mind of Pandora’s Box, the ancient myth about a woman graced by the gods with gifts ranging from wisdom to beauty, as well as one present, a box, she was forbidden to open.

“At some point in the first decade of this century the box opened and out flew all these creatures, just as they did with Pandora’s Box,” says Fry. “In the myth, a world without pain was infested with war, famine, lies, murder, lust and anger.

Similarly, the box opened on the Internet and brought trolls, abusers, groomers, misinformation and viruses. What had seemed like a paradise, a beautiful clean pool in which we could all swim, was suddenly littered with broken glass and horribly polluted.”

Discovering such striking parallels between the ancient and modern worlds is one reason Fry is such an enthusiast for Greek mythology. Having retold a selection of his favourites in Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold, published 18 months ago, he has turned the tales into a three-night storytelling marathon, switching his focus from Gods to Heroes to Humans with each performance.

Far from being an esoteric subject for academic study, these stories, he believes, are direct, accessible and immediate. They emerged, after all, as a popular artform.

“I hope I can take the smell of school out of Greek myths, because a lot of people associate them with a so-called classical education and believe you have to be

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03/07/2019 19:36

STEPHEN FRY THEATRE

“I hope I can take the smell of school out of these stories. They are a fantastic world – universal, sexy, juicy and full of fury, rage and adventure”

intellectual to understand them,” he says. “But that’s just not the case. It’s welcoming you into this fantastic world, which is universal, sexy, juicy and full of fury, rage and adventure.”

As you’d expect from the former host of QI, Fry approaches the myths with a combination of good humour and a love of knowledge. Making the most of playing live, he gives the audience a choice in the tales he tells. Which of the twelve labours of Hercules you hear will depend on which Heroes performance you’re at. Likewise, in Humans, our choice of flower or bug will determine whether we hear the story of Narcissus or the one about Arachne.

“The myths are such great stories,” he says. “I enjoy telling them and, you know, this just struck me as being a fun way of telling them. I noticed a lot of people really enjoy audio books. There’s something about these stories because they were originally told to other listeners, they work incredibly well in that communal sense of the hearth. After a long day’s work or a long day chasing antelope, they’d all come back and sit round the fire and tell stories of how the world was made and how spiders would spin webs.”

How easily, then, did the cultural values and beliefs of the Ancient Greeks translate into a modern idiom?

“Quite easily,” he says. “After all, two of the most popular ‘man-made’ mythological sequences are the Tolkien and JK Rowling series – I suppose you could add to that what is known as the MCU, the Marvel Comics Universe.

And indeed you can add Game of Thrones. These are 20thcentury versions – and they owe everything to Greek myth.

It shows there’s a great yearning for stories that are out of our own milieu. The moment you are inside that story, it’s more universal because it’s about human spirit without it actually being about living in London, Manchester, New York or Hong Kong, which is a very specific thing.”

WHERE & WHEN Mythos: A Trilogy, Festival Theatre, 19-25 August, times vary, £25–£42, eif.co.uk

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FLORENCE + THE MACHINE MUSIC

GO WITH THE FLO

A

a the pre-Raphaelite drama queen of the pop world, Florence Welch might just find the perfect backdrop for her elemental music in Edinburgh Castle and Castle Rock when Florence + the Machine take the stage as one of the headliners of Edinburgh Summer Sessions.

“I love performing outside,” says Welch.

“It’s as if the heavens are open and the elements become part of the show as well – you know, the wind and the rain and the thunder. It’s almost as if there’s a sense of invocation in performance.” Expanding on her own theme, Welch is a livewire lightning rod, conducting energy and communicating her great love of life through her concerts.

“I just get excited by music,” she says.

“It releases endorphins in your body, and I think that adrenaline really helps to make the songs fresh every time. I have this sensation of being EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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Florence Welch will be invoking the power of nature to lend extra magic to her performance at the Edinburgh Summer Sessions WORDS FIONA SHEPHERD

in flight all the time, and everything’s a big crescendo.”

Welch has been delivering those crescendos consistently for the past decade, though her 2018 album High As Hope was a conscious effort to dial down the bombast. She followed up earlier this year with the soulful single ‘Moderation’ – not a quality that Welch would claim for herself – and, more recently, she was the natural choice to record the song ‘Jenny of Oldstones’ for the final season of Game of Thrones.

“Celtic music has always been in my blood,” she says, “so I felt like I could do something with it,” she says. “The magic and ritual in Game of Thrones, not to mention the costumes, have always appealed to me.

“I’ve got my ideal job. I like to sing, I like to dance, I like to bang drums and dress up, and someone pays me – it’s incredible.”

WHERE & WHEN Florence + The Machine, Princes Street Gardens Summer Sessions, 7-8 August, 6pm, £57.75 usherhall.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

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ART GRAYSON PERRY

STITCH THAT Grayson Perry’s latest work uses the highstatus form of tapestry in an extraordinary celebration of an everyday Essex woman WORDS MARK FISHER PHOTO KATIE HYAMS

S Kate Grenyer, exhibitions curator, Dovecot Studios.

Opposite: Grayson Perry with ‘In its Familiarity, Golden’.

Below: ‘A Perfect Match’ and ‘Julie and Rob’. Above: ‘Dave and Julie’, all from Julie Cope’s Grand Tour

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itting on Kate Grenyer’s desk in Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios is a scale model of the gallery downstairs. Today, the curator is working on the forthcoming Grayson Perry exhibition and is moving around miniature prints of four large tapestries, brought together exclusively for the Edinburgh Art Festival.

She toys with the positions, trying to show them off to best advantage. “When you zoom into the detail, you see how much thought has gone into them,” she says. “It’ll be really exciting to see them in the flesh.”

Perry’s tapestries show scenes from the life of Julie Cope, a fictional Essex everywoman. One focuses on her chaotic early life and her first marriage in the 1970s.

She stands in the centre of the tapestry wearing a flamboyant dress, hugging her moustachioed husband and keeping an eye on a child in a pushchair. Above them, a Van Gogh sky swirls dramatically. The next tapestry takes us to marriage number two and the accident involving a takeaway delivery scooter that finished Julie off. Somehow, it manages to be poignant and funny at the same time.

“All of Grayson Perry’s work is interested in class, taste and what makes us buy a work of art,” says Grenyer.

“Because it’s an expensive thing to do, tapestry has a long history of being a high-status form that’s only for the kings and dukes of Europe in their castles. Perry takes all of that cultural baggage and plays with it. He uses tapestry as a monumental artform to commemorate the life of an everyday person.”

Accompanying the two narrative tapestries are two portrait tapestries and an ‘audio ballad’ spoken by Perry, who narrates key events in the protagonist’s story. “An epic poem is another way of memorialising great lives,” says Grenyer. “He’s interested in the everyday, but he makes it extraordinary.”

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It’s the only time you’ll be able to see all four tapestries together outside of A House for Essex, the ‘secular chapel’ Perry designed with FAT Architecture in 2015. The building, overlooking the Stour estuary at Wrabness, near the port of Harwich, is part of a Living Architecture scheme to prove it is possible to bring imaginative design to everyday homes.

“He’d always had a dream of making a chapel,” says Grenyer of Perry. “And he’d always done doodles of buildings that are completely fanciful and as wonky as his ceramic pots. A House for Essex is modelled on the medieval idea of a chapel for a saint.”

With his larger-than-life persona and love of dressing as his alter-ego Claire, Perry is as close as the world of textiles gets to a superstar. It’s easy to forget that behind the razzmatazz lies a gifted artist. Perry has the popular touch, as at home on television as he is in the studio, but whether creating pots or fashioning tapestry, the Turner Prize-winner has a rich and vivid imagination.

“What I stand up for is the relevance of craft in the information age,” Perry has said. “Some people think that craft is a nostalgic activity, like knitting with your grandma or throwing medieval peasant pottery. But I say craft is necessary and thriving more than ever.”

The exhibition doesn’t end there. In a second room, the curator is working with FAT Architecture’s Charles Holland, who worked with Perry to create A House for Essex.

He’s making a cabinet of curiosities showing everything from early sketches to rejected tiles. “As a tapestry studio, we work with artists who do all the making, so we were interested in the behind-the-scenes side of it,” says Grenyer.

“Grayson is incredibly generous in acknowledging that it’s not like he sits there and builds a house from scratch; he works with creative people, whether it’s art students designing his costumes or the specialist ceramics fabricator who made all the tiles for the outside of the house.”

Grenyer believes that regulars at Dovecot, which specialises in hand-woven tapestry, will be particularly fascinated to compare Perry’s machine-weaving techniques with the way they work. “Because he’s from a craft background, he thinks in a hand-made way,” she explains, pointing out the black outlines of his drawings which he makes slightly tighter to give the tapestry texture. “He’s using these digital looms as a craftsman, making sure he has control of every element of it.” www.edfestmag.com

03/07/2019 18:48

GRAYSON PERRY ART

“Some people think craft is a nostalgic activity, like knitting with your grandma.

I say craft is necessary and thriving more than ever”

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WHERE & WHEN Julie Cope’s Grand Tour: The Story of a Life by Grayson Perry, Dovecot Studios, 25 July-2 October, from £8, dovecotstudios.com

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COMEDY SEANN WALSH

DANCING WITH

DANGER Comedian Seann Walsh tells us about his current 2019 UK tour After This One, I’m Going Home, Strictly Come Dancing, and an uncomfortable jive with the tabloids WORDS JAMES KETTLE

A

lot of people have the wrong idea about Seann Walsh. He tells me a true story that indicates the problem. He was having a quiet night out in Glasgow recently and started chatting to a girl after going outside for some fresh air.

“The girl said, ‘You look exactly – exactly – like Seann Walsh,’” he explains. “And I said, ‘I get that a lot.’ And she said, ‘But he’s a prick.’ And I said, ‘I know what you mean.

Why do you think he’s a prick?’ And she said, ‘Just his general demeanour.’” Seann roars with laughter. “It’s very strange that people can have these ideas about you, and still be talking to you for five minutes and getting along with you!”

Six months ago, Seann Walsh was plugging holes in panel shows and comedy reality formats. He was probably best known as jaded rockstar Grizzo in Jack Dee’s ITV sitcom Bad Move and for his frank-speaking, gag-heavy observational comedy.

But the comic’s unique talent should have been crystallised during last year’s Strictly Come Dancing. BBC1 audiences would surely fall for him, and flock to his 2019 tour, After This One, I’m Going Home?

And the early weeks panned out this way, as viewers warmed to his disheveled awkwardness.

However, Seann had a dance with danger: “I kissed my dance partner [Katya Jones] who was married. I was in a longterm relationship,” he says. “ A huge media

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PHOTO ANDY HOLLINGWORTH

But I did actually quit.” storm ensued. And whilst a lot of stories Initially, Seann didn’t have dreams of about me then went out, what was actually winning the final or getting to Blackpool. happening to me in real life was very But under the new circumstances, different to what was being reported” everything felt different.

Overnight he underwent a very public “Suddenly, with the way I was being shaming. Journalists rifled through his bins vilified in the media and the hatred coming and followed him and his parents. “Every my way, this show suddenly meant time I left a building and was half way something to me. It meant that getting through a blink, they’d take a picture and through would be a victory.” say ‘Seann Walsh drunk again’.

He held on for another couple of weeks “Apparently Philip Schofield was having before the judges let him go and he was a go at me on This Morning. It became left to process his misjudged snog. increasingly stressful and surreal.”

Part of his catharsis came with a Seann faced decision to put the painful personal experience on stage. repercussions and That’s what his stand-up a tabloid tornado was about: taking the raw – whilst material of his life and continuing finding something funny. with the “There were people dressed up biggest show on as me for Halloween. That’s just television. “We get something you never think is going to the next Saturday, to happen to you. And then there and it’s show business, it’s were stories circulating that entertainment.

Television X were offering me “My brain was fried. £500,000 to do a porn film I hadn’t really slept. We with Katya. missed out on dance “At the time I was an rehearsal days because of absolute mess – but deep what happened.” down I still knew certain The comic thought aspects were funny.” about leaving: “I did quit The new show tells the show that week, and the story of what then my agent, friends Dancing up a storm: happened to Seann and people close to me with Strictly partner from the moment convinced me not to.

Katya Jones www.edfestmag.com

03/07/2019 18:58

SEANN WALSH COMEDY

With dance partner Katya Jones: ‘We missed out on dance rehearsal days because of what happened.’

the photo was published to his appearance on Strictly the following Saturday.

Sean didn’t get chance to workshop the show. “At my very first gig an audience member recorded my set on their phone and then sold it to a tabloid newspaper,” he explains.

“Every time I did a gig, someone would film it and someone would sell it to the papers. “ So he went to America and wrote the whole show in its entirety in a month – with no previews. It’s deeper than anything he’s done before.

“This is personal and it really means something to me.

Previously my shows have started with me going, ‘Well, what am I like?

Where am I at in my life?’ So a show will be about moving in on your own. A show will be about moving in with your girlfriend, a show will be about turning 30. But you know – those don’t have consequences that are that serious normally, and this did!”

Stand-up is a stress, as Seann freely admits.

This revelatory new show will be even more so, and this will be his last tour for a while.

“This was the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me…Right now it’s still raw, and I’m doing the show while that’s still fresh. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s something I felt I had to do.”

“Right now it’s still raw. It still haunts me and I’m doing the show while that’s still fresh... it’s something I felt I had to do”

WHERE & WHEN Seann Walsh: After This One, I’m Going Home Pleasance Dome, KingDome 31 Jul – Aug 1-11, 13-25, 20.30pm, from £10 pleasance.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

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#edintfest

Peter Gynt X:\Users\Marketing\MPotepski\My documents\2019\Advertising\Posters

After Henrik Ibsen National Theatre of Great Britain Starring James McArdle Written by David Hare

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TIME OUT ON YOUNG CHEKHOV



1—10 August Festival Theatre

Directed by Jonathan Kent

Book Now eif.co.uk

‘James McArdle is hilarious, tragic and magnificently watchable’

Supported by Sir Ewan and Lady Brown

Image Mads Perch | Charity No SC004694

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BASIL BRUSH COMEDY

M

r Brush, you’ve had such a long and distinguished career. Why have you chosen this year to make your Edinburgh debut?

Well, why not? Although I am a terribly English, urbane, well-spoken fox, I actually have some Braveheart in me somewhere – or is that Love Hearts, when I run out of jelly babies?

I am a natural ginger, so actually shouting ‘FREEEEDOOOOOM’ comes very naturally to me when shopping in the Edinburgh Woollen Mill in Windsor whilst doing panto. I think I will fit in very well. I should trace my ancestry – in fact, I should be on that programme, what’s it called?

‘Ooh Get Him, Who Does He Think He Is?’– something like that.

I think I may be related to Nessie, because if I lived in a freezing cold loch I’d get the hump too.

HA! HA! BOOM! BOOM! I don’t like the cold...

One of your shows is ‘adult’. What can we expect from that?

Politics? Brexit even?

It’s not totally political and not totally adult, this new show. It’s about everything really that’s fun. As for Brexit, it depends who I’m speaking to.

I swing both ways, you know. I don’t know if I prefer it hard or soft, in or out, I am more on the shake-it- all-about side. In fact, maybe the Hokey Cokey IS what it’s all about! I would prefer Foxit actually, because they have FOXED up the whole process really. So that’s about as adult as it gets!

I prefer to think of it as a grown-up children’s show for those who watched me on CBBC and are now in their twenties and those from the seventies now in their…well, if they’re still here, even. We’ll have defibrillators on standby if necessary! I have my family show as well if people are of a nervous disposition.

A run at the Edinburgh Fringe is notoriously tough. How are you going to keep up in the land of the deep-fried Mars Bar and heavy drinking?

Food-wise, deep-fried Mars Bars and heavy drinking sound Michelin five-star to me after the bin binges we foxes go on. A three-day left-over vindaloo and a couple of dirty chips garnished with potato peelings will keep me performing at the top of my game!

You are famously a hugely chatty fox. Do you know any Scottish vernacular for the home audiences?

I’d like to think I’m bilingual. “Take me up the Trossachs” is a phrase I use quite a bit. When I ask,“can I have a wee dram?” I don’t mean ‘wee wee,’ I mean small. You see, I know what I’m

talking aboot! Most people say I blether a lot. I speak nonsense, which is true. I love a clootie dumpling, I can’t wait til I get my paws on those.

I stir my porridge with a spurtle, and if you don’t laugh at my jokes I will hit you over the head with it. “Your bum’s oot the windae” is nothing to do with George Formby cleaning windows; actually it means you’ve made a mistake, so I’m sure I’ll be using that a lot!

I hope I don’t upset any locals by saying something wrong – I’ll apologise now for anything I say!

S ’ T A H W ?

X O F P U

mer on the Fringe The foxiest perfor on’t be giving explains why he w er ush-off this summ Edinburgh the br PSTICK WORDS KATE CO

NE STEVE ULLATHOR PHOTOGRAPHY

So no added ‘BOOM BOOM’ in the evenings?

People keep thinking it’s an adult show, which sounds like it might be coloured blue or 50 shades of orange. It is really a show for grownup children who still want to have fun and have jokes that fly miles above the heads of kids.

There will be plenty of BOOM BOOMS, audience participation and lots of “inyourendo” …. or is that innuendo? Anyway, it will be fun. There will be celebrity interviews and, of course, in the afternoon I have my family fun show as well.

Hopefully, all generations will enjoy a bit of the Brush at some point in the day.

Edinburgh is all about interaction. Are you looking forward to getting up close and personal with your fans ?

It will be thrilling for them, I know. I know folks like to get up close and personal but we must be careful these days for litigation purposes, so hands above heads please. But I’ll do a selfie with anyone, except when filming in HD. No one wants to see a nip and a tuck, although if they think I have had a face-lift they are talking out of their BOTOX!! Ha! Ha! BOOM BOOM! www.edfestmag.com

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WHERE & WHEN Basil Brush: Unleashed, Underbelly, Bristo Square – Cowbarn, 31 July-25 August, 6.45pm, from £7 Basil Brush’s Family Fun Show, same dates and venue, 1pm from £9.50, underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

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DANCE HAVANA AFTER DARK

CUBAN HEELS Cuba’s hottest new dance stars are bringing a dazzling mix of salsa, rumba and hip hop to Edinburgh WORDS KELLY APTER PHOTOS DEBORAH JAFFE

F

or over 500 years, Havana has been a melting pot of cultures and styles – and, despite everything the politicians can throw at it, Cuba’s capital is a city that knows how to have a party. Salsa, rumba, mambo – from the streets to the stage, these passionate dance styles have brought people together for centuries.

Director Toby Gough has been creating work in Cuba for more than 20 years, and his latest Fringe show, Havana After Dark, aims to capture its intoxicating vibrancy as well as its need for change. President Trump’s recent ban on all US cruise ships, yachts and private planes from travelling to Cuba – which has already had a crippling impact on local businesses – only underlines the crucial importance of music and dance.

“Havana today has a restless spirit, and the people are frustrated,” says Gough. “The Cuban government has introduced new censorship controls and Trump is tightening the suffocating restrictions of the US embargo. The streets of Havana are empty – restaurants, art galleries, taxi drivers, everyone is struggling, businesses are going bankrupt.

“The lack of opportunities for work means that the dream of every dancer and musician is to be part of a group or dance company that allows them to tour the

world, enjoy new experiences, open their eyes and earn a decent salary.”

Known worldwide for its excellent arts education, Cuba unsurprisingly is also home to some of the world’s most revered dance companies. So when Gough was on the lookout for talent for his show, he knew which doors to knock on. “The dancers come from Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Carlos Acosta’s company Acosta Danza and the National Contemporary Dance Company,” he says. “After his recent film Yuli and appointment as director of Birmingham Royal

“There will be a live salsa band playing this year’s hottest Latin hits. And when you put 20 Cubans on stage, it creates an unforgettable party” Ballet, Carlos Acosta is the most famous Cuban dancer of all time, and I’ve discovered the young man who is taking on all his roles at Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the next ballet star of Cuba, Daniel Rittoles.”

Alongside dancers like 21-year-old Rittoles, who has benefited from Acosta’s advice and training, Gough has also recruited performers better known for their edgy online presence and for appearing in music videos for stars like Marc Anthony and Enrique Iglesias.

“The dancers in Havana After Dark all need to be brilliant in different ways,” explains Gough. “Capable of performing exquisite classical ballet pieces, street rumba 38

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03/07/2019 18:40

HAVANA AFTER DARK DANCE

“We have fantastic musicians from the top salsa bands in Cuba and the Buena Vista Social Club orchestra”

and stunning salsa choreographies – and some of them also perform in the show as musicians. Many of them were the original dancers from the hit show Ballet Revolucion.

“We’ve also got nine fantastic musicians who have been selected from the top salsa bands in Cuba and the Buena Vista Social Club orchestra.”

The show itself is a series of choreographed interconnected scenes capturing people’s hopes, dreams and frustrations. They combine to form a portrait of the people living and working in this fascinating but complex city.

“Bringing the company to Edinburgh is giving them the greatest stage on which to demonstrate their talents and see all the other shows visiting from around the world,” explains Gough. “That’s why the Edinburgh Fringe was born – to bring the world together in one city, to engage in exchange, support communities and share cultures from around the globe.”

Despite its current economic woes and governmental issues, the Cuban capital is in the middle of a year-long celebration, and Havana After Dark aims to highlight the myriad dance and music styles that have emerged over the years, as well as bringing it right up to date.

“As this year is Havana’s 500th birthday, we’ve included all the rhythms and dances that were born here,” says Gough. “So we’re featuring rumba, mambo, salsa and the new fusion of hip hop and funk that’s being played on the streets today.

“And because it’s a 9pm summer party show, with a live salsa band, Havana After Dark will also play this year’s hottest Latin hits. When you put 20 Cubans on stage, it creates an unforgettable party.” www.edfestmag.com

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WHERE & WHEN Havana After Dark, Pleasance at EICC, 5-25 Aug, 9pm. from £15 pleasance.co.uk EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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03/07/2019 18:40

THEATRE OEDIPUS

THE MOTHER OF ALL W DRAMAS Director Robert Icke has the knack of making classic plays feel freshly written, so it’s no surprise that his version of Oedipus has the critics salivating WORDS LYN GARDNER

PHOTO JAN VERSWEYVELD

Reflecting the truth: this is a bold reworking of the Sophocles classic

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riter and director Robert Icke doesn’t just admire the Ancient Greek playwrights, he loves them. When he talks about Aeschylus and Sophocles, his voice lilts with passion and his Teesside accent – he was raised in Stockton-on-Tees – thickens like cream.

It was his unhappy teenage years, spent poring over the Ancient Greeks and Shakespeare, trying to find out how their plays worked, that turned Icke into a self-professed theatre nerd. Others might call him a theatre genius. Watching his 2012 Christopher Nolan-esque production of Romeo and Juliet, in which Shakespeare met Sliding Doors met 24, was like seeing the play new-minted.

Icke’s love of classic texts is evident in his stagings that include his own radical version of the Oresteia. That took inspiration from The Sopranos, lasted four hours, conquered the West End and in 2016 made the then 29-year-old Icke the youngest person ever to win an Olivier Award for Best Director.

So Edinburgh should be licking its lips at the prospect of his thriller-like production of Oedipus, made for International Theater Amsterdam, and which is in town as part of the International Festival programme. Oedipus is, of course, a story everyone thinks they know – about the leader who, without realising what he has done, slaughters his father and marries his own mother, giving rise to what Freud dubbed the Oedipus Complex. But Icke springs a few surprises in the way we view this story, which he sees as interrogating leadership, personal identity and whether it matters where you came from if you are the best person for the job.

“We are so lucky to have the Greek tragedies that we’ve got,” says Icke, sitting in a café close to his north London home. It’s a home he won’t be seeing much of over the coming months as he leaves his job as associate director at www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 10:24

OEDIPUS THEATRE Robert Icke’s gripping interpretation of an age-old tale

London’s Almeida Theatre later this summer to direct on some of the bigger European stages. “I just wish we also had the 300 Greek plays that have been lost. I think we would recognise ourselves in those plays a thousand times over.”

What he loves about the Greeks is the way, “they take old stories, often mythic stories, that everyone would know in the same way most educated people in the West today know a lot of the Bible stories. They then retold them with a contemporary sensibility and an understanding that the only audience in the room is the audience from the present day.”

This is something that Icke himself has the knack of doing, as he has demonstrated with contemporary takes on classic plays including Hamlet with Andrew Scott, Schiller’s Mary Stuart in which Lia Williams and Juliet Stevenson alternated the roles of Elizabeth and Mary, and a blistering revival of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck in which personal lies and the lies of theatre were exposed. Oedipus is another play in which the protagonists discover that the truth has been staring them in the face all along.

Icke has the rare ability of making old, familiar texts seem startlingly contemporary, frequently discovering something revelatory which has lain buried under the dust of years of performance history.

He has no time for, “the orthodoxies that you should always do your Chekhov in period costume with Russian names”.

When he directed his own version of Uncle Vanya, the title role became Uncle Johnny, because it’s a name that a contemporary British audience can relate too. Many of us have an Uncle Johnny who feels he’s wasted his life.

We may even feel that deep inside, we are Uncle Johnny ourselves.

This approach has brought him plenty of bouquets but also brickbats from those who prefer directors and adaptors to take a hands-off approach to classic texts.

Icke finds this puzzling. “We talk about revivals,” he says, “and a revival is a bringing back to life, but too often classic revivals in British theatre just feel like a wake in which we parade the dead body. One of the reasons so many classic plays in British theatre are so boring is because the body is still dead.

It’s being dragged around and somebody is moving the hand, but nobody is breathing real life into it.”

Such pronouncements haven’t always endeared Icke to the British theatre establishment. But with Europe beckoning, he has no reason to be too bothered. “It baffles me that adaptation has become such a dirty word in certain quarters of British theatre” says Icke. We talk about his former Cambridge tutor Simon Goldhill, who has argued that while all adaptors are to some degree traitors, they can also be liberators and that the classics need liberators if they are to live on. Icke puts it even more succinctly, describing what he does as a form of robbery that, “redistributes the gold”.

Icke’s productions may be intellectually rigorous, but they are also very accessible.

An Icke production is never dull and is always approachable. That’s because he sees the audience and their experience as central. It’s no surprise that so many of his productions – Oedipus included – have a racy, thriller-like feel as if an urgent mystery is demanding to be solved before the clock ticks down.

“Unless you’re thinking about the audience, you only have half of the equation.

If the audience isn’t there, and engaged, what’s the point? When I make a piece, I am always thinking, ‘What would my brother, or the people I went to school with, make of this?’ It means I’m always trying to push the boundaries so there is space for everyone to have a good time. Whether it is Shakespeare or Sophocles, I want to be able to say to audiences, ‘This play is amazing and it’s yours. It is as much for you and about you as it WHERE & WHEN is for and about the academic who has written a Oedipus, King’s book about this play. Please take it and enjoy it, Theatre, 14-17 August, because it belongs to you.’”

8pm. from £15, eif.co.uk

“Too often classic revivals in British theatre just feel like a wake in which we parade the dead body. It’s being dragged around and somebody is moving the hand, but nobody is breathing real life into it.”

www.edfestmag.com

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AWARD WINNERS EDFESTMAG.COM

N O S E Y E E Z I R P THE , ith awards w n w o d d ore Loade back for m e r a s r a t s these SER ANNA RIE WORDS

2018 Spirit of the Fringe

BOWJANGLES Tell us about your new show.

We’re bringing Excalibow back this year, although it’s a slightly reworked, updated version. It’s a ridiculous story about a plucky string quartet’s inter-dimensional quest to save the soul of their cellist – all while playing, singing, and dancing.

What does the Spirit of the Fringe mean to you?

We’ve been completely self-funded for a long time, which feels like quite an achievement in the arts, but it’s meant that we mainly rehearse with a collection of babies and dogs in the room.

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Favourite Fringe memory?

We were invited to perform on Nicholas Parsons’ chat show, but had to leg it over from a street show so turned up with a bunch of hungry, screaming kids five minutes before they let the audience in.

When Bertie got her boobs out to feed the baby we thought Nicky P was going to explode.

WHERE AND WHEN: Bowjangles: Excalibow Gilded Balloon: Teviot, 1-7 Aug, 5.30 pm from £7.50 www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 09:36

EDFESTMAG.COM AWARD WINNERS

ROSE MATAFEO Tell us about your new show.

Every show we have special guests from the festival and improvise a short monologue, which serves as the inspiration for scenes that our cast makes up. It’s very different every night.

What’s the best improv situation you’ve ended up in?

Any time I snog one of my friends in the show as part of a scene. They're all incredibly hot and I’ve nearly made my way through all of them. We’re all very good friends and have agreed to have each other's babies!

2018 Best Comedy Show Award

What are you looking forward to at the festival?

Each member of Snort are also performing amazing solo shows, so I’m looking forward to Alice Snedden, Guy Montgomery, Eli Matthewson, Chris Parker and Two Hearts (Joseph Moore and Laura Daniel). It sounds like a lie, but they are all incredible performers. And all incredibly attractive, as previously stated!

WHERE AND WHEN: Snort Pleasance Courtyard – Upstairs, 1-25 Aug, 11 pm, from £6.50

CIARAN DOWD

PHOTO: IDIL SUKAN

Tell us about your new show.

It’s a follow up to last year’s show – same idiot character, new dumb adventure. Last year he was an obnoxious sword-fighting lothario looking for revenge, this year he’s trying to leave that world behind and be a better man.

He joins the priesthood, and though he’s not built for the monastic life, quickly finds a role for himself as an exorcist and demon hunter.

It’s a bit supernatural and a lot stupid.

You’re very imaginative in your comedy, what adventures did you get up to as a kid?

I grew up in a place in Ireland called Drogheda.

It’s a town steeped in Celtic mythology and history and also weird stuff – we have a perfectly preserved head in a glass box in a church, and I used to visit that daily. On rainy days we’d make our own amusement – I once zipped my brother up in a suitcase and pushed it down the stairs. Just good old fashioned fun.

Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Newcomer

WHERE AND WHEN: CIARAN DOWD: PADRE RODOLFO Pleasance Courtyard - Upstairs, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 12), 9.45 pm, from £6

www.edfestmag.com

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AWARD WINNERS EDFESTMAG.COM Amused Moose Winner

TANIA EDWARDS What’s your best Edinburgh story?

When I started out I did a two-hander on the Free Fringe, off a grimy alleyway used variously for peeing, vomiting and snogging. We were also hosting a late show in a pub.

One particular evening, we were incompetent, our audience apathetic. Our headliner wrapped up saying, ‘I’m bored, you’re bored, let’s go home’. Unfortunately, the late show was the one that was reviewed. Nothing has ever made me laugh more than that viciously scathing attack. It captured the highs and lows of every Fringe endeavour in its single star.

THE NIGHT: HENRY NAYLOR

Three-time Fringe First Winner

Tell us about the show The Nights is a two-handed epic that grapples with the issue of what to do with returning jihadis. There’s ghosts. Murder. Love and violence.

How do you find your next story?

I’ll see what’s a topical issue next February, and start working up my next story then. I guess it’s because of my background in topical comedy (I used to write Spitting Image). Originally I was going to write something about Brexit this year, but frankly I’m sick of it.

WHERE AND WHEN:

WHERE AND WHEN:

Tania Edwards: Don’t Mention It, Monkey Barrel 2, 2-25 Aug (not 14th) , 4.00pm, from £5.

The Night: Henry Naylor, Gilded Balloon Teviot - Dining Room 16:15, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 14), from £10

Weekly Award Best Comed y Adelaide Fringe 2019

LATE BLOOMERS Tell us about your show.

Scotlaaaaaand! Our show is a mixture of clowning, slapstick, body percussion, audience participation and loads of tartan. The show is basically non-verbal, but we sing plenty of Scottish folk songs so make sure you warm up the vocal chords. We’ve taken the world's view of all things Scottish and mashed it together as a celebration of this great nation.

How did Scotland go down in other countries?

We've performed the show in France, Czech Republic, Norway, Finland, Australia and even Kangaroo Island (yes it is a real place and yes there are kangaroos). We really enjoy bringing our audiences into this crazy world we have created.

WHEN AND WHERE: Late Bloomers: Scotland! Assembly Rooms – The Bijou, 1-24 Aug, 8pm £8 44

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www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 09:44

EDFESTMAG.COM AWARD WINNERS 2019 New Act of the Year Winner

Funniest Joke 2018

NJAMBI MCGRATH

ADAM ROWE

Tell us about your new show?

My show is called Accidental Coconut, because I discovered that ‘coconut’ is not just a tropical fruit but a racial slur. This got me to explore the question of whether an African/black person can ever truly be of an independent mind.

gorgeous little places in Edinburgh like Bobby’s Café, Asti and Maison Bleue.

What’s your best Edinburgh moment?

Hanging out with comics who I rarely get to see and having a late-night drink. I also love dining in those

WHERE AND WHEN:

BIRDS OF PARADISE THEATRE

Who’s your hot tip for this year?

Esther Manito – she’s an incredibly talented Anglo-Lebanese comedian with an interesting story of identity.

Njambi Mcgrath: Accidental Coconut Just the Tonic at Marlin’s Wynd 1-23Aug, 4.05pm.

Pay what you feel

Tell us about your new show?

I’ve spent the last two years putting together shows that were tightly wound around one theme and I’ve really enjoyed doing that, but this year I want to talk about a variety of subjects on which I have a strong and unpopular opinion, and see if I can get audiences around to my way of thinking.

What have you learnt from your Edinburgh experiences?

Edinburgh is made out of hills. Tempting Tattie is a hidden gem.

Seriously, how is everything uphill? Haggis is weird. It’s not horrible, it’s just weird. The Royal Mile is an anxiety dream come to life. Literally, I’ve never seen so many hills in my life.

WHERE AND WHEN: Adam Rowe: Pinnacle, Just The Tonic at The Caves, 7.30pm, 1-25 Aug (not 12th), from £5

The man Scots irst F Fringe d a w A r

Tell us about the show.

Purposeless Movements looks at the lives of four men who have cerebral palsy, exploring how their physicality affects the way they see themselves and how others see them.

Through dance and amid laughs and tears we're invited to stare at what doctors refer to as purposeless movements.

How do you cover weighty topics while keeping a sense of enjoyment?

When dealing with heavy subjects it’s really important to me that the audience feel at ease – at least for some of the time – and humour is a way to allow people to relax.

WHERE AND WHEN: Birds of Paradise: Purposeless Movements The Studio 22 – Potterrow, 19-24 Aug, 8pm www.edfestmag.com

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ARABELLA WEIR COMEDY

A

rabella Weir’s first Fringe production is already, surely, a winner. If there’s a show with a better, funnier, smarter title than Does My Mum Loom Big in This?, we’ve yet to hear it.

It’s obviously a pun on the legendary catchphrase, “Does my bum look big in this?” that the actress and writer created for her neurotic character on the BBC’s Fast Show sketch series, but the one-woman show is more than an easy play on words or routine cash-in on telly celebrity.

Does My Mum… is the story of Weir’s dysfunctional upbringing and the damage it wrought on her teenage and adult self. As you’d expect from the very funny woman we also know from TV shows like Posh Nosh and Two Doors Down, it’s hilarious.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Weir admits, “because I had a very… tumultuous relationship with my mother. She was in no way, shape or form equipped to be a mother, and nor did she wish to be a mother.”

Her parents were both Scottish (dad from Dunfermline, mum from Melrose, “and of reasonably grand stock”), the latter so otherworldly by dint of privilege and education that she was insulated from earthbound concerns like paying for things. “One of my favourite stories, which isn’t in the show, is that she’d never seen the item nor heard the word ‘money’ until she went to university.”

So, as a mother, Alison Weir wasn’t what we’d call a nurturer? “Oh my God, no!” the 61-year-old hoots. “She was neglectful, verbally abusive, verbally violent.” Her husband’s job didn’t help.

Sir Michael Weir was a diplomat, which explains why Arabella was born in the US and had an early childhood bouncing between there, Egypt, Bahrain and the UK. “The awful thing about being a diplomat’s wife is, what do you do? It’s two years in Kuwait – great, so you go to some art galleries and maybe do some good works, but you have to be careful because of the political situation.

Then it’s two years in Azerbaijan. He’s having a great time with the local politicians, and you’re supposed to host nice dinner parties, look slim, and not go: ‘I don’t f*cking feel like it.’

“Added to that, my dad was a Fifer.

The idea of speaking to him about your feelings – well, he wouldn’t have known

MUM’S THE WORD Arabella Weir’s mother wasn’t exactly the nurturing type. But out of teenage trauma can come reflective comedy gold WORDS CRAIG Mc McLEAN

Arabella Weir in character on The Fast Show

what you were talking about.”

Her parents stopped living together when she was eight – not that they bothered telling their daughter. Her father simply moved to Bahrain, his next posting, and when young Arabella asked where he was, her mother replied: “F*ck off.”

All of which, understandably, messed her up. As a young actress, she admits she was promiscuous, a party girl, someone who’d sabotage auditions and jobs. But her combative spirit, fierce intelligence and sharp wit – not to mention therapy in her early thirties – saved her.

All of which has enabled Weir to alchemise some pitch-dark life stories into comedy gold.

Even sitting in her north London kitchen on a rainy morning, her ‘performance’ of these episodes is spill-your-tea funny. Her way with Scottish (and Irish) accents, and her riffs on her lifelong issues with weight – weaponised by her parents – are side-splitting.

“They were both Oxbridge, both incredibly competitive – and winners don’t have fat kids. So they didn’t know what to do with me.”

Right up until the end, her mother enjoyed going on about Arabella’s weight, no matter how big or small she was. Eleven years ago, when her mother was just a few days away from death, Weir spent a bank holiday weekend in hospital with her. She took in her favourite sandwich from Pret, Coronation Chicken. Mother’s first response: “OH, GOOD GOD! THE MAYONNAISE! HAVE YOU ANY IDEA? THE CALORIES!” “And I replied: ‘Ah, but Mum, you’re dying…’

‘Oh, but look at you! I can’t bear to look at you eating that!’

Her daughter had but one reply: ‘Oh, Mum, get over yourself.’

That’s exactly what Arabella Weir will be doing, brilliantly and unmissably, in

WHERE & WHEN Arabella with dad Michael (left) and mum Alison (right)

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Does My Mum Loom Big in This? Assembly George Square Studios – Two, 12-25 August, 4pm, from £12, assemblyfestival.com

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THEATRE PETER GYNT

“I

GUYS & TROLLS Peer Gynt is unwatchable in its original form, says David Hare. But his new take on the Ibsen classic makes the play seem startlingly contemporary WORDS SARAH CROMPTON

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love the idea of taking really classical plays and putting them on for a reason,” says the actor James McArdle with a wide smile.“And for me, Peer Gynt screams of being a completely relevant, modern play, especially now.

It’s all about self-deception, fake news and self-obsession.

I was waiting to play this part, waiting for a version that meets the times we’re living in.”

It has arrived in the shape of Peter Gynt, David Hare’s up-to-date adaptation of Ibsen’s difficult 19th-century classic, which is rarely performed thanks to its strange mix of reality and fantasy (all those scenes with trolls) and its intimidating length. With Jonathan Kent as director, the production reunites a trio who have collaborated many times, and who came together as a group to produce the much-acclaimed Young Chekhov trilogy.

It was McArdle’s performance as a depressed, drunken, manipulative charmer in Platonov that provided the starting point for this co-production between the National Theatre and the EIF. “Peter Gynt as a character is hand-tailored for James,” Hare explains. “In Platonov he was absolutely brilliant at talking to the audience, playing a toxic male so charmingly that the audience didn’t quite know what they felt. Because he is so witty, it seemed to suit Gynt, who is a fabulist and a liar.

We wouldn’t have done it without James.”

Even with him on board, the adaptation still proved a challenge. Hare had never read or seen Ibsen’s 1867 work, and when Kent first handed him a copy, he gave up (“I couldn’t www.edfestmag.com

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PETER GYNT THEATRE

even get to the end, it was so boring”). But he made a second attempt and gradually the idea of making an entirely different version took hold.

“I have kept Ibsen’s structure and his story because it’s so wonderful, but I have been the freest I have ever been. Normally I am very respectful of classics, but with this I felt I could be completely free.

“In the original, it is unwatchable. But in Ibsen’s defence, he wrote it as a poem, and it only began to be performed after Greig’s music – which, by the way, Ibsen hated – arrived, and then people would put on the play as an opportunity to hear the music. Ibsen himself said he accepted that his plays would be done in a different form according to the culture of the time, so I took my cue from the master.”

As Hare points out, Gynt’s story has extraordinary resonance for today: “Ibsen felt that as capitalism arrived in the 19th century, society was going to be atomised and we were all going to work on ourselves instead of working with each other. The natural effect of capitalism would be to isolate people, who would come to believe that self-fulfilment was the purpose of life. Gwyneth Paltrow is an example, the person who encourages you all the time to perfect yourself and fulfil yourself.

“Ibsen was strongly against that. He believed that people could only be fulfilled through their relationship with others.

People who spent all their time trying to perfect themselves were wasting their lives – and he wanted to write a full-scale attack on that. Plainly in the 21st century, there could hardly be anything more pertinent than that.”

“The play is handtailored for James McArdle. He is so witty that he suits the role of Gynt, who is a fabulist and a liar.

We wouldn’t have done it without him” www.edfestmag.com

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The cast of Peter Gynt in rehearsals.

Above: David Hare (left) watches the actors’ progress Below: James McArdle has the title role

The other quality that speaks so clearly to 2019 is the way Ibsen shows his anti-hero narrating his life rather than living it. “The character is a fabulist who conceives himself in terms of his story, his journey, his arc,” says Hare. “It could hardly be more timely. When I was writing it, the New Yorker exposed an author [Dan Mallory] who had claimed to have cancer and overcome it because he thought a narrative of adversity would look good on the book flap.

“The idea of the internet and the modern turning of the spotlight on yourself encourages people to make a narrative about your life, which is invariably heroic.”

Ivanka Trump’s belief that perception is more important than reality, that if people believe something to be true it doesn’t matter whether it is true or not, finds a place in the programme accompanying the production. And an echo of Ivanka’s father finds its way into McArdle’s performance.

“I’ve watched a lot of Donald Trump for the middle section,” he says.“I’m not impersonating him, but there is something about his demeanour which has the arrogance of a privileged white male that Peter has in the middle of his life.

The notion that we exist as single units, being obsessed with ourselves, is completely a point for doing the play now.”

McArdle, familiar to festival audiences from his towering performance as James I in Rona Munro’s James Plays trilogy, has thrown himself into the part. He relishes epic plays of this kind – and he loves working with the production team to bring the work to life.“I would walk to the ends of the earth for Jonathan Kent,” he says.“A lot of directors these days are concept-driven and the production becomes about their understanding and the endless fitting around that.

“Jonathan’s loyalty and commitment are to the story and to the play. It’s the same with David; they both love acting and storytelling. It’s rare to get that. It’s one of the most creative collaborative rooms I’ve ever been in.”

Although he is starting to take on more film work – he appeared in Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots as Mary’s brother, James – McArdle is at his happiest getting his teeth into a huge play.“I feel this is what I want to do,” he says. “There’s something immersive about WHERE & WHEN theatre, and I always kind of think, Peter Gynt, Festival if you are going to do it, you may Theatre, 1-10 August, as well make it an event. This is 7pm, from £15 an event.” eif.co.uk

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THEATRE MARCUS BRIGSTOCKE

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE Marcus Brigstocke’s powerful playwriting debut about an addict led into temptation isn’t completely autobiographical – but, he says, it comes close WORDS JAY RICHARDSON PHOTO KARLA GOWLETT

M

arcus Brigstocke might be nervous about directing his first theatrical production, but he’s reassuring his friends and family. “No, I’m not thinking of drinking again. Doing this, I’m probably further away from that than ever.”

The 46-year-old stand-up had his first drink at 12, began taking drugs soon after and was admitted to rehab at 17 for an eating disorder that saw him reach 24 stone. After nearly three decades of sobriety, he’s channelling his addiction into a rich, full-bodied play, echoing his own relationship with alcohol and his father.

Winner of best single drama in the 2018 BBC Audio Drama Awards for its initial outing on Radio 4, The Red focuses on the long-sober Benedict, bequeathed a bottle of 1973 Château Lafite Rothschild by his late, connoisseur father

“I’m trying to convey the truth of addiction: what it feels like to want a drink when you don’t really want one”

“My dad knows about wine, he loves it, he’s so generous with it. But it’s better than that, he’s actually sort of beautiful with it, the way he shares it, the way he enthuses about it. And, frankly, all the bollocks that goes with it. I find that delightful and like being around it, even if I can’t be part of it directly.

Although the comedian’s father is still alive and there’s no prized bottle specifically destined for his consumption, The Red shares plenty of direct comparisons with Brigstocke’s own experience. There’s his mother’s avowed pride in his sobriety, and his father’s sense of being superfluous as his son turned to others for help in the recovery process. However, as Brigstocke is keen to stress, after his initial teenage estrangement, “when I sorted my life out, I got much, much closer to my parents”.

He affords Benedict the same brief surrender he allowed himself, a blowout dinner at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant for his 40th birthday.

“Food is much more complicated and challenging than alcohol,” he says. “I have to

do a fair bit to make sure I choose not to drink again, but at least I can literally stick the cork back in the bottle and move on. But if you have a compulsive overeating disorder – which I still do – you have to make the choice three times a day to stop eating, and nothing in my body helps with that.

“That feeling you get on Christmas Day? When you’re so full it’s almost opiate?

And yet you’re still reaching into the Quality Street? If I don’t watch myself, that’s what happens to me every single day.”

Brigstocke admits that he was nervous about his parents’ reaction to The Red. “I was terrified that they would feel attacked.

Or judged. Or that their private lives, not for the first time, had been dragged into the public sphere and exposed by their son, and it would be awkward and difficult. But they love it and they’re thrilled that it’s going on stage. Even if, in some respects, it’s tough for them.”

He adds: “A few friends in recovery found it very painful, because it’s much closer for them.

I’m glad to say that the temptation to drink or use drugs is very far away for me. There’s always the risk that this afternoon I could change my mind, and that’s part of being an addict.

There’s bottles of wine and spirits all over our house and sometimes I think, ‘Well, maybe.’

But rarely.”

John with the express wish that he drink it.

Played by real-life father and son Bruce and Sam Alexander, they meet in John’s magnificent wine cellar shortly after his son has laid him to rest.

“It’s a good story,” Brigstocke maintains.

“Despite the fact that it largely reflects my dad and me, alcoholism and all the rest of it, at the centre there’s this jeopardy, something dangerous happening. Every time I’ve explained the plot to people, they’ve tended to gasp.”

“There’s a temptation to think his dad has been conjured by Benedict’s addict brain” Brigstocke suggests. “And that’s certainly true.

But the letter is real, the invitation to consider drinking that one special bottle is real. I’m not directing as if we’re in Benedict’s head.”

“I hope the play doesn’t sound like self-pity because I’m trying to convey the truth of addiction, what it feels WHERE & WHEN like to want a drink when you don’t The Red Pleasance really want one.”

Dome – King Dome Surprisingly, perhaps, the play 31 July–26 August very much celebrates wine. “Well, (not 13) 4pm, from £8 it’s great, isn’t it?” Brigstocke says. pleasance.co.uk 50

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03/07/2019 09:46

DANCE THE CRUCIBLE

W

TOIL & TROUBLE

hat would you stand up for, even if it meant losing your life? Would you oppose tyranny and always tell the truth even if you knew that doing so might destroy your family? Or would you betray others if you thought it would save your own skin?

Those are questions that fascinate American choreographer Helen Pickett, whose full-length narrative ballet The Crucible, based on Arthur Miller’s play and with a haunting new score by the appropriately-named Peter Salem, receives its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival. Created for Scottish Ballet, the production tours Scotland in the autumn before making its US debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington next year.

“I hope it puts audiences in a position where they watch and wonder ‘What would I do in that situation?’” says Pickett about her ballet, which brings the expressive physicality of dance to Miller’s seminal play set in the 17th century village of Salem, Massachusetts.

Where Miller uses words to explore a community suddenly gripped by hysteria and the conviction that its children have been bewitched by the devil, in Pickett’s version the play’s themes of blame, guilt and love are explored using movement and gesture. Great shadows loom over the characters, as repressed teenage emotions explode and cause havoc, and in the dark woods nasty surprises lurk for Salem’s tight-knit God-fearing Puritans.

“What we can do with dance,” says Pickett, “is to amplify. Words often fail to tell us how we feel, and movement can do that.”

What can Scottish Ballet’s production of The Crucible add to a classic of the American stage? Plenty, says choreographer Helen Pickett WORDS LYN GARDNER PHOTOS ANDY ROSS

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THE CRUCIBLE DANCE

Miller’s play was an allegory, written at the height of the Cold War, when the US government’s anti-communist witch-hunts saw reds under every bed. Even Shirley Temple was suspected of communist sympathies by the paranoid investigators of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was intent on rooting out those in public life who might have communist sympathies and demanded that life-long friends snitch on each other.

The historical parallels Miller’s play drew with the real-life events that took place in Salem in 1692 was immediately obvious to his contemporaries. There, too, suspicions went unchecked, fears festered and accusations of witchcraft spread. Just as in 1952, in that climate of paranoia, the investigations led away from, and not towards justice. More than 200 people were accused and 19 were executed.

Picket insists that The Crucible is every bit as relevant in in 2019. “It’s a piece about fabricated threats and also about the othering of people, and that is something that was going on in 1692, in 1952, and which goes on now too,” she says. She warns that we may not always be aware of, “what might be lurking in the shadows waiting to be unleashed,” and used by those – including governments – with their own agendas. As part of her research she visited Salem and talked to historians about how an apparently stable community can suddenly collapse almost overnight because of,“a fear of the unknown and ignorance and superstition.”

Female choreographers working with major companies are still relatively rare, but Pickett’s links with Scottish Ballet are strong. She worked with them before in 2013 on Room, a piece inspired by Sartre’s play Huis Clos. She has a particular gift for narrative ballet, knows that when it comes to choreography that less is always more, and spends lots of time working with dancers on character. No wonder The Scotsman’s dance critic Kelly Apter proclaimed: “The dance world needs more Helen Picketts. Choreographers who can take the genre of narrative ballet and hurl it into the 21st century.” Which is exactly what she is doing here.

Pickett’s flair for storytelling might well come from the fact that she is as much at ease in the world of the theatre as she is with ballet and dance. Both her parents were actors, and while she trained as a dancer and spent 11 years performing with William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt, she also worked as an actor, most notably with the avant-garde Wooster Group and director Elizabeth LeCompte. The Woosters are, of course, no slouches at reinventing classic theatre texts by shaking off the dust and transposing them into new mediums.

Pickett’s approach in The Crucible is to winkle out the drama that exists in the space between Miller’s words.“I am a collaborator by nature,” she says, pointing out that this is a collaboration between different forms, an old text and a new dance piece.

Pickett’s version not only plays on the fears of a community whose fragilities are suddenly exposed, but also investigates the characters’ motivations and relationships. In her version, Abigail, the servant dismissed from the home of John and Elizabeth Proctor, after her affair with John is revealed, is not just a young woman seeking vengeance but also suffering from posttraumatic stress after seeing her parents killed.

While the production is full of “horror and darkness”, she says, the audience can also see “the loyalty that people have towards each other and the courage they show. Like all great artists, Arthur Miller knew that dark and light sit side by side. Amidst all the horror there is love, such love.”

“What we can do with dance is to amplify. Words often fail to tell us how we feel, and movement can do that”

WHERE & WHEN The Crucible is at the Edinburgh Playhouse 3-5 Aug, 7.30pm, from £7.50 eif.co.uk www.edfestmag.com

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31 July – 24 August The Scottish Parliament

BRENT STIRTON, GETTY IMAGES

FREE ENTRY

parliament.scot/WPP

“fantastic” “outstanding”

“awesome”

MadMaxAdventures.com

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04/07/2019 08:46

CLIVE ANDERSON COMEDY

H

e’s best known as the host of Whose Line is It Anyway?, Loose Ends, and for his long-running, late night chat show, which was infamous for the sheer number of guests who walked off in a huff. So, with Whose Line..? back for another undoubtedly sell-out Fringe run, why would Clive Anderson suddenly decide to risk it all and give stand-up a try?

“I’ve done one-man shows before – I did some stand-up in my very first Edinburgh and I was on stage on the first night of The Comedy Store, so it’s not, perhaps, as surprising as people might think,” he says of Me, Macbeth and I, a blend of stand-up and memoir he’s bringing to Assembly George Square.

“I’ve tried to call it a one-man show, not to raise too many hopes,” he says cautiously.

“There’s only one man and that’s me. It’s really an improvisational, reactive show but I thought I’d better have a structure. Macbeth is a favourite play of mine, so that’s a theme, but a lot of it will be improvised every night.”

If you’d been at the Fringe in 1981, a cool 38 years ago, you might have stumbled on a show called An Evening Without... – so named because it was supposed to be entirely free of rising stars, famous names or anyone important. In fact, the troupe of performers included Griff Rhys Jones, Rory McGrath and Clive Anderson, all on the cusp of successful TV careers.

“It wasn’t intended to be a misnamed show,” explains Anderson, “but Griff had just started to appear in Not the Nine O’Clock News. In those days, the Fringe wasn’t supposed to include celebrities, so people were a little sniffy – although it did wonders for our ticket sales.”

All of the cast have visited the Fringe in the years since, but Anderson most frequently, coming up as the host of Loose Ends and running an improv show for the last six years.

Improvisation, of course, is how a whole generation first got to know Anderson. He hosted Whose Line..? for its full ten-year run on UK TV – with regulars like Paul Merton and Josie Lawrence performing improvised skits with a rotating cast of guest stars. “My contribution to Whose Line, such as it is, was that I used to spend a lot of time getting suggestions from the audience,” he says – and if you’re starting to get

the impression that Anderson is a modest and retiring type, unwilling to grab the limelight, then you’re right.

Whose Line..? finished its UK run at the end of the 90s, but it’s still on air in the US and Australia.

The concept made a glorious return to the Fringe in 2014 and has been a regular ever since.

“I’m a naturally very pessimistic and nervous person,” he confesses. “I thought it wouldn’t work because the audience is used to an edited version that cut the crap. But it turns out the improvisers are all good enough to do it.”

He probably shouldn’t have worried.

Improvisation has been at the core of Anderson’s career – whether on stage, on his chat show or even in court during his years as a barrister.

One of my favourite TV moments of all time, I tell him, was when the Bee Gees stormed off his chat show. I expect him to laugh and tell me it was deliberate, but he just looks stricken.

“Because there were three of them, I kept asking them questions in turn,” he recalls. “I asked Robin a question, turned to Barry and in the meantime, Robin is brooding over the last thing I’d said. He thinks, hang on, I’m a flaming Bee Gee, I don’t have to sit here and listen to this. So off they went. Some people loved it but some people thought, ‘how dare this non-entity be so rude to the greatest songwriter that ever walked the earth?’”

Sometimes, he adds, the most important thing is knowing when not to say a word, but people don’t realise how right you are when you stay schtum. He recalls his final day in court as a barrister.

“I’d started doing Whose Line..?, then my chat show, but there was a little bit of an overlap period. There was one particular case where the correct thing to do was not to ask any questions because I didn’t want to expand the body of evidence against my client.” He gives a wry grin.

“I think the jury thought, ‘He’s that bloke off the telly and he hasn’t asked a question for days. He’s forgotten how to do the job.’ I don’t know which did my client more favours – me not asking questions or the jury feeling sorry for him. I won the case though,” he says with the first touch of pride he’s shown since we started talking.

Despite his self-effacement, is he looking forward to the month? “So much,” he beams.

“I’ve had my highest ups and lowest downs there, and the city always stays so beautiful. That backdrop when you’re walking home at five in the morning having an argument with somebody, or you’re drunk, or you’ve had a big success, or you’ve had a big failure, and there’s the castle on the hill … it gives everything, even the most banal things, an unreal romantic quality. I love it. I just hope everyone will be kind.”

“I was on stage on the first night of The Comedy Store, so it’s not as surprising as some might think”

G N I K TA D N A T S THE t from son stepping ou er nd A e liv C is Why y his hand nter’s desk to tr se re p e th d in eh b at stand-up?

ULLATHORNE PHOTO STEVE N ARMSTRONG HE EP ST S RD WO

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WHERE & WHEN Clive Anderson: Me, Macbeth and I, Assembly George Square, 3-25 Aug (not 12), 9.30pm, from £13, assemblyfestival.com Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Underbelly Bristo Square, 31 July - 26 Aug (not 12), 7pm, from £12.50, underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

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FESTIVAL FAVOURITES CABARET

“

The rage and fire have to be channeled, or it will burst through your chest

“

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CABARET FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

HIT IT!

It’s the return of the kings (and queens) of Edinburgh as we welcome our favourites back for another year

REUBEN KAYE WORDS KATE COPSTICK

Is there anything you haven’t won at the Adelaide Fringe?

My parents’ approval.

You have said you are a “gentleman in make-up”… so what makes drag ‘drag’?

How I define myself to a member of the Metropolitan Police Force at 3am while on crown land, trying to allegedly “roast a swan,” is entirely my business. That being said, drag is both makeup and more than just make-up. It’s not so much a genre as it is a pathway to exploring all genres.

You have also said that drag is not a choice … can you explain that?

You do drag because you have to. Because the rage and fire have to be channeled or it’ll burst through your chest.

Nothing like being told you’re shameful and undeserving of life and love for centuries to keep those coals burning bright.

Do you feel comfortable with drag being regarded as more and more mainstream?

You can’t deny homosexuality has begun to lose its subculture status, its exclusivity. And yes, drag was once “our thing” and now we have teenage girls in Wyoming shouting, “YAAAS QUEEN” but you know what? if it’s a choice between being accepted too much and being hunted, then I know which side I’m picking. Drag will never lose its beauty, its glitter or its menace. Have you seen that footage of those drag queens beating up that homophobe in Sydney?

What do you look forward to whenever you return to Edinburgh in August?

The staggering number of muscular circus performers with very low standards.

WHERE & WHEN Assembly Checkpoint 9.30 pm, 31 Jul– 25 Aug (not 7, 21), from £9

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FESTIVAL FAVOURITES COMEDY

“

I was radicalised as a feminist as much by being a receptionist as by stripping

“

FERN BRADY WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO MATT CROCKETT

As a Scottish comic, do you feel ‘invaded’ in August?

I’m a former Edinburgh resident, so on the one hand yes, but I live in London so I’m now one of the Fringe wankers. It’s truly confusing.

I remember the hell of trying to walk up South Bridge on my lunch break with offensively confident theatre students thrusting flyers at me. For that reason I’ve never flyered any of my shows to this day.

Is a Fringe show still a special thing? Even now when there is so much TV that successful comics could do?

The Fringe is the building block for everything we do in stand-up. You don’t have to do it that way but generally if a show does well you’ll then get other work off the back of it. The 58

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festival is the biggest slog of the year (we gig multiple times a day every day and I always sleep for about a week when I get home) but it just makes you a way better comic. My show this year goes on tour all round the UK and Europe straight afterwards, so the Fringe is great for that.

Is it true you started stand-up after writing a piece for a magazine about a critic trying stand-up?

Yeah, the article pushed me to do it, but I’d been wanting to try it for about three years prior to that and was too shy. I sent The Stand a long wistful email like, ‘“Do you think I should try stand-up?” which is so horrifying.

You’re just supposed to apply to do their gig, no one’s gonna coax you into it.

Do you think having a ‘real life’ to feed off helped you with starting out in comedy?

I did a really wide variety of jobs before stand-up and it absolutely contributed to the comic I am today. I was radicalised as a feminist as much by working as a receptionist for arrogant all-male CEOs as by stripping.

Training in journalism taught me how to communicate ideas in an accessible way, which is crucial in stand-up. Generally doing any poorly paid job with pointless rules is great, because it makes you resentful, which is a decent starting point for interesting stand-up.

WHERE & WHEN Monkey Barrel 1. 6 pm, 1-25 Aug (not 12), from £6 www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 14:38

COMEDY FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

ED BYRNE WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO IDIL SUKAN

You went to Strathclyde Uni to study flowers … really?

Yes. I had worked with my uncle as a gardener and had it drilled into me from a young age that you “must have a proper job to fall back on”, I thought I’d get a qualification in something “proper” before embarking on some sort of showbiz career, so I was enrolled in a BSc in Horticulture. If I’d stuck with gardening I’d have a better chance of getting my own TV show.

You got a Perrier Nomination in 1998. Did you feel you were robbed?

Not at all! I was expecting Al Murray or Sean Cullen to win, but Tommy Tiernan was a worthy victor. Getting nominated was very helpful to

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me at the time and a nice thing to have on the comedy CV. After that, the “new comedian smell” began to fade. The press moves on to the next crop of jokesters, but the audiences continue to show up, which is what counts.

What keeps you coming back to Edinburgh now you are a proper grown-up?

I’m sentimental about the Fringe; I met my wife in the Pleasance Courtyard in 2003. But I also love how seriously people take performance in general and comedy in particular, for just that month. I love that every other year, I get to spend my August surrounded by the kind of freaks and show-offs I used to work with every night of the week when I was on the circuit.

Even though we’re nearly all parents now.

Will you be talking about being a dad this year?

My shows are autobiographical, whether I’m talking about my parents, my girlfriends, my wedding or my cat. So yes, I will talk about my kids. The trick is to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate people.

What happened to your flower skills?

I never accrued any. I coasted through First Year using the stuff I learned in school and dropped out during Second Year when things got difficult.

WHERE & WHEN Assembly Rooms - Music Hall, 9pm, 1-25 Aug (not 12), from £12

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FESTIVAL FAVOURITES COMEDY

LUCY PORTER WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO ANDY ROBINSON

Did you always want to be a stand-up?

Goodness me, no! When I was at primary school I was determined to be a nun someday. Then I lost my faith, but I still wanted to save the world, so I set my heart on being a war reporter like Kate Adie. I drifted into stand-up, which was only meant to be a hobby, and forgot about saving the world. Maybe I’ve still got time to change direction and do my bit – on the plus side the world is clearly way more in need of salvation than it was when I was little.

16 years in Edinburgh? Is it 'always a pleasure, never a chore’?

It’s always a pleasure and always a chore. I’m at the stage of writing new material, which means sitting inside at my computer on a sunny day while my husband and children are playing in the park.

However, the chore aspect is entirely worth it when I get off the train at Waverley station and launch myself into the glorious chaos of the Fringe.

Does it help being a two-performer family?

No! My husband performed at the festival for years, but he’s busy being a serious actor now, so he doesn’t bring shows to Edinburgh anymore.

I envy other performers whose partners don’t know anything about comedy because they can pretend the Fringe is a proper job. Justin knows that I’m only working for one hour a day and having fun for the rest of the time.

You do so much else now, what keeps you coming back to stand-up?

There’s nothing like live stand-up. It’s still the most fun you can have with your clothes on (or off if you’re Phil Nichol). Plus middle-aged women don’t get much of a platform elsewhere, so I’ll be happy to come back for as long as you’ll have me.

WHERE & WHEN Pleasance Courtyard - Cabaret Bar 6.40 pm, 31 Jul–17 Aug (not 12), from £8

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COMEDY FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

“

I have a really good memory for jokes but I don’t have a good memory for whether I thought of them

“

PAUL MERTON WORDS CLAIRE SMITH PHOTO DEAN CHALKLEY

How does it feel to be bringing your Improv Chums back to the Fringe?

It’s great and it doesn’t really feel like work.

It’s a different show every night so it never gets boring.

imagination and the ability to put that across to an audience. Other skills help too – Mike McShane has a proper West End musical quality voice and is also really strong on Shakespeare.

Who are your chums?

They are Mike McShane, Lee Simpson, Richard Vranch and Suki Webster. We’ve also got a new member this year, Kirsty Newton who plays keyboards. We’ve always had music, but this means we’ll have more of it. Because I’m not musical, I’m in awe of people who can improvise music.

Why do you think improv continues to be so popular with audiences?

Well the key thing is that the show doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist on paper. It only comes into being on the night. Because you are surrounded by people you know and respect and love, it’s very freeing.

What makes a good improviser?

I suppose the crucial thing is you have to really listen to what’s being said around you.

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When did Improv become a thing in the UK? It was a big thing in America but not so much here until the Comedy Store Players formed in 1985. The US comics Kit

Hollerbach and Mike Myers, who went on to create Austin Powers and Shrek, came from the scene in the US and wondered why it didn’t exist here – Don Ward of the Comedy Store took a chance and put it on on a Sunday, and it took off.

You are a real expert on the history of comedy. What do you think of it nowadays?

I don’t see a lot of comedy, and I avoid watching panel shows on TV because I have a really good memory for jokes but I don’t always have a good memory for whether I thought of them or not.

WHERE & WHEN: Pleasance Courtyard – The Grand, 4 pm, 8-17 Aug, from £14 EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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FESTIVAL FAVOURITES COMEDY

HARRY CLAYTON WRIGHT WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO CLAUDIO RASCHELLA

What’s your show about?

How I learned about sex. My mum, who was a Methodist, never spoke to me about sex and my dad gave me a big bag of gay porn DVDs. The show also deals with my own sexual history – the good, the bad… It’s full on sexplicit and very boundary pushing.

What does your Mum think now?

My Mum is a big part of the show. I had a chat with her and recorded an interview. It has some lovely moving moments. I hope the audience appreciate her as much as I do.

Where will audiences in Edinburgh have seen you before?

I started with Miss Behave when I was 24. I was the glamorous assistant, the Debbie McGee in Miss Behave’s Game Show. We took that show from Blackpool to Vegas, which was amazing.

Then I joined Briefs, the Australian boylesque troupe, and toured the world for two years.

I’m not a trained dancer or an acrobat but I think they saw someone that would be game for being thrown around the stage. Suddenly I became Jane Torvill.

“

My mum never talked about sex. My dad gave me a big bag of gay porn DVDs

Does Sex Education have a strong element of cabaret?

There are some ridiculous dance numbers, some stunning outfits including a white lace wedding dress, some funny bits and some conversations with the audience. I make cucumber sandwiches for the audience to eat while we are listening to my mum’s stories.

We also watch some of the gay porn my dad gave me when I was a teenager.

WHERE & WHEN Summerhall – TechCube 0 7.10 pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 12, 19), from £5

“

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COMEDY FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

SH!T THEATRE WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO CLAUDIO RASCHELLA

What’s your show about?

It’s about us being invited to Malta to do a show. We thought were going to have a free holiday, talk to some expats, bash out a quick performance and head home sun-kissed. But we discovered that Malta is the centre of the migrant crisis, that Malta (along with a few other EU countries) is selling European citizenship, that journalists are being murdered for speaking out about such things, that our new expat chums pretty much all voted Leave.

The show explores what it is to be European, what it means to fight for European citizenship, why some people are denied it, how some people can purchase it. There is also a dog in our new show.

Were you ever scared in Malta?

We were scared that we’d never get to eat. We made friends with an art crowd who seemed to have a small brunch, start drinking, and then never stop drinking for the rest of the day, without any other meals or snacks. The first time we went to Malta we were there for a week. It got to the Sunday and we were feverishly asking each other, ‘Do we get to eat now? Is this the day we get to eat?’

Your shows are often based around adventures. Have you ever been on a trip where nothing happened?

We haven’t been on a trip where nothing happened, no. We’ve had the opposite experience though; we go somewhere expecting a quiet break, do some work, perhaps we are on tour, and shit just. keeps. happening.

Best Edinburgh moment?

Possibly Cafe Royal seafood platter. So much garlic butter. It’s glorious.

WHERE & WHEN Summerhall – Main Hall 8.05pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 1, 12, 19) from £5

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FESTIVAL FAVOURITES MAGIC

“

If only we could still get away with silky hankies and sparkly boxes

“

PETE FIRMAN WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO KARLA GOWLETT

12 years at the Fringe. That’s a LOT of tricks. Surely it’s much harder for a magician to come up with a new trick than it is for a comic to come up with a new joke?

The hardest thing is trying not to repeat myself. There are only so many ‘plots’ in magic...production, disappearance, transformation, transposition, mentalism/mind reading etc, So it’s finding different ways to do those things and have the tricks mean something to a 2019 audience. If only we could still get away with silky hankies and sparkly boxes.

The idea of this year’s show seems like a magical deathwish!

You’re doing each show as a double act with a Muggle? Why? Well, I’m previewing it at the moment and I’m learning it’s not as straightforward as I first thought! I quite like not knowing what to expect and for years I’ve wanted to work with a partner on stage. Being in a double act opens up a whole new gamut of tricks. Also, unlike most double acts, if I hate them I can swap them for a new person the following night.

Is this what you always wanted to be?

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cash. My main focus switched to magic when a TV producer cast me in a magic series after I sent him a pretty ropey homemade showreel. Acting fell by the wayside and I’ve been a full-time wizard ever since.

Who inspired you?

I think the magicians who were on TV when I was young and meant the most to me were Penn & Teller. They had a series on Channel 4 in the 90s and it was the antithesis of any magic show or magic performance I’d ever seen. Smart, funny, edgy, slightly disgusting. It was like discovering a really cool band.

This year you misdirecting types are everywhere! You’re all over Britain’s Got Talent - good thing? Bad thing?

It’s a good thing. It seems like BGT is your only option as a specialist act to get a spot on mainstream TV, so I can see why it’s appealing. If the magic is good, then the public remember they like magic and go out and see live shows. So it helps us all.

WHERE & WHEN: Pleasance Beyond, 8 pm. 31st July–25 Aug, from £9 www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 13:45

COMEDY FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

SUSIE McCABE WORDS KATE COPSTICK

Are you buzzing about winning the Scottish Comedy Awards?

Totally delighted, I was up against some hugely talented people so to scoop those two awards was massive. The fact that it’s your peers and promoters on the circuit who vote for the awards means a lot.

Your tickets famously sell out in minutes at The Glasgow Comedy Festival. Do you enjoy performing there more?

I love Glasgow; Glaswegians are great people and great audiences. I’ve been lucky to have earned a large part of my comedy schooling there. It’s probably my favourite city as a performer. Compared to Edinburgh it’s a different world, though. Every weekend Edinburgh has a truly international audience in its clubs and of course at the Fringe, it’s global.

Do you feel that comedy saved you?

Comedy gave me a sense of being good at something, and I suppose that instant validation you get from an audience is something I got hooked on from my very first gigs.

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Do you think you use it as therapy?

Oh probably! I tell stories, I talk about my life so I think there’s definitely a therapy aspect.

Probably the good old Catholic guilt mixed with this cathartic unburdening of yourself like in confession, but you don’t need to say a Hail Mary after. Although sometimes you might say one before certain gigs.

What’s your show about this year?

It’s about life-changing moments and picking up the pieces. I’m looking at the expectations people have of us and how much we are defined by our gender, our family and friends’ opinions and what they deem to be failure.

I do examine why I don’t live up to the ideals my mother has for me and discuss my experiences as a woman in a few different walks of life. The result is definitely not what people expect when they come in to the show. Changing perspectives whilst having a laugh, I’m basically on a crusade!

WHERE & WHEN: Assembly George Square - The Box 8 pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug (not 12) from £6

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FESTIVAL FAVOURITES CABARET

DAVID O’DOCHERTY WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO IDIL SUKAN

20 years since you won So You Think You’re Funny. Do you feel old? Or just ‘mature’ like a fine Stilton?

I’m definitely bigger but I’m not sure I’m maturing. I think of myself more like those individually-wrapped plastic cheese slices that, even if global warming does its worst, will survive and continue to provide minimal nourishment to the few people who remain.

You were a trailblazer for whimsy in Edinburgh. Now we’re up to our nipples in it, do you regret opening the door?

When I started, there was The Boosh and Ross Noble and Stewart Lee, and then my lot coming through were Conchords and Kitson and Josie Long. But before us there had been Python and Shakespeare and Chaucer, so don’t go round blaming me for flights of fancy.

You also find time to be a prolific author.

What’s the lure of writing for kids?

I was writing before I started doing stand-up. I used to work in a residential childrens’ home – kids in care – so I’d write stuff for them.

Anything you are particularly looking forward to? Do you still get a buzz out of August?

Yeah! It’s my favourite month. I love everything about it – buying a bike on the first day, giving it away on the last night. I’m excited to do my new show and to see tons of others. Rosie Jones, Tom Parry, Snort from New Zealand – Josie Long is back for the first time in five years. That will be a real event.

WHERE & WHEN Assembly George Square 7.30pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 13), from £10

“

I love buying a bike on the first day and giving it away on the last night

“

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COMEDY FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

“

WORDS CLAIRE SMITH PHOTO MICHAEL WORLEY

So what’s your show about?

I always get to the point, usually about two months before the Fringe of thinking: ‘What am I going to talk about?’ and then I go: ‘It’s OK. The world is still stupid.”

Is anything off limits?

You can talk about anything in person, or with a group of people. If people have come to see you there’s a certain amount of trust already there.

But I have given up speaking my mind on Twitter.

Almost all of supposed ‘online debate’ is just wilful misunderstanding. www.edfestmag.com

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“

ANDREW MAXWELL

The point of being a jester is to give everyone the hedonistic bliss of a laugh

Are Fringe audiences special?

Certainly the size of it. There’s no arts festival that comes close anywhere in the world. And only in Scotland and perhaps only in Edinburgh do you get audiences deliberately trying to see something shit.

As well as your stand-up show All Talk, you’ll be doing a play.

Yes it’s called Julius ‘Call me Caesar’ Caesar. It’s a Belfast Julius Caesar done by the company who did Kafka for Kids. I play all the parts. It’s like a one-man Ben Hur. Does political comedy influence politics?

All my shows are about fifty-fifty politics and personal observation. It is fun to be the butt of

the joke. If you spend an hour taking the piss out of everyone else, there’s no lightness of being. The point of being a jester is not to be powerful – it’s to give everyone the hedonistic bliss of a laugh.

Do you see a lot in Edinburgh?

Usually I catch up in the last few days. I’ll be bringing the whole family up to Edinburgh. It’s one of the reasons I keep doing the Fringe.

They all love it. Having them all there makes me feel like I’ve won at parenting. I’ve done my job.

WHERE & WHEN Underbelly, George Square - Udderbelly, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 12), from £7.50 EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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Delivering courses in Media, Communication and Performing Arts for over 40 years In the Division of Media, Communication and Performing Arts at QMU we provide a stimulating and challenging environment where students combine academic study, creative practical work and opportunities for reflective, work-based learning.

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Visit our website to find out more about the Division of Media, Communication and Performing Arts and our range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. You can also meet us on campus at our undergraduate open days.

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03/07/2019 09:48

CABERET FESTIVAL FAVOURITES

GINGZILLA WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO SCOTT CHALMERS

Was Gingzilla always there inside, waiting to make her entrance with her usual flair?

Girl, she’s been inside me all my life, ready to bask in the spotlight. It’s only now that she has been allowed the space to fully be embraced by the planet. The world can be a dark, lonely place, and that’s why Gingzilla exists: to bring people experiences of outrageous joy and vulnerability.

You have been on both America’s Got Talent and X Factor … is that because Simon is in love with you?

You want the goss? They were loving every inch of me honey. I was getting seared by their stares.

That’s quite the vocal range you have there...

My range has doubled since performing in drag.

As a male performer I was limited by very rigid gender stereotypes, but now I’m free to soar or scream, growl or seduce and make whatever sounds come out. I don’t hold back, bitches.

Are you sometimes still Ben on stage?

I have been given a gift: the liberty of not giving an F! I don’t need to conform to gender roles or societal norms, I can be a blob of creativity living in the moment. Gingzilla is Ben’s fully evolved Pokémon. And it might be the flair of Gingzilla, but it’s the humanity of Ben that makes it special.

What brings you back to Edinburgh?

The cobbles must be a nightmare in heels!

I don’t know how, but I can skip, jump and twirl down those blasted cobbles in 7” heels without breaking a sweat. Edinburgh is magic. Thats why I’m back and will continue coming back.

I’m hooked.

WHERE & WHEN Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre - Main Theatre 11.30 pm, 2-3, 8-10, 15-18, 22-24 Aug, from £10

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I’m free to soar or scream, growl or seduce. I don’t hold back, bitches

“

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Sweet Grassmarket - Apex Grassmarket Hotel VENUE 18 Sweet Novotel - Novotel Lauriston Place VENUE 188 Box Office: 0131 243 3596 - www.sweetvenues.com

APOCALYPSE SONGS

BAD GIRLS UPSET BE THE TRUTH

18-25 Aug | 16:00 | £9/£7 | MUSIC

9-19 Aug | 22:30 | £8/£5 | CABARET

Follow the adventures of scientist/poet Captain Redacted as he is sent to explore the multiverse and document his findings in story and song.

Pete Seeger meets David Bowie in this funny, heartfelt, and interactive show!

A dark ‘honky-tonk opera’ about a small-town Texan who asks Jesus for answers to life’s burning questions, but the response on high leads Jo Carol on a holy unexpected path that shocks and disturbs all who love her!

BETTER THAN DYING ALONE

COME OUT FROM AMONG THEM

3-24 Aug | 21:30 | £7/£5 | COMEDY

2-25 Aug | 13:00 | £10/£8 | THEATRE

Ménage à trois. Dungeon parties. Amorous vicars and improper use of Twitter. Ros is busy in the bedroom, but nowhere near love; armed with questionable hair and a millennial railcard, she’s on the hunt for it.

The companion piece to last year’s Scotsman Fringe First Award-winning DUPed continues the writer’s odyssey to meet supporters and representatives of the DUP, the political party founded in 1971 by Ian Paisley.

COMING HOME WITH ME

I’M JUST KIDNEYING

2-11 Aug | 19:15 | £8/£6 | THEATRE

1-25 Aug | 14:00 | £7 | THEATRE

Join us for a girl-powered delve into the (at times) slimy world of a night out. Using verbatim testimony and badass dance moves, we’re fighting the patriarchy and lad culture, one creep at a time.

Amanda donated her kidney! And saved two lives! What? From carrying her urine on the NYC Nigel Osner subway to enduring needle-happy nurses to passing resounding farts, this whimsical comedy questions what it takes to be a “hero”.

I’M WOMAN

QUINTESSENCE

12-18 Aug,14:30 & 19-25, 20:30 | £9/£7 | THEATRE

12-25 Aug | 13:20 | £10/£8 | THEATRE

Raw and unflinching, Ana Daud’s explosive one-woman telling of her raging and tormented tale is naked reality torn from the womb. A physical tour de force that scorches the air and demands audiences ask questions of themselves.

Humanity’s extinction leaves behind an AI programmed to recreate the human race when the time is right, with the complete works of Shakespeare as a guide. Humanity must thrive...but at what cost?

‘Outstanding Theatre’ award-winner, Brighton

SHATTERED

SONIA ASTE - MADE IN SPAIN 2

1-25 Aug | 18:40 | £8.50 | COMEDY

2-25 Aug | 17:30 | £5 | COMEDY

Gavin Lind is middle-aged, gay and getting divorced and left wondering where his perfectly mediocre existence went. He’s picking up the pieces and taking the world head on with his amazing dad bod and killer vegan accent.

Have you ever been to Spain? Did you think things were "interesting"? After sold-out shows in 2018, this energetic Spaniard is back with her highly anticipated sequel. Foot-stomping comedy! Olé!

(MumbleComedy.net)

THE GENIUS OF CHARLES DICKENS

TOO YOUNG TO STAY IN, TOO OLD TO GO OUT!

5-11 Aug | 11:20 | £8/£6 | SPOKEN WORD

2-18 Aug | 17:45 | £8/£7 | CABARET

Author/actor Chris Foote Wood gives animated readings from the novels of Charles Dickens illustrating some of his best-known characters in the manner of Dickens himself who “acted out” the parts in his own public readings.

Nigel Osner observes life’s challenges and opportunities for the not so young. Original songs and stories by male and female characters. Dating, love, holidays - even the gym!

‘Witty, bitchy, achingly sad and, finally, strangely uplifting’ Broadway Baby

Enjoy the best of the Fringe at Sweet Venues. Visit us at Sweet Grassmarket and Sweet Novotel for children’s shows, theatre, comedy, music, physical theatre and musicals across 7 venues. @SweetVenues #SweetGrassmarket #SweetNovotel Information correct at time of printing. Check online for full listings including dates with no performances and additional discount tickets. p_70.indd 70

03/07/2019 09:49

ANNA CALVI MUSIC

LIFE OUT LOUD Multi-instrumentalist Anna Calvi was afraid to sing, until legends like David Bowie and Nina Simone showed her the way WORDS FIONA SHEPHERD PHOTO MAISIE COUSINS

O

N STAGE and on record, thrilling singer/guitarist Anna Calvi radiates control of her gymnastic voice and her dramatic performance.

All signals point to a woman who is entirely self-possessed.“I just try and make it really raw and primal and passionate,” she says.

“It’s really playing with the idea of strength and vulnerability. I want to see how far I can take those two extremes.”

But it wasn’t always thus. Calvi chose to study music instead of visual art almost on a whim, and despite playing violin and guitar from a young age and song writing for others from her teens, she feared the notion of singing for herself. “The main thing that stopped me singing was that I thought your speaking voice was an indication of what your singing voice would be like, and I really didn’t want to have a quiet, little voice like I do,” she says - in what is indeed a soft speaking voice. “But when I put my mind to something I can be quite stubborn.

I won’t give up until I’ve conquered the thing I’m trying to do.”

Calvi practised obsessively in private for years, taking inspiration from vocal giants such as Scott Walker, David Bowie and Nina Simone.

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“I just try and make it really raw and primal and passionate” “What I really like about them is they find ways of manipulating the voice that they have,” she says, “and when I realised that you can colour your singing voice, so many avenues opened up to me. Now I feel really comfortable singing, it just feels very natural. It’s as if I’ve always been singing even though I haven’t.”

Having found her voice in audacious style on her first two albums, Anna Calvi and One Breath, the London-based musician has often been sought out for collaborations, performing at tributes to Bowie and Gil Scott-Heron, and working with Marianne Faithfull and David Byrne. It was Byrne who recommended that she compose the music for director Robert Wilson’s 2017 operatic adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffman’s dark fable, The Sandman.

“David warned me it would be like going down the rabbit hole, which seemed very exciting to me,” she says. “When you’re working with someone else, you make decisions quicker, and that’s helped me with my own work. Left to my own devices I can go round and round with things. Sometimes it’s easy to forget whenever

you’re being creative that your compass is your instinct.”

Calvi took that impetus forward for her latest and most acclaimed album, Hunter, on which she plays with gender stereotypes and her own queer identity.

“When you’re writing, the goal is to find the most clear, succinct way to express something true and honest about yourself and your experience,” she says, “so I really wanted to push that idea for this record and see how intimate I could get. It’s been really fun to play live because it’s a very dynamic record. I feel more free and liberated up on the stage. I can just do whatever I want and not feel in any way restricted.”

WHERE & WHEN Anna Calvi, Leith Theatre, 11 August, 8pm, £30 eif.co.uk

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ART NICOLE FAHRI

The library of sculpted authors was first inspired by the Oscar Wilde bust she gifted to her husband, David Hare

A BUST-SEE COLLECTION Globally famous as a fashion designer, Nicole Fahri is now starting a new career as a (very literary) sculptor

WORDS ANDREW DICKSON ARTWORK COURTESY OF NICOLE FARHI

A

nyone stepping inside the Fine Art Society on Dundas Street this August might wonder what they’ve got themselves into. There’s someone who looks remarkably like Samuel Beckett, severe and inscrutable as ever. A whitebearded Ernest Hemingway broods nearby. Can that be Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus in conversation?

Toni Morrison chatting away to Muriel Spark?

Entitled Writing Heads, the exhibition – 25 busts of famous literary folk, both living and dead – has been brought together by another name you might recognise, Nicole Farhi. But she’s not here as a fashion designer, the career that made her a household name on catwalks across the globe: she’s the artist.

Every one of these busts, most only 12 cm tall, was sculpted by hand in Farhi’s studio, a converted orangery at the rear of her Hampstead home.

“For many years, I was living a double life,” Farhi laughs.

“But at last I’m able to come out. I can do it full-time. I feel impossibly lucky.”

Farhi, now 72, always had a hankering to make art. Even while studying fashion in Paris in the late 1960s she would pursue other interests: dutifully learning patterns and designs in the morning, and spending her afternoons at an easel or watching movies. But when she began to make a reputation as a designer, she had to leave her paints to one side.

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It wasn’t until a chance conversation in her thirties that Farhi began to wonder if her talents might lie in clay and bronze. On a friend’s recommendation, she went to meet the sculptor Jean Gibson, who taught evening classes; Gibson made her sculpt something on the spot, to prove that she was serious.

“She thought I was a dilettante,” Farhi reflects.

“But I think I can say I became a favourite student. I never missed a class. When I touched the clay, I knew it was something important for me.”

That was 35 years ago, when Farhi’s fashion label was becoming a major international force. When she finally left the rag trade behind (the label was sold in 2010, and she cut her ties to it a few years later), her determination to spend more of her time making sculpture was a major part of the reason.

Though the disciplines have obvious differences, Farhi does feel the connection. “Making clothes, you work in the third dimension too. You use your eyes, you teach yourself to look, not only in front of you, but behind and above also. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to sculpture. You go deep.”

Writing Heads came about similarly by chance.

In 2012, her husband, the playwright David Hare, was about to open a revival of his play The Judas Kiss in London; to celebrate, Farhi made him a tiny bust of Oscar Wilde, its hero and subject. Busts of Chekhov and Ibsen followed, each tied to new productions.

While she was supposed to be working on other projects and exhibitions, Farhi kept adding to the collection.

The literary menagerie – pantheon? party? – grew and grew. Farhi models each www.edfestmag.com

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NICOLE FAHRI ART

Farhi in her studio, a converted orangery in Hampstead.

‘Making clothes, you work in the third dimension too. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to sculpture. You go deep’

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head in clay before casting it in a concrete-like material, then painting it in cheerful acrylic.

Some of the busts capture major Anglo-American literary figures, among them Philip Roth, James Baldwin and Doris Lessing. Others reflect the artist’s own French background and tastes: Françoise Sagan, Jean Cocteau, Camus, and – naturellement – De Beauvoir.

“When I was living in Paris in the 1970s, she was my heroine, like she was for a lot of women of my generation. Camus, too.”

Farhi says. “I’m a bit biased, I love the French ones.”

A select few – notably playwright and The Princess Bride and Toy Story star Wallace Shawn, a good friend of both Farhi and Hare – are more personal. Unlike the majority of her subjects, where she had to work from archive footage and stills, Farhi was able to sketch Shawn from life.

“He has an incredible face, and he’s the only one who is smiling,” she says. “I sent him a photo.”

There’s more to Farhi’s sculptural output than just these busts. The great Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi was a friend and mentor, and he pushed her to experiment in every way she could. In recent years, she’s made a number of works celebrating folds of Rubenesque flesh, which are cast directly from her models’ bodies, another series focusing on heads and hands, as well as more abstract compositions. One is a bronze called Orgasm – a blast of what might be flame tearing out from a small bomb-like sphere. “Explosive” seems the appropriate adjective.

She works at a relentless pace, and finds herself in her studio by 9am most mornings. “I’m not 20 years old any longer,” she says. “I feel like I’m running.”

One thing Farhi is clear on: she WHERE & WHEN has little time for art-world vogues.

Writing Heads Unlike a great deal of contemporary The Fine Art sculpture, these busts are Society, 6 Dundas unashamedly figurative, even a Street, Edinburgh touch old-fashioned. She sees no EH3. 25 July - 25 reason to apologise.

August 2019. Mon “Even when I worked in fashion, Fri 10am - 6pm.

I was never fashionable,” she says, Sat 11am - 4pm. laughing again. “I like that.” fasedinburgh.com EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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THEATRE FISHBOWL

FISH OUT OF WATER A new resident shakes up the status quo in this wordless Gallic gagfest

WORDS MARK FISHER

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W

e’re in the restaurant of the Théâtre du RondPoint in Paris where the cast and crew of Fishbowl have settled in for a post-show meal.

Actor Olivier Martin-Salvan grabs everyone’s attention with his tale about the time he ate an indigestible Chinese delicacy just before going on stage.

The table is in uproar as he describes a performance repeatedly interrupted by his bodily functions. Most of it is unprintable, but let’s just say he had to exit the stage backwards so no one saw the state of his trousers. We fall about laughing.

Our conversation has taken this scatological turn because of Fishbowl (known as Bigre in France). This wordless comedy about bedsit living mixes clever visual gags with a seam of toilet humour that builds from fart gags to something far more explosive. To say more would be to spoil the surprise, but it’s very funny.

The show is the work of Pierre Guillois who, in 2013, gave his friends Martin-Salvan and Agathe L’Huillier a challenge. He loved the idea of acting on stage but, as a writer and director, he didn’t rate his speaking voice.

Would it be possible, he wondered, for them to devise a show that expressed itself in a visual language, allowing him to perform too?

“He didn’t want us to speak but we didn’t want to do mime either,” says L’Huillier. “We wanted to tell a story that didn’t need words.”

When he was a student and then an impoverished artist, Guillois had rented what Parisians call a chambre de bonne, a top-floor apartment built for domestic servants where everyone lives cheek by jowl. With a bit of artistic licence, he reckoned they could put three such apartments on stage and build a comedy about mismatched neighbours – one punctilious, one bookish, the third

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FISHBOWL THEATRE

trying to teach herself everything from hairdressing to osteopathy in order to get a job. Living separate lives but unable to avoid one another, they would have to learn to get along – perhaps even to grow fond of each other.

“My character is the new arrival who upsets the equilibrium and breaks the friendship,” says L’Huillier.

“One falls in love when he sees her; the other doesn’t like her. Meanwhile, she has no job and doesn’t know what to do, so she learns by books, but it’s catastrophic because she fails everything.”

Telling a story in this way was easier said than done.

Even after developing the show for a year before its 2014 premiere, they continued to refine it, ditching material, re-ordering routines and finessing what became a highly technical show (not for nothing do the two stage managers take their bow with the actors). There are times when you’re watching three comic routines at once; other times when your focus is on one apartment alone. Biscuits tumble out of cupboards, underwear is whisked away on the wind and

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“Biscuits tumble out of cupboards, underwear is whisked away on the wind and a fish gets doused in toilet cleaner – all with razor-sharp precision” a fish gets doused in toilet cleaner – all with razor-sharp precision.

“Sometimes we’d have an idea that was good on paper, but so bad when we tried it for real,” says L’Huillier. “Every time, we had to try it with real props to see if it would work.

We had three or four hours of material, but just kept one hour for the show. Even though it is now fixed, we still work on scenes and have little rehearsals.”

Their hard work paid off. So much of a hit did it become, the Molière Award-winning comedy is now performed by a team of actors who’ll be in rotation with the original three during the Fringe.

For all the laughter, however, what’s crucial to L’Huillier is the emotional truth. This is a play that deals with loneliness, friendship, romance, separation and motherhood and all the attendant feelings of jealousy, guilt and embarrassment. “In the big laughs, we want a dramatic sense,” she says. “I took inspiration from the movies of Charlie Chaplin, where there is always a feminine figure who is melancholic. It was my role to support the dramatic story.”

Relishing the prospect of making her Edinburgh debut, she arrives in Scotland confident in the knowledge this wordless comedy also works in translation. “We were WHERE & WHEN in Toronto a month ago and met our Fishbowl, Pleasance Courtyard – first Anglophone audience,” she The Grand, 31 July–26 August says. “It was fantastic to see they (not 14), 1pm From £9 have the same sense of humour.” pleasance.co.uk

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03/07/2019 19:14

BOOKS SOFIE HAGEN

S

o many people came up to Sofie Hagen after her comedy shows asking for advice that she decided to write a selfhelp book. And it’s one that’s every bit as sunny, radical and outspoken as she is.

“People would ask me: ‘How do I learn to love myself?’ That is such a huge question with so many points to it. But I had already gathered all this material from learning about it myself. ” The cover photo of Happy Fat, showing the Danish comic with a huge smiley face drawn on her exposed midriff, is deliberately provocative.

Fat, for Hagen, is a political issue. “It is so taboo,” she says. “People don’t even want to say the word ‘fat’.

I’ve had people talk to me about the book for hours and never say the word.”

Happy Fat begins with a heart-rending description of teenage Hagen, desperately trying diet after diet and trying to fit in. It moves to the realisation that capitalism, particularly the diet, fashion and beauty industries, conspire to make women feel that they’re not good enough.

Discovering fat activism helped transform the way she felt about herself. “In one aspect of my life I’ve been all about facts – that’s why trolls and

commentators don’t bother me because they are factually wrong. It doesn’t really touch me because it’s not real.

“It’s not really a choice. What are you supposed to do – say ‘I know there’s a problem and I’m trying to fix it?’ That’s what fat activists call being a ‘good fatty’.”

Hagen moved to London in 2012, having already worked as a comedy writer and performer in Denmark. She reckons English is an easier language for comedy than Danish. “You have to be really, really good to be a good comic in Denmark”.

Growing up in a different comedy landscape also gives her a fresh take on the UK scene.

“I didn’t grow up with Live At the Apollo and I didn’t know what the Fringe was until I was on it.

Everything I do in the UK is a nice surprise.”

In her first year in Edinburgh in 2015 Hagen walked away with the Best Newcomer award for Bubblewrap. “I’m terrible at show titles,” she says. This year her show is called The Bumswing and is about memory.

“I wanted something that made me laugh, rather than something deep,” she says. “It’s all about a specific swing that I had when I was a child. It’s also about me being a child and

“People don’t even want to say the word ‘fat’. I’ve had people talk to me about the book for hours and never say the word.”

wanting to know everything, and how the brain is selective because it’s just trying to make us happy.”

Most of all, she wants to make a show that’s silly and that’s packed full of images and ideas that make her laugh.

She’s made shows about anxiety and about childhood abuse – but for Hagen the comedy is the most important thing. “Because I talk about anxiety, people sometimes say my shows are safe spaces, but they’re not. I don’t want people to think that. It’s comedy, and in comedy you can make mistakes.”

In Edinburgh she will also be doing a live version of her podcast Secret Dinosaur Cult, with drag king Jodie Mitchell. She loves the DIY nature of podcasting and also hosts Made of Human, which tackles mental health, politics and social activism.

“I love it because there’s no middleman. You don’t have to ask any other person to do anything.

I love meeting people who listen to the podcasts.”

Secret Dinosaur Cult listeners are given a special signal to use if they ever see Hagen in the street.

The pre-arranged response makes it look as if Hagen is being rude.

“I’m hoping someone will go on Twitter and say: ‘I’ve just seen Sofie Hagen screaming at someone in the street.’ That will make me laugh.”

WHERE & WHEN Sofie Hagen New York Times Main Theatre, 17 Aug 3.15pm, pay what you can edbookfest.co.uk Sofie Hagen: The Bumswing Pleasance Dome – Queendome, 31-July-25 August (not 12) 7pm, from £6, pleasance.co.uk

Shed the shame, not the pounds, says Danish comedian Sofie Hagen WORDS CLAIRE SMITH

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A TO Z EDFESTMAG.COM

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BUMPER BLYTON Lashings of innuendo make for a riotous Blyton tribute.

Underbelly, Bristo Square - Jersey, 5.05 pm, 2-25 Aug

A

ALGORITHMS A one-woman play about a bisexual Bridget Jones for the online generation.

Pleasance Courtyard - Baby Grand, 12:45 pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 13)

D

C

CAROLINE MABEY

A joyous cautionary tale about the dangers of following your dreams.

Laughing Horse @ 32 Below - Main Room, 3.50pm, 1-25 Aug (not 12)

DALISO JAPONDA Britain's Got Talent's Daliso levels his wit on disgraced celebs and bombings in Malawi.

Gilded Balloon Teviot - Wine Bar, 6.30pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 14)

R E T H G U A L D N A S L L I P S THRILLS,

I

IAN SMITH Multi award-winning comedian Ian Smith is thinking about half lives, from Chernobyl to love, and the dangers involved in each.

Underbelly, Bristo Square - Buttercup, 5.15 pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 12)

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JAY LAFFERTY

Breaking the News' Jay Lafferty is obsessed with luck and takes a satirical swipe at serendipity.

Gilded Balloon Teviot - Turret, 6.30pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 19)

K

KEVIN MCGAHERN

A familair face to Irish audiences from his comedy shows Republic of Telly and Hardy Bucks, McGahern offers the perfect mix of clever silliness.

Underbelly, Bristo Square - Clover 10.50pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 13)

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FOR ALL I CARE

National Theatre Wales tell a story of two women's complicated lives.

Summerhall - Main Hall, 1.30 pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 12, 19)

E

H G

HELEN DUFF

GLENN MOORE

As seen on Mock the Week, Glenn Moore returns with his blissfully silly brand of humour.

Pleasance Courtyard - Cabaret Bar, 4pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug

GEORGE EGG The anarchist cook stirs the pot and rustles up a tasty storm.

Assembly George Square Gardens – Piccolo. 4.30 pm, 1-25 Aug (not 12)

Master of subversive clowning Helen Duff is out to prove that she's the Tits.

Heroes @ the Spiegelyurt, 2.20pm 2-6 Aug

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LIMMY Cult comedy figure Limmy shares his life tips with a live audience.

The Stand’s New Town Theatre Grand Hall, times vary, 2-8, 16-18 Aug

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MAISIE ADAMS Amused Moose National New Comic 2018 winner Maise Adams is on a mission to work out who's to blame, and why.

Gilded Balloon Teviot - Billiard Room 3pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug

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NICK HELM Beloved star of Uncle and part-time rock god Nick Helm returns with his full-volume comedy.

Pleasance Dome - QueenDome, 5.40pm, 31 Jul–24 Aug (not 12)

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OCKHAM'S RAZOR Swinging high and low with a diverse cast of dancers aged 13 to 60.

Saint Stephens, 3pm, 1-25 Aug (not 6, 13, 20)

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Q

PAUL FOOT

AVENUE Q

Weird and wonderful comedy delivered with Foot's signiture off beat energy.

Underbelly, Cowgate - Belly Dancer 7. 10pm 1-25 Aug (not 13)

The adult puppet musical that has taken the world by storm.

Hill Street Theatre Alba Theatre, 9 pm, 2-25 Aug

L L I W T A H T S A E D I F O T E AN ALPHAB

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V

U

UN POYO ROJO Incredible athletic feats performed in a locker room by these awardwinning Argentinian dancers.

ZOO Southside - Main House, 5.10pm, 21-26 Aug

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WITCH HUNT

India's hottest comedy talent, Das is touring the globe and musing on love.

Gilded Balloon at the Museum Auditorium, 7.30 pm, 31 Jul–10 Aug

Winners of Guardian's Best Fringe Show 2018, A&E Comedy return with a surreal and darkly hilarious new show.

Pleasance Dome, JackDome, 5.30pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 13)

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EDFESTMAG.COM A TO Z

RACHEL FAIRBURN Enjoy some bittersweet comedy as Funny Women-finalist Rachel Fairburn declares herself the People's Princess.

Underbelly, Bristo Square - Dexter, 9.35pm, 31 Jul-25 Aug

SHOWSTOPPERS The Olivier Award-winning improv musical returns for it's 12th consecutive year.

Pleasance Courtyard - The Grand, times vary, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 13)

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S

TOM ROSENTHAL

The star of Friday Night Dinner and Plebs shares his quest to recover his foreskin.

Pleasance Courtyard, 6.30 pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 13)

M R O N E H T D N O Y E B U O Y TRANSPORT YURIKO KOTANI A shy and retiring type, Kotani negotiates the cultural tightrope in her debut hour.

Pleasance Courtyard - The Attic, 7pm, 31 Jul-26 Aug (not 12)

Y X KID X

Street dance and mind bending acrobatics meet the sensational vocals of Eva Lazarus, and incredible projections tell a dystopian love story.

Assembly Roxy - Central, 10 am, 20-25 Aug

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ZACH & VIGO

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Norwegian-American comedy clowning duo Zach & Viggo are back with an hour of inspired stupidity and anarchic energy.

Cowgate, 11.55pm, 9-23 Aug

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gorgeous a wisp of smoke.

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A SPEYSIDE SINGLE MALT BEAUTIFULLY BALANCED WITH

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VICTORIA HISLOP BOOKS

VICTORIA’S SECRET HISTORY Victoria Hislop’s latest novel set in Greece shows a side of the country’s recent past that you’ll never see in the tourist brochures WORDS CLAIRE SMITH

PHOTO BILL WATERS

S

ince she fell in love with Greece as a teenager, Victoria Hislop has had an enduring fascination with its history and its people. And ever since her 2005 debut novel The Island became a runaway bestseller, readers throughout the world have been sharing in her love affair with the country.

Her latest novel, Those Who Are Loved, delves into the dark and painful history of the Greek civil war of 1946-9, in which communist rebels took on government forces.

The story is told through the eyes of Themis Stravidis, who in her old age decides to tell her grandchildren the story of her life.

“I wanted to write about the civil war, but you can’t really do that without talking about what led up to it and what happened afterwards. The twentieth-century history of Greece isn’t so well known: people are a lot more familiar with ancient Greece than with its more recent history.”

Hislop begins by describing the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in the 1930s through the eyes of a child.

With one brother a communist and the other a fascist, Themis grows up in a family torn apart by ideological differences.

“The civil war really did divide families, so this is a way to see it through a microcosm,” she says.

During the turbulent period after the Nazi occupation of Greece, Themis becomes a fighter herself, and ends up on the notorious prison island of Makronisos.

Hislop relished creating a story from the point of view of a grandmother.

“A lot of people look at the elderly and just see faded, shrunken people with silver hair, but they represent extraordinary history.

“Themis has lived through times of deprivation so she doesn’t have a lot of possessions, but she has a world of experience to share – which is more valuable in many ways.”

Although she marries and has children, this is not really a love story.

“It’s a different kind of love really. There’s the love of mothers for children, grandmothers for grandchildren, different types of love between blood relatives and friends” Hislop, whose husband Ian is the editor of Private Eye, says writing about twentieth century European history inevitably brings parallels with what is happening in politics today. “Generally I just want things to run smoothly and don’t get too caught up in it – but it is hard not to right now.”

As someone who has been immersed in Mediterranean culture and history for most of her life, the UK’s decision to leave Europe took her by surprise.

“It has been such a shock since that day three years ago when the results came in. I was absolutely devastated by it.

“Since then it’s almost worse. At least at the time it was a decision made democratically. Now they are talking about leaving without a deal. There’s absolutely nothing good for me about Brexit.

“Europe was all about bringing peace and bringing people together, and has been such a good thing.”

While in Edinburgh for her Book Festival event, Hislop plans to see lots of comedy, as well as some music events at the Usher Hall.

“I’ve been to the Book Festival twice before and I’m really looking forward to going again. My son Will will be performing with the sketch group Giants, so I’ll be running across town to the Pleasance to see him. I don’t know if he’ll come to see me, but it’s lovely that we are both doing something in Edinburgh.

“I’ll go to see as much comedy as I can pack in. Ian will come up if the Private Eye schedule allows. In comedy we tend to like the same things.

“What is always so frustrating in Edinburgh is there’s so much going on. You have the choice of fifty things in any one hour.”

“The civil war really did divide families”

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WHERE & WHEN Victoria Hislop New York Times Main Theatre, 19 August, 3.15pm, from £12. edbookfest.co.uk

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THEATRE THE SECRET RIVER

THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND The stage version of The Secret River makes the guilt of Australia’s first colonists shockingly clear, as author Kate Grenville explains WORDS MARK FISHER PHOTOS HUGH HARTSHORNE/HEIDRUN LÖHR

“We were brought up with a sanitised version of Australian history”

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n 2013 it looked as though Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Secret River might never make it out of the rehearsal room. Their attempt to stage Kate Grenville’s Booker-shortlisted novel about Australia’s first convict colonists had been hard work. The novel tells the story of one man’s life from birth to old age, on two different continents, and initially it seemed too difficult to encompass on stage. The creative team was ready to give up on it, but Cate Blanchett, the theatre’s artistic director, kept her faith. She told them to go back and try again.

So when it came to version two they invited Grenville to watch a late rehearsal. She didn’t know what to expect.

“I’m getting quite emotional remembering it,” she says.

“I was in tears. It was just the most moving thing to see something I had set down from my own imagination that had triggered something quite different, but quite powerful from a different set of imaginations.”

Where many a novelist gets shirty about theatre productions taking liberties with their work, Grenville is delighted with playwright Andrew Bovell’s adaptation precisely because it has not tried to be faithful. Or at least, it is not faithful to the letter of the book, even if it is faithful to its spirit. “The fabulous thing about this play is it sidesteps all the pitfalls of the obvious, the stereotypical, and also the overly heart-onsleeve,” she says.

Gone are the novel’s Dickensian early scenes where we meet William Thornhill growing up in the slums of London and, catastrophically, supplementing his income as a boatman on the Thames with a spot of thieving. Gone too is much of the section about his arrival in the fledgling port of Sydney, where he arrives on a convict ship and is reunited with his wife Sal. Instead, Neil Armfield’s production cuts to the chase to depict the young family’s cultivation of a patch of inhospitable Australian land, unaware that the country’s original inhabitants already have a claim on it.

“I didn’t want to preach to the converted. I wanted to get the people who were fundamentally ignorant about our past, as I was when I started the book,” says Grenville, who took inspiration from her own ancestry.

“My generation was brought up with a sanitised version of Australian history in which it was terribly sad that the Aboriginal people had been decimated but it was mainly measles and a lack of resilience and it was nobody’s fault.

Now we know better. We’ve had to reinvent our history with a much darker cast.”

Where the novel is one man’s interior monologue, the play, which transfers to London’s National Theatre after its run at the Edinburgh International Festival, shows us everyone’s perspective – although only speakers of Dharug will understand what the Aboriginal actors are saying.

“One of the revolutionary things they have done is to make this a play about two families,” says Grenville. “There are equal numbers of white and Aboriginal actors. It’s an amazing moment in the theatre when you realise these people are speaking their own language and we in the audience are not understanding, just exactly the same way the first settlers didn’t understand. I couldn’t do that in the book, for a million reasons, but it’s what makes the play so powerful.”

Fascinated to know how the play will be received in the very country that colonised Australia in the first place, Grenville is overawed by the impact her story has when it takes on theatrical form. “One of the most moving things about the play is watching Aboriginal actors, for whom the story is a trauma in the past and present, and yet they’re prepared to take part in it,” she says. “I find that an act of incredible bravery and large-heartedness. They’re being asked to relive the most shocking trauma.”

Having seen it as many as ten times in Australia, she says the same thing happens at the end of every performance. “There’s a moment of absolute silence, when the audience is so affected that clapping just doesn’t seem appropriate.”

“There’s this terrible shocked silence at the end. I’ve seen many people in tears – including me”

WHERE & WHEN The Secret River, King’s Theatre, 2–11 August, £7.30, from £15 eif.co.uk www.edfestmag.com

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THEATRE THE SHARK IS BROKEN

JAWS WIDE OPEN Actor Ian Shaw sinks his teeth into the story surrounding one of his father’s most famous roles WORDS MARK FISHER

F

OR four-year-old Ian Shaw, it seemed normal. Like any kid, he was just visiting his dad at work. No big deal. But looking back, it was a very big deal indeed.

That’s because his dad was Robert Shaw, his dad’s workmates were Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss, his dad’s boss was Steven Spielberg and his dad’s place of work was Martha’s Vineyard on the set of Jaws. What felt to a small boy like a routine holiday to a Massachusetts island was Hollywood history in the making.

“I got to see the shark, which was a closely guarded secret,” says Shaw today. “I didn’t see the film at the time, but I did see it before my father died in 1978. I remember that very distinctly because I woke up in the middle of the night thinking there were sharks trying to get me.

I called out for my dad to save me. Obviously, he got eaten in the film, but that wasn’t the problem – I knew the film wasn’t real – but what it did do was give me a real terror of sharks.”

In Spielberg’s blockbuster, Shaw’s father plays Quint, the irascible old sea-dog. A hard-drinking outsider, he’s a man any sane person would leave alone – if he weren’t the best hope of ridding the ocean of a bloodthirsty shark. Against their better judgement, Scheider’s landlubbing police chief and Dreyfuss’s geeky aquatic expert climb aboard. Only by setting aside their differences will they have any chance of

defeating their ferocious enemy.

“I wasn’t aware of the real-life tensions between the actors until after my dad died and I read Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log,” says Shaw.

“It was antagonistic between Dreyfuss and my dad. Nobody is quite sure how serious that was; there’s conjecture about whether my dad was winding him up in order to get a better performance out of him. Dreyfuss was brash, neurotic and egotistical and my dad was very egotistical. A lot of good things happen in the film as a result of the people they cast.”

Shaw became an actor himself – taking pride in not exploiting his family connections to get a leg up – and built an extensive catalogue of stage roles, including War Horse at the National Theatre, as well as appearances in EastEnders, Watership Down and on film. It was only when he looked in the mirror and saw how like his father he had become, especially having grown a moustache, that he wondered whether he could play him. “When you’re a kid, you don’t know what they are – they’re just your dad,” he says. “To me, it was perfectly normal to be going round visiting film sets, staying in different countries. When he died I was devastated. From an early age I decided I wanted to be an actor, but not to compete with him in anyway.”

“I got to see the shark, which was a closely guarded secret”

Going from noticing a family resemblance to portraying his dad on stage was a big leap, however. “I became completely terrified that it was not only going to offend my family but look exploitative because all of a sudden I’m playing my father.” Chatting to friends, including his co-writer, Joseph Nixon, he convinced himself the idea was too good to sit on. The result is The Shark Is Broken, a true-life drama that gives the inside gen on this classic three-men-in-a-boat tale as Shaw, Dreyfuss and Scheider kill time waiting for the mechanical shark to be fixed.

“We’re trying to fill in the blanks,” he says, having drawn on his father’s diaries, interviews and letters. “I thought I’d finished grieving many years ago, but in the research I was able to feel I’d completed an emotional journey. I think we’ve got something that’s funny, moving and truthful.”

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Ian on set facing up to his fears

The Shark Is Broken, Assembly George Square Studios, 2–25 August (alternate days), 11am, £13–£15 (£11–£13) assemblyfestival.com

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COMEDY JAYDE ADAMS

WORKING CLASS HERO Don’t be fooled by the title of her show. BBC Eurovision podcaster and stand-up Jayde Adams is as comfortable talking about body positivity and class struggle as she is about Kylie Jenner WORDS KATE COPSTICK PHOTO SUZIE LARKE

So how was Eurovision? Channelling your inner Graham Norton? Did you feel his presence ?

Eurovision was iconic! It’s all anyone talks to me about nowadays – so many people are totally obsessed with Eurovision and Graham is an absolute dream! Scott and I got to interview him on the podcast and I’ve got to say, it was one of my 2019 highlights. I really hope my presence on Eurovision this year is the start of something special. I’m absolutely besotted with it now.

Once you’re hooked ... well let’s just say I’ve already blocked out mid-May. You have had pretty much year-on-year success with your shows so far. Does that make it easier or harder to come back?

It’s massively stressful, but I remind myself when I’m up here that I’ve been through way worse in my life so I just get on with it. I really enjoy the challenge of the Fringe. Trying to figure it all out and staying true to yourself is part of the fun. I set myself little challenges every year because I don’t want to get stuck doing the same stuff. Obviously stepping outside of your comfort zone brings on stress but I really thrive in those circumstances.

Everyone will know you ‘off the telly’ from the Sun Bingo ads. Where do you stand on the debate about it being unacceptable to market online bingo so directly to working class women – and sending them up in the process?

Who am I sending up? It’s me! There’s no parody.

I’m not going to lie, the money was great but you’ve got to remember I’m working class myself.

I’ve worked my ass off since I was 16. Waitressed until I was 31 years old, worked in Asda, ran pubs, restaurants, at one point I had three jobs and slept 5 hours a night. Did 18-hour shifts when 88

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I was manager, ran a kiosk cafe that opened at 7am in the middle of Islington, worked in call centres, did anything I could so I could carry on doing stand-up up and down the country in working men’s clubs and pubs until someone in the TV industry thought I was good enough to pay. I’m not related to anyone famous and I’ve got an accent. It’s taken a lot of hard graft to get where I’ve gotten to. There’s a huge class divide in this country and I don’t think I’m the person to start any fights with over it.

Will there be big songs and big frocks this year?

This year I want the industry to see how good of a stand-up I am. Female voices like mine don’t often end up in writers’ rooms and I’ve written four successful Fringe shows and won

Leaving sequins behind for thoughtful black turtlenecks

numerous awards for comedy shows I’ve written, including being nominated for Best Newcomer during Fringe 2016. I think all the pizzazz has slightly overshadowed that sometimes, so I’ve stripped it back. No whistles, no bells. Just me and a microphone – we’ve even done away with my sequins. I used to be the only curvy girl wearing all-in-ones but everyone’s doing it now.

It’s not so much of a statement anymore.

But a funny, working-class girl in a black turtleneck, highlighting the bigger issues at the biggest arts festival in the world? No one’s doing that.

Do you feel happier having a Spirit Diva onstage with you? Adele, Bette Midler, Kylie Jenner, Graham Norton..?

Ah yes, well, I did the Adele and Bette Midler shows but I wouldn’t be fooled by my title this year. The show isn’t a celebration of anything Kardashian. If anything it’s a reaction to it.

Gorgeous TV actress Jameela Jamil has recently taken a loud stance against airbrushing and the Kardashians, which I think is great and easy to do when you don’t need airbrushing, but I think it would be a lot more inspiring coming from someone normal looking. Us fat girls can fight our own battles, we’re pretty tough. I’m not a victim in any way, shape or form. Sorry Jameela.

You’re really flexing your acting muscles – do you think a life with David Tennant could take you away from comedy ?

I’ll always have comedy until I die. Acting is a great passion of mine but more of a bonus in this career. I don’t know how actors sit around waiting for the phone to ring, I’d go mad. I’m not sitting around. Live performance is the best drug in the world and I’ll always need it, no matter how many feature films me and Meryl are doing. www.edfestmag.com

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JAYDE ADAMS COMEDY

“Us fat girls can fight our own battles. I’m not a victim in any way, shape or form”

WHERE & WHEN Jayde Adams: The Ballad of Kylie Jenner’s Old Face Pleasance Courtyard 31 July-25 August 9.30pm, from £8 pleasance.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

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BALLET BOYZ DANCE

s choreography up to Balletboyz’s new work leave perhaps – but it works the dancers. A leap of faith

DIY G N I C N A D TO GEORGE PIPER WORDS KELLY APTER PHO

B

s odies fly over metal bars, limb welcome stretch and torsos ripple – ale dance to the BalletBoyz, an all-m finesse and er pow ng taki y pan com d in sse dre y’re to the next level. Whether the ets or jack and ts shir rt sma colourful tracksuits, cut a dash cers dan six the d, este e-ch simply bar and ability to convey with their technical polish ility in a single erab vuln both strength and . ent movem many cooks spoil And although they say too letBoyz the Bal the of e cas the broth, in the th’ in question is ‘bro The . true ved pro rse reve y’s Fringe doubleThem, one half of the compan by the dancers irely ent ted crea k bill, and a wor bold, virtually this themselves. What prompted

unheard-of move? rested in the “The dancers were really inte , William ctor dire idea,” explains co-artistic they are tive crea how n see d Trevitt, “and we’ aborative coll ly a real when they’re working with t den fi con felt ays alw choreographer. We could rely on y the t tha rs phe gra reo telling cho have so many ideas the dancers, because they So we just thought ute. trib con and are eager to and see what let’s take that a step further happens.”

Them met The leap of faith paid off, and lause app us with rave reviews and rapturo around Set r. yea this lier when it premiered ear k moves wor the e, fram al met oid a large, cub ute to seemingly from balletic grace one min t, never allowing nex the ics effortless acrobat the pace to drop.

Them, the “When they were creating

n to each other dancers were all willing to liste er’s ideas,” says oth h and were very open to eac , was a really with up ed end we t Trevitt. “So wha dually, gra n . The broad palette of movement closer to was it t tha so er that was drawn togeth e.” voic being one t Trevitt and It comes as no surprise tha n have fostered Nun l hae Mic , co-artistic director their dancers – the such a spirit of teamwork in t way from the tha duo have been operating Ballet School as al Roy the at met start. Having ced together for teenagers, the two men dan re seeking new befo let Bal 12 years in the Royal g to the UK to rnin retu n the an, Jap in challenges ce company. dan ary start their own contempor y both the n whe r, eve how Since 2009, itt and Nunn Trev es, sho cing dan ir the hung up finest male have been cherry-picking the those early And nd. fi can y the dance talent dy when it han ved connections have also pro istopher Chr with ing, comes to commission al Ballet with Roy the at ced dan who Wheeldon, ly 1990s, providing Trevitt and Nunn in the ear .

Us m/ The of the second half on and athletic unis t tigh of k wor ning A stun ch smaller mu a as life partnering, Us started duet for our rt sho a as Us ted crea piece. “Chris really liked we d “An last show,” explains Trevitt. ience in aud the d ppe dro it, but felt like he had know how to ted wan We y. stor a of the middle t, what led up to it? the dancers got to that poin to create – and him ed ask So that’s what we ing with it, rest inte ly real ing eth som he did cers.” dan six for k developing it into a wor

“The dancers have so many ideas and are eager to contribute, so we took that a step further to see what would happen”

WHERE & WHEN BalletBoyz: Them/Us Underbelly, Bristo Square, 31 Jul-15 Aug, 1pm. From £11.50 underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

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COMEDY ONES TO WATCH

SOPHIE DUKER

DAN SODER

The Background Bit: Strap yourselves in for a full-fat woke debut hour from the woman whose favourite hobbies are breaking hearts and telling jokes in the style of a straight, middle-class white man.

The Show Bit: Silly, sexy and savage stand-up as Sophie discusses, sex, race and her hatred of Yorkshire puddings.

The Extra Bit: A recent Twitter exchange with her religious aunt went viral. Her aunt told her that someone was madly in love with her. Sophie was gutted to discover that she was talking about Jesus.

Sophie Duker: Venus, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–25 Aug (not 14), 7pm

The Background Bit: The New York-based comedian and actor’s unpretentious, laid-back style may make him feel like a familiar face.

Then again, he could be a familiar face as he stars in the hit series Billions and is a regular on Conan.

The Show Bit: Dan’s having a mid-millennial meltdown and asking the important questions, like,"Are police dogs on your side?" and "What is it with screaming babies on planes?"

The Extra Bit: He and best friend Michelle Wolf bonded whilst doing an improv imagining Kayne West trouserless.

Dan Soder: Son Of Gary, Underbelly – Bristo Square, 31 July–26 Aug (not 12) 7.15 pm

FRESH CUTS Take a chance on a brand new stand-up and find your new fave before they're selling out the Grand, says Gayle Anderson

ESTHER MANITO The Background Bit: After the birth of her second child, So You Think You’re Funny finalist Esther felt like a blob who’d lost all her banter. She did the sensible thing and enrolled at the Camden Comedy School.

The Show Bit: A whirlwind observational tour of what it’s like to be an Anglo-Arab mum with anger issues. From tackling online trolls to ‘Terrorist Awareness Training’ at work - this is her personal crusade.

The Extra Bit: Esther was the first female comedian to perform at the Dubai Opera House.

Esther Manito: Crusade, Gilded Balloon – Teviot, 31 July–25 Aug (not 12), 4pm

JACK GLEADOW The Background Bit: Demonstrating the best use of comedic braces this side of Bobby Ball, this surreal stand up is the winner of Amused Moose National New Comic and Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year.

The Show Bit: Gleadow tips his flat cap to his Saturday night comedy heroes Bruce Forsyth and Norman Wisdom in this unique, one-man/one-scooter variety show.

The Extra Bit: Jack started his showbiz career as a magician but was kicked out of the Magic Circle at the tender age of 14.

Jack Gleadow: Mr Saturday Night, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–25 Aug (not 12), 5.45pm

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ONES TO WATCH COMEDY

JANINE HAROUNI The Background Bit The London-based New Yorker is a Laughing Horse New Comedian Of The Year winner and one third of the award-winning sketch trio, Muriel. She has a mightily-impressive joke-per-minute ratio.

The Show Bit Standing up for what you believe in - even if you have to do it nicely while passing the salt to your Trumpsupporting father at Sunday lunch.

The Extra Bit LAMDA-trained Janine starred alongside Keira Knightley in Colette.

Janine Harouni: Stand Up With Janine Harouni (Please Remain Seated), Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July 31–25 Aug (not 13) 5.45pm

SUSAN RIDDELL The Background Bit: Best Scottish Newcomer nominee and Funny Women runner-up, Susan has written for and appeared in BBC Short Stuff online sketches that have attracted almost three million views.

The Show Bit: Get ready for some pillow talk par excellence.

In an increasingly frenetic world, Susan gives a shout out to all slackers in this sharp, observational set that champions laziness.

The Extra Bit: Susan says she aspires to be the Scottish Tina Fey - really rich and respected but still under the radar.

Susan Riddell: Duvet Day, Monkey Barrel Comedy, 2-25 Aug (not 12). 7.15pm

MICHAEL ODEWALE The Background Bit: Clever without being cocky, smooth without being too slick, Michael is winner of the Best New Show at this year’s Leicester Comedy Festival.

The Show Bit: Michael’s selfish and apathetic. He’d love to figure out what matters in life, but can he actually be bothered? This show comes with added politics and pigeons.

The Extra Bit: At school, Michael formed his own band called Three Piece. He was the main writer/ choreographer but eventually got kicked out because he couldn’t sing.

Michael Odewale: Black Bears Matter, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–25 Aug (not 12) 5.30pm

CHRISTOPHER KC The Background Bit: Twice-nominated Scottish Comedy Awards Best Newcomer, Christopher KC definitely wins the vote for best show title. He delivers plenty more puns and razor-sharp punchlines in this debut hour.

The Show Bit: Christopher offers insight into the racism and stereotyping he faces as an East Asian living in a Western world. Oh, and apparently he can’t see soup.

The Extra Bit: The KC stands for his Chinese forename, Ka Chun.

Christopher KC: Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Rice, Gilded Balloon at The Old Tolbooth, 31 July–25 Aug (not 12), 4.15pm

BRODI SNOOK The Background Bit: She may look like butter wouldn’t melt, but this British-based Aussie and former So You Think You’re Funny finalist could nuke Kerrygold at 10 paces. Frank, forthright and drier than a dead dingo’s donga.

The Show Bit: Brodi takes a swipe (right) at the clichéd, vapid world of online dating, especially the cocky 23-year-old who told her that she was a‘bit of a handful’. May God have mercy on his manbun.

The Extra Bit: Brodi once sold pictures of her toes to foot fetishists.

Brodi Snook: Handful, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 31 July–26 Aug (not 13), 8.15pm

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ONES TO WATCH COMEDY

ANNA DREZEN The Background Bit: Emmy-nominated ‘Saturday Night Live’ writer and one of the ‘50 funniest people in Brooklyn’ (Brooklyn Magazine) takes a satirical sideways look at life. This is where droll and New York drawl collide.

The Show Bit: Drezen turns her withering gaze on a proper pick ‘n’ mix of subjects including true crime, the dark side of reality TV and very powerful ghosts.

The Extra Bit: Anna turned her experience of working as a Manhattan hotel concierge into the best-selling book, ‘How May We Hate You?’ Anna Drezen: Okay Get Home Safe, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–25 Aug (not 14) 4.30pm

STUART MCPHERSON

LIAM MALONE The Background Bit New Zealander Liam is a double-Paralympic Gold medal-winning sprinter who’s hung up his blades to pursue a career in comedy.

The Show Bit Deliciously dark and brutally honest, Liam describes his incredible personal journey; from scraping by on social welfare to becoming a world champion and having a fancy day job in artificial intelligence.

The Extra Bit Liam used crowd-funding to pay for his first set of blades.

Liam Malone: No Limbits, Gilded Balloon at the Old Tolbooth Market, 31 July 31–25 Aug (not 13), 7.45pm

The Background Bit: Expect dry, ascerbic humour and carefullycrafted stories from the Scottish Comedian of the Year finalist and Scot Squad regular.

The Show Bit: This is a show about Generation Rent. How does it feel to be scraping by in a series of dodgy jobs and even dodgier rented flats in your mid-twenties? Not sure? Don’t worry – Stuart’s here to fill you in.

The Extra Bit: Stuart’s dream is to play New York’s famous Comedy Cellar but only with people from his home county of Fife in the audience.

Stuart McPherson: Mr November, Monkey Barrel, 1-24 Aug (not 13), 1.55pm

DAISY EARL The Background Bit: The Anglo-Scot has a great ear for accents, a brilliant line in self-deprecation and a no mercy policy towards smug Instagramers and chuggers. Daisy was the first woman to pick up the Scottish Comedian of the Year back in 2015.

The Show Bit: On her 30th birthday, Daisy gave herself a life MOT and decided she was a write-off.

This is the story of her attempts to sort herself out.

The Extra Bit: Daisy can’t stand the sound of someone cracking their knuckles and would make it illegal if she could.

Daisy Earl: Fairy Elephant, Gilded Balloon, 31 July 31–26 Aug (not 12) 4pm

JAMES MCNICHOLAS The Background Bit: James is one of the stars of BBC’s ‘Horrible Histories'. He’s also ‘that one in the glasses’ in critically-acclaimed sketch trio, BEASTS. The Show Bit: This is a story about boxing by someone who has never boxed, but who can bob and weave stories with the best of them.

The Extra Bit: When James was in Gibraltar as a baby, a monkey climbed into the family car through the sun roof and his mum ran away leaving him trapped in the car with it.

James McNicholas: The Boxer, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–25 Aug (not 14), 4.15pm

HELEN BAUER The Background Bit: It’s Helen Bauer’s debut hour – and she’s scarily happy that this rhymes. Londoner Helen honed her comedy skills in Berlin, performing to English speakers and confused locals.

The Show Bit: When she’s not composing a mental top ten of her favourite reality TV shows, Helen’s dreaming of being a more chilled, sweet individual. Can she carry it off? On this anecdotal evidence, probably not.

The Extra Bit: At her first-ever gig, Helen ran out of things to say, so played Cher’s ‘Believe’ to the audience on her mobile.

Helen Bauer: Little Miss Baby Angel Face, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–25 Aug (not 14), 6pm www.edfestmag.com

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COMEDY SARAH KEYWORTH

CRYING WITH LAUGHTER Award-winning newcomer Sarah Keyworth says she’s slowly turning into her dad. But does that mean she can still have a good cry?

WORDS GAYLE ANDERSON PHOTO IDIL SUKAN

S

arah Keyworth has a strong suit game.

I’d admired the Nottingham-born comic’s sharp two-piece at last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards where she was a Best Newcomer nominee. The promo pictures for this year’s show, Pacific, feature her in a Saturday Night Fever-style cream number with extra-wide funky flares. Who the hell is this woman’s tailor?

“Ha, ha! Well, we’re not talking Savile Row. I’m so tiny that I usually shop in the boy’s departments of Next and John Lewis.

The cream suit is a bit special though. It’s my dad’s, the one he wore on his wedding day over 40 years ago. How skinny must he have been?”

Francis Keyworth features prominently in Sarah’s second hour. Mainly because she’s come to the conclusion that she’s turning into him.

“There’s always that thing where women reach a certain age and think they’re turning into their mother, but I’m definitely turning into my dad.

The best way I can describe him is that he’s quite daft. He just does silly things and is very, very funny as well as being kind and gentle. I find myself unintentionally mimicking his behaviour as I get older. Shuffling round the house, covered in beans.

And I’ve suddenly got very interested in torches.

That feels like such a Dad thing. I like to have a torch wherever I go and I’ve no idea why.

Also, I hear the way my mum speaks to my dad and weirdly it’s echoes of conversations I’ve recently had with my girlfriend. Especially about getting rid of the bean stains.”

Her girlfriend is fellow stand-up and rising star, Catharine Bohart.

How unfunny is it trying to write two new Fringe shows in the same house?

“It has its moments. There are definitely times when we’re wandering around talking to ourselves and blatantly ignoring each other until we’ve got some material we want feedback on.

We’ve got quite different styles, though, so we don’t step on each other’s toes too much and there’s very little joke-nicking.”

Is jealousy ever an issue?

“Jealousy seems like a strong word, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times when there’s a little bit of envy about a gig or TV show the other’s booked. It’s all about honesty, though. About being able to say, ‘I’m really pleased for you but a little disappointed for myself.’ The minute I found out that I was nominated for Best Newcomer last year but Catherine wasn’t, I went to the bathroom for a good cry. I was so disappointed for her. I subsequently found out that she was somewhere across Edinburgh crying happy tears for me! I think that sums up what we’re about, really.”

The ability to have a good sob is something that features in this year’s set as Sarah explores masculinity and in particular her own relationship with masculinity.

“Essentially, I’m a small woman trying to learn how to be a modern man. It isn’t easy.

There was a whole load of soldiers at one of my previews. I wondered how they’d like the show but it turns out they loved it.

They identified with the stuff I was saying about not being able to be emotional and resenting parts of yourself. I’m doing this show for the army!”

She’s picked up other awards too, a Chortle Best Newcomer and a Herald Angel. Has it ramped up the pressure?

“Not really. You experience a lot of knockbacks being a comedian, so it’s felt great to have some nods from the industry.

Acknowledgements that I’m doing the right thing. It’s been a bit of a lovely year all round, and I’m super-excited about this new show.”

“I’m suddenly very interested in torches.

That feels like such a Dad thing. I’ve got to have a torch wherever I go”

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WHERE & WHEN Sarah Keyworth: Pacific Pleasance Courtyard – Baby Grand, 31 July-25 August (not 13) 5.45pm. From £7 pleasance.co.uk

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CABARET & DRAG ALFIE ORDINARY Help I Think I Might Be Fabulous Alfie is a drag prince extraordinaire who regularly opens for the Ru Paul’s Drag Race girls. He welcomes us to Madame LeCoq’s Preparatory School for Fabulous Boys – with a little help from his good friends Whitney Houston and Bette Midler (in puppet form). He aims to set free the fabulous, sequined genie in every one of us – and help us celebrate who we really are.

WHERE & WHEN: Gilded Balloon – Roxy Theatre, 31 Jul–26 Aug. 6pm, £9 gildedballoon.co.uk

GINGER JOHNSON’S HAPPY PLACE Legendary Sink The Pink host Ginger's Fringe debut is partcabaret confessional, part-Sesame Street special, as she sticks two fingers up to sadness with her twisted comedy act.

WHERE & WHEN: Pleasance Dome – 10 Dome. 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 12, 19). 9.40pm. £12 pleasance.co.uk

D N O M DIA DIVAS ns drag and Festival cabaret quee case of talent drop a sparkling show l into this year's festiva WORDS ANNA RIESER

LITTLE DEATH CLUB Bernie Dieter heads up the darkest, funniest and most debauched cabaret club this side of the Weimar Republic.

A smash hit at last year’s festival, join the punk-jazz band, miscreants and fantastic freaks for an unmissable night at the Circus Hub. There are no rules, and no seat is safe in this dark and defiant den of iniquity.

WHERE & WHEN: Underbelly's Circus Hub on the Meadows – The Beauty, 3-24 Aug(not 12). 8pm. £16 underbellyedinburgh.co.uk 98

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PIÑATA

S L L I FR

Piñata makes its debut at the Fringe, bringing you a late night arty party stuffed with goodies. A South London staple, this alternative comedy variety party showcases Fringe favourites, new talents and, of course, the gutting of a large object until treats come out.

WHERE & WHEN: Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose – Doonstairs, 24th Aug, 11.15pm. £10 gildedballoon.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 10:08

CABARET & DRAG CRYSTAL RASMUSSEN PRESENTS The Bible 2 (Plus a Cure for Shame, Violence, Betrayal and Athlete’s Foot) Live!

Author of Man Booker Prize-winning book Diary of a Drag Queen, Crystal Rasmussen returns to Edinburgh for her first solo show. Through song, dance and writhing in a children’s swimming pool, she explores the daunting task of getting from A to She. WHERE & WHEN: Underbelly Cowgate Belly Dancer. 1-25 Aug (not 12). 5.50pm. £11.50 underbellyedinburgh

POLLYANNA The sweatiest, messiest, queerest, most outrageous party, Pollyanna is celebrating its fifth birthday and graduating from its home at Paradise Palms to the Gilded Balloon for two nights only. Expect the most notorious faces of the Fringe and be sure to get there early.

WHERE & WHEN: Paradise Palms. Every Sunday from 8pm. Free theparadisepalms.com

JUST DESSERTS

LOLLY JONES

Winner of Best Cabaret at this year's Adelaide Fringe, this musical cabaret explores empowerment, obsession with perfection and desire. Performances include dessert!

WHERE & WHEN: Underbelly Cowgate – Belly Button, 1-4, 7-11 Aug, 10.40pm. £15.50 underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

Burlesque performer and Funny Woman finalist Lolly Jones offers up political satire with a cabaret twist.

Last year’s Fifty Shades of May saw a disturbing yet captivating Theresa strip tease, this year she takes on Marine Le Pen, Nicola Sturgeon, and Angela Merkel in lip sync battles and nipple tasselled power struggles.

You have been warned!

WHERE & WHEN:

Assembly Roxy- Downstairs 31 Jul–25 Aug (not 14), 8pm, from £6, assembly festival.com

FRISKY AND MANNISH POPLAB Fringe sell-outs for a decade, the Professors of Pop, Frisky & Mannish, are qualified to scientifically analyse the molecular intersections within every pop song. Join them for some outlandish dissections.

WHERE & WHEN: Assembly George Square Gardens - Palais du Variete. 1-25 Aug(not 12, 19), 7pm. £16 assemblyfestival.com www.edfestmag.com

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MUSIC TEENAGE FANCLUB

RIFF IT UP AND START AGAIN Teenage Fanclub finish off their world tour at the EIF with a new member, new material and some old favourites WORDS FIONA SHEPHERD

A

fter 30 years as one of Scotland’s most creatively consistent and cherished bands, Teenage Fanclub are appearing at the Edinburgh International Festival with a new line-up and some classic songs that haven’t been on their playlist for some time.

The impetus for the change came about when founder member and bass player Gerry Love left the band last year, leading to the introduction of Euros Childs of the band Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci on keyboards and vocals.

WHERE & “Although we’ve WHEN always got on as Teenage Fanclub, friends, we’ve never Leith Theatre, been a band that’s 16 August, 7pm, been a gang. It has £30 eif.co.uk always been the

music first, and we got together based on that,” says singer/guitarist Raymond McGinley pragmatically.

Since forming in Bellshill in the late 1980s, Teenage Fanclub had always been a group of three accomplished singer/ songwriters, with the spoils divided equally across each album. For the time being at least, there will be no Gerry Love songs in the set, but the bittersweet prospect of no live versions of Fanclub favourites such as ‘Sparky’s Dream’, ‘Ain’t That Enough’ and ‘Radio’ is leavened by the resurrection of some deep cuts from the catalogue that have fallen off the edge of their set over the years.

“To me there’s songs that people really like and know, but we haven’t really played that regularly, like ‘Alcoholiday’ from Bandwagonesque. I think we’re still at the start of digging into things we should be playing,” McGinley says.

The band is also working on new material, drawing inspiration from each member of the new line-up. “Sometimes people have an idea in their head about ‘This is the kind of record I want to make’,” says McGinley, “but there can never be that singular vision with us, because the band is only worthwhile if you let people give something of themselves.

Whenever there is someone different in the room it changes the dynamic within the group, and any change is stimulating.”

The first fruit of that initial recording session is a new song by McGinley, the non-prophetic ‘Everything Is Falling Apart’, which will be aired when the band play at the International Festival. Their Leith Theatre show is the final date of their current world tour – after that, the group will head back into the studio.

“As a band we’ve never really worked to any predetermined plan, we just get together and do it as we go along. That’s the way it’s always been. I don’t think that’s really going to change much.”

“The band is only worthwhile if you let people give something of themselves”

From left to right: Raymond McGinley, Norman Blake, Dave McGowan, Euros Childs and Francis Macdonald

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04/07/2019 16:38

TWO NEW MUSICALS ACROSS TWO UNCERTAIN WORLDS

LIMBO THE TWELVE

By Jonathan Bauerfeld & Casey Kendall Directed by Ryan Cunningham EVEN DAYS (NOT 12)

CITY OF DREAMS

By Finn Anderson Directed by Tania Azevedo ODD DAYS (NOT 19)

Music and Lyrics

by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin Book by Heather Hach Based on the novel by Amanda Brown and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture

10:00 / 2 - 24 AUG (NOT 12,19) ASSEMBLY ROOMS

15:00 / 1- 24 AUG 2019 (60 MINS) GILDED BALLOON

rcsedfest.co.uk

rcsedfest.co.uk

@rcs_mt

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rcsofficial

@rcs_mt

rcsofficial 03/07/2019 09:55

MUSIC CHVRCHES

LIKE A PRAYER

Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry on the importance of live music and why she thinks women should be front and centre at festivals WORDS FIONA SHEPHERD PHOTO JOOST VANDEBRUG

G

laswegian electro pop trio Chvrches may have started life as a studio project, quickly creating an international splash when they released their first tracks online in 2012, but they have developed into a lean, mean touring machine over the ensuing years.

“We’ve gone around in the van and done the whole bit,” understates singer Lauren Mayberry.

“When we first started, we were lucky enough that people knew about the band from the internet, but we didn’t have any kind of budget to put on a big live show so it was the three of us, the computer, and some spotlights.”

Synth players Iain Cook and Martin Docherty are the other points in the Chvrches triangle but Mayberry is the focus, developing from the timid, static stage presence of their early days into an energetic, empathetic frontwoman who can see her teenage self in the kids who populate the front rows of the band’s many concerts.

“Live music is one of the few places where people come together in public anymore,” she says. “You can celebrate with other people and forget about all the bullshit in your life for ninety minutes. Most other forms of entertainment can be really solitary, but you can’t really recreate the feeling of watching live music with any other kind of technology, so it’s always been important to us to make sure it’s a live show and a live band, not just a glorified playback party.”

Now Chvrches have created such an impressive fusion of booming, melodic synth pop and retina-scorching lightshow that they are one

of only a handful of bands with female members who are currently deemed bankable enough to top the bill at a mainstream music festival.

For Mayberry, one of the most articulate activists in pop music, this is not an acceptable state of affairs from an industry which often does not celebrate – or even cultivate – its own diversity. She is one of a number of leading female musicians who have backed initiatives such as Keychange, which asks festival organisers to sign a pledge to achieve gender-balanced bills by 2022.

“Signing up for something like that holds people accountable in a different way,” she says.

“Live music is one of the few places where people come together anymore. You can forget about the bullshit for ninety minutes” “Generally I do feel that people giving up money and privilege and making small concessions is what’s going to make a difference in the long run. It shouldn’t just be the same artists who are disadvantaged – and I don’t include us in that because we’ve been very lucky.”

Mayberry is a veteran of concerts in Princes Street Gardens, though Mayberry is hoping for a contrasting experience when Chvrches headline Edinburgh Summer Sessions six years after performing at the city’s Hogmanay celebrations.

“That show was amazing but it was freezing, so it will be nice to come back at a different time of year,” she says.

WHERE & WHEN Chvrches, Edinburgh Summer Sessions at Princes Street Gardens, 11 August, 6pm From £38.50. usherhall.co.uk

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www.edfestmag.com

03/07/2019 19:10

CIRCUS

CIRQUE BERSERK! Roll up, roll up! Following its sellout Fringe debut in 2018, Cirque Beserk returns with a jaw-dropping spectacular created especially for the theatre with more than 30 acrobats, aerialists, dancers and drummers.

It also features the legendary motorcycle Globe of Death stuntman, who would put Evel Knievel to shame.

WHERE & WHEN

RING MASTERS Pleasance at EICC, 2-20, 22-25 Aug, times vary, from £12 pleasance.co.uk

BLIZZARD BY FLIP FABRIQUE Flip Fabrique bring us the premiere of Blizzard all the way from Quebec.

Get carried away on a poetic journey through a wintery landscape, with some of the finest performers working today.

WHERE & WHEN Assembly Main Hall, 1-26 Aug, 4.45pm from £12 assemblyroomsedinburgh.co.uk

International circus stars demonstrate their superpowers at the Fringe, with feats of endurance not for the faint-hearted WORDS ANNA RIESER

BLACK BLUES BROTHERS Combining the classic tunes of The Blues Brothers with the virtuosity of five Kenyan acrobats, this is a daring tribute to the cult comedy classic. Energetic and fun, fusing the vibrancy of Africa with a rhythm and blues sound, this is the perfect circus for all the family.

WHERE & WHEN Assembly Rooms – Music Hall, 1-25 Aug, 4.30pm from £10 assemblyroomsedinburgh.co.uk

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www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 12:03

CIRCUS KOMBINI Montreal’s masters of clowning Les Foutoukours bring us their premiere show. Follow the hilarious emotional and acrobatic journey of two clowns trying to find their big break in international showbiz. Expect plenty of traditional clowning as well as emotional depth as we follow their story and mop up the odd tear.

WHERE & WHEN Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows – The Beauty, 2pm, 3-24 Aug (not 13, 20), from £15, underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

HOTEL PARADISO A run-down hotel becomes a physical playground as a multinational cast of six acrobats, clowns and jugglers battle to save their home and livelihood. Heart-stopping aerial skills, stunning floor acrobatics, laugh-outloud clowning and physical comedy combine to deliver thrills, action and a fun-filled family show.

WHERE & WHEN Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows – The Beauty, 12:10 pm, 13-24 Aug (not 19), from £14.50, underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

BROMANCE BY BARELY METHODICAL After huge success with KIN and Shift, Barely Methodical circus troupe return with Bromance. The show explores friendship through handshakes that become handstands, and backslaps that become backflips. This look at male companionship is audacious, touching, showstopping and exhilarating.

WHERE & WHEN Assembly Rooms – Music Hall, 1-25 Aug (not 7, 12, 19), 3pm from £10 assemblyroomsedinburgh.co.uk

KNOT Touching exploration of a modern affair told through breathtaking acrobatics and dance.

Physically exhilarating and poignant, Knot, from internationally acclaimed circus and dance team Nikki & JD, dwells on love and the cost of being honest.

WHERE & WHEN Assembly Roxy – Upstairs, 1-25 Aug (not 6, 13, 20), 2.45pm, from £10 assemblyfestivals.com

ROUGE This is late-night circus for grown- ups, combining acrobatics, opera, cabaret and burlesque. The award-winning circus company deliver a decadent treat; filthy, gorgeous and guaranteed to make you blush.

WHERE & WHEN Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows – The Beauty, times vary, 3-24 Aug (not 7, 14, 21), from £15.50 underbellyedinburgh.co.uk www.edfestmag.com

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VISIT THE HELIX

HOME OF THE KELPIES

Visit the world’s largest equine sculptures just 30mins from Edinburgh

www.thehelix.co.uk

@Helixfalkirk

@TheHelix

@HelixFalkirk

Helix Park, Falkirk, FK2 7ZT 01324 590 600

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03/07/2019 09:57

SURPRISE SURPRISE!

TIM VINE

HOW DO I KNOW HIM? The King of puns, he’s never off the airwaves, starring in Not Going Out and The Tim Vine Chat Show.

WHAT’S NEW? Transforming into The King himself. For one night only, Vine will be Plastic Elvis! His crooning is not to be missed.

WHEN & WHERE

SHLOMO HOW DO I KNOW HIM? Beatboxer extraordinaire, he played at Glastonbury this year and has collaborated with Ed Sheeran.

WHAT’S NEW? He’s created a kids show where your wee ones can get their groove on and join in with the beatbox fun.

Tim Vine Presents: Plastic Elvis Live in Concert, Underbelly Circus Hub, 7 Aug, 10.15pm, from £16.50

WHEN & WHERE?

Shlomo’s Beatbox Adventure for Kids, Underbelly Bristo Square, 31 Jul–18 Aug, 3.35pm from £7

LAUREN BOOTH HOW DO I KNOW HER? The rebellious sister of Cherie Blair, she campaigned against the Iraq war and entered the jungle on I’m a Celeb.

WHAT’S NEW? She’s performing a one woman show tracing her journey from hedonism to Hajj.

WHEN & WHERE?

Lauren Booth: Accidentally Muslim, Gilded Balloon Teviot 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 15th, 12:00pm, from £6

SURPRISE SURPRISE! Familiar faces pop up in unexpected places as they try out alternative talents WORDS ANNA RIESER

FELIX & THE SCOOTERMEN HOW DO I KNOW THEM? The Hoosiers topped the charts in the mid 00s, with hits like ‘Worried About Ray’ and ‘Good-bye Mr A’.

WHAT’S NEW? Reinventing themselves as self-help gurus.

WHEN & WHERE?

Felix & The Scootermen! Self-Help Yourself Famous, Underbelly, Fresian, 31 Jul–26 Aug (not 10th), 4.40pm, from £7

www.edfestmag.com

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04/07/2019 14:11

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03/07/2019 15:53

21 THINGS TO DO CITY GUIDE

2

1

SPLASH DOWN Head to Beacon Leisure Centre for a wild and wet water adventure. If wave machines and flumes aren't your thing, there are enough top sports facilities to satisfy Jessica Ennis-Hill. dayoutwiththekids.co.uk/ beacon-leisure-centre

MEET YOUR GREENS bble

Bunch and ni Join the Munch around e walking tour away on a fre inburgh.

Ed en rd Ga c ni the Royal Bota n grow ca u le treats yo Discover edib . You'll am te g di e meet th at home and the m fro t the garden learn all abou rs ee nt lu vo t ec ing Proj Edible Garden how to on s et cr se r side and pick up in n massive veg. grow your ow rbge.org

21 and full of fun

OOR WULLIE TRAIL Follow the wee boy with the bucket and learn about Scotland's comic heritage on a fun and creative art trail around the city. You can even bid on one of the sculptures to raise money for children's charities. oorwullie.com

4

Once your sides have split from all the comedy shows, take a break with one of these delightfully different days out WORDS ANNA RIESER & LOUISE HUTTON

3

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Check out the unparalleled collection of antique musical instruments at St Cecilia’s Hall. stcecilias.ed.ac.uk

6 5 FEELING FLIGHTY

HORSING AROUND Andy Marvel at sculptor rse ho s ou orm en ’s Scott head statues, which cape dominate the lands g for an kin ma rk, lki Fa ar ne t. astonishing day ou .uk .co thehelix

Visit the National Museum of Flight and have a supersonic day. Get to grips with Scotland’s aviation history and climb aboard Concorde, which used to fly faster than sound across the Atlantic. nms.ac.uk/ national-museum-offlight/ www.edfestmag.com

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CITY GUIDE 21 THINGS TO DO

9 7

UNIVERSAL APPEAL

10

TALK TO THE ANIMALS

Get a taste of the countryside in the capital at Gorgie City Farm. Kids can play with sheep, goats and pigs, learn about farm life and then hit the cafe for ice cream and cake. gorgiecityfarm.org.uk

Ward off evil spirits with the Burryman. An ancient and obscure figure covered in burrs to bring good luck, the uncomfortable character is paraded around South Queensferry in August to absorb negative energy that might affect the harvest. rove.me

8

yal Mile to Follow the Ro rth, a unique Ea ic Our Dynam phy casing geogra attraction show mmer su is Th e. ob gl e from across th ing ma will be show the 360ยบ cine oon M e th of de rk Si Pink Floyd's Da , an 0 36 olst's Planets and Gustav H itish Br e th of -imagining immersive re ite. su al tr es ch composer's or h.co.uk dynamiceart

RAISING THE BURR

ALL SHEEPISH Head to Duddingston for a peaceful afternoon at one of Edinburgh's oldest pubs. Sip on a cold beer in the garden or try your arm at the pub's oldfashioned 10 pin bowling. thesheepheidedinburgh. co.uk

11 12 JUST THE TONIC

REACHING THE HEIGHTS

13

SEA DREAMING

Get lost at sea with a trip to Cramond Island. Walk across the causeway but watch the tide times whilst enjoying spectacular views of the Firth of Forth.

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Drive your family up the wall at Ratho Climbing Centre on the outskirts of the city.

There are boulders and walls to suit all levels of ability, and the wee ones can scramble around to their hearts' content in their own soft play area. edinburghleisure.co.uk

Old Curiousity are paying homage to the city's illicit 18th century distillers with gin-tasting in the historic Mary King's Close. Expert distillers will tour around Edinburgh's famous underground site, where plague doctors once used botanicals to ward off disease. The tour takes place every Wednesday of August. theoldcuriosity.co.uk

14 LISTEN UP Visit Talbot Rice Gallery's incredible Sound Garden to experience artist Samson Young's brand new sounds. Mixed media sculptures are set to evoke a massive brass instrument. ed.ac.uk/talbot-rice/exhibitions/samson-young-real-music www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 14:31

Find out what’s happening in Fife by using the new Fife Events App!

Fife

Download FREE

Welcome to Fife Events App

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03/07/2019 15:54

OPEN TILL 11PM EVERYDAY SPECIALITY COFFEE CRAFT BEER NATURAL WINE COCKTAILS

HAWAIIAN INSPIRED STREET FOOD SERVED FROM 4PM

BREW LAB, 6-8 SOUTH COLLEGE STREET @BREWLABCOFFEE @MANAPOKEBOWLS

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03/07/2019 15:55

21 THINGS TO DO CITY GUIDE

15

16 EAT LOCAL Join food writer and broadcaster Nell Nelson on a local's tour of Edinburgh's best-kept foodie secrets. Her food safaris focus on specific neighbourhoods for a true taste of the area. edinburghfoodsafari.com

BEYOND THE FRINGE Make like a seagull and head to the beach for a more relaxing entertainment experience at Fringe by the Sea. Highlights include Idlewild, Reginald D Hunter and Ian Rankin. fringebythesea.com

17

GET ON TARGET

Unleash your inner Robin Hood at the Scottish Archery Centre and take part in competitive shoot-outs in the East Lothian countryside. The centre offers a variety of activities from team building to 'exploring' mine fields and acid swamps. scottisharcherycentre.co.uk

19

STIFF DRINK

18

Tour Glenkinchie Distillery, one of Scotland’s smaller distilleries, and explore the museum with a wee dram to discover the process of making world-famous Scottish whisky. malts.com/en-row/distilleries/glenkinchie

JUPITER ASCENDING Visit award-winning cultural hub Jupiter Artland, set in more than 100 acres of woodland and meadow in the grounds of a Jacobean manor house. Stuffed full of art, sculpture and other exhibits, it hosts family-friendly days for little ones, with summer sessions offering messy, imaginative play for under-10s. jupiterartland.org

20

TEATIME TRIUMPH Treat yourself to an elegant afternoon tea in the tranquil Georgian Tea Room at the Dome. Enjoy a selection of delicate finger sandwiches, sweet treats and freshly-baked scones. All dietary requirements are catered for with separate vegan and gluten-free menus available. thedomeedinburgh.com

www.edfestmag.com

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20

21 UP IN THE AIR

Bounce into a family day out at Ryze Edinburgh. With interconnected trampolines, a bungee foam pit and even giant super trampolines, the sky is the limit – well, aside from the roof. ryze.co.uk/locations/edinburgh

EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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Celebrating 10 years of debate, literature, music & art

Beyond Borders International Festival 24-25 August 2019 Traquair House, Innerleithen, EH44 6PW

“It’s intimate, it’s expansive, it’s joyful and an engaging festival to be at”

FIND US AT:

Razia Iqbal, Journalist and Broadcaster

118 GORGIE ROAD, EH11 2NR 82 SOUTH CLERK STREET, EH8 9PT 39X LAURISTON PLACE, EH3 9HA

Programme & Box Office: 0131 290 2686

www.beyondbordersscotland.com

WWW.BONNIEBURRITO.COM WORLD PREMIERE

LLIAM PATERSON

A brand new opera for 12 to 24 month-olds

Venue No.

70

EDINBURGH ACADEMY 2 – 16 AUG | 10am & 11.30am

scottishopera.org.uk Registered in Scotland Number SC037531 Scottish Charity Number SC019787

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Co-commissoned and co-produced with Royal & Derngate, Northampton Supported by Scottish Opera’s Education Angels & New Commissions Circle

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England

04/07/2019 08:50

ERTH’S DINOSAUR ZOO CHILDREN

I

t started with a white lie. Theatre maker Scott Wright was talking to anthropologist George MacDonald, who was working as the guest director of Museums Victoria in Australia. MacDonald knew Wright’s company built large-scale puppets for outdoor performances and asked him whether he’d ever thought about making dinosaurs. “Yes,” bluffed Wright – and before he knew it, he was building two scale-model creatures for the museum.

They were a hit. Next came commissions from museums all over the world. “It’s turned out to be one of those beautiful accidents where something we never intended to do is something that people really love,” he says.

And because people loved it so much, Wright and his team at Erth

Visual & Physical had an idea. “We said, ‘We’re doing really well from commissions for them – we should make some for ourselves.”

It was this idea that led to Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo, a show he describes as “Steve Irwin, only with dinosaurs,” in which the over-fives get as close as they dare to prehistoric insects and some of the largest creatures ever to walk the planet. “The show is like a wild animal presentation,” he says. “If you went to a zoo, this is what you’d expect from a keeper talk.

The difference is we let some of our visitors into the enclosure with the animals.”

Talking the form of a hands-on lecture, it shows the dinosaurs being fed and watered and shares the latest scientific knowledge about them. Not only has the show captivated young palaeontologists in Australia for the last decade, but before the Edinburgh Fringe it’s enjoying a lengthy run at Washington’s Smithsonian’s National Zoo – one of the world’s great science institutions.

“We had consciously thought that museums

would be great places to become friends with because they have lots of things we want to see,” he says. “Our work has always had a focus on natural history.

The educational side is the thing that surprises people. It’s a good laugh but inside it is solid knowledge. We don’t dumb it down.”

Even though they can be as much as 5.5m long, each replica dinosaur is operated by just one puppeteer. They’re far from being full size, but they still dwarf the brave young audience members who come on stage to feed them.

“They are all hand-made and are good boutique creations,” says Wright. “They’ve also been made with the consideration that people do like to touch. We’re definitely presenting an animal on stage, not a glossy theatre prop.”

The combination of fun and fact is part of the appeal. “We always bring kids on stage to help us,” he says. “We might – or might not – put them in dangerous situations, but then we’re Australian so we’re used to that!

We have that licence to take a few more risks that other people wouldn’t. If they really misbehave, we feed the kids to the dinosaurs.

The adults don’t seem to mind.”

JURASSIC PERKS Feeding time at the dinosaur zoo. Will your wee one be brave enough to help out?

WORDS MARK FISHER

WHERE & WHEN Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo, Underbelly, Bristo Square – McEwan Hall, 31 July–26 August (not 12), 11am, From £13 underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

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Adult Summer Pass

Everything you need for an activity filled summer!

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Adult summer pass ÂŁ60 Six weeks unlimited access to over 800 fitness classes, our swimming pools and gyms and the biggest climbing arena in Europe! Plus up to 20% off lots of other activities including golf and racquet sports!

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For more information speak to reception or visit edinburghleisure.co.uk

Registered Scottish Charity No: SC027450 Terms & Conditions apply.

Available 28 June - 31 August 2019.

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03/07/2019 15:56

VALENTINA’S GALAXY & ROCKET GIRL CHILDREN

“The character is quite girly, but that doesn’t mean she’s not serious and capable”

The inspirational story of the first woman in space is explored in Valentina’s Galaxy

MOON SHADOW

I

t’s the morning of the first performance of Valentina’s Galaxy, and director Heather Fulton is feeling ‘sick to the stomach’. Why? It’s just the normal tension any of us might feel when we’re about to be seen in public.

Having put her heart and soul into directing the show, Fulton wants it to be a success and avoid embarrassing herself.

“It’s the fear of getting things wrong,” she says. “It’s the idea that I’d rather not try than do it and get it wrong. You’re putting something of yourself out there and you’ve no idea how it will be received. The idea of getting it wrong is horrible – but we still do it.”

That’s very like the character at the heart of Valentina’s Galaxy, who grew up idolising Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, but has had the confidence knocked out of her.

She’s convinced herself that she’s no good and now, however many letters she gets from NASA imploring her to join them, she’d sooner stay earthbound and study plants.

“Women look at the things they can’t do rather than what they can do, and don’t put themselves forward,” says Fulton, artistic director of Scotland’s Frozen

A female Neil Armstrong? Why not, ask the Rocket Girl team (right) www.edfestmag.com

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Two empowering Fringe shows are hoping to teach kids that women can reach for the stars or even walk on the Moon WORDS MARK FISHER PHOTO BRIAN HARTLEY & J SWAN

Charlotte. “But someone’s got to do it, so why not me?” When it comes to women in space, she points to evidence that children as young as two are prone to gender stereotyping. It doesn’t help to know that NASA recently cancelled an all-female space walk for lack of women’s spacesuits.

“I like the idea that kids could go away from Valentina’s Galaxy and think, ‘Of course I could be an astronaut,’” says Fulton. “The character is quite girly, but that doesn’t mean she’s not serious, intelligent and capable.”

Aimed at the under-fives, although suitable for older children, Valentina’s Galaxy is a visual treat that transforms an ordinary living room into an outer-space spectacle. A swivel chair becomes a lunar module and the door of a washing machine an astronaut’s helmet. Finally, we’re dazzled by a canopy of stars.

“Parents have told us they were looking for something empowering like this,” says Fulton.

Fifty years after the first Moon landing, Valentina’s Galaxy is one of several spacethemed shows on the Fringe – and not the only one that puts women centre stage. Produced by Ditto Theatre Company, Rocket Girl is a puppet show about an eight-year-old who watches the giant leap for mankind in 1969 and determines to follow in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong – if only the world would let her.

“The number of women who have gone into space is still only about 10% of all astronauts,” says lead puppeteer Polly Bycroft-Brown.

“There was a programme for women to land on the Moon but they changed the rules at the last minute, saying you could only be in the crew if you were a jet pilot. At the time, women weren’t allowed to be jet pilots, so it was a catch-22. We find Rocket Girl resonates with children, but it also emotionally affects their parents because we have to be better at encouraging equality.”

WHERE & WHEN Valentina’s Galaxy, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh – Fletcher Building, 3–4, 6–11, 13–18 August, times vary, £8, rgbe.org.uk Rocket Girl, Underbelly, Cowgate, 1–11, 13–25 August 10.50am, £10 (£9) underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

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FOOD FOODIES FESTIVAL

IT’S GASTRO GLASTO Foodies Festival is celebrating its 15th year in Edinburgh this summer – and the annual party is launching in style. From the 2nd–4th of August, Inverleith Park will play host to 35,000 hungry visitors, so whet your appetite and dive in!

WORDS LOUISE HUTTON

B

ORN AND bred in Edinburgh, Foodies Festival has been the natural home of Scotland’s best food and drink for the past 15 years. On such a huge anniversary, the “gastronomic Glastonbury” promises a blowout celebration of all things edible.

As always you can expect a line-up of top chefs showcasing their skills in the Chef’s Theatre.

The Great British Menu’s 2019 Champion of Champions Lorna McNee will be preparing tantalising dishes using local produce. MasterChef 2019 finalist Jilly McCord will be showcasing her skills. Others include Ally McGrath of Osso Restaurant and The Great British Menu, Neil Forbes of Café St Honore, Daniel Ashmore of The Pompadour and Phillip Hickman of Brasserie Prince

by Alain Roux, who’ll all be sharing their tips and tricks for aspiring foodies.

For the sweet of tooth Aisha Elani of Honeycomb & Co. will be serving up delicious cakes and sweet treats in the Cake & Bake theatre. Amy Lormier will be sharing some Scottish Granny favourites with some new twists, and prepare to be amazed by Charlotte White’s Cake and Cabaret demo.

Share a glass with The Scotsman wine columnist Rose Murray Brown, who will be sharing her wine expertise in talks across the weekend at the Drinks Theatre.

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Appearing The Musicians Against Homelessness live music stage will preview the best of the Fringe Festival.

Headliners The Hoosiers will lead the way, while acts such as The Dirty Harry Blondie Tribute Act, The Sensational David Bowie Experience, Wannabe – The Spice Girls Show and Billy Joel – Piano Man will keep audiences entertained over the actionpacked weekend. Be sure not to miss the dazzling talent of Gingzilla: the self-styled ‘7ft, ginger bearded glammonster’ was a hit on The X Factor and America’s Got Talent, and brings raucous fun to the weekend with award-winning cabaret, music and drag. Colonel Mustard and Cirque du Slay will be bringing a taste of their colourful cabaret shows.

The wee ones aren’t forgotten either, with their own dedicated Kids Cookery Theatre featuring a slime-making masterclass and lots more fun ways to introduce them to the kitchen.

Foodies Festival gets bigger and better every year, and promises to bring another exciting, food-filled, musical weekend to Edinburgh’s Inverleith Park.

TOP FIVE AT FOODIES FESTIVAL 1 TV CHEFS Join The Great British Menu Champion of Champions Lorna McNee and MasterChef 2019 finalist Jilly McCord at the Hoover Chef’s Theatre with top tips and tricks to improve your culinary skill 2 LIVE MUSIC The Hoosiers, Wannabe – The Spice Girls Show and Gingzilla light up the Musicians Against Homelessness stage 3 WINE Become a sommelier for the weekend with The Scotsman wine expert Rose Murray Brown 4 FUN Beat your friends to become the champion of the chili eating and hot wings challenges 5 STREET FOOD Tantalise the taste buds with great local street food. There’s a little something for everyone with Slumdog Indian street food, Porelli ice cream and churros, Chop Chop Chinese dumplings, Cedar Cottage burgers and Chipsy – which offers loaded chips and a full DJ set on the side

Live

the hoosiers

wannabe

gingzilla

PLUS The dirty harry blondie tribute band the sensational david bowie experience www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 11:34

FOODIES FESTIVAL FOOD

“Experience Edinburgh’s own gastronomic Glastonbury”

WHERE & WHEN Foodies Festival, Inverleith Park, EH3 5NZ, 2-4 Aug, 11am–9pm Fri, 10am–9pm Sat, 10am–6pm Sun, from £17, foodiesfestival.com

www.edfestmag.com

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MICHELIN STAR FOOD

Feast your eyes Fuelling your festival from Michelin artistry to street food on the hoof.

WORDS ANNA RIESER

21212

21212 3 Royal Terrace ££££ 21212restaurant.co.uk

The stunning listed Georgian townhouse, 21212, is Edinburgh’s only Michelin-starred restaurant complete with rooms for a luxurious stay. Chef and owner Paul Kitching was trained in classical French cooking but brings a sense of humour to his dishes with a ‘fine Brexit’ selection of cheeses and ‘top cat’ fish pie.

Dish names may be cheeky, but you can expect quality, elegant and surprising food in sumptuous surroundings.

Signature Dish: Finish your experience with a fresh ‘broken tart’ with custard heart and lemon barley.

The Kitchin

THE KITCHIN Number One

NUMBER ONE: 1 Princes Street ££££ roccofortehotels.com

The Balmoral hotel is a landmark in its own right and houses this Michelin-starred restaurant, which specialises in creative dishes that make the most of Scottish produce. New head chef Mark Donald has developed a menu inspired by his team’s www.edfestmag.com

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international travels which is beautifully presented. There’s also a sommelier on hand to ensure your food is perfectly paired to their best wines.

Signature Dish: No trip to Number One is complete without trying the Highland Wagyu beef with beetroot, smoked bone marrow and bitter leaves.

Restaurant Martin Wishart

78 Commercial Street ££££ thekitchin.com

The Kitchin resides in a converted whisky-bonded warehouse in the old dock area of Leith. Tom Kitchin has picked up countless awards to go with his Michelin-star, including best restaurant for four years.

He has championed seasonal, carefully sourced and creatively executed dishes whilst the rest of the restaurant world was enamoured with fusion cooking.

Still driven to create the freshest dishes- in concept and ingredientthe Kitchin philosophy of ‘from nature to plate’ continues to push forward.

Signature Dish: As an advocate of nose-to-tail eating, Kitchin’s boned and rolled pig’s head,

roasted tail of langoustine from Tobermory and crispy ear salad is a true testament to quality Scottish produce.

RESTAURANT MARTIN WISHART 54 The Shore ££££ restaurantmartinwishart.co.uk

Trained by stalwarts like Albert Roux and Marco Pierre White, Martin Wishart’s credentials are not to be sniffed at. For further proof, just look at Restaurant Martin Wishart’s track record, which includes 17 years of Michelin stardom and a listing in the top 50 restaurants in the UK. The eight-course tasting menu offers the full experience, featuring top-of-the-line ingredients from Orkney scallops to Lindisfarne oysters, while the lunch menu is fantastic value, offering a snapshot of awardwinning cooking at just £32 for three courses.

Signature Dish: Go all out with the Valrhona Alpaco chocolate mousse, a rich and heady chocolate assault to the senses, brightened up with sharp sea buckthorn.

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FOOD TASTING MENUS

Variety is the spice of life and these tasting menus allow you to enjoy a little bit of everything

The Gardener’s Cottage

tasting menu showcases refined French techniques combined with quality Scottish ingredients.

Escape the throng to picturesque Stockbridge, its cobbled streets and this friendly and consistently high-standard hang-out.

Signature Dish: Venison and game ballotine with pistachio and soused vegetables

AIZLE 107 St Leonard’s Street £££ aizle.co.uk

Named after the Scots word for a glowing ember or spark, Aizle brings the innovation and authenticity that the name suggests. The menu changes constantly, offering the very best of what’s in season. Everything at Aizle is made in-house, from the nutritious live ferment in the sourdough to the aquavit and aged kombucha in their cocktails.

Expect clean, beautifully presented thoughtful food from their sixcourse tasting menu.

Signature Dish: The menu changes every couple of days, but look out for their luscious handchurned butter.

CASTLE TERRACE 33-35 Castle Terrace ££££ castleterraceresturant.com

Castle Terrace shares the same philosophy as its sister restaurant, The Kitchin: ‘from nature to plate.’ Michelin-starred head chef, Dominic Jack serves up refined wonderful seasonal eating using Scotland’s finest produce. One of the city’s best fine-dining experiences was recently refurbished and is nestled auspiciously just beneath the castle.

Signature Dish: Roasted saddle of Inverurie lamb served with sweet pepper marmalade and black olives.

stripped back culinary offerings, but for a very modern wine list.

The titular reclaimed timber yard with its brick warehouse and south-facing yard for sunny days offers a different dining experience in a city as elegant as Edinburgh.

Try the five-course lunch menu, ox tartare, or treat yourself to a luxurious eight-course vegetarian dinner.

Signature Dish: The tasting menu changes regularly, but look out for the incredible cocktail menu featuring treats like rowan, pear, cinnamon with vodka, home-grown herbs and edible flowers.

THE GARDENER’S COTTAGE 1 Royal Terrace Gardens ££ thegardenerscottage.co

Escape the hustle and bustle of the festival at The Gardener’s Cottage, a pretty little place dating back to 1836, and one-time home to the gardener of Edinburgh’s Royal Terrace. Its verdant surroundings are a welcome haven and the greenery on your plate is another ode to joy, married with a selection of what’s best on the day from local butchers and bakers.

The dishes are rustic yet refined: expect offerings like roe deer, spiced aubergine and burnt onion on their five-course tasting menu.

Signature Dish: Each day brings new inspiration but you can always rely on the homemade sourdough, which you can take home.

become, ‘Perthshire strawberry, parma violet, mascarpone and Douglas fir,’ and Gorgonzola is served with bottoni pasta, pine nuts, broccoli, cocoa and oyster leaf.

Signature Dish: Try their deconstructed lasagna featuring veal ragout, bottoni, parmesan and sage.

SIX BY NICO

THE LOOKOUT

97 Hanover Street £ sixbynico.co.uk

Calton Hill EH7 5AA £££ thelookoutedinburgh.co

Nico’s imaginative six-course tasting menu aims to create an experience as much as a meal. Following themes such as childhood, the Orient Express and Willy Wonka, you’ll be transported to another world. The menu changes every six weeks so be sure to book ahead if there’s a theme you don’t want to miss.

Signature Dish: The creativity of the chefs at Nico’s is boundless so there’s no telling what the next theme might be. To sense their interpretation of themes, childhood involved cereal milk espuma, crunchy peanut clusters, honey gelee and roasted apple as an ode to pre-school breakfasts.

Built on a cantilever, so partially suspended over Calton Hill’s north-west slope, this new venture from The Gardener’s Cottage offers not just stunning food, but spectacular views of the city. Continuing with the ethos of its older sister restaurant of identifying local, seasonal and exceptionally sourced ingredients, The Lookout guarantees something rather special.

Signature Dish: The menu changes with the seasons, but the whipped butter and homemade sourdough is a constant not to be missed.

Mono

MONO 85 South Bridge £££ monoresturant.co.uk

Mono thinks about the dining experience holistically. Aiming for a multi-sensory experience, each ingredient is designed and researched to create the perfect plate. Its innovative approach to Italian cooking combines simplicity and quality to artistically create dishes around a core ingredient. So strawberries Timberyard

PURSLANE TIMBERYARD 10 Lady Lawson Street £££ timberyard.co

Timberyard has been raking in the awards of late, not just for its 122

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33a St. Stephen Street ££ purslanerestaurant.co.uk

For a more traditional yet casual fine-dining experience head to Purslane. Their seven-course www.edfestmag.com

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The Forth Floor Restaurant, Brasserie and Bar offer the best in contemporary eating and drinking in Edinburgh, with unparalleled views of the city skyline.

BOOK YOUR TABLE NOW +44 131 524 8350

|

harveynichols.com

Harvey Nichols, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, EH2 2AD

F EST IVAL F IR EWORK S DINNER

T H E B E ST O F T H E F R INGE

THE ONLY WAY TO CELEBRATE THE END OF THE FESTIVAL njoy a delicious three course dinner with matched wines and live music, followed by fireworks on the terrace.

FE STIVAL FIRE WORKS DI NNER – £105 champagne on arrival Three courses with matched wines Forth Floor Restaurant, Harvey Nichols Edinburgh MON DAY 2 For more information

AUGU ST, 6.30P M

FEST ON FORTH

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,

,

h & 2

DINNER , COCK TAIL & S H OW, £39 131 558 9005 To book, please call or visit COC KTAIL & SHOW, £17 To book, please call 131 226 0000, book online at www.edfringe.com oors open 7.30pm Dinner from 7.30pm, show starts at 9.30pm

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Re Opening Soon theglobeinn

GlobeInn1

Undiscovered

EDINBURGH

Scotland

GLASGOW NEWCASTLE

is closer than you think

CARLISLE

open all year

round

HULL

A new and unique Scottish experience awaits - just across the border from England - in Dumfries & Galloway.

7 days a week

Annandale Distillery is a single malt Scotch whisky distillery that offers the ideal attraction at which to stop between the Lake District and Glasgow or Edinburgh. We can welcome parties of up to 60 for tours and refreshments.

For group bookings contact Carolyn Hashimoto

Annandale Distillery, Northfield, Annan, Dumfries & Galloway, DG12 5LL Scotland

www.annandaledistillery.com | +44 (0) 1461 207817 p_124.indd 124

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c.hashimoto@annandaledistillery.com

03/07/2019 15:58

SCOTTISH FOOD Borough

Put a kilt on it! Experience gourmet and traditional food the Caledonia way BOROUGH 50-54 Henderson Street £ boroughrestaurant.com

The husband and wife team behind Borough aim to deliver a relaxed dining experience, combining traditional recipes with creative ideas and maximum flavour.

Located in the heart of Leith, its four-course set menu changes seasonally and offers classic combinations served with care.

Signature Dish: The menu identifies the best produce of the month. Expect combinations like roast Atlantic cod with wild garlic, broad beans & Jersey royals.

CANNONBALL 356 Castlehill ££ contini.com

Situated in the heart of the old town with stunning views of the castle, Cannonball serves fine Scottish dining in the most quintessential of Edinburgh settings.

Incredible seafood reminds you of the proximity of the Firth of Forth. Indeed when the building was refurbished, the foundations

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were excavated to reveal layers of discarded oyster shells dating back hundreds of years.

Signature Dish: Treat yourself to Eyemouth lobster with herb chilli garlic and lemon butter. Served with hand-cut chips and seasonal leaves.

DINE 10 Cambridge Street ££ dineedinburgh.co.uk

Perfectly positioned for the Traverse Theatre, elegantly glamourous Dine boasts an award-winning cocktail bar with exciting combinations like truffle martini. The dining experience encourages luxury, with oysters and champagne topping their menu. Dishes such as loin of Fhior

Highland venison are brought bang up-to date with a schezwan and juniper crust, served with white bean purée, Wye Valley asparagus and potato crisps.

Signature Dish: Try their 35-dayaged Borders Sirloin from the grill.

or chocolate and hazelnuts with beetroot marshmallow.

Signature Dish: Try its alphabetti spaghetti, for a nostalgic moment that brings nursery dining to a whole new level.

FIELD

36 Broughton Street £ fhior.com

FHIOR 41 West Nicolson Street ££ fieldrestaraunt.co.uk

Field takes Michelin concepts and strips them back to their origins, adding a fun twist to create a fresh dining experience. It is also dedicated to sustainability, seasonality and innovation. Try some of its more unusual pairings with options including duck-livers with crumpets and baked onion

Fhior is the Gaelic word for true, and that’s exactly what this sleek, clean restaurant aims to be. Founder Scott Smith won Restaurant of the Year in 2018 at Norn and promptly left to start his own venture. Fhior serves stripped-back meals that let the meticulously sourced ingredients do the talking.

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FOOD SCOTTISH

Expect beautiful dishes like partridge with sweetcorn, skirlie and white current, and offbeat desserts such as chocolate with Jerusalem artichoke and sea buckthorn.

Signature Dish: Scott Smith’s beremeal bread.

One Square

ONE SQUARE

RHUBARB Priestfield Road £££ prestonfield.com/dine

A sumptuous affair set in the Regency rooms of the Prestonfield Hotel. Opulently decorated, it’s the perfect date-night restaurant for something a bit special. Try its breast and pithivier of guinea fowl with Swiss chard, spiced pear and thyme confit potatoes.

Signature Dish: Decadent halfBelhaven lobster on mac and cheese is luxury on a plate.

THE MAGNUM

Set in a prime position for the famous Festival Fireworks with a view of the castle, every meal at One Square feels like a special occasion.

They source everything locally from the finest producers and have recently added a vegan menu, so everyone in your party can dine. Try the fermented red cabbage with crispy tofu and roasted cauliflower.

Signature Dish: The sharing 900g Ardrossan smoked-ham hock, glazed with cider and apple, will keep even the hungriest party going through a long festival evening.

1 Albany Street £ themagnumrestaurant.co.uk

PAUL TAMBURRINI

1A Alva Street ££ forageandchatter.com

GRAZING Waldorf Astoria, Princes Street ££ markgreenaway.com

Award-winning chef Mark Greenaway brings his talent to the

cheeks in red wine with silky mash, mushrooms and bacon is hearty food elevated to its highest incarnation with big flavours, lightness and melt-in-the-mouth texture.

1 Festival Square ££ onesquareedinburgh.co.uk

FORAGE & CHATTER

In a cosy basement that used to house the Edinburgh Larder, Forage and Chatter create an intimate and unique dining experience. Using ingredients from within a 25-mile radius gathered by a dedicated forager, you’re guaranteed to be eating the best of what Scotland has to offer on the day.

Signature Dish: With the menu depending so much on what bounty nature has laid out for the forager, it’s hard to say exactly what will be on offer. However, look out for simple but skilful dishes such as mushroom seven ways with egg yolk.

Signature Dish: You can’t go wrong with sausage and mash exceptional from Hendersons of Fife - served with creamed potatoes, green beans wrapped in prosciutto, lambs leaf and jus.

Waldorf Astoria, creating a menu of laid-back dining that lends itself to grazing. Showcasing a mix of traditional and modern sharing plates, share a Cote de Boeuf for two and take your time over a real feast.

Signature Dish: Try Mark’s famous 11-hour slow-cooked pork belly for a truly indulgent dinner.

The Magnum is as close to a Scottish bistro as you can get, offering perfect gastro pub food in beautiful surroundings. The menu follows the seasons and uses the best of what Scotland has to offer on a plate.

81 Holyrood Road £££ macdonaldhotels.co.uk

World-renowned chef Paul Tamburrini lets loose his French training on top-notch Scottish ingredients at this fine restaurant.

Signature Dish: Braised ox

SONDER 74-78 South Clerk Street ££ restaurant-sonder.com

At Sonder, select from vibrant small plates, ‘from the sea, the land or garden' for a unique dinging experience.

Signature Dish: Opt for the call of the sea and try the scallop with Jerusalem artichoke, apple and squid ink which is both sweet and earthy.

at the

FRINGE Thursday 1st August from 6pm

Join us for a night in the SKYbar and enjoy the best views in the city!

Modern Scottish dining Dating from the 1700’s, the Michelin star restaurant with rooms offers one of Scotland’s top dining rooms. Renowned for its warm welcome and casual elegance, guests can enjoy exquisite and contemporary cooking in a setting full of character.

Open Tuesday-Saturday for lunch, dinner and accommodation.

Gift vouchers available.

0131 221 5414 events@doubletreeedinburghcity.co.uk DoubleTree by Hilton, Edinburgh City Centre, 34 Bread Street, EH3 9AF

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Tel: 01334 840 206

| Email: stay@thepeatinn.co.uk

Peat Inn, Near St Andrews, Fife KY15 5LH

thepeatinn.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 17:19

Escape the city and join us for a Whisky or Gin tour at our 5-star distillery, only 6 miles from St. Andrews.

TOURS

CAFÉ

SHOP

KINGSBARNS DISTILLERY & VISITOR CENTRE DARNLEY’S GIN DISTILLERY & GIN SCHOOL East Newhall Farm, Kingsbarns, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 8QE PHONE 01333 451300 EMAIL info@kingsbarnsdistillery.com www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com

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13 Frederick St. EDINBURGH, EH22EY

241 Sauchiehall St. GLASGOW, G23EZ

www.corochocolate.co.uk

"LE French Bistro" Enjoy traditional French food and delicious wines in Edinburgh’s city centre.

Festival Opening Hours 12pm -12am Monday to Friday Reservations: 0131 226 6992 109 Hanover Street, Edinburgh , EH2 1DJ /chezjulesedinburgh www.chezjulesbistro.com

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FRENCH FOOD

Signature Dish: Devour roasted Loch Etive ocean trout with white asparagus & hollandaise sauce.

Brasserie Prince

THE LITTLE CHARTROOM 30-31 Albert Place ££ thelittlechartroom.com

L’ESCARGOT BLANC

Cafe St Honore

Café Tartine is a family-run brasserie combining rustic French fare with a friendly atmosphere. Try the white wine braised rabbit with pickled carrot, herb crouton, frisée salad with carrot and orange gel. Or go for slow-braised Scottish beef in a red wine gravy, served with vegetables and roasted new potatoes. There is also a set menu for parties of 10 or over.

Signature Dish: Decadent confit of pork belly with saffron potato fondant, apple purée, tender stem broccoli and gravy.

CHEZ JULES

Tom Kitchin brings this charming, elegant bistro to Bruntsfield. A rotisserie grill is presented to diners with a selection of meat, fish and vegetables.

Signature Dish: Don’t miss Endive tarte tatin, prepared with roasted vegetables.

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CAFE TARTINE 72 Commercial Street £ cafetartine.co.uk

SOUTHSIDE SCRAN

An artful take on a French Bistro, Le Roi Fou offers elegant versions of classics as ‘a bijou restaurant for bon vivants.’ Opening in 2017, it picked up Best New Restaurant in the Scottish Food Awards.

Brainchild of Isolde Nash & Jérôme Henry, previously head chef for Mosimann’s Dining Club, Belgravia and Les Trois Garçons, Shoreditch, this is a cool dining experience.

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Gordon Ramsay’s favourite French bistro in the UK, La Garrigue serves up a speciality from a different region of France each day. On Tuesday you may find yourself in Provence dining on ox tongue in a spicy sauce with olives and on Friday in Roussillon, feasting on a seafood casserole with anchovy croutons.

Signature Dish: Chicken breast with confit chicken-leg, black pudding croquette, spinach and foie gras sauce.

C H PA E F JÉ TR H RÔ ON EN M : RY E

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Café St Honore sits down a cobbled lane two minutes from Princes Street. Serving authentic, organic food and snagging the Sustainable Restaurant Award for 2018, this is a real Edinburgh gem. Dishes like fennel tarte tatin, poached pear, endive, candied Californian walnuts and Lanark blue cheese combine the best of Scottish fare with French cooking.

Signature Dish: Try its express,

31 Jeffrey Street £££ lagarrigue.co.uk

1 Forth Street ££ leroifou.com

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CAFE ST HONORE 34 Thistle Street N W Lane ££ cafesthonore.com

LE ROI FOU LA GARRIGUE

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Classic bistro food is presented in Café Marlayne’s airy rooms.

Handwritten menus change regularly and a hearty, threecourse set lunch is only £15.90.

Signature dish: Gressingham duck breast with borlotti beans, cavolo nero and cherry beer sauce.

Or tryToulouse sausage, creamy mashed potato, and warm red onion chutney.

wine and smoked bacon with gratin dauphinoise make for perfectly portioned French fare.

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CAFE MARLAYNE 76 Thistle Street £ cafemarlayne.com

L’Escargot Blanc has been serving classic French food in Edinburgh for 20 years. Expect hearty portions and excellent ingredients. The latest venture is a wine bar, serving delicious tidbits from ‘Raclette’-style cheese to oysters.

Signature Dish: A super tender Le steak tartare de boeuf.

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The Roux dynasty’s latest offering harmonises French flavours with local ingredients. Brasserie Prince serves classic bistro dishes in the iconic Balmoral Hotel. It offers a daily Grand-Mère’s special like Cassoulet de Canard or Coq au Vin with a French dessert for £25.

Signature Dish: Feast on fruits de mèr with ‘Le Prince,’ shellfish platter of oysters, Scottish lobster, brown crab, langoustines, prawns, mussels and clams.

The Little Chartroom, tucked away in Leith, is a fresh and elegant take on fine dining. Skilfully melding the best of French and British, their seasonally focused plates are precisely hewn and the dinner options are brief but carefully thought out.

Signature Dish: Delight the taste-buds with Lamb rump with sweetbreads, labneh, anchovies, sweetheart cabbage & pink fir apple potatoes.

0 55 131 93 7 46

1 Princes Street ££ roccofortehotels.com

17 Queensferry Street ££ lescargotblanc.co.uk

1 E HFOR ED 1 TH IN 3 S BU J T RG X H

BRASSERIE PRINCE

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£16 for two courses lunch. Enjoy leek, potato and lovage soup with poached organic egg and sippets, followed by pork belly with white beans, Toulouse sausage and apple.

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Auld Alliance: French cooking meets Scottish Produce

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109 Hanover Street £ chezjulesbistro.com

Red-checkered tablecloths, dynamic chalkboards and tumblers of wine make Chez Jules as authentic a Parisian brasserie as you will find in the land of the Scots. Enjoy a three-course lunch menu for just £9.99. Hit the Coq au Vin, or opt for a la carte, and tuck into frog legs in garlic and parsley.

Signature Dish: Slow braised rabbit leg with Dijon mustard, white www.edfestmag.com

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bar parties cocktails chef’s table private dining salon dining room EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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ITALIAN FOOD Cucina CONTINI

takes food seriously with ‘simple is beautiful’, being the mantra that guides them. Expect perfectly executed Italian staples and an impressive wine list to wash it all down. Save room at the end for Nardini’s famous ice creams.

Signature Dish: Keep to the Italian classics with veal escalopes, Parma ham and sage, cooked in a dry white wine sauce served with roasted potatoes.

103 George Street ££ contini.com

Situated in a converted banking hall, Contini is a real treat. High ceilings and frescos bring some Italian drama to the dining experience. A modern approach to Italian food encourages the sharing of small plates delivered to the table as soon as its ready. Look out for fresh dishes like mint steamed artichokes, fennel, olive and almond pesto with crumbed Ailsa Craig goats cheese and lemon polenta.

Signature Dish: On the menu since opening in 2004, fresh orecchiette with Italian picante sausage, dried porcini mushrooms, rocket, fresh cream and Parmigiano Reggiano is a Contini classic.

CUCINA 1 George IV Bridge ££ radissoncollection.com

Cucina elevates Italian fare with a Scottish twist to modern gourmet.

It’s not just the furnishings that have flair; seasonal dishes with vibrant vegetable options make this a thoroughly modern restaurant.

Try the seared dived scallops with pumpkin salsa, pumpkin purée, samphire and smoked bacon crisp, or stuffed savoy cabbage leaf, lentils, chestnuts, butternut squash and red pepper sauce.

Signature Dish: Enjoy the perfectly balanced floral yet savoury squab pigeon, smoked bacon cabbage and honey and lavender jus.

DANTES 48-50 Bridge Road ££ dantesresturant.co.uk

A modern, warm and friendly family-run Italian restaurant, Dante’s is located just outside the festivals main fray in the bucolic greenery of Colinton. It serves hearty pizza and pasta options, but also creatively realised Secondi.

Signature Dish: Try the 12oz veal chop, pan-fried in Dantes

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Divino Enoteca

rosemary butter, simply served with lemon – you’ll want to lick the plate.

The fish options change every day so keep an eye on the blackboard.

oil, garlic, kiss of chilli and fresh homemade crustacean stock. It’s the stuff of dreams.

DIVINO ENOTECA

208 Bruntsfield Place £ osteriadeltempoperso.info

OSTERIA DEL TEMPO PERSO 5 Merchant Street ££ vittoriagroup.co.uk

This wine cellar, with rich oak floors and soft ambience, offers more than just a fine selection of wine.

The new menu, devised by head chef, Francesco Ascrizzi, is bursting with fresh creations that hold authentic Italian cuisine to heart.

The restaurant also does wine tasting masterclasses if you are in need of a refresh.

Signature Dish: Tuck into the best Italian-executed Scottish produce with herb-crusted stone bass, served with cavolo nero, celeriac and grain- mustard mash with asparagus, finished with fish veloute.

As the name suggests, expect to lose track of time here. Part of the slow-food movement, Osteria

LOCANDA DE GUSTI 102 Dalry Road £ locandadegusti.com

Chef Rosario grew up in a large family in Naples and is now devoted to bringing authentic southernItalian cuisine to Scotland. Whilst tradition is at the core of what they do at Locanda De Gusti, they are not against accommodating different needs and make the best gluten-free pasta going, meaning everyone can enjoy delicious flavour combinations.

Signature Dish: The menu changes daily according to what’s in season. For a flavour of what to expect try the exceptional glutinous or gluten-free linguine, served with half-lobster in a light Vesuvian tomato sauce, olive EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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FOOD PIZZA Dough CIVERINOS

ORIGANO 236 Leith Walk £ origano-leith.co.uk

5 Hunter Square £ civerinos.com

Spacious yet intimate, Origano is perfect for both date night and group celebrations. In a listed Georgian building, decked out in trademark green, you’ll spot it right away. Enjoy one of the delicious, carefully selected wines, and soak up the atmosphere.

Signature Dish: Try the Pompeii, with tomato, mozzarella, Gorgonzola, spicy sausage, chilli flakes, garlic and rocket, and be briefly transported to southern Italy.

Serving Neapolitan pizza by the slice or the whole round, Civerinos offers a cool, casual dining experience, pitching itself as ‘the neighbourhood pizza bar’. Serving alcoholic ‘slushies’ such as the Aperossa with vodka, Aperol and blood orange, this incredibly popular restaurant is the perfect way to cool down and refuel during the busy festival.

Signature Dish: For a finger-licking experience, try the sweet calzone desserts, made with signature dough and stuffed with milky bars, white chocolate, raspberries and pistachios.

PIZZA GEEKS 19 Dalry Road £ pizzageeks.co.uk

DOUGH PIZZERIA 172 Rose Street £ dough-pizza.co.uk

An Edinburgh institution, you’ll have to vie with locals to get a table.

Once in, expect hearty portions of lovingly-crafted pizza, made using quality ingredients and delivered with a sense of humour. Now with another restaurant on South Clerk Street, you can enjoy its wares at the heart of the festival.

Signature Dish: Try the ultimate fusion of Italy and Scotland with the Scozia made with tomato passata, Stornoway black pudding, haggis, smoked pancetta, egg and mozzarella.

HIGH DIVE 81/85 St. Leonard’s St £ civerinosthehighdive.com

The sister restaurant to Civerinos, High Dive serves the same high-

85 DALRY ROAD, EDINBURGH EH11 2AA TELEPHONE: 0131 337 5757

quality dough. Each pizza is nine inches, making it perfect for one person. Mix and match with friends trying their unusual combinations, and treat yourself to a cocktail-ina-can such as a vodka cream soda.

The decor is as fun as the flavour combinations, with Grace Jones and neon lighting making it feel like Studio 54 - even mid-afternoon on a weekday.

Signature Dish: Try the 99, with its classic combo of rosemary, pepperoni, Italian sausage, garlic sausage and burrata.

L A FAVORITA 331-325 Leith Walk £ vittoriagroup.co.uk

An award-winning pizzeria, La Favorita has served Edinburgh pizza for years. Its wood-fired oven ensures the crispest of crusts, including gluten-free, so everyone can enjoy the delicious toppings.

Signature Dish: Try the combination that won Scotland’s best pizza; the Hot Star, featuring tomato, nduja, mascarpone, mozzarella, spicy salami, corn-fed chicken, red onions and red and green chillies.

You’ll see why it’s a champion.

NOVAPIZZA

AUTHENTIC PIZZA FROM NAPLES OPENING HOURS: MONDAY - THURSDAY 5-10PM FRIDAY - SUNDAY 12- 10PM

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42 Howe Street £ novapizza.co.uk

Nova’s stated mission is to serve cruelty-free pizza that tastes so good, you’ll tell your friends about it. Serving only meat-free options, this is a vegetarian restaurant that even the more ardent carnivore will be happy to devour.

Signature Dish: Go for the very ethical 4 Stagioni with tomato sauce, artichokes, veg ham, veg pepperoni, mushrooms and mozzarella.

Serving up a solid combo of geekery and pizza, this street-food staple finally has it’s own shire to bed down in. The puns are as tasty as the food with ‘wildling’ pizzas - may the sauce be with you!

Signature Dish: Get over your Game of Thrones grief with the ‘Mother of Dragons’ pizza complete with Welsh rarebit and haddock.

PIZZA POSTO 16 Nicholson Street £ pizzaposto.co.uk

Winner of Best Pizza at the Scottish Italian awards two years in a row, Pizza Posto uses a multi-cereal dough and slow rise to create the best possible flavour. This is combined with perfectly paired toppings and the clay oven seals in all the goodness.

Signature Dish The 2018 award-winning ‘Madre Terra’ with San DOP, mozzarella di Bufala DOP, wild mushrooms, porcini cream, rocket, parmesan, truffle slices and balsamic pearls, is about as luxurious as you can get on a pizza!

PIZZERIA 1926 85 Dalry Road £ pizzeria1926.com

Checked tablecloths, jugs of wine and colourful football shirts set the scene at Pizzeria 1926. Named after the founding date of Naples’ football team, and just as passionate about sport as cuisine, 1926 delivers enormous, mouthwatering pizza.

Signature Dish: Try the pizza fritta, the upscale version of Scotland’s famed deepfried pizza. It’s filled with ciccoli (soft curled pork crackling), fresh ricotta, fresh provola (smoked buffalo mozzarella), a touch of tomato & seasoned with black pepper. www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 17:20

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FOOD ASIAN BLUERAPA 6 Torphichen Place £ bluerapathai.co.uk

Bluerapa is a family run restaurant, serving authentic Thai food based on traditional recipes. The staff are friendly and it has a wonderfully warm atmosphere, where you can bring your own booze.

Signature Dish: Try the drunken king scallops: aromatic pan-fried scallops with sweet chilli, cashews, peppers, sweet basil leaves, green beans and a splash of Shaoxing wine.

CHAOPHRAYA 4th Floor, 33 Castle Street £ chaophraya.co.uk

An elegantly designed restaurant, Chaophraya brings Thai food into the fine-dining sphere. A rooftop bar serves signature cocktails and the food packs flavour into the classics.

Signature Dish: Don’t miss the Lamb Massaman: caramelised slowcooked lamb, peanuty massaman curry, coconut milk, carrots and potatoes topped with cashew nuts.

CHOP CHOP 248 Morrison Street £ chop-chop.co.uk

Chop Chop’s dumplings have become the gold-standard in the city.

MACAU KITCHEN

Opt for a banquet and re-order any dish you like free of charge.

Signature Dish: Enjoy pork and Chinese-leaf dumplings, seasoned with sesame, ginger and soy sauce.

93 St Leonard’s Street £

DUSIT 49A Thistle Street ££ dusit.co.uk

Opened almost 20-years-ago, this Thai restaurant has a variety of options. Go for the banquet with seven starters and five mains between two.

Signature Dish: Try the slowcooked lamb shank, stir-fried with Thai holy basil, garlic and chilli.

GON VIETMAMESE CAFÉ 17 Cadzow Place £ goncafe.co.uk

Gon, Lila Nguyen’s family-run café was opened when she identified a lack of good Vietnamese fodder in the capital. Nguyen offers up the classics; Báhn mì, pho and summer rolls, with a lightness that makes everything feel modern.

Treat yourself to the coffee with condensed milk.

Signature Dish: Pho soothes and enlivens - Gon’s version is strewn with fresh herbs.

Chaophraya

The only Macau restaurant in the UK, serving cuisine from the former Portuguese trading post.

An organically-synthesised fusion menu captures a unique culture.

Signature Dish: Bacalhau, a Macau, salted cod in coconut sauce is unmissable.

KAMPONG AH LEE MALAYSIAN DELIGHT

NOK’S KITCHEN

28 Clerk Street £ daochef.com

8 Gloucester Street £ nokskitchen.co.uk

The perfect place to warm-up with fragrant Malaysian cuisine, try a laska if the haar sets in. Service is prompt, dishes consistently delicious and reasonably priced.

Signature Dish: Delights include aubergine with minced pork and homemade prawn paste.

A hidden gem in Stockbridge, delivering full-flavour recipes using traditional methods.

Signature Dish: Soft shell crab with potatoes, onion and cherry tomatoes is packed full of umami.

KAREN’S UNICORN 8B Abercromby Place £ karensunicorn.com

In this beautiful New Town restaurant, a firm favourite with locals, you can enjoy classics like crispy duck, or a more unusual dish like San Pei Monkfish.

Signature Dish: The soft-shell crab is exquisite.

PASSORN 23 Brougham Place £ passhornthai.com

Awarded a ‘Bib Gourmand’ in the Michelin Guide and The Times Best Thai Restaurant in Scotland, Passorn presents traditional recipes in a modern way, using carefully sourced Scottish produce.

Signature Dish: Try home-made Pad Cha with a fragrant mix of Thai herbs and chilli.

THAI RESTAURANTS

AUTHENTIC THAI DINING, TAKEAWAY, HOME DELIVERY AND OUTSIDE CATERING 6 TORPHICHEN PLACE, Haymarket BYOB only (for bookings: 0131 629 0447)

IN THE WESTEND OF THE CITY CENTRE

Business Lunches available from

Come and try our famous Pad Thai by Mr 9M! Lunch box £6.95. Order 10 or more, free delivery to your office. Advance order is essential.

£7.95 pp

35-37 Shandwick Place Edinburgh, EH2 4RG 0131 228 2441

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Friday 2 Course Lunch Special at £8.95 12pm - 2.30pm

www.bluerapathai.co.uk

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INDIAN FOOD Sample the colour and creativity of the Indian sub-continent on the streets of Scotland

NAVADHANYA 88 Haymarket Terrace ££ navadhanya-scotland.co.uk

10 TO 10 IN DELHI 67 Nicolson Street £ fb.com/10-to-10-in-delhi

This cosy, friendly eatery serves simple, honest and reasonablypriced curries in a cosy arena of exotic, embroidered wall-hangings and beautiful Rajasthani lamps.

Almost always packed with locals, it’s well worth a visit if they can squeeze you in.

Signature Dish: The cooling, comforting mango lassi is the perfect salve to some of the more fiery menu options.

Dishoom an impressive list of dry cocktails for those cutting back on drink but keen not to be relegated to fruit juice.

Signature Dish: The Pau Baji is a Bombay classic; a hot-butter bun served with mashed vegetables. But people really come here for the black dahl, cooked over 24 hours which is both silky and fragrant.

DISHOOM

MOTHER INDIA’S CAFE

3a St Andrews Square ££ dishoom.com

3-5 Infirmary Street £ motherindia.co.uk

Inspired by the Iranian cafés Zoroastrian immigrants established across Bombay, Dishoom is an atmospheric treat. Decked out with mirrors, old-fashioned body-builder posters and flooded with dusty sunlight, it has an excellent menu along with vegan options, as well as

Sharing is caring at Mother India, where tapas-style dishes of colourful curries are served-up as fast as they are cooked. The wide-ranging menu is perfect for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike so everyone can enjoy what’s on offer.

www.edfestmag.com

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Signature Dish: We recommend a dosa each or you’ll end up fighting over the crispy pancake filled with fluffy and fragrant potatoes.

A modern take on Indian cuisine, brought to you by awardwinning chefs and staff with five-star hotel and Michelinstar backgrounds. The dishes are beautifully presented and flavoured, taking you all the way from Kerala to Himalaya Pradesh.

Signature Dish: Try the Hyderabadi lamb shank; a six-hour, slow-cooked hindshank with caramelised onion, cardamom and fennel.

MUMBAI DINNERS CLUB

TUK TUK

3 Atholl Place £ www.mumbaidinersclub.co.uk

1 Leven Street £ tuktukonline.com

A fine Indian dining experience where delicately-spiced dishes are paired with a well-thoughtout wine list. There’s a tasting menu of nine courses for the extremely hungry and curious.

Signature Dish: Chunks of North Sea monkfish, marinated in yogurt and fresh green herbs, grilled in the tandoor, are perfectly seasoned – fresh yet substantial.

Paying homage to the roadside dishes of tuk-tuk wallahs, who feed India’s streets on busy days, this vibrant place is incredibly atmospheric. Small plates at Tuk Tuk are boldly flavoured and the busy, bustling arena is compelling.

Signature Dish: Grab a tiffin lunch in signature steel tins with the Railway Station Lamb, aloo gobi and a nan of your choice.

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STEAKS, BURGERS & GRILLS FOOD

BREAD STREET BRASSERIE 34 Bread Street ££ breadstreetbrasserie.co.uk

Three-times winner of the Diners’ Choice award, Bread Street Brasserie offers perfectly-cooked steaks paired with carefully selected wines, but also caters to a vegan audience. This makes it the perfect place for a mixed group with something for everyone.

Signature Dish: Go for a Scottish classic like Balmoral Chicken, stuffed with haggis and served with mashed potato, carrots and a whisky cream sauce.

CHOP HOUSE Arch15 East Market Street ££ chophousesteak.co.uk

Chop House is the discerning carnivore’s restaurant of choice.

Now at three venues across the city, the restaurant uses state of the art technology to air-dry its meat for up to 90 days, making it more tender and flavoursome.

Don’t miss out on the bone marrow gravy.

Signature Dish: Try a Chateaubriand porterhouse bone-in rib, sharing cut with chimichurri for a meal you won’t forget.

FAZENDA 102 George Street ££ fazenda.co.uk

Fazenda brings the Brazilian dining experience to Edinburgh.

A card changes from red to green to inform waiting staff when to deliver sizzling cuts of meat to be carved at the table. Load-up on salads before a selection of cuts.

There is also a vegan, vegetarian and pescetarian menu if your meat-free companions can brave a thoroughly meat-orientated restaurant.

Signature Dish: It’s an all you can eat affair at Fazenda, making it perfect for those who can’t decide. Make sure to sample picanha, the signature cut that’s always delicate, juicy and full of flavour.

GAUCHO 4 St Andrews Square ££ gauchorestarants.com

Free-to-roam, grass-fed Aberdeen Angus, descended from cattle transported to Argentina in the nineteenth-century are the stars of Gaucho’s menu. Cooked over an open flame like a traditional Argentinian barbeque, the flavour of the beef is sealed in. Monday www.edfestmag.com

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Kyloe night is a BYOB affair so you can bring your favourite red to set off the beef.

Signature Dish: Push-the-boat-out with a Gaucho sampler for sharing. It’s got 1.2 kg of every cut served and can help decide your favourite.

HAWKSMOOR 42 West Register Street £££ thehawksmoor.com

A steak-lovers institution, the Hawksmoor serves perfect steaks in this beautiful former Royal Bank of Scotland hall, a grade A-listed building of national importance. A short walk from Waverley Station, Princes Street, and just off St Andrew Square, Hawksmoor is perfectly located for a pre-theatre dinner where you can enjoy an express menu.

Signature Dish: Keep it classic, like the gorgeous surroundings, with fillet steak topped with Stichelton hollandaise.

HARVEY NICHOLS BRASSERIE 30 - 34 St Andrew Square ££ harveynichols.com

At the top of the department store over-looking St Andrew Square,

Hawksmoor

the brasserie is open from 10am to 10pm, giving shoppers a chance to relax and unwind. The steaks are sourced within 25 miles of the building, and the desserts are definitely worth saving room for, with combos like Parisian custard tart, poached rhubarb and rhubarb ice cream. You’ll definitely want to linger a while.

Signature Dish: Go for the ribeye served with watercress, fries and a choice of béarnaise, herb butter or peppercorn sauce.

KYLOE 1-3 Rutland Street ££ kyloerestaurant.com

Guarded by a statue of a cow, occasionally dressed-up for the festival, Kyloe is forever paying tribute to its most valued ingredient: beef. The array of pedigree Angus steaks make it hard to choose. Don’t neglect the sides; the lobster mac and cheese is a pure indulgence, and the Highland wagyu burger with seared foie gras, brioche bun, bone marrow gravy and beef dripping chips are not to be missed.

Signature Dish: Go on a weekday date and share the Chateaubriand with red wine and blue cheese sauce, bone marrow gravy and baked sweet potato with whipped cinnamon butter.

MILLER AND CARTER 29-31 Frederick Street ££ millerandcarter.co.uk

Focusing on simple, great quality meat cooked with care, the knowledgeable team at Miller and Carter will guide you to the best steaks. All their steaks are served with parsley butter, seasoned fries, balsamic beef tomato and the

Burgers & Beer famous onion loaf. Be the master of your steak, choosing how it’s cooked, the sauce to go with it and the all-important cut.

Signature Dish: Make sure you try the stuffed bone marrow with tender beef brisket, mixed with beef-dripping sauce, topped with crispy onions and aged-Cheddar cheese sauce.

BURGERS BREAD MEATS BREAD £ 92 Lothian Road £ breadmeatsbread.com

Winning Best Burger of the Year two years running, you will not be disappointed at Bread Meats Bread. The family-owned restaurant offers hearty portions sure to keep you satiated. Don’t miss out on the poutine, served with house chips, cheese curds, chopped bacon, grated cheese and topped with gravy.

Signature Dish: The Cali Burger is a cult classic, with mustard fried layers of thin burger patties topped with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles and onions and secret sauce.

BURGERS & BEERS GRILLHOUSE 194A High Street £ burgersandbeersgrillhouse.co.uk

Located right in the heart of the festival action, Burgers & Beers on the Royal Mile is the perfect pitstop for tired feet. All of the beef burgers are made from Aberdeen Angus beef sourced near Fife. You can also choose chicken, ‘moo-less’ vegan mince or ‘cluck-less’ vegan chicken.

Signature Dish: The Frying Scotsman features an Aberdeen Angus patty, haggis fritter, onion rings, mature Scottish Cheddar cheese with a side of creamy pepper sauce served on a white-glazed bun for a truly patriotic dinner.

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VEGGIE & VEGAN FOOD VEGGIE

wines for an absolutely cruelty-free evening out.

Signature Dish: The haggis bonbon and black pudding salad with roasted beets and mustard and whisky mayo will keep it patriotic and vegan.

DAVID BANN 56-58 St. Mary’s Street ££ davidbann.co.uk

Serving vegetarian food at a fine-dining level for many years, David Bann offers a sleek culinary experience. The menu sweeps through many different genres, with curries, noodles and Scottish fare on the menu, all delivered in elegant style.

Signature Dish: Try the mushroom and rosemary strudel with goats cheese from Ayrshire and heather ale, baked and wrapped in filo pastry, served with polenta chips and shallot sauce.

PUMPKIN BROWN 16 Grassmarket £ pumpkinbrown.com

Holy Cow

cheese, served with a vibrant salad of the day.

HENDERSONS 20-22 Thistle Street £ hendersonsofedinburgh.co.uk

KALPNA 2-3 St Patricks Square £ kalpnarestaurant.com

Vegan and vegetarian southIndian food has been dished-up to Edinburgh residents for the last 40-years at Kalpna - a veteran of the veggie market. Grab a vegan thali and enjoy a selection of its finest dishes including Dahl, Palak, Paneer Butter Masala and two seasonal vegetables.

Signature Dish: Try the fragrant Dum Aloo Kashmiri with potato barrels filled with mixed vegetables, paneer and nuts, served in a combination of fresh tomato, honey and ginger sauce, and a creamy almond and saffron sauce.

VEGAN BEETROOT SAUVAGE 33 - 41 Ratcliffe Terrace £ beetrootsauvage.co.uk

This vegan café has community and holistic health at its heart, with a yoga studio upstairs and a menu packed with nutritious goodies.

Make sure you try one of its edible flower-bedecked cakes, no matter what time you visit.

Signature Dish: Enjoy the comforting mac and

Hendersons is an Edinburgh vegetarian institution, which has served the community since 1962. Now completely vegan, the restaurant offers a fantastic selection of hearty-fare like jackfruit, tomato and coconut stew or beetroot and amaranth tartar.

Signature Dish: The legend, the treat, the meal that people have come back for since 1962: Hendersons’ vegan haggis with mash and red wine gravy. The restaurant has retained it’s original recipe and flavour over the years.

If you haven’t tried it yet, you’re missing out – you know what to do.

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Paradise Palms serves up vegan and vegetarian soul food classics in a quirky atmospheric bar. The cocktail menu is a colourful riot of fun Scottish tipples. Try the Buckfast daiquiri if you dare. Snag a table outside in the sun, or join in the evening for cabaret and live performance.

Signature Dish: Fill the fried chicken void with southern fried seitan with red slaw and Buckfast barbecue sauce.

HULA JUICE CAFE

SEEDS FOR THE SOUL 167 Bruntsfield Place ££ seedsforthesoul.co.uk

The perfect spot for a healthy brunch or light lunch. Enjoy a refreshing juice and tuck into every imaginable kind of bowl.

Signature Dish: The vegan poke bowl is perfectly seasoned with sesame and smoked seitan.

Seeds for the Soul is on a mission to show that vegan food is not just grass. The Beyond Meat cheeseburger and seitan BLT provide the salt-hit that recent converts crave. An incredible selection of cakes and tray bakes will have your teatime covered, too.

Signature Dish: The best full-vegan breakfast in town with two sausages, seitan bacon, tofu scramble, potato scone, beans, spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms and toast. It will keep you going through whatever August throws at you.

HOLY COW 34 Elder Street £ holycowedinburgh.com

Holy Cow uses local, organic and seasonal ingredients to create its scrumptious vegan menu. Try the seitan bibimbap or nori fish burger.

Signature Dish: No trip is complete without dipping into the sumptuous selection of vegan cakes.

20 Lochrin Buildings, Gilmore Place £ grassrootshealth.co.uk

www.edfestmag.com

PARADISE PALMS 41 Lothian Street £ theparadisepalms.com

103-105 West Bow £ hulajuicebar.co.uk

GRASSROOTS EDINBURGH

Pumpkin Brown

counter the junk-food inevitability of the Fringe.

Signature Dish: Try the vegetti with walnut bolognese for a satisfying yet light dinner.

Specialising in food that tastes good and does you good, Grassroots offers plant-based and raw-food dishes for those looking to

This clean-eating destination, which views the castle from Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, was established when the founder had to adjust her diet for health reasons and struggled to find good clean, vegan food. There’s a hot dish, a soup and a hummus each day, plus all kinds of scrumptious cakes.

Signature Dish: The menu changes daily, but be sure to tuck into a dragonfruit smoothie bowl if you’re around in the morning. The colour alone will put a zing in your step.

HARMONIUM 60 Henderson St £ harmoniumbar.co.uk

Harmonium, little sister to Glasgow’s Stereo & Co, opened in June 2017. The interior is designed as a nod to Leith’s rich history and offers a friendly, welcoming and warm place to while away the hours. The whole menu is plantbased and serves-up delicious, stone-baked pizza and chicken parmigiana. It’s refreshing to have a menu that features familiar dishes made with plant-based ingredients but not specifically marketed as vegan.

Signature Dish: No-Fish and Chips comprising beer-battered nori banana blossoms, hand-cut chips, mushy peas, tartare and pickled onion.

Grassroots

THRIVE 171 Bruntsfield Place £ thrive-edinburgh.co.uk

Thrive’s arrival on the Edinburgh restaurant scene was hotly anticipated. It serves a predominantly vegan menu with ‘proper’ food, not just sandwiches.

Tuck into a seitan steak with peppercorn sauce, or opt for a vegan tapas night. It also has vegan EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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FOOD SPANISH & MEXICAN

Tap into tapas for a fiesta of flavour!

CAFE ANDALUZ 10-11 George IV Bridge £ cafeandaluz.com

On George IV Bridge, leading to the Royal Mile discover Café Andaluz with its splendid views of Grefyriars Kirkyard. Sample classic tapas, tuck into a paella or share a favourite tortilla. Alternatively, try Iberico Ham or the Menu del Día, and a taste of what’s best in season.

Signature Dish: Opt for the super- tender carrillada de cerdo, pork cheeks braised in a rich red wine sauce with roasted shallots, thyme and garlic.

CASA DE MARA 14 Eyre Place £ casademara.com

Mara grew up in Barcelona but has called Edinburgh home since the nineties. When she grew homesick, she realised she was pining for Catalan food. Daily offerings at Casa Mara are based on her

MIROS CANTINA

mother’s recipes. The three course Menu del Día is just £9.99. With bright pottery, eclectic artwork and scrumptious dishes this is a sure-fire hit.

Signature Dish: Go for the lluç de mar a la cassola, a casserole of hake with potatoes, saffron and paprika.

184 Rose Street ££ miroscantinamexicana.com

INDABA 3 Lochrin Terrace ££ edindaba.co.uk

Indaba fuses classic Spanish tapas with South African and Scottish ideas. This creates dishes like homemade Biltong and avo salad with a traditional patatas bravas.

Signature Dish: Delight in the homemade meatballs with signature Indaba tomato sauce.

EL QUIJOTE TAPAS 13 Brougham St ££ quijotetapas.co.uk

Specialising in Iberian pork-based meals, El Quijote Tapas aims to bring the best quality Spanish food to Scotland, reaching further than the usual British tapas menus.

Signature Dish: Try the Pluma Iberica with wild mushrooms and Iberian pork pate.

Cafe Andaluz TAPA 19 Shore Place ££ tapaedinburgh.co.uk

Tapa is situated in a converted warehouse in Leith. Whitewashed walls and high-vaulted ceilings give it a Mediterranean feel even on a dreich day. The atmospheric restaurant sources produce from different regions of Spain to showcase in Scotland. There’s an enormous range of veg, meat and fish-based tapas, and customers are encouraged to slow-down and enjoy.

Signature Dish: Try the secreto from the Iberian black pig, it has an incredible, almost buttery texture when griddled and is served with a Romesco sauce of almond and red pepper.

MEXICAN

Miros Cantina is a colourful cantina just off Princes Street specialising in rustic, home-cooked Mexican cuisine. Regional stews, paella and meat dishes give diners the chance to sample the kind of rustic fare eaten in homes across Mexico.

In the summer months, you can dine outside on the terrace and watch the world go by. The staff are friendly and the music lively.

Signature Dish: The Borrego con miel is a real feast; a seven-hour cooked lamb with Mexican honey and smokey chipotle chillies, served with rustic mash, pickled red onion and warm tortillas.

THE BASEMENT 10a-12a Broughton Street £ basement-bar-edinburgh.co.uk

Step into a corner of Mexico at the Basement and draw beautiful inspiration from the colourful country. There’s an impressive range of tequila and mescal and unusual cocktails like the deja brew, which blends jalapeno-infused el jimador blanco, Cointreau, fresh pineapple, lime and a house-made butterfly pea tea with lavender syrup.

Signature Dish: Make sure you order the guacamole, which is freshly made at your table!

BODEGA 36 Leven Street £ ilovebodega.com

Tacos are the order of the day at Bodega, with tasty toppings overflowing from their delicious corn wraps. There is plenty of choice - from smoked brisket to avocado tempura.

Signature Dish: Pig-out on the slow-cooked pork shoulder with feta cheese, pickled red onion and herb leaves.

EL CARTEL 64 Thistle Street £ 15-16 Teviot Place elcartelmexicana.co.uk

WAHACA 16 S St. Andrew’s Street £ wahaca.co.uk

Thomasina Miers’ award-winning Mexican street food, can be found just a stones throw from Princes Street. Enjoy their exciting flavours in a vibrantly-decorated, airy environment.

Signature Dish: It’s all about the tacos, try the MSC-certified fish with shredded slaw, chipotle mayo & pickled cucumber for a sustainable fish taco option.

The Basement

El Cartel serves authentic Mexican street food with a selection of over eighty tequilas and mescals. Be sure to try one of their unique cocktails like the Hibiscus Tesoro, with tapatio blanco, velvet falernum, hibiscus and honey tea, ginger syrup and lemon. All of the tacos are handpressed in house and filled to the brim with tempting combinations.

Signature Dish: Tuck into roast chicken wings with apricot and tamarind sauce, for a finger-licking treat.

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MIDDLE EASTERN FOOD From humble hummus to saffron spiced shawarma, you’ll be amezzed by Edinburgh’s Middle Eastern cuisine.

the simple but delicious Cobra or the Fattoush Salad at this mezze restaurant.

Signature Dish: The Yeni Iskender is a Turkish staple often neglected on western menus. Yeni’s version has chopped pitta bread topped with garlic yoghurt, strips of meat, tomatoes and herb sauce, finished with hot butter. Yum!

BABA 130 George Street ££ www.baba.restaurant

Inspired by the flavours of the Levant region, Baba has upped the mezze game in Edinburgh, bringing creative and beautifully presented dishes to the table. Be sure to try the selection of Lebanese wines.

Signature Dish: The beef, lamb and bone-marrow kofta with tahini, harissa, pickles and herbs is a hearty feast. Special mention to the mouth-watering rosewater baklava.

LADY LIBERTINE

HAMAN’S

25 West Register Street ££ Dishoom ladylibertine.co.uk

3 Johnston Terrace £ hanams.com

With an enviable spot at the top of the Royal Mile, Haman’s is a welcoming restaurant with amazing views over the Grassmarket and up to the castle.

Serving award-winning Kurdish and Middle Eastern dishes, it’s the perfect place to feast on mezze with friends or watch the world go by on the shisha terrace.

Signature Dish: Chicken Kurdiyani is a Kurdish take on a classic biryani; fragrant rice mixed with chicken-thigh strips, sultanas and green peas, with a veg casserole and naan bread.

LAILA’S BISTRO 63 Cockburn Street £ lailas-bistro.co.uk

This casual bistro, from the owners of Haman’s, offers breakfast as well as hearty lunches to sustain you through the Fringe.

Signature Dish: Take advantage of the grill and devour the chargrilled lamb chops with okra casserole and pomegranate rice.

Baba

Marble tabletops and metallic accents create a space that is decadent yet welcoming. But Lady Libertine isn’t style-oversubstance. The menu leans toward Middle Eastern flavours, made -up of a mouth-watering range of mezze and flatbreads.

Signature Dish: The charred cauliflower with pomegranate molasses, pine nuts and roast tomatoes is a guaranteed winner that gives substantial mezze options to vegetarians.

Try the saffron and lemon Chicken Slow with olives and aromatic spices.

YENI MEZE 73 Hanover Street £ yenirestaurant.com

For a true Turkish taste explosion try Yeni Meze. The Sultan Feast allows you to savour samples from across menus. Don’t miss out on

POMEGRANATE 1 Antigua Street £ pomegranatesrestaurant.com

Pistachio and pomegranate dominate not just the menu but the decor at Pomegranate. This comfortable and bright eatery has a focus on mezze and a private outdoor shisha terrace to spill out on once you’ve sated your hummus cravings.

Signature Dish: We recommend ordering double of the lamb sambousek. Sharing is caring, but it’s every man for themselves once you taste this moreish dish.

SOUQ 57-59 South Clerk Street £ souq-edinburgh.com

SOUQ skilfully combines Middle Eastern and Morrocan cuisine to create a menu full of unique street-food style dishes. It’s BYOB and there’s belly dancing on a Saturday night, making this a really atmospheric place to start your night.

Signature Dish: Colourful tagines will reel you in. www.edfestmag.com

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112 St Stephen Street, Stockbridge, Edinburgh, EH3 5AD Tel : 0131 2206677 www.kiltedlobster.com

An award-winning, socially conscience restaurant in the heart of Stockbridge serving up the very best of Scottish Seafood and Shellfish that is ethically caught, seasonal and sustainable.

Exciting playful food.

Inspiring Scottish ingredients.

Nourishing community values.

Scottish Food Awards Services to Ethical & Social Causes Scottish Entertainment Awards Best Scottish Restaurant Food Awards Scotland Best Seafood Establishment Top 12 UK Seafood Restaurants 2018

AT THE HEART OF GREAT SEAFOOD SINCE 1991

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SEAFOOD, JAPANESE & SUSHI FOOD

Take advantage of the seaside city and enjoy the catch each day SEAFOOD FISHERS IN THE CITY 58 Thistle Street ££ fishersrestaurants.co.uk

As the name suggests, Fishers in the City, is a dab-hand with the fruits of the sea. Established in Edinburgh more than 20-years-ago, with restaurants in Leith and on The Shore, you can expect first-class fish to suit any palate, from caviar to Goan seafood curry.

Signature Dish: The sweetest Orkney scallops served with chervil and scallop-roe butter, alongside crushed potatoes that allow topquality fish to do the talking.

ONDINE 2 George IV Bridge £££ ondinerestaurant.co.uk

Ondine trawls the very best suppliers for every aspect of its creative menu. Headed by Roy Brett, who trained under Rick Stein, every meal at this sophisticated restaurant is a beautiful event.

Signature Dish: Oyster Happy Hour happens everyday from 5.30pm to 6.30pm with oysters served in all their guises for £1 a shuck. With each breed

JAPANESE

offering a different flavour, be sure to try them all.

THE FISHMARKET

This casual fusion restaurant is a great place to start for newbies to Japanese cuisine and is expansive enough to keep aficionados happy.

Signature Dish: The Volcano Roll with prawn tempura, avocado and cucumber topped with flying fish roe is a scorcher!

In a lofty, green-tiled warehouse with soaring rafters overlooking Newhaven Harbour, you will find the Fishmarket. An ambitious collaboration between Ondine’s Roy Brett and fishmonger, Gary Welch, it showcases the freshest, brightest, most sustainable marine offerings.

Signature Dish: Amazing fish and chips made with angel fillet haddock from Peterhead; simple and satisfying, like Ondine’s philosophy. Go for the ‘Whale’ if you dare – it’s enormous!

THE KILTED LOBSTER 112 St Stephen Street ££ kiltedlobster.com

The Kilted Lobster brings you a chef-driven take on local seafood in a friendly and casual environment.

The visionary restaurant also collaborates with the Prince’s Trust and Job Centre on ‘Cooking up a Storm.’ Every Tuesday, the restaurant closes to regular punters and provides a complementary meal to people on low income.

It also trains school-leavers and unemployed people. Not only will you enjoy a delicious meal but you can feel good about yourself at the same time!

Signature Dish: Go for the whole lobster served with

Scottish free-range pork, lettuce and nira with a chilli-soy vinegar sauce offers little bites of heaven.

KANPAI 8-10 Grindlay Street ££ www.kanpaisushiedinburgh.co.uk

‘Kanpai’ is the Japanese way of toasting, literally meaning ‘bottoms up’. It would be rude not to sample this sushi, fine-dining restaurant’s extensive range of sake. So why not raise a glass at

HARAJUKU KITCHEN 10 Gillespie Place ££ harajukukitchen.co.uk

Beautifully presented dishes with edible flowers, showcased in a bright space, makes this Japanese bistro a must visit. From the sashimi to the cute bento boxes, you can’t go wrong.

Signature Dish: The crispy gyoza served with www.edfestmag.com

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WHITE HORSE

24-15 Pier Place £ thefishmarketnewhaven.co.uk

BENTOYA 13 Bread Street £ bentoya-edinburgh.com

king scallops, smoked mackerel and smoked halibut. And then breath and rest!

266 Canongate ££ whitehorseoysterbar.co.uk

Fishers In The City crayfish butter, caramelised green beans and roast sweet potato THE SHIP ON THE SHORE 24-26 The Shore ££ theshipontheshore.co.uk

Voted one of The Guardian’s 50 best places for breakfast, The Ship on the Shore, an elegant quayside restaurant in Leith, will set you up for the day with ingredients from nature’s salty larder. Be sure to pop along in the morning for an Arbroath Smokie or a champagne breakfast.

Specialising in champagne and crustacea, the restaurant delivers sustainably-sourced seafood and fine wines for the perfect, guilt-free romantic dinner.

Signature Dish: Dive in at the deep end with Fruits de Mer Royale, a medley of whole Scottish Lobster, Loch Creran oysters, langoustines, dressed brown crab, Ship’s hot & cold Bunnahabhain-smoked salmon, clams, mussels, Arbroath smokies,

the bar where you can watch your sushi being prepared.

Signature Dish: The Snow Crab Vulcan with onions, sesame, bonito, ponzu and tobiko is the chef’s speciality.

MAKI & RAMEN 13 West Richmond Street £ makiramen.com

This is the ramen you’ve been dreaming of – sit at the low tables and tuck into the nurturing broth that has been simmering for 24 hours. The sushi is also top-notch; try the dragon roll or the freshest of fresh sashimi.

Signature Dish: Stick to the classic Tonkotsu Ramen with a deeply savoury and silky texture that will cure you of any Fringe-related ailments.

SLURP AT THE KIRK

Kanpai

44 Candlemaker Row £ slurpkirk.com

The oldest inn on the Royal Mile, The White Horse has been revamped by the energetic folk behind Chop House, who have been soundingout seafood. Stylish and modern, offering sharing plates and options of oysters in up-to-the-minute combinations like nduja and pickled fennel or horseradish cream and green herb oil, this is a cool choice for dinner.

Signature dish: Scotch bonnet cured-smoked salmon with avocado & heritage tomato and a crab scotch egg. Their cocktails are also exceptional as are their English wines. Try the samphire Mary with the oysters.

Ondine

in an old church, you’ll find the crispest katsu and bento boxes brimming with goodness in this light and airy café. Be sure to leave room for the white chocolate and matcha brownies!

Signature Dish: The ramen has been stewed for three days to impart maximum flavour and texture, so be sure to slurp it up.

YAMATO 11 Lochrin Terrace ££ yamatosushiedinburgh.co.uk

At Yamato, expect top-quality, traditional Japanese cuisine and service in an intimate, refined environment. It specialises in fabulous wagyu beef that has melt-in-the-mouth marbling.

Signature Dish: The wagyu beef Teppan is griddled steak; a simple dish, that celebrates the ingredients by keeping it that way.

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FOOD BRUNCH & PUB GRUB

EDINBURGH LARDER 15 Blackfriars Street £ edinburghlarder.co.uk

The Edinburgh Larder serves a serious brunch. Seasonal, local produce is the flavour-oriented focus with Linz Farm eggs, Belhaven smoked-salmon and Ramsey’s bacon, cooked to morning perfection. It is also a social enterprise, tooling-up people with cooking skills and easy access to local food.

Signature Dish: Potato, fennel and Belhaven smoked-haddock hash with kale, lemon balm and poached egg, topped with Hollandaise.

HONEYCOMB & CO. 1 Merchiston Place £ honeycombandco.com

Take a latte and a honey-laced breakfast offering fit for royalty.

Some have a Middle Eastern edge, adding a twist to the traditional brunch menu.

Signature Dish: Shakshuka with tomatoes, peppers, caraway, cumin and paprika topped with free-range baked eggs, crumbled feta, tahini yoghurt, hazelnut dukkah and Company

Bakery sourdough. Alternatively, try buttery French Brioche soaked in free range egg and Graham’s double cream, pan-fried, topped with caramelised apples, sticky toffee pudding croutons, vanilla bean Greek yoghurt and sweet dukkah.

PAPII 101 Hanover Street £ fb.com/papiicafe

A tiny, unfussy cafe that serves top-quality coffee. The super-fluffy buttermilk vanilla waffles are famous.

Signature Dish: Artisan Roast flat-white and a homemade pastry make for a swift breakfast.

THE BLACKBIRD 37-39 Leven Street £ theblackbirdedinburgh.co.uk

The Blackbird’s brunch runs from vegan chia seed waffles, to a delicious full Scottish so all taste can be catered to. Enjoy them in the sun-catching back-garden.

Signature Dish: Coconut and sweet potato hotcakes with pickled strawberries, Greek yoghurt and blossom honey.

The Pantry THE PANTRY 1 North West Circus Place £ thepantryedinburgh.co.uk

The Pantry’s brunches are famous, and the porridge du jour, a novel idea. Made with nutty pinhead oatmeal, it cries out Caledonia.

Signature Dish: Go for the Pimp My Fry with rare-breed pork sausages, streaky smoked bacon, Stornoway black pudding, haggis, smoked paprika and thyme tomatoes, beans, confit mushrooms and a free-range egg on sourdough toast.

PUB GRUB THE DORIC 15-16 Market St £ the-doric.com

Edinburgh’s oldest gastropub, dating back to the 18th century, The Doric is famous for serving fresh and locally-sourced Scottish produce. Folk music echoes through the cosy pub on Fridays and Saturdays.

Signature Dish: Shepherd’s pie made with Mull cheddar mash and for afters, the sticky toffee pudding!

GUILDFORD ARMS 1 West Register Street £ guildfordarms.com

Salisbury Crags, with bacon, tattie scones and haggis.

THE SHEEP HEID INN 43 - 45 The Causeway £ sheepheidedinburgh.co.uk

While The Doric may be Scotland’s oldest gastropub, The Sheep Heid Inn is arguably the nation’s oldest pub. Established in 1360, this cosy watering-hole has welcomed thirsty historical figures, authors and poets throughout a colourful past. With an enormous beer garden and oldfashioned bowling alley, it retains its charm and is the perfect place to grab a pie and a pint after a long walk up Arthur’s Seat.

Signature Dish: Surf and turf is served in the form of slow-cooked pork belly and cured pork cheek with scallops, potato dauphinoise, crispy prosciutto, green veg and jus.

THE BARONY 81-85 Broughton Street £ thebarony.co.uk

With high ceilings and gilded mirrors, this pub has a feeling of old grandeur about it. The food however, is fresh as can be.

Signature Dish: The Barony burger is everything you could wish for in a little meat patty. Tender and tasty, in a bronzed brioche bun.

The Guildford Arms reflects the elegant style of the New Town.

Owned by the Stewart family since 1896, the bar retains many original features making it the perfect place to rest.

Signature Dish: Venison haunch, cooked pink with port and raspberry sauce.

THE GREENMANTLE 44 West Crosscauseway £ www.greenmantlepub.co.uk

A friendly little pub conveniently placed off Nicholson Street with an active ‘pubs love dugs’ policy.

Signature Dish: The burgers are famous. Go for the 144

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AFTERNOON TEA, CAKES & CAFES FOOD

FORTITUDE CAFE

AFTERNOON TEA

3C York Place fortitudecoffee.com

MIMI’S BAKEHOUSE

Fortitude uses single-origin espresso carefully roasted for optimal sweetness. Try one of the scrumptious cakes to go along with your morning pick-me-up.

63 The Shore mimisbakehouse.com

Mimi’s Bakehouse has the rarest of treats, a before-noon tea! It has taken the classic afternoon tea and reinvented it for brunch-lovers, serving tiers stacked with Cheddar cheese and chive scones, bacon butties and waffles with dulce de leche. Add sparkle with a bellini, spritz or mimosa. A more traditional afternoon tea is served once the clock strikes 12pm.

LOVECRUMBS 155 West Port lovecrumbs.co.uk

Serving Tea, Anteaques and Artisan Roast wares, cake is the name of the game at Lovecrumbs – try to grab the window table. S The Ivy SUGAR DADDIES

THE GRAND CAFÉ 20 North Bridge grandcafeedinburgh.co.uk

Former home to The Scotsman newspaper’s advertising department, The Grand Café is an opulent destination for brunch, afternoon tea and late-night jazz.

THE IVY 6 St Andrews Square theivyedinburgh.com

Jade-green and gold Art Decostylings make The Ivy a luxurious place to take tea with fluffy scones, smoked-salmon sandwiches, truffled chicken brioche rolls and crème brûlée doughnuts.

PALM COURT AT THE BALMORAL 1 Princes Street roccofortehotels.com

Award-winning afternoon tea is served at The Balmoral’s signature salon. The columned-walls, with landscape drawings and Venetian chandelier, recall teas-of-old.

THE COLONNADES AT THE SIGNET LIBRARY Parliament Square thesignetlibrary.co.uk

Edinburgh’s ‘finest afternoon tea’ venue, the Signet Library has a royal seal of approval. Columns line the salon, surrounded by ornate neoclassical balustrades. The food offerings are a more modern affair with smoked mozzarella panna cotta and rosewater Battenburg.

CAKES & CAFES ARTISAN ROAST 57 Broughton Street artisanroast.co.uk

Artisan Roast is a fabulous caffeine pit-stop. Seminal in the Edinburgh coffee revolution, it roasts its beans in-house and baristas have won multiple awards for their caffiene creations, great decorations too!

DON’T TELL MAMA

This friendly, central cafe offers an impressive range of milk alternatives and delectable cakes.

This little café bakes tremendous cakes and delivers for weddings and parties. Visually beautiful and crazy delicious!

CORO

VICTOR HUGO

13 Frederick Street corochocolate.co.uk

26/27 Melville Terrace Victorhugodeli.com

In the heart of the New Town, Coro brings fun to the table. Breakfasts threaten death by chocolate, with chocolate covered waffles on offer.

Victor Hugo has been serving breakfast, brunch and lunch for 60 years. Perfect for Italian meat, French cheese, fine tea and coffee.

Enjoy authentic Greek coffee and an alluring range of Mediterranean lunch options in this bright, sunny café founded by two Greek brothers.

ETEAKAT 41 Frederick Street eteakat.co.uk

Eteaket serves ethically-sourced, loose-leaf tea in delightful flavours, like sea buckthorn or Ceylon blended with sunflowers, cornflower blossoms, rose blossoms & safflower. Cakes and high tea, too!

KITCHEN TABLE 148 Duke Street twelvetriangles.com

Twelve Triangles bakery has been making waves on the Edinburgh food scene for years as word of its fabulous doughnuts spread. The Kitchen Table cafe is a delightful neighbourhood haven that takes coffee seriously, too.

TWILIGHT TEA AT THE GARDEN

BREW LAB 6-8 South College Street brewlabcoffee.co.uk

Dining at The Garden is like entering a verdant glasshouse. The cocktails and spritzes served with twilight tea will transport you straight to Eden.

Try a Strawberry & Rhubarb Bellini whilst you tuck into passion fruit and tarragon macaroons.

Brew Lab is a cool Berlin-style coffee shop, Coffee becomes fine art with single-origin beans and tasty cold-brew for sunny days. At night, the cafe will shake you up an Espresso Martini to keep the party going!

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41A Frederick Street cairngormcoffee.com

8 Roseneath Street youneedcake.co.uk

64 Home Street fb.com/DontTellMamaCoffee

38 Charlotte Square gardenedinburgh.com

www.edfestmag.com

CAIRNGORM COFFEE

sustainably sourced BEANS from all over the world roasted in house. be sure that our knowledgable and friendly staff will help you take home a coffee that you’ll love.

Visit Us: 9 Dean Park Street, Edinburgh, EH4 1JN 44 East Trinity Road, Edinburgh, EH5 3DJ web: mreion.com instagram: @mr_eion EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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Adventurous Scottish Spirit Distilled to be Different

McQueen Forest Fruits Colour Changing Gin available in Aldi stores

mcqueengin.co.uk

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GIN DRINK It’s a party all August so raise a wee dram or sip on a cocktail at the city’s finest bars

for 150 years. The gin is based on an original 1947 recipe and features nine Bombay botanicals, engineered to create a full-bodied flavour with a bitter-sweet balance.

56 NORTH 2 West Causeway fiftysixnorth.co.uk

THE PRINTING PRESS 21-25 George Street

The perfect cocktail destination with an enormous gin list, broken down by flavour profile, so that you can sample something you will truly love.

printingpressedinburgh.co.uk

56 North HEADS AND TALES 1A Rutland Place headsandtalesbar.com

The residency of Edinburgh Gin’s stills, Flora and Caledonia, Heads and Tales has a cocktail list as extensive as the gin menu. Try Romance and Adventure with Martin Millers, Lillet Blanc, manzanilla, St Germain and orange bitters.

THE JOLLY BOTANIST 256-260 Morrison Street www.thejollybotanist.co.uk

The Jolly Botanist has a distinctive Victorian interior, offering a huge range of gins and cocktails in china teacups with an Alice In Wonderland aesthetic. Winner of Best New Pub in 2015, each gin comes with a recommended tonic and garnish.

JUNIPER 20 Princes Street juniperedinburgh.co.uk

Juniper is a chic affair with panoramic views, serving creative cocktails in the heart of the city.

Try Strawberries and Steam with strawberry infused Brokers Gin, Lillet Blanc, Coquelicot, crème de fraise, cranberry juice, fresh lemon, vanilla gomme and red berry tea.

by Pickering's at Summerhall distillery in Edinburgh. They also lead a gin tasting experience that takes in the best of Scotland's current gin renaissance. The ultimate place to order a gin martini, try one of their signature options like The Mermaid.

THE ROYAL DICK Summerhall pickeringsgin.com

ONE SQUARE 1 Festival Square onesquareedinburgh.co.uk

105 different varieties of gin sir proudly behind a Scottish marble bar at One Square. This includes its very own One Square gin made

Summerhall's bar serves gin distillled on site. Pickering’s Gin was founded in 2013 during a clear-out of Summerhall’s dog kennels. It was deemed an excellent venue for the first exclusive gin distillery in Edinburgh

The Printing Press is the old home of acclaimed novelist Susan Ferrier and pays homage to Edinburgh’s literary heritage with its quirky style and dining room typewriters Try the robust and velvety Printing Press signature; a combination of Spanish citrus notes, juniper, French lavender and Italian violets.

THE VOODOO ROOMS 19a West Register St, voodoorooms.com

Situated in the old Cafe Royal Bar, The Voodoo Rooms is a real grand affair, the perfect plact to sip on a gin cocktail amongst the gold ceilings and lushious plants. Try their curious cumcumber party with Hendrick’s Gin, limoncello, Peychaud’s Bitters, dill syrup, lemon and black pepper for a long refreshing sip of summer.

Try our Multi Award Winning Gins at the ‘Gin Fayre Presents: International Scottish Gin Day’, the opening weekend of the International Fringe Festival. Search ‘Gin Fayre Presents: International Scottish Gin Day’ or visit www.orkneygincompany.com www.edfestmag.com

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UNCONVENTIONAL WHISKY TASTINGS

SHOW ADVER THIS VENUE T IN THE AN A SOCI D RECEIVE ETY GI FT*

Visit one of Edinburgh’s best Whisky Bars for a dram or an unconventional and fun tasting. Drop-in Tastings are held daily at our stunning Georgian venue at 28 Queen Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1JX Choose from; Burger and Whisky, The Last Drop, Steak and Whisky, Whisky & Cheese and more.

Call us on 0131-220 2044 or go to www.smws.com/events for more information. *1 gift per booking

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WHISKY DRINK you’re in expert hands at The Scotch Malt Whisky Society. There's a certain mystique surrounding the exclusive independent bottlings.

Pick the brains of staff whilst enjoying limited-edition single-cask whisky.

THE KALEIDOSCOPE BAR 28 Queen Street smws.com

A true haven for whisky-lovers, the Kaleidoscope Bar is the official residence of the Scottish Malt Whisky Society, and it takes the national drink seriously. Choose from 200 whiskies and an everupdating list. Reacquaint with old favourites and find something new.

WHISKI 119 High Street whiskibar.co.uk

Whiski on the Royal Mile is perfect for a dram. It has more than 200 malt whiskies and live musicians every day. Tuck into haggis and you will have designed yourself a truly Scottish experience.

LARDER 2 Hope Street usquabae.co.uk

Inspired by Robert Burns poem, Tam O’ Shanter, Usquabae Whisky Bar & Larder believes whisky-drinking is both saintly and noble. Burns insisted if you meet the devil, you would survive only if fortified with usquabae (whisky). Usquabae offers a solid history trip back-in-time with liquors dating to before WWI.

whisky quest. Expect to emerge much fonder of Scotland than you have ever been!

SCOTTISH WHISKY EXPERIENCE The Royal Mile, 354 Castlehill scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk

SCOTCH 1 Princes Street roccofortehotels.com

Scotch will guide you around Scotland’s finest whiskies from the comfort of the Balmoral Hotel.

Knowledgeable staff will journey visitors through Speyside, Islay, the Highlands, Lowlands and Campbeltown, on the perfect

The Scottish Whiskey Experience employs experienced tutors to have you nosing like an expert as you compare four contrasting malts to discern unique characteristics. A ‘Blend Your Own’ with an expert, helps you create your own whisky to treasure forever. An ideal gift for a whisky lover or a special treat for yourself.

TEUCHTERS 26 William Street teuchtersbar.co.uk

The upstairs bar at Teuchters on William Street, is famous for its sizeable collection of single malts and quality beer. Sample flights of whisky or try the ‘hoop of destiny,’ tossing a ring at rows of whisky bottles and tasting whichever it lands on. If you miss, you still get a dram of Sheep Dip. USQUABAE WHISKY BAR & THE VAULTS 87 Giles Street smws.com

With it’s own podcast you know

Award winning whisky and real ale pub in the heart of Edinburgh’s old town.

172 C ANONGATE

R OYAL M ILE

T EL : 0131 556 5864

E DINBURGH

F AX : 0131 556 2527

WWW . CADENHEAD . SCOT CHWS @ CADENHEAD . SCO www.edfestmag.com

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Come choose from 400 whiskies.

80 W Bow EH1 2HH www.thebowbar.co.uk EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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Frontiers Woman Featuring brands: Ace & Jig Baum und Pferdgarten Chinti & Parker Etre Cecile Folk Karhu Les Expatriates LF Markey Neul Rails YMC and more

Frontiers Woman 16B Stafford Street West End Village Edinburgh, EH3 7AU 0131 476 3449 www.frontiers-woman.com p_150.indd 150

Frontiers Man 18 Stafford Street West End Village Edinburgh, EH3 7BD 0131 538 3546 www.frontiers-man.com 03/07/2019 16:08

CRAFT BEERS & COCKTAILS DRINK

CRAFT BEERS

Innis & Gunn

BREW DOG Festival Square brewdog.com

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Brew Dog’s beer is a force to reckon with. A decade after kicking-off in Scotland as a brewery of flavour and style, it expanded across the UK and abroad. Try a pint of classic Punk IPA or a more unusual brew of silky-smooth chocolate stout.

159 Constitution Street fb.com/smokemirrorsleith

Behind a velvet curtain you will find a little bar with a big heart.

Ambient lighting, local artwork and bohemian mis-matched furniture make this a cozy and eclectic space. Ethically-sourced wine and spirits deliver a fair-trade espresso martini, leaving you buzzing on virtue as well as caffeine.

HOLYROOD 9A 9A Holyrood Road theholyrood.co.uk

Sample craft ales on-tap in a scooner measure at this cosy pub on the Cowgate. Also serving gourmet burgers, it’s the perfect place to while away an afternoon.

TONIC to purchase your favourite tipple, this is a great stop-off for thirsty festival goers.

COCKTAILS

INNIS & GUNN 81-83 Lothian Road innisandgunn.com

Prohibition-era, speakeasy vibe.

Try the show-stopper, High Society served in a hat with Banks 5 Island Rum, Banks 7 Golden Age Rum, lychee, ginger falernum, lime juice, dill and prosecco.

BRAMBLE

Barrel-maturing its brews in old whisky casks, Innis and Gunn serves complex, truly tasty beers.

With 26 craft beers on tap, you’re sure to find something you like. An all-day, plant-based menu is also available as well as classic burgers.

THE HANGING BAT 133 Lothian Road thehangingbat.com

The in-house brewery at The Hanging Bat allows for exciting experimentation. The menu in this stylish craft beer haunt changes weekly, but expect concoctions like raspberry Berliner weissbier, cherry blossom IPA or peanut butter milk stout.

SALT HORSE 119 High Street salthorse.beer

With 400 different beers, a glorious beer garden and a shop

theme? It’s not just a gimmick, the constantly changing menu keeps mixologists creative to stir-up the best seasonal concoction.

16A Queen Street bramble.co.uk

Bramble has something of the speakeasy about it. The mixologists are serious about the art of the cocktail. Enjoy the evocatively-named Autumn Moon with Laird’s bonded apple brandy, Cocchi Americano Rosa, Jagermeister Manifest, buchu, grenadine, lemon and orange bitters, for an unusual, mellow moment that will stay with you.

LUCKY LIQUOR CO. 39A Queen Street luckyliquorco.com

Every 13 weeks, 13 lucky cocktails come to town, drawing from the 13 spirits behind the bar. Sensing a

34A North Castle Street bar-tonic.co.uk

The award-winning cocktail mixologists at Tonic are always looking for the next big thing.

Small and intimate, its bartenders pay real care and attention to their creations. There are DJs every night so don’t be surprised if you find yourself dancing ‘til late on a Tuesday night after sampling the fine nectars that Tonic has to offer. You have been warned!

BRYANT & MACK 89 Rose Street North Lane

Film Noir tints this speakeasystyle cocktail bar. Set in a private detective’s office, the moody atmosphere adds an extra something to the drinking experience. An extensive list of creative cocktails means you’re sure to find just your tipple.

NIGHTCAP 3 York Place nightcapbar.co.uk

This hidden-gem serves cocktails late into the night. It is housed in the labyrinthine network of tunnels leading to Feed, a late-night American soul-food restaurant with a similarly nocturnal vibe and ribs and wings on the menu.

PANDA & SONS 79 Queen Street pandaandsons.com

Nightcap

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Opened in 2013, Panda & Sons quickly established itself as a cocktail haven. This hidden bar, masquerading as a vintage barbershop, has a classic EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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TIME TO MAKE A SPLASH SEASONAL STYLE WITH UP TO 60% OFF YOUR FAVOURITE BRANDS REISS, KURT GEIGER, FOSSIL, GUESS, TED BAKER, FRENCH CONNECTION, PHASE EIGHT AND WATCH STATION Take Junction 3 off the M8 Motorway

FOR RETAIL THERAPY, DINING AND LEISURE #affordableluxury livingston-designer-outlet.co.uk

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SHOPPING CITY GUIDE Orslow jacket, £254.10 epitomeofedinburgh.com

For the unpredictable scottish weather The Athens of the North will routinely throw you highly un-Mediterranean weather.

Be prepared with a classsic trench that will keep you looking stylish come rain or shine.

1 Scarf Pom Amsterdam, £99 epitomeofedinburgh.com Etre Cecile Big Dog t-shirt £70.00 frontiers-woman.com A.P.C. trench £430 epitomeofedinburgh.com

Etre Cecile track pant £125.00 frontiers-woman.com

Dress, £120 epitomeofedinburgh.com

AGL white & silver toe sneakers pamjenkins.co.uk

Style by

DAY

2

A.P.C. Bag £325 epitomeofedinburgh.com

Be ready for whatever the Fringe throws at you with these elegant Edinburgh outfits

3 A.P.C. sandals, £120 epitomeofedinburgh.com

WORDS ANNA RIESER

Velvet dress by Graham & Spencer, £195 harveynichols.com

THE SIGNATURE ACCESSORIES These stylish shades will let you watch the best of the Royal Mile’s talent even in the the brightest sunshine. Throw a necklace over any outfit to effortlessly accessorise, and stay hydrated without the need for plastic with a gorgeous water bottle you’ll never want to throw away.

Necklaces, from £95 lilyluna.co.uk

POMANDÈRE round wicker bag £56.40 epitomeofedinburgh.com

Sandals, £195 epitomeofedinburgh.com

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Yaya big leather shopper bag, £119.95 www.biscuit.clothing Sunglasses by Monokel Neko £119.00 frontiers-woman.com

Water bottle, £25 godivaboutique.co.uk

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CITY GUIDE SHOPPING

These accessories go with everything

Earrings, Yaya, £19.95 biscuit.clothing.com

Clutch, £185 thoushaltcovet.com

2 Top, Karen By Simonsen, £70 biscuit.clothing.com

1 Style by

Dress, Second Female, £175 biscuit.clothing.com

Sandals. Star Mela, £75 biscuit.clothing

NIGHT Make an entrance with vibrant colours and sumptuous textures that are sure to turn heads Gold Plated Bracelet Bangle £95.00 lilyluna.co.uk

3

Amethyst ring, £54 www.thoushaltcovet.com

Trousers, Karen By Simonson, £55 biscuit.clothing

UP THE ANTE WITH PATTERNED ACCESSORIES This geometric bag will transform a plain black dress into an elegant outfit, while these golden sandals will keep you light on your feet to the wee small hours.

Top, £25 edenretail.co.uk Clutch, £69 thoushaltcovet.com

These go with everything Skirt, Masscob £253 epitomeofedinburgh.com

Sandals, Christian Louboutin at Pam Jenkins, £545, pamjenkins.co.uk

STOCKISTS Biscuit, 22 Thistle Street & 132 Bruntsfield Place; Covet, 20 Thistle Street; Eden, 18 North West Circus Place; Epitome of Edinburgh, 35 Dundas Street; Frontiers Woman, 16B Stafford Street; Godiva, 9 West Port; Hannah Zakari, 43 Candlemaker Row; Harvey Nichols, 30 - 34 St Andrew Square, Lily Luna, 43 William St; Pam Jenkins, 41 Thistle Street.

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www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 11:56

CITY GUIDE SPAS

A few too many late nights?

Stiff as a board from watching too many shows?

THE SOLUTION: Massage WHERE? Mind and Body, 244 Morrison St, mindandbodyspa.co.uk HOW MUCH? £50 HOW LONG? 1 hour.

Let the therapists at Mind and Body untie every knot in your

body to leave you relaxed and rejuvenated. Their classic Thai massage uses a combination of acupressure techniques and stretching to disperse knots and tension. It leaves you feeling more supple, rejuvenated and de-stressed.

THE SOLUTION: Spa day WHERE? Stobo castle,

Peeblesshire, www.stobocastle.co.uk HOW MUCH? From £45

Crowned the UK’s best destination spa, Stobo Castle is your one-stopshop for relaxation. In the beautiful countryside of the Scottish Borders you can get away from it all and enjoy the Swedish sauna, hot tub, pool and hydro spa, as well as massage, facials and other treatments.

Spa solutions Pause the partying and prepare yourself for even more Fringe fun WORDS ANNA RIESER

Got an invitation to an exclusive aftershow party?

Feet aching from Edinburgh’s endless hills?

THE SOLUTION: Pedicure WHERE? The Balmoral Spa, roccofortehotels.com HOW MUCH? £50

If you’ve been battering the cobbled streets in unsuitable shoes, treat yourself to a luxurious pedicure at the Balmoral, to bring a little life back and make your toes worthy of your dancing shoes.

Eyebrows off fleek?

THE SOLUTION: Tint and shape WHERE? Brows & Co., 32 Salamander Street HOW MUCH? £18

We all know that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Set yours off with perfect eyebrows from Brows & Co. Threading is the most precise way to shape your brows, these guys are specialists and will leave you with the best possible shape for your face.

Hot date with a Fringe fling?

THE SOLUTION: Blow dry WHERE? Medusa, 6/7 Teviot Place. medusahair.co.uk.

HOW MUCH? From £25

Nothing makes you feel more swish than having smooth, bouncy hair. Get your tresses into shape with the helping hands of the stylists, who will transform your lank locks to fab within an hour.

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THE SOLUTION: Make-up application WHERE? The Makeup Bar, themakeupbaredinburgh.co.uk HOW MUCH? From £32

Nails bitten from watching amazing acrobatics?

THE SOLUTION: Manicure WHERE? Nails Inc, harveynichols.com HOW MUCH? From £29

Get hands worthy of applause at the Nails Inc bar at Harvey Nichols. The speedy gel manicure will give you nails to last the festival. Choose from a selection of 35 shades while you sip on some bubbly.

Get your glam on for a night at the cabaret by letting best make-up award-winners The Make-Up Bar give you a whole new look. They’ll consult with you on the look you’re going for, before teaching you the tricks of the trade as you’re transformed into your most fabulous self.

Lost your glow to the shows?

THE SOLUTION: Facial WHERE? Zen, 84 Hanover Street. zen-lifestyle.com HOW MUCH? £62 HOW LONG? 40 min.

Late nights and a few too many cocktails will leave any complexion a little worse for wear. Hop along to Zen for a custom facial that analyses and addresses your problem areas. Leave with the radiance of someone who’s been sensibly in bed by nine for the last three weeks. www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 12:38

LISTINGS ART

From sculpture to multi-media, fresh students to the old masters, this years Art Festival has it all!

OUR TOP ART EXHIBITIONS

A MACHINE FOR MAKING AUTHENTICITY

ALL THAT THE RAIN PROMISES AND MORE...

Edinburgh Printmakers 26 July—12 October

Arusha Gallery 25 July—14 September

Edinburgh Printmakers technicians showcase their own work, together with a printmaking machine which will allow visitors to produce an unlimited edition print, designed collaboratively with the artists.

This exhibition takes the fruiting body of fungus as a starting point. The 17 selected artists share a preoccupation with the symbiotic connection we each have with our environment.

ALFREDO JAAR: I CAN’T GO ON, I’LL GO ON

ARTIST ROOMS SELF EVIDENCE: PHOTOGRAPHS

BY WOODMAN, ARBUS AND MAPPLETHORPE

West College Street, adj. to National Museum of Scotland 25 July–25 August

Alfredo Jaar presents a neon sign, quoting the closing words of The Unnamable, a novel by Samuel Beckett, accompanied by performances which disperse the text through the city’s crowded streets.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery 6 April—20 October

With a focus on self-portraiture and representation, this exhibition celebrates the work of three of the twentieth century’s most influential photographers.

BRIDGET RILEY

CINDY SHERMAN: EARLY WORK

National Galleries of Scotland 15 June—22 September

Stills: Centre for Photography 28 June—6 October

The first survey of Riley’s work to be held in the UK for 16 years, and the first of its kind in Scotland, this exhibition traces pivotal moments across her acclaimed career.

An exhibition of the seminal work made between 1975 and 1980 by the nfluential photographer. Timed to coincide with a major retrospective of the artist's work at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

CAROLINE ACHAINTRE: ENCOUNTER L. Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop 25 July—25 August

Known for her sculptures in ceramic and metal, as well as her drawings, prints, watercolours and fabric pieces, Caroline Achaintre creates new work for Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s outdoor courtyard.

2-3,8-10,15-17,22-24 AUG 2019

CORIN SWORN: HABITS OF ASSEMBLY Edinburgh College of Art 25 July—25 August

Habits of Assembly brings together sculptural elements, video and choreography to read technologies in parallel with the body, exploring their impact on one another.

23:30 (120 mins)

0131 622 6552 | GILDEDBALLOON.CO.UK Bridget Riley High Sky, 1991.

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ART LISTINGS of deer within dance from across cultures, presented alongside a series of visual score print works made during a residency in the studio.

IF PLAY IS NEITHER INSIDE NOR OUTSIDE, WHERE IS IT? Collective Gallery 13 July—6 October

This new film centres on a child-led outdoor playgroup that meets in the grounds of a former military camp in Scotland.

INTIMATE: A PORTRAIT The Fine Art Society 25 July—31 August

Intimate: A Portrait presents close and personal portraiture, including painting, sculpture and photography, by living and twentieth century artists whose sitters are closest to them.

Blindfold, Harry Ward, 2018 Blue Snow and Fiery Trees, 2011, Victoria Crow

EVER AFTER The Scottish Gallery, 24 July–24 August

Derrick Guild’s unique interpretation of portraiture is at the heart of his exhibition; Ever After.

HANNA TUULIKKI: DEER DANCER Edinburgh Printmakers 26 July—12 October

A new cross-artform project investigating the representations

JOANA VASCONCELOS: GATEWAY Jupiter Artland 27 July—29 September

The artist’s most ambitious public artwork to date, Gateway consists of an intricately designed pool, set within a landscaped formal garden and accompanied by a delicate glass dome space.

NIGHT WALK FOR EDINBURGH The Fruitmarket Gallery 25 July—25 August

A mesmerising video walk using artist Janet Cardiff’s voice and footsteps, you will be led through the back streets of the Old Town.

FULLY AWAKE 4.6 William Caldwell Crawford From the Croft Window,

CUT AND PASTE: 400 YEARS OF COLLAGE Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern Two 29 June—27 October

The first survey exhibition of collage ever to take place, the exhibition spans a period of 400 years and includes more than 250 works.

DOUBLE DISASTER (CLOSING DOWN) Edinburgh College of Art 27 July—18 August

A video pilgrimage to the site of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 car crash in Durness, Yokollection transports the viewer through Scotland as they learn to drive.

Exploring themes of death, sexuality and fandom it takes inspiration from Ballard's Crash. www.edfestmag.com

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Edinburgh College of Art 25 July—25 August

Celebrating the practice and teaching of painting have been invited to submit a piece of work for the exhibition.

GRAYSON PERRY: JULIE COPE’S GRAND TOUR Dovecot Studios, 25 July—2nd Nov

Julie Cope’s Grand Tour comes to Scotland for the first time, bringing the complete set of tapestries designed by Perry for A House for Essex.

GREY TO BLUE: ECOLOGICAL ENTANGLEMENTS Edinburgh College of Art 25 July—25 August

A series of abstract interactions are presented through sculptural, photographic, moving image and sound-based works, to draw attention to the role of colour in the living world, while highlighting ecological loss.

298 Portobello High St | Edinburgh, EH15 2AS 0781 391 6684 | velveteasel.co.uk |art@velveteasel.co.uk @thevelveteasel

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LISTINGS ART

JOHN BUSBY: SILENT LANDSCAPE Open Eye Gallery 29 July—2 September

Featuring many previously unseen paintings, all held by the artist’s estate, this exhibition shows Busby’s avid passion for panoramas and ‘bird’s eye views’ undertaken during his prolific career.

LUCY WAYMAN: CLOVEHITCH Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop 25 July—31 May 2020

Commissioned to create a new public sculpture for the cycle path close to the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Wayman’s practice makes use of weaving, knotting and macramé on a dramatic scale to create unique sculptures.

NATHAN COLEY: THE FUTURE IS INSIDE US, IT’S NOT SOMEWHERE ELSE Parliament Hall, 11 Parliament Square 25 July —25 August

Coley’s new project consists of a series of large-scale custom-made lightboxes which combine original wallpaper from Zuber & Cie with short texts selected by the artist.

JOHN BUSBY REMEMBERED

MIGRATORY MOTOR COMPLEX

NICOLE FARHI: WRITING HEADS

Open Eye Gallery 29 July—2 September

Collective Gallery 26 July—20 October

The Fine Art Society 25 July—31 August

To coincide with Silent Landscape, the Open Eye Gallery mounts an exhibition of invited artists who worked alongside and were acquainted with Busby during his prolific career.

A six-channel electro-acoustic installation that explores the capacity of sound to render artificial spaces, and locate sonic and melodic events, woven throughout with vocal and musical motifs.

A series of 25 busts of twentieth century novelists and playwrights from Françoise Sagan to Samuel Beckett sculpted and painted after the artist’s feelings towards the figure as much as their recognisable qualities.

KILN GODS

MY OWN PRIVATE BAUHAUS

The Scottish Gallery 24 July—24 August

Ingleby 24 July—28 September

Taking its title from the small mascots that watched over the firing process, Stephen Bird battles with the duality of the traditional and the non-traditional in ceramics with this expansive exhibition that takes its inspiration from many sources.

An exhibition by David Batchelor marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the German Bauhaus by Walter Gropius in 1919.

The title pays tribute to the artist’s personal appreciation of the square, circle and triangle and the colours they were associated with in the influential design school.

NOW: ANYA GALLACCIO, CHARLES AVERY, AURÉLIEN FROMENT, ROGER HIORNS, PELES EMPIRE, ZINEB SEDIRA Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern One 1 June—22 September

NOW is a dynamic three-year series of contemporary art exhibitions, with the fifth instalment focusing on work of Paisley-born artist, Anya Gallaccio, who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2003.

PLATFORM 2019 ANNA DANIELEWICZ, JOANNE DAWSON, HARRY MABERLY, SUDS MCKENNA

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ROSALIND NASHASHIBI Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern One 25 July—27 October

A new two-part film inspired by sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s story, which follows a multi-generational group testing a new form of space travel using non-linear time, inspired

by Chinese divination texts.

The Fire Station at Edinburgh College of Art 25 July—25 August

RUSSIA: ROYALTY & THE ROMANOVS

Platform: 2019, emerging artists selected by artists Monster Chetwynd and Toby Paterson, offers audiences an opportunity to experience the breadth and vitality of emerging contemporary art practice in Scotland, from sculpture to film to performance art.

The Queen’s Gallery 21 June—3 November

Exploring the familial, political, diplomatic and artistic associations between the British and Russian royal families, through portraits, sculpture, jewellery, costume, photos and archival documents.

www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 16:49

ART LISTINGS

Bridget Riley, Pink Landscape, 1960

John Busby - Silent Landscape Flight Over Yellow Field, 1977

SAMSON YOUNG: REAL MUSIC Talbot Rice Gallery 24 July—5 October

Real Music is the first major UK solo exhibition of Hong Kong artist and composer Samson Young. At the heart of the exhibition, newly commissioned "Possible Music #2" conjures an impossible, giant musical instrument.

SONIKEBANA Edinburgh College of Art 25 July—17 August

Sonikebana is a long-form sound composition featuring nine custombuilt speakers on wheels which play an ecosystem of electronic sounds, whose response changes as you move the speakers around.

SRIWHANA SPONG: CASTLE Institut français d’Ecosse 25 July—25 August

A new film which begins with the writings of sixteenth century mystic St Teresa of Avila, whose book, The Interior Castle, imagines a castlecrystal, a space that gives Teresa courage to write.

SUMMER AT ECA: ECA FESTIVAL EXHIBITION

THE NOISE OF MAKING SPILLS OVER

Featuring rich displays and

Adam Benmakhlouf's practice mixes painting, writing, print, sculpture, sound and video. Here he makes a new sound work for Edinburgh Sculpture workshop's beacon tower.

THE LONG LOOK: THE MAKING OF A PORTRAIT Scottish National Portrait Gallery 25 May—27 October

A collaboration between the painter, Audrey Grant and the photographer and printmaker, Norman McBeath, a look at the artist and sitter relationship.

TRISHA BROWN: TIME, SPACE, GRAVITY Jupiter Artland 27 July—29 September

Focusing on Brown’s moving image archive, this exhibition charts the development of her movement language from early site-specific pieces through to large-scale works.

VICTORIA CROWE: 50 YEARS OF PAINTING City Art Centre 18 May—13 October

A showcase of work by Edinburgh College of Art Postgraduate students in creative practices, materials practice, art, space & nature, illustration and contempary.

Embracing every aspect of Victoria Crowe’s practice, this major retrospective features over 150 pieces and spans four floors of the City Art Centre.

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National Museum of Scotland 26 June–10 November

iconic objects, this landmark exhibition uncovers how Romantic interpretations of the cultural traditions of the Scottish Highlands and islands became enduring symbols of wider Scottish identity.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop 25 July—25 August

Edinburgh College of Art 10-18 August

www.edfestmag.com

WILD AND MAJESTIC: ROMANTIC VISIONS OF SCOTLAND

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LISTINGS MUSIC

AMADOU & MARIAM/BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA Usher Hall, 7 August, 8pm

Poignant double-bill exploring the roots of gospel music “from Bamako to Birmingham”. Malian marital-duo Amadou & Mariam are crossover stars of world music, combining Mariam’s cathartic vocals with Amadou’s dexterous guitar work to create an Afro-blues explosion.

Gospel veterans the Blind Boys of Alabama have been testifying together since meeting as children in the 1930s.

ANNA CALVI Leith Theatre, 11 August, 8pm

Drama from English singer/guitarist Anna Calvi, who returns to the EIF to deliver more of her theatrical rock flourishes, soaring vocals and heroic riffing.

AN AUDIENCE WITH KYLE FALCONER The Old Dr Bells Baths, 2-4 August, 5pm

The Fringe’s most intriguing new venue welcomes the wild frontman of Dundonian indie-rockers The View for a well-behaved, earlyevening of acoustic songs, stories and chat.

BREAKING THE King’s Theatre, 21-24 August, 7.15pm

OUR TOP MUSIC EVENTS

US composer Missy Mazzoli’s operatic adaptation of Lars Von Trier’s heartbreaking and challenging film, Breaking the Waves, won the award for Best New Opera from the Music Critics Association of North America in 2017.

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN: CAVE Pleasance, 31 July–25 (not 7, 12, 19) August, 9.15pm

There is never a bad time to catch the magnificent Camille O’Sullivan at the Fringe, but her new tribute to the music of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds is a true passion project that see her put new shades of darkness and light onto Cave's mellifluous lyrics.

CATE LE BON Summerhall, 25 August, 7pm

There’s no one who sounds quite like this acclaimed and idiosyncratic Welsh singer/songwriter. Cate Le Bon blends haunting pastoralpop with quirky turns of tune and phrasing to captivating and, sometimes extremely funny, effect.

Marcel & Rami Khaliffe

CHVRCHES Princes Street Gardens, 11 August, 6pm

The biggest new band to emerge from Scotland in the last decade return to their stomping ground a lean, mean touring machine, with sleek, booming synth-pop hooks sweetening singer Lauren Mayberry’s candid lyrics on relationships, gender and selfesteem.

CONNAN MOCKASIN Leith Theatre, 20 August, 8pm

Like Cate Le Bon, there is no one else who sounds quite like this Kiwi musician so it’s gratifying that his woozy, twisted psychedelic pop, characterised by his ringing reshaped Stratocaster and unusual keening vocals, have been embraced by the discerning masses.

EUGENE ONEGIN Festival Theatre, 15-17 August, 7.15pm

Komische Opera Berlin return to Edinburgh with Tchaikovsky’s contrasting lyric opera of rejection, regret and redemption on a Russian country estate, adapted from Alexander Pushkin’s classic verse novel.

58 FORDWYCH ROAD - NICK HARPER The Jazz Bar, 10-17 Aug, 7pm

John Mauceri CONDUCTOR Alan Cumming NARRATOR

Sponsored by

The virtuoso guitarist and expressive singer celebrates the sounds of his childhood home in north-west London where his father, the veteran folkie Roy Harper, would host the great and the good of the 1960s British-folk boom.

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE Princes Street Gardens, 7-8 August, 6pm

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matches her band for arena-sized sonic power. Current album High As Hope indulges her predilection for hippy mysticism and popmelodrama with great subtlety.

FROM WHEN I WAKE Summerhall, 13-15 August, 8pm

Scottish Album of the Year Award winner Kathryn Joseph reprises her exquisite collaboration with Glasgow’s Theatre Cryptic.

From When I Wake is a staged performance of Joseph’s haunting, hypnotic album of the same name, with an atmospheric mirrored stage-set that is worth the price of admission alone.

GOTTERDAMMERUNG Usher Hall, 25 August, 4pm

Hunker down as the International Festival rounds off a four-year Wagnerian odyssey with a concert performance by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra of the concluding part of the Ring Cycle.

JARV IS Leith Theatre, 22 August, 8pm

The last time Jarvis Cocker graced the stage of the EIF, it was to invite us into Room 29. Now we know the former Pulp frontman intimately, he is back in town to introduce his typically eloquent new band/project Jarv Is, whose line-up includes harpist Serafina Steer.

KATE TEMPEST Leith Theatre, 9 August, 8pm

Performance poet Kate Tempest first made her mark on Edinburgh with the blistering Brand New Ancients show at the Fringe. Now, she has made the leap to the International Festival to present her expressive socio-political vignettes of London life and loves, backed by an atmospheric trip-hop-inspired soundscape. www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 15:02

MUSIC LISTINGS

LA PHIL AT TYNECASTLE

SIR JAMES MACMILLAN AT 60

Tynecastle Park, 2 August, 7pm

Various venues

This year’s free EIF opening event is a treasure and a treat. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the irrepressible Gustavo Dudamel, take to the Tynecastle pitch to perform a selection of cherished film scores from Star Wars to Harry Potter.

A series of concerts celebrating the works of Scotland’s most prestigious living composer, including his poignant World War I-inspired oratorio All The Hills and Vales Along, performed by the National Youth Choir of Scotland in Greyfriars Kirk.

Dhun Dhora from Rajasthan and Galicia vocal trio Tanxugueiras.

THE SINGING SIXTIES Queens Hall, 12 August, 8pm

A celebration of the classic folk sounds, which emanated from Edinburgh’s legendary Sandy Bell’s bar in the 1960s, performed by some of the artists who were there at the time.

SHARON VAN ETTEN

LEWIS CAPALDI Princes Street Gardens, 13-14 August, 6pm

Sarah-Jane Morris

The ever-so-humble pop boy of the moment brings the bombastic balladry of his chart-topping debut album, Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent to Edinburgh's Summer Sessions for two of the season’s fastest-selling concerts.

Expect some self-deprecating craic from the newly minted pop sensation.

venue – a 100-seater amphitheatre built entirely from old pianos – is a show in itself but swing by for its series of free lunchtime concerts, a programme of quality folk acts and the nightly #Pianodrome Live, hosted by house band S!nk with special guests.

MADNESS

Princes St Gardens, 10 August, 6pm

Princes Street Gardens, 18 August, 6pm

Primal Scream have displayed admirable staying power for a raggle-taggle party band. Joining them in the non-retirement home for 80s indie icons is Johnny Marr, who slings some classic jangly guitar-riffs from across his solo and Smiths career.

The kings of ska will be laying down their syncopated beats at the Summer Sessions, playing all the hits from their 40-year-long career.

MARCEL KHALIFE & RAMI KHALIFE

Leith Theatre, 21 August, 8pm

TEENAGE FANCLUB

This New Jersey torch singer/ songwriter and Twin Peaks guest performer only grows in stature as her career advances, with her latest album Remind Me Tomorrow, the most complete expression of her elegant angst to date.

Leith Theatre, 16 August, 8pm

SHOOGLENIFTY: EAST WEST PRIMAL SCREAM/JOHNNY MARR

One of Scotland’s best-loved bands split from founding member, bassist Gerry Love, last year but their remaining two songwriters, Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, continue to honour the Fanclub signature of tender love songs and melodic grungey rockers.

The Lyceum, 9 August, 9pm

Edinburgh’s premier folk-fusion party-band advance to the August echelons of the International Festival with this assured presentation, which showcases their own diverse influences alongside the complementary traditions of their musical friends

WEST SIDE STORY Usher Hall, 5-6 August, 8pm

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, give a concert performance of Leonard Bernstein’s vibrant, kinetic score for West Side Story.

Usher Hall, 11 August, 8pm

The man dubbed “the Bob Dylan of the Arabic world” has mined the richness of Arabian musical traditions over five decades with an array of political and spiritual works.

NENEH CHERRY Leith Theatre, 10 August, 8pm

Since her earliest performing days, bouncing around on stage with shepunks The Slits, Neneh Cherry has combined rebel attitude with pop accessibility and distinct style.

SARAH-JANE MORRIS: SWEET LITTLE MYSTERY Assembly George Square Studios, 31 July–11 August, 6.45pm

Former Communards singer Sarah-Jane Morris, accompanied by guitarist Tony Remy, pays tribute to the eclectic catalogue of the late singer/guitarist John Martyn in her own rich, articulate tones.

SCOTTISH JAZZ AND BEYOND – A NIGHT AT THE QUEENS HALL (PARTS 1-3)

#PIANODROME LIVE

Queen’s Hall, 13 August, 8pm

Pianodrome at the Pitt, 31 July – 1-4, 7-11, 14-18, 21-25 Aug, 7pm, 9pm

Three storming acts – the virtuosic Fergus McCreadie Trio, ScotsIndian fusion of Tom Bancroft’s In Common and guitarist Graeme Stephen in partnership with Shetland fiddler Chris Stout – deliver a course apiece in this Scottish jazz tasting menu.

The Fringe’s most idiosyncratic

Neneh Cherry

SHEKU KANNEH-MASON & ISATA KANNEH-MASON Queen’s Hall, 7 August, 11am

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has enjoyed a stellar trajectory since winning the 2016 BBC Young Musician of the Year title. Here, he is joined by elder sister Isata on piano for a lunchtime programme of Debussy and Mendelssohn.

www.edfestmag.com

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LISTINGS BOOKS

A L KENNEDY

ARUNDHATI ROY & NICOLA STURGEON

3.45 pm, Friday 16th August

Not only is A L Kennedy an awardwinning author, she is a criticallyacclaimed stand-up comedian, whose strikingly funny deadpan wit makes her a sure-fire win. Here, she shares her new fable on friendship.

ALAN RUSBRIDGER 6.45pm Thursday 15th August

Former editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger was at the helm of one of the world’s most respected newspapers at one of the most turbulent times for journalism. He discusses his book Breaking News; an impassioned defence of good journalism and how it shapes our understanding of the world.

ALI SMITH AND KAMILA SHAMSIE 6.45pm, Sunday 11th August.

Shamsie’s latest novel Home Fire, re-imagines Sophocles's Antigone in a modern British Muslim family.

Smith’s season quartet takes as its backdrop the divided landscape of Brexit Britain, watch these two incredible authors discuss division, antagonism and hope for unity.

6.45 pm, Monday 19th August

OUR TOP BOOK EVENTS!

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon talks to Booker prizewinning author, Andati Roy. After the success of her debut, Roy spent over twenty years campaigning in India on justice, rights and freedoms before last years publication of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Her newly released memoir and essays My Seditious Heart chronicle these experiences.

BEN OKRI

Ben Okri

BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH 6.45 pm, Saturday 17th August

Zephaniah is a radical poet, author, reggae artist and proud anarchist.

In his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, he

WIGTOWN BOOK FESTIVAL 27 SEPTEMBER-6 OcTOBER 2019

Don Paterson is best known for his masterful sonnets. However, today he is discussing that ‘obscure hinterland between poetry and prose’; the aphorism. Literary twitter has revolutionised the way in which pithy one liners can be deployed and Don traces the relationship between all three.

EDDIE IZZARD 5.45pm, Saturday 10th August

shares the story of his life, what drives him and how he got here.

11.45 am, Sunday 11th August

The Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri aims to wake us from our slumber before disaster strikes. His new novel, The Freedom Artist, is a chilling dystopian world of eroded truth that has something of a Borgesian parable about it, depicting a terrifyingly recognisable world.

DON PATERSON 8.45 pm, Monday 19th August

CATHY NEWMAN 8.30pm, Saturday 10th August

Award-winning journalist and Channel Four News anchor, Cathy Newman is joined by Rosemary Goring to talk about her new book Bloody Brilliant Women. The work traces the history of remarkable women who have shaped modern Britain, from Emmeline Pankhurst to Beatrice Shilling. These extraordinary stories will be brought to life.

Eddie Izzard shares his unique take on Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. A life-long fan of the author, Izzard’s take on Pip and his adventures is delivered with oodles of charm, warmth and ingenuity.

ELIF SHAFAK 10.15 am, Friday 23rd August

Turkish author Elif Shafak has an incredible capacity to bring a lightness of touch to the heaviest of topics. In her latest novel, she charts the ebbing thoughts of a murdered Turkish woman in the last 10 minutes and 38 seconds of her consciousness.

CAROL ANN DUFFY 8.30pm, Sunday 11th August

FATIMA BHUTTO

Ending her decade as Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy discusses the final collection of her tenure, Sincerity.

A mixture of moving elegies and political calls to action, this is mature, distilled and free poetry.

10.15am, Saturday 10th August

Niece of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Fatima Bhutto discusses her second novel, The Runaways. The novel explores the reasons why jihadis are able to target disaffected youths in the UK.

DAVID NICHOLLS 3.15 pm, Tuesday 20th August

GINA MARTIN

Holding a special place in the hearts of the people of Edinburgh due to his novel One Day, David Nicholls returns to the festival to discuss his new book Sweet Sorrow.

8.30 pm, Friday 16th August

Gina Martin headed the campaign to ban up-skirting; taking pictures up women’s skirts. She shares her experiences in her new book, Be the Change Handbook.

DERAY MCKESSON 5pm, Sunday 11th August

HOWARD JACOBSON

After Michael Brown Jr was shot unarmed, McKesson moved to Ferguson to help bring Black Lives Matter into existence. In conversation with race editor of the New York Times, McKesson discusses his deeply moving book, On the Other Side of Freedom.

1.30pm, Monday 12th August

Booker Prize-winner, Howard Jacobson introduces his new novel, Live a Little. Dealing with love at the end of life, memory and trauma, this is a sharp and tender work from the critically-acclaimed author.

DEREK OWUSU & JOHNY PITTS

1.30pm, Friday 16 August

4pm, Saturday 10th August

Former Scots Makar Jackie Kay shares her exuberance and insight through her new poems. She also discusses her memoir, Red Dust Road, that was adapted for a play.

JACKIE KAY

wigtownbookfestival.com O1988 4O3222 southwest scotland

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The editor of Safe, an anthology of writings by black British men, is joined in discussion by Johny Pitts, author of Afropean, a testament on the lives of black Europeans.

Together they will touch on the interplay of black and European culture, and the battle against the far-right in Europe.

JACK MONROE 7.30 pm, Saturday 17th August

Guardian columnist and best-selling author Jack Monroe started her www.edfestmag.com

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BOOKS LISTINGS

food writing career looking for ways to cook well on a book strap. She and Scottish chef Gary Maclean talk about Scotland’s polarised food landscape, where our products are prized across the world yet many Scottish people don’t have reliable access to food.

has been a voice to be reckoned with ever since she won the Best Newcomer Award at the Fringe in 2015. Her podcasts Made of Human, The Guilty Feminist and Secret Dinosaur Cult each deal with issues of trauma providing a sensitive humour that is nonetheless hilarious. Here, she discusses her new book, Happy Fat, about living in a fat body in a world determined to make you shrink.

JOANNE HARRIS 11.45 am, Tuesday 13th August

In her new novel, The Strawberry Thief, Joanne Harris revisits the world of Chocolat 20 years on. She talks about how characters evolve and how love changes.

KATE ATKINSON

Zinzi Clemmons Oliver. Here, he presents his new book, Kaleidoscopic History of Our Isles.

6.45pm, Saturday 10th August

The Costa Prize-winning author will be in conversation with the Scotsman’s Lee Randall. Discussing her best loved characters, new novel, Beside the Seaside and writing in the UK. KHALED KHALIFA & CHRIS MCCABE 5pm, Sunday 11th August

Chris McCabe’s new novel Mud, is a re-telling of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a surreal version of London.

Damascus-based Khaled Khalifa offers his own hellish journey in Death is Hard Work, that follows a family on a trip through war-torn Syria.

LINTON KWESI JOHNSON

OLIVIA LAING AND NAFISSA THOMPSON-SPIRES 2.00pm, Friday 16th August

Olivia Laing’s Crudo was undoubtedly the book of summer in 2018, her semi-autobiographical work captured the constant twitter stream in a hot summer of Brexit, and created an altogether different narrative that flits between her reality and that of Kathy Ackers.

PRUE LEITH

MARTIN PARR

Much-loved broadcaster Sue Perkins joins Ruth Wishart to talk about her incredible adventures through South Asia, as documented for a BBC Series.

Armed with ‘zero practical skills’ but a limitless supply of wit and cheer, Perkins’ experiences make for hilarious stories.

ZAWE ASHTON 8.30 pm, Saturday 24th August

Zawe Ashton has been performing since the age of six, before becoming best known as Fresh Meat’s Vod. In her autobiography, Character Breakdown, she details the fine-line an actor must tread in order to maintain a sense of self whilst continuously pretending to be someone else. Funny, honest and to the point, Ashton has amassed cult following.

ZINZI CLEMMONS & MIREN AGUR MEABE

VICTORIA HISLOP

12.15pm, Sunday 11th August

3.15 pm, Monday 19th August

Zinzi Clemmons is a rising star of fiction and one of Vogue's 30 under 35 for her debut What We Lose.

Here, she joins Basque writer Miren Agur Meabe to talk about why we need novels now more than ever.

Victoria Hislop has a knack for writing personal stories in historical contexts that prove un-putdownable. Her new offering, Those Who Are Loved is another sure-fire

3.30pm, Saturday 10th August

Celebrated food journalist, best known for judging Bake Off, Prue Leith releases her first book in 25 years; Prue: My All Time Favourite Recipes. Join her for show-stoppers and star-studded stories.

9.45 pm, Sunday 18th August

Jamaican social worker and poet Mikey Smith’s life was cut short in 1983 at a political rally. Linton Kwesi Johnson, one of Britain’s most significant poets, discusses his work with BAFTA-winning filmmaker Anthony Wall.

SUE PERKINS 6.45pm, Tuesday 20th August

bestseller, set amid tumultuous Mediterranean history, from the Nazi occupation of Greece to the ensuing civil war. Sensitive and insightful about women’s experience of the trauma of war, Hislop shows she’s at the top of her game. She talks to James Runcie.

ROGER MCGOUGH 5pm, Sunday 18th August

One of Britain’s best loved poets, Roger McGough is here to share his thoughts on bringing people together in divided times. Ever adept at capturing the essence of an issue, his new poetry collection is full of warmth and generosity.

Liquid Lunch Productions presents (on alternate nights)

a 5-piece band performing

Billy Joel

Piano man live!

10:30am, Friday 16th August

Renowned photographer Martin Parr has spent his life documenting the British Isles with his tender, humorous look at its inhabitants.

NAOMI WOLF

ROWAN HISAYO BUCHANAN & YELENA MOSKOVICH 5pm, Saturday 10th August

Explore queer love stories with these two writers whose work centres on LGBTQ+ metropolitan life and love.

8.45pm, Monday 12th August

Seminal voice in literature, Naomi Wolf joins the Edinburgh Book Festival to talk about her new book, Outrages, that explores Britain's obscenity laws which criminalized homosexuality.

NEIL OLIVER 3.30pm, Tuesday 13th August

With history continuously repeating itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, who better to turn to for a wider view than esteemed historian Neil www.edfestmag.com

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SIMON ARMITAGE 11.45 am, Saturday 17th August

The freshly ordained Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage joins Jamie Jauncey to talk about the honour and responsibility of the role. He will also discuss his new poetry collection Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic.

Elton John RocKet man live!

SOFIE HAGAN 3.15pm, Saturday 17th August

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LISTINGS THEATRE Raw talent and Festival veterans makes for an unmissable month of drama.

8:8 Summerhall, 31 July–25 August (not 1, 5, 12, 19), times vary

The Swiss company Mercimax is drafting in Edinburgh locals to appear in a show about ordinary people and the snap judgements we make about those we meet. An audience of eight meets a cast of eight. Will we know who’s who?

ALL OF ME (THE POSSIBILITY OF FUTURE SPLENDOUR) Summerhall, 31 July– 25 August (not 12, 19), 3.10pm

Caroline Horton starred in Mess a few years ago at the Traverse; a funny and provocative show about anorexia. Expect a similarly edgy combination in the première of All of Me, a consideration of wanting to live and wanting to die.

AMERICA IS HARD TO SEE Underbelly Cowgate, 1–25 August (not 12), 7.45pm

What do we do with our criminals once they have served their

sentence and been released back into the community? In the case of America’s sex offenders, some are sent to live in Miracle Village in rural Florida. Life Jacket Theatre’s verbatim play tells their story.

BABY REINDEER Roundabout @ Summerhall, 31 July– 25 August (not 1, 6, 13, 20), 6.25pm

Having won the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016, Scottish Richard Gadd moves into the theatre programme to tell a story about the scary ramifications of a simple mistake.

BEAT Pleasance Dome, 31 July– 26 August (not 14), 2.30pm

UK-version of a hit French show, nominated for a Moliere Award as Une Vie sur Mesure. Written by Cédric Chapuis, it’s about a boy who will only communicate if he can play the drums at the same time.

OUR TOP THEATRE PICKS!

BEFORE Dance Base, 2–25 August (not Monday's), 8.45pm

Ireland’s Fishamble is a regular visitor to Dance Base and a frequent recipient of festival awards. This year’s offering is a play, with music written and performed by Pat Kinevane, about a separated father preparing to meet his estranged daughter after 20-years apart.

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION Summerhall, 13–25 August (not 19), 9.50pm

Ahmed El-Attar, one of the key players in the Egyptian theatre scene, writes and directs a play about tensions preceding a popular uprising. Inspired by events leading up to the Arab Spring, it attempts to look to the future by reconsidering the past.

THE BELIEVERS ARE BUT BROTHERS

This page: Dressed, Burgurz Opposite: Blood & Gold

the legacy of colonialism and slavery. Drawing on ancient myths and modern-day storytelling, she talks about the way history shapes our identity and sense of belonging.

Assembly George Square Studios, 19–24 August, 11am

BRYONY KIMMINGS: I’M A PHOENIX, BITCH

A return visit for this 2017-hit, in which Javaad Alipoor talks about radicalised Muslims and the misinformation that proliferates in our supposedly connected world.

Pleasance Courtyard 31 July– 25 August (not 12), 5.30pm

BIBLE JOHN Pleasance Courtyard 31 July–26 August (not 13), 3.50pm

One of several Fringe shows to focus on true-crime stories, Poor Michelle’s production takes us back to the troubling case of three women murdered by an Old Testament-quoting serial killer in the Glasgow of 1969.

Picked up for the British Council Edinburgh Showcase after a successful run in London, Bryony Kimmings’ show is what one commentator called an “offbeat musical about post-natal depression”. Drawing on dark episodes of her life, she finds comedy, quirks and feminist commentary in unexpected places that are not often talked about.

BLACK IS THE COLOR OF MY VOICE Gilded Balloon Teviot, 12, 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26 August, 4pm

Another chance to catch Apphia Campbell’s acclaimed show inspired by the life of Nina Simone. The Edinburgh-based performer is also appearing in Woke, her Fringe Firstwinning show, which juxtaposes the story of Assata Shakur, a member of the civil-rights Black Panther movement, with the events in Ferguson in 2014 and the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

BLOOD AND GOLD Scottish Storytelling Centre, 1–26 August (not 12, 19), 2pm

Mara Menzies joins the Made in Scotland programme to consider 166

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THEATRE LISTINGS

company stars Cherish Violet Blood as a woman out to avenge the murder of her little sister.

DIE! DIE! DIE! OLD PEOPLE DIE! Summerhall, 13–25 August (not 19), 5.40pm

In the running for the best title of the Fringe, this deadpan comedy

by Ridiculusmus is about the perils of eternal life, as two 120-yearold's drag their aging bodies through the day at a snail’s pace.

DRESSED. Pleasance Courtyard, 20–25 August, 12.10pm

A welcome return from one of last year’s most powerful shows, the true-life story of a designer whose way of taking back control after a sexual assault was to refashion her wardrobe by hand.

BURGERZ Traverse Theatre, 1–25 August (not Mon), times vary

Everyone reacts in their own way to abuse, but Travis Alabanza had an unusual response when someone threw a burger at them in a transphobic attack. They became obsessed by burgers; from their texture to their aerodynamic capacity.

COME OUT FROM AMONG THEM Sweet Grassmarket, 2–25 August (not 11, 18), 1pm

Last year, John McCann won a Fringe First for DUPed, which tackled the thorny topic of the Democratic Unionist Party and its staunch views on religion, same-sex marriage and abortion. Come Out from Among Them is a companion piece that takes a further look at the party’s supporters.

COMMUNITY CIRCLE Summerhall, 31 July– 25 August (not 12, 19), 1pm

Surrealist-comedian Trevor Lock moves his five-star Free Fringe comedy show up to Summerhall and into the theatre programme.

Expect lots of audience interaction as he conducts something between a social experiment and a prayer group.

COTTON FINGERS Summerhall, 31 July– 25 August (not Mon), 12.15pm

The first of two plays produced by National Theatre Wales, Cotton Fingers by Rachel Trezise goes on a coming-of-age journey to Cardiff from Belfast, where the www.edfestmag.com

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historic referendum of the eighth amendment is taking place.

DRONE

CROCODILE FEVER

Summerhall, 31 July–17 August (not 1, 12), 7.10pm

Traverse Theatre, 2–25 August, times vary

Director Gareth Nicholls hopes to repeat the runaway success of last year’s Ulster American with another Irish-themed play, this one by Meghan Tyler, who takes us back to 1989 where two mismatched sisters fight over the memory of their tyrannical father in a Northern Irish cottage.

A grotesque black comedy with a backdrop of the Troubles.

CRUEL INTENTIONS: THE 90S MUSICAL

Spoken word with multimedia bells and whistles. Poet and playwrite, Harry Josephine Giles plays with the meanings of “drone”

‘BELLYWRENCHING LAUGHS’

from weapons system, office worker, bee and background hum.

Accompanied by video and live music. Part of Made in Scotland.

EDDIE IZZARD EXPECTATIONS OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS Assembly George Square Studios 7–25 August (not Mon, Tue), 2pm

The marathon-running actor and multilingual comedian is calling this reading of the Charles Dickens novel a work in progress. Given his prepensity towards perfectionism in the rest of his endevours, that’s unlikely to deter the legion of fans, who’ll be keen to see whether Izzard shapes up to be as good a narrator as the Victorian author himself.

ELECTROLYTE Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–26 August (not 3, 10), 5.20pm

Wildcard’s piece of gig theatre was a five-star hit last year. Its a vigorous fast paced response to schizophrenia, depression and male suicide, centering around friends in Leeds. With live musical accompaniment, it won the Mental Health Award in 2018.

BEST COMEDY PLAY D

MOLIÈRE AWAR 2017

Le Figaro

‘A COMIC EXPLOSION’ Télérama

Assembly George Square Gardens, 1–25 August (not 13), 8.30pm

Don’t be surprised if this is not the last you hear about this 90s-themed musical, brought over from the USA by impresario Bill Kenwright. It’s based on the movie of the same name and is all sex, seduction and manipulation.

OIS

BY PIERRE GUILL

HHHHH HHHHH Le Monde

Le Parisien

DAUGHTERHOOD Roundabout @ Summerhall, 31 July–25 August (not 4, 6, 10, 13, 20, 24), times vary

Paines Plough presents a new play

by Charley Miles about the meeting of two estranged sisters, one of whom stayed at home to look after their father whilst the other left to change the world. Now, they must test the depth of their family ties.

DEER WOMAN CanadaHub @ King’s Hall, 31 July– 25 August (not Mon), 2.30pm

Canada’s Article 11 theatre

1.00 PM (75min)

31 Jul – 26 Aug www.pleasance.co.uk No performance 14 Aug 0131 556 6550 EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2019

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ENOUGH

himself in the British care system.

Nicola McCartney is the other writer in a show that is part of Made in Scotland.

Traverse, 1–25 August (not Monday's), times vary

The in-house company in the première of a play by Stef Smith, author of Roadkill and Swallow, about two flight attendants who look immaculate 30,000 feet in the air, but feel a whole lot less together on the ground. Bryony Shanahan directs.

IF YOU’RE FEELING SINISTER: A PLAY WITH SONGS Gilded Balloon Potter House, 31 July–26 August (not 12), 3.45pm

Fempire

ESTHER RANTZEN: EVERYTHING I’VE EVER DONE WRONG (ACCORDING TO MY DAUGHTER)

band One Two One Two. Half popalbum, half-play.

Gilded Balloon at the Museum, 5–7 August, 1.30pm

FEMPIRE: CLEO, THEO AND WU/MESS

Three chances to hear the That’s Life star in conversation with her daughter, the journalist Rebecca Wilcox, talking frankly about their lives and relationship.

Assembly Rooms - Powder Room, 1–24 August (alternating dates), 8.15pm

EVERYTHING I DO Summerhall, 31 July–25 August (not 1, 12, 19), 4.30pm

After acclaim in Dublin, this musictheatre hybrid comes hot-foot to Edinburgh, performed by Zoe Ní Riordáin and directed by her sister Maud Lee, both members of the

Kirsten Vangsness’s is best known for playing FBI Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia in Criminal Minds – which may or may not be relevant to her starring roles in these eccentric-sounding plays.

Cleo, Theo and Wu is a about a time-travelling heroine's journey to save the universe, Mess is a onewoman study of the non-linearity of time.

FISHBOWL Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–26 August (not 14), 1pm

Silent comedy that won the Moliere Award in Paris. It’s about three loveable eccentrics living in close quarters in their rooftop bedsits. See feature.

FOR ALL I CARE Summerhall, 31 July– 25 August (not Monday's), 1.30pm

The second show of the day from National Theatre Wales Alan Harries’s fast-moving comedy looks at the mental-health service from two perspectives as a nurse and a patient try to get through their day.

FRANKENSTEIN: HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER Traverse Theatre, 6–25 August (not Monday's), times very

The young performers of Battersea Arts Centre’s Beatbox Academy respond to the themes of Mary Shelley’s novel in an astonishing display of vocal skills.

FRANKIE FOXSTONE AKA THE PROFIT: WALKING TOUR Assembly Rooms, 1–24 August (not 12, 19), 2.15pm

Satire for the Brexit-era as property developer Frankie Foxstone takes us onto the streets to share her less-than-visionary plans for the buildings of Edinburgh. Not your average walking tour.

Glasgow theatre-maker Eve Nicol digs out her copy of the Belle and Sebastian album of the same name and turns it into a play – one about two lost souls dreaming of pulling off a heist, if only they could take their hands off each other.

THE INCIDENT ROOM Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July– 26 August (not 13), 4.30pm

One of several true-crime dramas on this year’s Fringe, this one is about the search for the Yorkshire Ripper. Its less about the crime than the investigation, it focuses on the challenges and pressures on a police force tasked with tracking down one of the country’s most notorious killers.

ISLANDER: A NEW MUSICAL Roundabout @ Summerhall, 31 July–25 August (not Tuesday's), 10am

An epic story of myth and reality as a stranger is washed ashore on a remote island. Lush harmonies are created as the cast record their voices and layer them over each other enhancing the folk-themed score.

IT’S TRUE, IT’S TRUE, IT’S TRUE Underbelly – Bristo Square, 16–26 August (not 17), 1pm

Making a welcome return after being a big hit last year, Fringe First and Total Theatre Award-winning Breach Theatre tells the story of the 17th-century rape of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi based on surviving court transcripts. It takes a look at the renaisance trail and asks how much has really changed in the last four centuries.

HOLD ON LET GO Summerhall, 31 July–25 August (not 1, 7, 12, 20), 8.40pm

Paul Smith from Maximo Park provides the songs for this gigtheatre look at memory – what we store in our heads and what we download to our phones.

HOW NOT TO DROWN Traverse Theatre, 3–25 August (not Monday's), times vary

Inspired by the true story of cowriter Dritan Kastrati, How Not to Drown is about a child refugee who gets out of Kosovo and finds 168

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LA REPRISE. HISTOIRE(S) DU THÉÂTRE (I)

PURPOSELESS MOVEMENTS The Studio, Festival Theatre 19–24 August, 8pm

Royal Lyceum, 3–5 August, 8pm

La Reprise, considers the nature of real and theatrical violence by debating the represention of homophobic murder and the ethics showing it on stage.

After writing and directing My Left Right Foot – The Musical, one of last year’s big Fringe hits, Robert Softley Gale moves to the Edinburgh International Festival with his dance-theatre performance starring four men with cerebral palsy. Staged by Scotland’s Birds of Paradise.

THE LAST OF THE PELICAN DAUGHTERS Pleasance Courtyard, 31 July–26 August (not 17), 4.40pm

An intriguing collaboration between the Wardrobe Ensemble, which enjoyed success with Education, Education, Education and Complicite, the famed physicaltheatre company, who present a comedy about four sisters coming to terms with their mother’s death.

LAUREN BOOTH: ACCIDENTALLY MUSLIM Gilded Balloon Teviot, 31 July–26 August (not 15), 12pm

Tony Blair’s sister-in-law has had a more eventful life than most. After a misspent youth, she woke up in a mosque after a wild night, and discovered religion – going, in her words, from “hedonism to Hajj”. In her one-woman show, she reflects on her journey from north London to Palestine.

MANUAL CINEMA’S FRANKENSTEIN Underbelly, Bristo Square 31 July–26 August (not 12), 2.45pm

Mary Shelley’s 200-year-old thriller is retold by a Chicagobased company, using shadow puppetry, live video and imitation silent-movie techniques, all to the accompaniment of a four-piece orchestra.

MOOT MOOT Summerhall, 8–25 August (not 19th), 1.30pm

Entertaining performance art from Scotland’s Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill. They play two identical DJs, both called Barry, who field calls on a radio phone-in. Part of Made in Scotland and the British Council Edinburgh Showcase.

MUSIK Assembly Rooms, 5–24 August, 9.40pm

The Pet Shop Boys have written half-a-dozen songs for this new musical, written by old collaborator Jonathan Harvey, starring Frances Barber. Barber plays an aging rock star looking back at a life of excess.

She also starred in the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven. www.edfestmag.com

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RED DUST ROAD Royal Lyceum, 14–18 August, 7.30pm

Moot Moot MYTHOS: A TRILOGY: GODS. HEROES. MEN Festival Theatre, 19–25 August, times vary

Having written a bestselling update of the Greek myths, Stephen Fry takes to the stage to perform a selection of his favourites in three separate programmes. Expect high drama and low comedy in his fresh take on these enduring tales.

NARCOLEPSY

THE PROFESSOR Assembly Rooms, 1–25 August (not 13, 19), 3.20pm

You get a greater rate of words per minute in a Brian Parks comedy, so hold onto your hats as American Absurdum Productions charges its way through facts and fake news in his play about an eccentric professor, ranting his way through topics ranging from shipwrecks to the Venus de Milo and everything inbetween.

Jackie Kay’s true story of her quest for identity as the black daughter of adoptive parents is adapted for the stage by Tanika Gupta and staged by the National Theatre of Scotland for the Edinburgh International Festival. From Scotland to Nigeria, it describes Kay’s 20-year search for her biological mother and father.

THE RED Pleasance Dome, 31 July–26 August (not 13), 4pm

Marcus Brigstocke directs and adapts his award-winning radio play about an alcoholic, 25-years

Summerhall, 31 July–25 August (not 12, 19), 1pm

Theatre-maker Chris Goode looks back to his first appearance on the Fringe 25-years-ago, in a piece of autobiographical documentary theatre that recalls the influence of River Phoenix and evokes gay life in the 1990s.

OEDIPUS King’s Theatre, 14–17 August, 8pm

Celebrated young London director, Robert Icke works with the International Theater Amsterdam to make his Edinburgh International Festival debut. Writing and directing, he turns the ancient story of the hero who accidentally kills his father and sleeps with his mother into a modern-day political thriller about a politician whose past catches up with him.

PETER GYNT Festival Theatre, 1–10 August, 7pm

The Edinburgh International Festival welcomes the National Theatre of Great Britain for the première of David Hare’s adaptation of Ibsen’s wild and sprawling play. Relocated from rural Norway to modern-day Scotland via Florida and Eygpt for a quick meeting with a Sphinx, it stars James McArdle whose last EIF role was as King James I in The James Plays. See the feature on page 48-49.

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Theatre . Comedy . Kids Shows Dance . Circus . Music . Magic

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0131 556 6550

@ThePleasance

Pleasance.co.uk

Mediterranean

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THEATRE LISTINGS

sober, whose father bequeaths him a bottle of red wine. Inspired by the comedian’s own recovery, it is a bitter-sweet play about addiction.

Rhum and Clay arrive in town with a show that makes the connection between the hype around the Orson Welles radio broadcast and the fake news of today. Were audiences really as taken in as reported?

THE RED HOURGLASS Scottish Storytelling Centre, 1–14 August, 6pm

WATCHING GLORY DIE

Since first enjoying success with this horror comedy in 2012, authorperformer Alan Bissett has been acclaimed for two instalments of The Moira Monologues. In this earlier work, he takes on the form of five spiders holed-up in a research lab.

Assembly Rooms 1–25 August (not 7, 13, 20), 1.50pm

Above: What Girls Are Made Of Below: Frankie Foxton

THE SECRET RIVER

SONGS IN THE KEY OF CREE

King’s Theatre 2–11 August, 7.30pm

CanadaHub @ King’s Hall, 31 July–18 August (not 5, 12), 7pm

Sydney Theatre Company takes on Kate Grenville’s compelling novel about the life of a convict, shipped with his family from the slums of London to the new colony of Australia.

Indigenous performers are well represented at this year’s Fringe.

Among them is Thomson Highway, a celebrated Cree-Canadian playwright. In this theatrical cabaret, he presents highlights of his work, accompanied by a singer and saxophonist. Part of Canada Hub for Summerhall.

THE SHARK IS BROKEN Assembly George Square Studios, 2–25 August (alternate days), 11am

Ian Shaw has started to look an awful lot like his father, Robert Shaw. So who better to play the maverick Jaws actor than Shaw himself? His play sees the three stars of the Kubrick classic caught on a tiny boat while a mechanical shark is being fixed.

SH!T THEATRE DRINK RUM WITH EXPATS Summerhall, 31 July–25 August (not 1, 12), 8.05pm

In an attempt to capture the Brexit zeitgeist, the chaotic double act that makes up Sh!t Theatre journeyed to Malta to find out how British expats viewed Europe. Once there, they found much more than they bargined for.

THIS SCRIPT Scottish Storytelling Centre, 4–11 August, 4pm

TOTAL IMMEDIATE COLLECTIVE IMMINENT TERRESTRIAL SALVATION The Studio, Festival Theatre 7–25 August, 8pm

Actor and writer Tim Crouch teams up with the National Theatre of Scotland for this show about truth, lies and the end of the world.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS Pleasance Courtyard 31 July–26 August (not 14th), 3.20pm

After an acclaimed run in London,

From Canada, this play by Judith Thompson is about Ashley Smith, a teenager who – after five years of being misdiagnosed, and mistreated,- committed suicide in prison while the guards watched on security cameras.

WHAT GIRLS ARE MADE OF Assembly Hall 1–25 August, (not 7, 19) 2.30pm

A smash hit at the Traverse last year, Cora Bissett autobiographical play with music tells the story of how she turned from small-town girl to next-bigthing as her band Darlingheart were signed by a major label.

Things, however, didn’t quite go according to plan…

Edinburgh performance poet, Jenny Lindsay showcases her latest publication; a polemical memoir calling for feminist unity in the face of reactionary forces. Expect pithy rhymes, direct delivery and a punchy performance.

TO MOVE IN TIME Summerhall, 19–24 August, 4.05pm

After appearing most recently at the Edinburgh International Festival, Tim Etchells and Forced Entertainment make a return to the Fringe with a time-travelling stream-of-consciousness piece performed by Tyrone Huggins.

Questions of morallity, values and priority are brought to the fore by the posibility of living a life in any order.

TOKYO ROSE Underbelly, Cowgate 1–25 August (not 12), 6.55pm

All-female rap musical sung by five female disk jockeys. Its about Iva d’Aquino, an American citizen who, in 1949, was accused of treason for pedalling Axis propaganda as a broadcaster on Radio Tokyo. The evidence was flimsy and many years later she was pardoned, but not before serving six years in prison. From the team behind The Half Moon Shania. www.edfestmag.com

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CABERET LISTINGS

ADA CAMPE & THE PSYCHIC DUCK

together stories of coming out, addiction and abuse with an undying love of Britney Spears.

The Stand New Town Theatre – Studio, 3-25 (not 13) Aug, 2.50pm

Award-winning variety artist Ada Campe and her Psychic Duck will introduce you to wonderful women, strange encounters and fairground mystery.

LATE NIGHT LIP SERVICE WITH GINGZILLA Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre – Main Theatre, 2-3, 8-10, 15-18, 22-24 Aug, 11.30pm

HELP! I THINK I MIGHT BE FABULOUS Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre – Attic, 31 Jul–25 Aug, 6pm

Alfie Ordinary is definitely fabulous.

He tours Britain with the RuPaul's Drag Race girls, bringing sparkle wherever he goes. After winning four Fringe awards around the world, he makes his Edinburgh debut.

Best Of Caberet

Diary of a Drag Queen, Crystal Rasmussen returns to Edinburgh for her first solo show. Bringing her pages to life through song, dance and writhing around in a children’s swimming pool, her show explores the daunting task of getting from A to She.

ATOMIC SALOON SHOW Assembly George Square Gardens – Palais du Variete, 1-25 (not 12) Aug, 10:10pm

EXPOSING EDITH George Square Studios,

The Atomic Saloon Show is coming to town! Our host, Boozy Skunkton, has gathered up the “most abnormally sexy but sensationally amoral” troupe of entertainers on earth to regale us with their comedy, acrobatics and music.

Winner of Best Cabaret at Adelaide Fringe Festival, Exposing Edith follows the life of the great songstress, unravelling dark stories by weaving together her songs and the characters in her life.

BEST OF CABARET Assembly Rooms – Ballroom,

Assembly George Square Gardens Palais du Variete 1-25 (not 12, 19) Aug, 7pm

2-26 (not 12, 19) Aug, 2.20pm

Multi-award winner and ex-XFactor contestant, Gingzilla, is hosting the notorious Late Night Lip Service at Gilded Balloon.

Expect lip-sync battles, allstar line-ups and much more midnight madness with the ginger-est, most glamorous host of all.

PIÑATA Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose Doonstairs, 24th Aug, 11.15pm

A DIY, art-school aesthetic cabaret night, Piñata brings together established talent and some fresh faces before the joyful smashing of it's papier-mâché name-sake.

POLLYANNA Paradise Palms, every Sunday night from 8pm. Gilded Balloon, 9-10 Aug, details tbc.

Outrageous behaviour from Paradise Palms late-night favourites. The queerest, messiest and sexiest creatures will all come out to play for Pollyanna.

LITTLE DEATH CLUB

REUBEN KAYE THE KAYE HOLE

Underbelly, 3-24 (not 12) Aug, 8.00pm

Assembly Checkpoint, 2-4, 9-11, 16-18 & 23-25 Aug, 11.15pm

Join the mysterious Bernie Dieter for a darker shade of cabaret that maintains the hedonism of inter-war Berlin.

Described as "a cross between Lady GaGa, Marlene Dietrich and Noel Fielding in sequins", the piano may have been drinking, but Bernie is always seductively in tune.

This is one hot late-night ticket! Reuben Kaye creates an atmosphere of extravagant chaos with a quick wit that means no matter what happens, it will be hilarious. Backed by a live band and hosting some of the best talents at the Fringe, prepare to blush to your toenails and be drenched in sweat and glitter!

FRISKY AND MANNISH

1-25 Aug, 11pm

With 50 of the most talented variety, comedy and burlesque stars on their line-up, this nightly Cabaret show is guaranteed late night entertainment.

CIRQUE DU SLAY theSpace @ Niddry St – Lower Theatre, 5-10 Aug, 8.35pm

Dragtime’s kings, queens and in-betweens invite you to enter a sparkling tent of mystical wonders for a whirling cabaret of dancing, singing, lip-sync, burlesque, comedy and general oddity.

COLONEL MUSTARD AND FRIENDS Gilded Balloon at the Museum – Auditorium, 6-8, 16, 18-22, 25 Aug, 10.30 pm

Scotland’s favourite mustard-based movement are taking over Gilded Balloon for a night of dijon-based mayhem. Colonel John Thomas McMustard brings you a show with guests from the world of music, comedy and spoken word.

Legendary “popmusicy-seriocomicmash-parodic-stereophonicLOUD-vaudevillian-sketchcabaretthrowbackcurrent-oldfanglednewfashioned-bapsbottyinfotainment” Frisky and Mannish are back to mess around with music in the most entertaining way.

GINGER JOHNSON Pleasance Dome, 1 Bristo Square, 31 Jul–26 (not 12, 19) Aug, 9.40pm

Ginger Johnson has had enough of the horrors of everyday life, from the alt-right to melting permafrosts, she's decided to dedicate an hour to pure escapism. Confessional cabaret from the legendary host of Sink the Pink.

HERSTORY theSpace @ Surgeons Hall – Theatre, 12-17 Aug, 10.15pm

Using song, movement and spoken word, this bold and bodacious cabaret show tells the stories of some of the most misunderstood women in history.

CRYSTAL RASMUSSEN

IT’S BRITNEY, BITCHES

Underbelly, Cowgate – Belly Dancer, 1-25 (not 12) Aug, 5.50 pm

Gilded Balloon – Turret, 31 Jul–26 (not 12) Aug, 11.30pm

Author of Nobel-nominated book

It’s Britney, Bitches weaves

www.edfestmag.com

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LISTINGS KIDS

BASIL BRUSH’S FAMILY FUN SHOW Underbelly, Bristo Square

OUR TOP KIDS SHOWS

JANE FOSTER: FROM RABBITS TO RAPTORS Charlotte Square, 19 Aug, 12.15pm

Jane Foster's colourful books introduce young readers to the animal kingdom – alive and extinct.

She draws some favourites and encourages the audience to get involved.

31 July–15 August, 1pm

Older audiences on a nostalgia kick will want to check out Basil Brush Unleashed in the early evening, but Basil Brush’s Family Fun Show is the one most in keeping with the spirit of the original children’s TV favourite.

Expect songs, jokes and plenty of “boom, booms!” .

BICYCLE BOY Pleasance Dome, outside

GIRL SCOUTS VS ALIENS Assembly George Square Studios 31 July–26 August (not 13, 20), 12.10pm

Ogg, 'n' Ugg 'n' Dugg

show features mum’s and dad’s favourites from The Clash, The Beatles and The Strokes.

Low-fi sci-fi comedy adventure in which four teenage campers discover a flying saucer in the next field. They have only their camping equipment and Girl Scout training to deal with the other-worldly visitors.

DEXTER AND WINTER’S DETECTIVE AGENCY Roundabout @ Summerhall

Charlotte Square 10 August, 11.45am

16–18 August, 11am, 1pm and 3pm

An “interactive, bike-powered eco-musical” in which Sam goes on a trail of discovery into his grandfather’s old bike shed. It’s free but there’s a catch; none of it will happen unless the audience pedals enough power.

COLONEL MUSTARD AND THE BIG BAD WOLF Gilded Balloon Teviot 5–7 and 15–18 August, 12pm

CHORES

Natalie McConnon and Anna Russell-Martin join Colonel John McMustard in his attempt to work out whether the Big Bad Wolf is really bad or just misunderstood.

Assembly George Square 12pm Gardens 1–25 August (not 12, 19)

COMETE

Circus tomfoolery from Australia as two brothers are left to tidy their room but, however hard they try, just can’t get the job done.

Assembly Checkpoint 31 July–26 August (not 8, 13), 10.30am

Likely to appeal to parents as much as children, this live rock gig of a

3, 4, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25 August, 11.20am

Weekend entertainment by Nathan Bryon, one of the writers behind CBeebies hit Rastamouse, it follows best friends Dexter and Winter who set about proving Dexter’s mum is innocent of involvement in a jewellery robbery.

HARRY HILL: STAND-UP STAR

Harry is back with the latest instalment of silliness; Matt Millz Stands Up! The dilemma for our hero is he’s been too busy living the showbiz life to come up with any fresh material.

CHRIS HOY: FLYING FERGUS’S BIG FINALE Charlotte Square 13 August, 5pm

DON’T MESS WITH THE DUMMIES Underbelly, Bristo Square 31 July– 25 August (not 12, 19), 11.20am

All-female circus fun with a jungle theme.

The Olympic champion comes to the Edinburgh International Book Festival to conclude his Flying Fergus series about an ordinary boy and his cycling dreams.

I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS

DOODLE POP Assembly George Square Studios

Pleasance Courtyard 31 July–26 August (not 14, 19), 10.30am

31 July–25 August (not 12, 19), 10.50am

Wizard theatre company brings to life Michael Morpurgo's tale of a boy who becomes a lot more interested in reading after he meets the Unicorn Lady.

Korean show in which two friends watch their doodles come to life.

Multimedia trickery means their underwater adventure is animated before your eyes.

FEAST OF FOOLS Scottish Storytelling Centre 1–18 August (not 7, 13, 14), 1.30pm

You’ll probably want to eat before you see Feast of Fools, otherwise storyteller Daniel Serridge will make you hungry with his tales of disgusting banquets, salubrious suppers and measly meals.

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I’LL TAKE YOU TO MRS COLE! Pleasance Courtyard 31 July–26 August (not 12), 1.45pm

Based on the book by Nigel Gray and Michael Foreman, about a boy whose mother threatens him with a visit to Mrs Cole whenever he's naughty. However, when he meets Mrs Cole, she’s not at all what he expected.

FIRST PIANO ON THE MOON

ILLUSTRATING HARRY POTTER WITH JIM KAY

Summerhall 31 July–18 August (not 12), 11.30am

Charlotte Square 24 August,10.30am

Keyboard maestro Will Pickvance takes Mozart, Chopin and Scott Joplin into orbit as he prepares for a lunar concert. But how will the lack of gravity affect his performance?

The man responsible for the illustrated editions of JK Rowling’s fantasy about the boy wizard is Jim Kay. He shares his inspirations and the challenges of visualising such magical books. www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 16:51

KIDS LISTINGS

JARRED CHRISTMAS AND HOBBIT: THE MIGHTY KIDS BEATBOX COMEDY SHOW Assembly Rooms 1–24 August, (not 12), 3.50pm

An afternoon of comedy and beatboxing, starring comedian Jarred Christmas and world champion beatboxer and UK loopstation champion, Hobbit.

JELLY OR JAM Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows 3, 4, 10, 11 August, 12pm

Circus acrobatics inspired by interviews with children about their emotions and friendships.

SYLVIA V LINSTEADT: ENTER THE WILD FOLK WILDERNESS Charlotte Square 25 August, 6pm

Linsteadt’s magical Stargold Chronicles are rooted in folklore and mythology. Here, she talks about The Wild Folk Rising, the latest in her epic fantasy series.

LITTLE TOP Pleasance at EICC 1–18 August (not 5, 12), 10.30am, 1.30pm

Circus for babies, created by Scotland’s Starcatchers and exploring the way gravity works on the developing body.

16:30 01 - 25 AUG

www.edfestmag.com

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MONSKI MOUSE’S BABY CAB Assembly George Square Gardens 5–8, 12–15 August, 11am

Fringe regular Monski Mouse calls on her friends Richard Crawley, Amy Gwilliam and cabaret star Dusty Limits for a morning of under-age cabaret entertainment.

MOON DRAGON BABIES Pleasance Courtyard 31 July–26 August (not 14, 21), 11.05am

Sensory performance catering to those under 12 months old, telling the story of Bertie the Moon Dragon who forgets to send the Moon into the sky at the right time.

OGG ‘N’ UGG ‘N’ DOGG Gilded Balloon Teviot 31 July–26 August (not 7, 14, 21), 12.30pm

Man’s best friend wasn’t always so friendly. Before we had domestic dogs, we had to tame them. Theatre Fideri Fidera takes us back to the days when early humans first teamed up with the wolves.

ROCKET GIRL Underbelly, Cowgate 1–25 August (not 12), 10.50am

13:30 31 JUL

- 26 AUG

A puppet show about an eightyear-old girl who is so inspired by the Moon landing in 1969 that she determines to become an astronaut herself. But will a patriarchal society stop her before she’s even begun? Girl power at its finest.

SLIME Pleasance Pop-Up: Central Library 2–24 August (not Sundays), 11.15am

WALLACE & GROMIT’S MUSICAL MARVELS Pleasance at EICC 15 and 16 August, 1pm and 3.15pm

Wallace has written an orchestral score, My Concerto in Ee Lad, and wants to hear it performed. Even with Gromit to help him, there’s no certainty it’ll come off. With specially created Aardman animations and a live orchestra, in this interactive show you'll find the clay figures as you’ve never seen them before.

There’s nothing the under-fives like more than slime, so they’ll be hoping to get their hands on the stuff in this interactive show. It’s about a slimy slug who tries to convince a caterpillar to co-operate on getting a hard-to-reach leaf.

SPARKLE Summerhall 31 July–25 August (not 12, 19), 10.20am

This show tells the story of Sparkle, who loves to dress in tutus, tiaras and sparkly dresses, but finds on his first day of school that not everyone wants to let him shine.

Jelly Or Jam

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LISTINGS DANCE

BACK OF THE BUS

THE CHOSEN

Assembly George Square Gardens 2-25 (not 7, 12, 19) August, 5.30pm & 7.15pm

Dance Base 2-25 Aug, (not 5, 12, 19), 5pm

New Zealand dance company Java invite you onboard a double decker bus, where dancers hang from the roof, dance along the aisles and cause merry mayhem.

OUR TOP 20 DANCE SHOWS

Company Chordelia follows up its previous Fringe hits Nijinsky’s Last Jump and Lady Macbeth: Unsex Me Here, with this new piece by Scottish choreographer and artistic director Kally Lloyd-Jones that explores our relationship with death.

BALLETBOYZ: THEM/US Underbelly Bristo Square 31 Jul-15 Aug, 1pm

The London-based company of six male dancers, collectively known as Them, present this superb doublebill choreographed by the dancers themselves, which presents an extended version of Christopher Wheeldon’s Us.

Tricia Brown: In Plain Sight

THE FOREST Assembly Checkpoint 31 Jul-11 Aug, 4.40pm

The latest talented graduates from Russia’s acclaimed Moscow Art Theatre School perform this highly visual physical theatre piece exploring our relationship with the natural world.

TRISHA BROWN: IN PLAIN SIGHT

HARD TO BE SOFT: A BELFAST PRAYER

Jupiter Artland 9-11 Aug, 5pm & 8pm

The Lyceum 21-24 August, 4pm & 8pm

One of the most important forces in American post-modern dance, Trisha Brown left behind a legacy of great creations, including these short pieces turned into sitespecific works in Jupiter Artland's glorious garden.

Choreographer Oona Doherty presents this four-part work exploring notions of aggression and vulnerability in Belfast. It features a solo from Doherty herself, a male duet and an ensemble of young dancers.

HAVANA AFTER DARK

RITE OF SPRING

Pleasance at EICC 5-25 (not 21) August, 9pm

Festival Theatre 22-24 Aug, 8pm

Latin rhythms, salsa, mambo and rumba meet classical ballet and contemporary dance in this live music and dance show from the Cuban capital, packed with some of the country’s most talented dancers.

China’s Peacock Contemporary Dance Company, headed by choreographer Yang Liping, presents this highly visual work set to Stravinsky’s iconic score, with a stunning set by Academy Awardwinning designer Tim Yip.

JULIET AND ROMEO

RITUALIA

Dance Base 21-25 Aug, 12.45pm

Zoo Southside 19-24 Aug, 9.30pm

The renowned Lost Dog company re-imagines the outcome of Shakespeare’s most romantic couple. Now they’re in their 40s and love isn’t what it once was.

Scottish Dance Theatre perform choreographer Colette Sadler’s fresh, original and androgynous take on Bronislava Nijinska’s 1920s ballet Les Noces, set to Stravinsky’s stirring score.

KALAKUTA REPUBLIK The Lyceum 8-11 August, 8pm (2pm matinee)

Inspired by Afrobeat pioneer and political activist Fela Kuti, this visually striking work by African choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly recreates the vibe of Kuti’s radical nightclub.

THE STORM Dance Base 20-25 Aug, 2pm

Contemporary company James Wilton Dance returns to the Fringe with The Storm, a work for seven dancers combining martial arts, acrobatics, an electro-rock soundtrack and thousands of bits of paper.

KID_X Assembly Roxy 20-25 Aug, 10am

SUPER HUMAN

This family-friendly show follows the futuristic romance of a boy with a bionic heart and a ‘selfie queen’.

Featuring circus, street dance and video projections set against live vocals by Eva Lazarus.

Zoo Southside 2-17 Aug, 5.30pm

Inspired by the supernatural and superhuman, Danish company Next Zone explore the limits of the body through a fusion of extreme physicality, urban dance and new music.

9 Church Hill Theatre 3-6 Aug, 6pm (2pm matinee)

Montreal company Cas Public presents this dance show for families, taking dancer Cai Glover’s hearing impairment and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as its starting points.

TAIWAN SEASON: BOUT Summerhall 31 Jul-25 (not 5, 19, 12, 19) Aug, 10.20 am

The brothers of Taiwan’s Chang Dance Theatre return to the Fringe after the success of their debut show, Bon 4 Bon, and continue their exploration of fraternal relationships and masculinity.

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UN POYO ROJO

Greenside @ Nicolson Square 19-24 August, 12.30pm

Zoo Southside 21-26 Aug, 5.10pm

Joel Brown of integrated dance company Candoco joins forces with former Scottish Ballet principal Eve Mutso for this intimate duet exploring their different strengths and vulnerabilities.

Argentinian dance duo Luciano Rosso and Alfonso Barón bring back their hilarious two-hander set in a male locker room, featuring contemporary dance, acrobatics and physical comedy. www.edfestmag.com

04/07/2019 16:02

Devil May Care

‘Sharpest one-liner merchant’ SUNDAY TIMES HHHHH THE MIRROR

WORK IN PROGRESS

HHHH

HHHH

THREE WEEKS

BROADWAY BABY

re Neil Delame

Ivo Graham THE GAME OF LIFE

LISA RICHARDS BY ARRANGEMENT WITH OFF THE KERB

E N D O F WAT C H

You’ll be hard pressed to find a more gifted comic at the Fringe

‘A hugely enjoyable hour of stand-up comedy’

HHHH THE TIMES

‘On the brink of comedy’s Premier League’

★★★★★

THE SCOTSMAN

HHHH

★★★★★

One lean, mean, comedy, killing machine

Three Weeks

EVENING STANDARD

★★★★ Chortle

★★★★ The List

★★★★★

THE HERALD

★★★★ Mail on Sunday

@neildelamere Facebook.com/neildelamere

Nath Valvo

I’m happy for you

‘SUPER-SHARP DRYTIMEWIT’ OUT

HHHHH ‘A MASTERCLASS’ THE SCOTSMAN

NOMINEE MELBOURNE COMEDY FESTIVAL MOST OUTSTANDING SHOW, 2019

NOMINEE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE BEST NEWCOMER, 2016

HHHHH HHHH THE ADVERTISER THE SCOTSMAN

AFTER THIS ONE I’M GOING HOME

HHHH

‘...After This One is a masterclass of performance’ CHORTLE

Unrelatable PHIL JERROD Unrelatable Unrelatable

HHHH

‘INSIGHTFUL, DESPAIRING WIT’

THE TIMES

THE SCOTSMAN

‘Hot!’

‘DEFINITELY ONE TO WATCH’

CRAIG REVEL HORWOOD

HHHH

THE LIST

THE TELEGRAPH

THE BIGGEST AND FUNNIEST SHOW AT THE FRINGE!

COMEDY

HOSTED BY:

JOSH JOEL WIDDICOMBE & DOMMETT

GALA 2019 A CHARITY GALA IN SUPPORT OF WAVERLEY CARE

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS INCLUDING:

SUZI RUFFELL • JAMALI MADDIX • JON RICHARDSON MARLON DAVIS • SUSIEAND McCABE • ROSIE JONES • NIGEL NG MANY MORE!

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COMEDY LISTINGS

ADAM ROWE: PINNACLE Just the Tonic at The Caves, 1-25 August (not 12), 7.30pm

OUR TOP 55 COMEDY SHOWS

DAVID O’DOCHERTY: ULTRASOUND Assembly George Square, July 31, 1-26 August (not 13), 7.30pm.

If it’s perfectly-executed, nongimmicky stand up that floats your boat, you should check out this likeable Liverpudlian. Still only 27, and already a Fringe favourite, he bosses the stage with the confidence and self-assured swagger of a seasoned pro.

Sail away, sail away with this self-described ‘hairy Enya’ as he tells ridiculously funny stories and plays songs on the plastic keyboard he got for his Confirmation. Don’t let the Irishman’s tousled appearance fool you, he delivers sets that are smoother than a pint of the black stuff.

AHIR SHAH: DOTS Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1-25 August, 1.45pm.

THE DELIGHTFUL SAUSAGE: GINSTER’S PARADISE

The man who did things with Bohemian Rhapsody that few thought humanly possible, is back with another thought-provoking, intricately-crafted hour. It’s like a giant joke jigsaw and Shah knows where all the pieces go. Comedy so intelligent, Only Connect fans would approve.

BASIL BRUSH: UNLEASHED

Playhouse, 11 August, 8pm.

ALICE FRASER: MYTHOS

Underbelly, Bristo Square, July 31, 1-25 August, 6.45pm.

Los Angeles-based Craig is returning to his roots with his first UK stand-up show in over 25 years.

The Fringe gave the former Late Late Show host his big break back in the mid-90’s when his patter was spotted by a Hollywood agent.

The rest, as they say, is showbiz.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, July 31, 1-26 August (not 12), 8.45pm.

Ex-corporate lawyer and occasional banjo strummer, Alice is one of the smartest comedians on the circuit.

With a Masters in Rhetoric (I kid you not) her shows are consistently well-crafted, thought-provoking and punctuated with gold-standard gags.

Monkey Barrel Comedy – Barrel 2, 2-25 August (not 13), 12pm.

Above: Alice Fraser Below: Desiree Burch

Boom! Boom! Shake the room!

Fresh from appearances on The Last Leg and Celebrity Juice, showbiz legend, Basil Brush is bringing an adults-only show to the Fringe.

Some of the biggest names in town are expected to cosy up on the couch with the celebrity billed as ‘Britain’s most loveable fox’.

Yorkshire’s finest meat-themed double-act are back with more surreal sketch show shenanigans. Chris Cantrill and Amy Gladhill linked up back in 2017 and they’ve been collecting four and five star reviews ever since. This year, they’re staying at Ginster’s Paradise - a holiday camp that’s more League of Gentleman than Hi-De-Hi. May contain offal puns and a load of tripe.

CATHERINE BOHART: LEMON BABY WANTS CANDY: THE COMPLETELY IMPROVISED FULL BAND MUSICAL Assembly George Square Studios, July 31, 1-25 August, 8pm.

A sell-out for the past four years, the BWC crew are old (jazz) hands at giving audiences exactly what they want - a rollickingly good time. The premise is simple: you shout out the title and the US ensemble will create the musical. A spontaneous, seat-ofthe-pants delight.

Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August (not 13), 6pm.

Following on from last year’s immaculate debut, Bohart, the bisexual, daughter of a Catholic deacon is back with another confessional set. She’s talking about sex, baby. All the good things and the bad things, like - whisper it- lesbian bed death. A benediction to relationships and wee Irish mammies.

CIARÁN DOWD: PADRE RODOLFO Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August (not 14), 9.45pm.

Last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer winner swashed and buckled his way into everyone’s hearts with his epic tale of 17th-century swordsman, Don Rodolfo. The Irishman’s reprising the role this year but things are no longer all ruffles and Rioja. Don Rodolfo has joined the priesthood.

If Zorro had been raised on Craggy Island this surely would have been the craic.

CRAIG FERGUSON: HOBO FABULOUS Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh www.edfestmag.com

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imagination-workshop.com 0131 507 0669

imagination workshop

v119 The George Hotel, 19-21 George Street, EH2 2PB

the home of interactive and immersive theatre

A Migrant’s Son

Explore one of the most colourful times in Australian history - the arrival of the Greeks during a traditional Greek feast!

You’ll be serenaded by the soulful songstress as she cooks you a delicious three course dinner.

14-26 Aug (excl 19th) | 5:30pm

Big Tops and Tiny Tots

Cherie - My Struggle

4-13 Aug (excl 5th) | 5:15pm

8-18 Aug | 11:30am

2-25 Aug (excl 9th, 19th) | 10:30am

Myra

Greg Byron Stand Up Poet

3-24 Aug (excl Wed) | 3pm

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Comfort Food Cabaret

2-25 Aug (excl Mon) | 7pm

The Dots

3-25 Aug (Thu-Sun) | 8pm

Love/Hate Actually 1-26 Aug (excl 12th) | 6pm

03/07/2019 09:28

m

THE OFFICIAL FRINGE FAVOURITE! ENTERTAINING AUDIENCES FOR OVER 22 YEARS!

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‘OUTRAGEOUSLY FUNNY’ BROADWAY BABY

‘AN ABSOLUTE MUST’ SCOTTISH SUN

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Debut at Edinburgh Frin

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LIKE BEING INSIDE THE TELLY’

TimeOut London

01 - 26 AUG | 20.30

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COMEDY LISTINGS

DESIREE BURCH: DESIREE’S COMING EARLY! Heroes @ The Hive, August 1 -12, 14-19, 21-25. 7.40pm.

Fresh from hosting the utterly bing-bong Netflix game show, Flinch, the London-based New Yorker is back with a show that’s guaranteed to shock and awe.

Desiree is currently developing some of her dominatrix tales for television so catch them here first.

and he’s feeling the pace. Will that stop him from bouncing around the stage at a hundred miles an hour like a man possessed? Or spontaneously ad-libbing so that every show is different from the last? Don’t hold your breath.

ELEANOR TIERNAN: ENJOYING THE SPOTLIGHT RESPONSIBLY PBH, Banshee Labyrinth, 3-25 August (not 13), 2.20pm.

No-one overthinks things better than Eleanor Tiernan. The exengineer turned comic could probably get a PhD in pondering.

Cliché free and completely unconventional, her odd, off-beat observations illustrate how life’s intermittent boots up the backside help shape our identity. This particular kick in the pants starts with a stolen smartphone.

ERIC ANDRE: THE STAND UP TOUR Gilded Balloon at the Museum, 25 August, 9pm.

What’s that strange howling?

It’s not Eric Andre practising for his role as a hyena in Disney’s upcoming remake of The Lion King. It’s the sound of comedy fans weeping into their plastic pints because they’ve missed out on tickets for the US prankster and king of carnage’s final night of the Fringe show.

JAYDE ADAMS: THE BALLAD OF KYLIE JENNER’S OLD FACE Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August, 9.30pm

Above: Eleanor Ternan, Jo Caulfield Below: Jason Byrne

FERN BRADY: POWER AND CHAOS

JASON BYRNE: WRECKED BUT READY

Monkey Barrel, 1-25 August (not 12), 6pm.

Assembly Hall, 5-25 August, 9pm.

Fern Brady knows what it takes to craft a good stand-up routine.

She should do, she used to be a comedy reviewer. The girl’s done good though - just voted one of Vogue’s top 5 British female comedians, she’s been notching up telly time on shows like Russell Howard Hour, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and Live At The Apollo. A pound says you blush at least once.

An annual must-see for many Fringe goers. This is the Irish comic’s 23rd consecutive year

Following last year’s all-singing, all-dancing musical spectacular, Jayde is taking a sequin sabbatical this year. The leotards and leopardskin have been packed away as she reinvents herself as a ‘successful, independent woman person’. Expect gratuitous use of black sweaters.

FRANK SKINNER LIVE Assembly George Square, July 31, 1-18 August, 9pm.

In 1987, the Brummie comic spent £400 of his last £435 booking a venue at the Fringe. It was a sound investment. Four years later, he beat Eddie Izzard and Jack Dee to the Edinburgh Comedy Award title and he’s done alright for himself ever since, thank you very much.

Here, he returns with a new hour of stand-up ahead of his autumn tour.

GLENN MOORE: LOVE DON’T LIVE HERE GLENNY MOORE Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August, 4pm.

Another year, another stonkinglygood show title from the prince of puns and pullovers. He follows up last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated offering with a joke-crammed, confessional tale that’s set to blow the lid on his former paper-shuffling life as a TV newsreader. A class act. www.edfestmag.com

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JENA FRIEDMAN: MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE Assembly George Square Studios, July 31, 1-25 August (not 12), 9.20pm.

The former joke writer for David Letterman returns to the Fringe after a four-year break, and this time it’s personal. Jena celebrates free speech while she still has it in this unapologetically political set. Provocative and powerful, it may unleash a presidential Twitter tirade.

JO CAULFIELD : VOODOO DOLL The Stand Comedy Club, 2-25 August (not 12 or 19), 7.40pm.

Sharp, sarcastic and with more pith than the citrus fruit aisle in Sainsbury’s - Jo Caulfield is everything the Comedy Fringe is about. Do NOT be tempted to ask her what it’s like to be a woman in comedy, but DO be tempted to go along and see her sink her claws into a whole random range of subjects.

JOHN-LUKE ROBERTS: AFTER ME COMES THE FLOOD (BUT IN FRENCH) DRIPS SPLOSH SPLASH DRIP BLUBBP BLUBBP BLUBBPBLUBBPBLUBBP!!

Assembly George Square Studios, July 31, 1-26 August (not 14 or 21), 5.30pm.

Absurdist and full-time idiot, John-Luke Roberts is a reviewer’s dream. Partly because his titles are so long there’s no room to write anything else and partly because his shows are a guaranteed hour of unmitigated mayhem, madness and escapism.

He’ll make you feel, mighty surreal.

Above: John Luke Roberts Left: Jojo Sutherland Below: Lou Sanders

JOJO SUTHERLAND: RICHES TO RAGS

LOU SANDERS: SAY HELLO TO YOUR NEW STEP-MUMMY

Gilded Balloon Teviot, July 31, 1-26, 4.15pm.

Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1-25 August (not 14), 3.15pm.

After a five year break, the queen of Scottish comedy is back, all guns blazing. Her confessional set contemplates a life that’s been like Cinderella’s in reverse. Oh, and there’s a reason for that five year break by the way, but you’re going to have to see the show to find out what.

A comedian’s comedian - Lou’s 2018 Fringe hour was voted best show by her fellow funny folk. This year, she shares more misadventures from her magnificently mental life. She’s come over all spiritual, so there’s free advice for her audiences too.

JONNY PELHAM: OFF LIMITS Just the Tonic at the Caves, 1-25 August (not 12), 3.20pm.

Jonny’s a sublime story-teller. His oddball, insightful style has already been compared to the genius that is Daniel Kitson. This fourth Fringe hour is his most personal to date and packs a real punch. Confessional and cathartic.

JOSIE LONG: TENDER The Stand Comedy Club, 1-25 August (not 12 or 19), 8.20pm.

Indie comedy queen and legendary lefty, Josie Long is back with her first show in five years. Expect talk of placentas along with the politics.

Josie’s been busy recently having a baby and its prompted her to take a look at the mind-bending intensity of motherhood. There’s funny voices and a sense of hope too.

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10.30am

Tickets ÂŁ12-ÂŁ14 FREE coffee, tea, croissant & strawberry (served from 10)

Three delicious rotating menus of 10-15 minute comedy, eccentricity & mini-drama

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LISTINGS COMEDY

LOYISO GOLA: POP CULTURE Pleasance Dome. July 31, Aug 1 24 (not 13), 7pm A household name in his native South Africa where he anchors and stars in the satirical series Late Nite News, the doubleEmmy nominee is back with more super-smart observations on the absurdities of life. His vote for the world’s greatest pop star may surprise you: it’s not Ed Sheeran.

LUCIE POHL: REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REAL Gilded Balloon Teviot, July 31, 1-26 August, 9pm.

What’s it like to be a video game celebrity with a bathtub in your kitchen? Get ready to soak up the actress and comedian’s selfdeprecating stories about being an online hero but real-life zero.

The small but mighty New Yorker can count Steve Coogan among her fans.

LUCY PEARMAN: BAGGAGE Monkey Barrel Comedy, 2-25 August(not 13 or 14), 4.30pm.

After previous sell-out shows, Maid of Cabbage and Fruit Loop, absurdist Lucy is having a foodbased title break this year. There’s every likelihood that Baggage will contain the same high proportion of hand-made props, elaborate costumes and if you’re very lucky, a finger puppet or two.

MAISIE ADAM: HANG FIRE Gilded Balloon Teviot, July 31, 1-26 August, 5pm.

Above: Loyiso Gola Left: Lucie Pohl. Below: Olga Kotch and Amused Moose National New Comic winner Maisie returns with her second hour. Big things are expected of the ‘nudging 6ft’ Yorkshirewoman. Expect nostalgic, anecdotal humour and the best lumbering awkwardness this side of Miranda Hart.

2018 Best Newcomer nominee MOON: WE CANNOT GET OUT

EDINBURGH’s favourite food & Drink festival

WITH TOP CHEFS INVERLEITH PARK 2, 3, 4 AUGUST

Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August (not 12), 9.30pm.

More ‘lunar-tic’ goings on from the boiler-suited duo. Theirs isn’t any old sketch show format – it’s an immersive comedyhorror experience. Join them in their strange, eerie and weirdly, wonderfully warped world. Rules and the fourth wall are guaranteed to be broken.

NICK OFFERMAN: ALL RISE Assembly Hall, 24 August, 6pm.

Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation buddy is in town for one night only. It promises to be a memorable one, though. The actor, comedian and husband of the peerless Megan Mullally plans an evening of, ‘deliberative talking and light dance that will compel you to chuckle’. Who does this guy’s PR – Chris Eubanks?

and persuasive, Kumar is a modern ‘ranty-hero’ at the top of his game.

OLGA KOCH: IF/THEN Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1-25 August (not 14), 4.30pm.

2018 Best Newcomer nominee and the only person to ever truly rock a 1980’s neon shell suit is back. Again, the Russian-born comic comes bearing props. Last year’s poignant Powerpoint has been replaced by a love story told through the medium of computer programming. Confident and whipsharp, listen out for her upcoming Radio 4 special.

PHIL NICHOL: TOO MUCH Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1-25 August (not 12), 9pm.

Comedian, actor and Duracell bunny impersonator Phil Nichol has amassed over 1,034 stars in his 23 years of sweat-drenched stand up and yet he’s still worried that no-one likes him. He’s in reflective mood with some beautifullycrafted stories of a life wonderfully misspent. You’ll say, ‘thank you for over-sharing’.

NISH KUMAR: IT’S IN YOUR NATURE TO DESTROY YOURSELVES Assembly George Square, 19-25 August, 9pm.

OUR PARTNERS

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The host of BBC 2’s The Mash Report is back and he’s positively apoplectic about the state of the nation. Expect fast, furious forays into the enemy territories of racism, sexism, the class structure and of course Brexit. Passionate www.edfestmag.com

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COMEDY LISTINGS

ROB AUTON: THE TIME SHOW Assembly George Square Studios, July 31, 1-26 August (not 13), 2.50pm.

Guaranteed to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. The stand-up, actor, poet, painter and passionate lover of words, philosophises on a different subject each Fringe. This year, he turns his attention to time.

Eccentric, beautiful and unfailingly uplifting.

successful, Russell Howard would need any help with his comedy career, but he’s looking for yours.

Pop along to his work-in-progress show to help him fine tune new material for his tour and TV shows.

A great chance to see a big name in two relatively small venues.

RONNI ANCONA AND LEWIS MACLEOD: JUST CHECKING IN Above: Russell Howard Right: Ronni Ancona

PHIL WANG: PHILLY PHILLY WANG WANG

RHYS NICOLSON: NICE PEOPLE NICE THINGS NICE SITUATIONS

Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August (not 12), 8pm.

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 1-25 August, 8.40pm.

The regular TV/radio performer and part-time noodle bar reviewer (see his Twitter account) is building up an impressive fan base. This year, that unique brand of super-smart/ super-silly humour is focusing on the weighty subject of morality. A few fart gags might slip out though.

The acerbic Aussie with the sharp dress sense and even sharper tongue is back with his ninth solo show. Brace yourselves for an hour of high-speed, wonderfully waspish humour. This man spits punch-lines and vitriol at a sensational rate of knots.

www.edfestmag.com

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Gilded Balloon at the Museum, July 31, 1-17 August, 9pm.

These seasoned sound-alikes double-team this Fringe to create a dark and scary story:Donald Trump is trying to buy a Scottish hotel whilst a galaxy of famous guests do their damnest to stop him.

Contains more celebs than the VIP bars at midnight.

RUSSELL HOWARD: WORK IN PROGRESS Heroes @ The Hive, 1-13 August, 2.20 and Assembly George Square Studios, 1-13 August, 6.30pm.

It seems unlikely that the mega-

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pastiche of her father, complete with facial hair and baked bean stains.

Clockwise from top: Sara Barron, Simon Brodkin, Tom Houghton

SARA BARRON: ENEMIES CLOSER Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August (not 13), 8.30pm.

The woman Jon Ronson crowned, “the reigning queen of New York story-telling” is back with a big, ballsy, honest hour of stand up.

You’ll be left both shaken and stirred by a cocktail of confessions that are equal parts beautiful and brutal with just a dash of bitters.

SARAH KENDALL: PAPER PLANES Assembly George Square Studios, July 31, 1-25 August, 7pm.

Get yourself as comfy as you

can at a Fringe venue and settle back for an hour of spell-binding story-telling from the multi-award winning Australian. You’ll laugh, you’ll laugh again and then you’ll maybe be a teeny bit sad or a touch moved as she gently folds over a magical mixture of fact and fiction.

SARAH KEYWORTH: PACIFIC Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August (not 13), 5.45pm.

The award-winning comic likes to take a sideways look at life. This could be down to her admittedly terrible posture - or maybe the fact that she’s turning into a perfect

SIMON BRODKIN: 100% SIMON BRODKIN Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-24 August (not 12), 9.30pm.

The mentalist prankster is unveiling a brand new character this year - himself! Brodkin’s best-known for his portrayal of cheeky chav, Lee Nelson and for impersonating folk like Donald Trump, Theresa May and Kayne West. Here, he’s stripping it back to do an hour of good, honest stand-up.

TOM HOUGHTON: THAT’S WHAT I GO TO SCHOOL FOR

SNORT

Pleasance Dome, July 31, 1-25 August, 8.10pm

Pleasance Courtyard, 1-25 August (not 12), 11pm.

New Zealand’s favourite comedy improv show backpacks its way to Edinburgh for the very first time.

Topical and delightfully bonkers, it’s a great chance to see some of the finest Kiwi comics strut their stuff including Alice Snedden and last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards winner, Rose Matefeo.

SOFIE HAGEN: THE BUMSWING Pleasance Dome, July 31, 1-25 August (not 12), 7pm.

The Copenhagen-born comedian, author and fat activist promises a show about memory and swings that are specifically for bums. No doubt it’ll start out like that, but expect deliciously dark detours from the queen of callbacks.

SPENCER JONES: THE THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND Pleasance Courtyard, July 31, 1-25 August (not 12), 5.45pm.

The professional nutter and prop addict returns with another mash up of unconditional madness.

Jones has prepared a surreal smorgasbord of turbo clowns, ear puppets, music loops and stand-up for your delectation and wonderment.

Tower of London resident and all -round posh bloke, Tom lifts the solid silver lid on the British public school system and its old boy’s network that he was packed ‘orf’ to at the tender age of six. Matron may not approve, but you most certainly will.

VIR DAS: LOVED Gilded Balloon at the Museum, July 31, 1-10 August, 7.30pm.

India’s biggest-selling comedian/ actor/biscuit lover is back at the Fringe for a limited run with his internationally-toured show. He may have his own Netflix specials and been recently named as one of Variety’s ‘Top 10 Comics To Watch’ but this global superstar has insecurities just like the rest of us and he’s ready to share.

WIL GREENWAY: THE OCEAN AFTER ALL Underbelly, Bristo Square, 1-25 August (not 12), 4.10pm.

Wil’s delicately-woven tales of whimsy and wonder have made him a Fringe favourite. The Aussie wordsmith is back with some more softly-spoken story-telling that may or may not be about a message in a bottle. A cult classic.

TIFF STEVENSON: MOTHER Monkey Barrel Comedy, July 31, 1-25 August, 9.15pm.

It’s a labour of love as the actress and comedian delivers a show about the extreme sport of being a woman. Political and passionate without ever being preachy, Tiff’s a regular on panel shows like 8 Out Of Ten Cats and Mock The Week.

She also starred in, People Just Do Nothing and Gameface.

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SOUND AND VISION

PODCASTS COMEDY

Catch up with your favourite pod people SUKAN WORDS ANNA RIESER MAIN PHOTO IDIL

THE HOOVERING PODCAST

Jessica Fostekew’s hugely popular podcast explores the way that we interact with food through stories about scoffing it, while Jess and guests chow down on some local grub.

3pm, 13th & 14th Aug, Monkey Barrel Comedy – Monkey Barrel 4, £6.

DRUNK WOMEN SOLVING CRIME

SCUMMY MUMMIES

A true crime podcast with a twist...of lime.

Comedians Hannah George, Catie Wilkins and Taylor Glenn get a little worse for wear and welcome a top guest to test out their drunk detective skills and solve true crime cases.

Underbelly, Bristo Square – Friesian 7.20pm, 3-11th Aug, from £10.80

Hit podcast Scummy Mummies is here to celebrate the scummier side of parenting, from drinking wine at teatime to hiding from the PTA. Assembly George Square – The Blue Room, 7.50pm, 1-25 Aug (not 12), £14

IAIN DALE: ALL TALK

SURPRISE SURPRISE!

The host of For the Many podcast, awardwinning LBC radio presenter and CNN political commentator Iain Dale brings his insight on current affairs to the Fringe for the first time. Iain interviews a different high-profile guest each day, including Heidi Allen MP, Fi Glover, Alan Johnson, Sadiq Khan, John McDonnell MP and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.

Gilded Balloon Teviot – Wine Bar, 4pm, 31 Jul – 11 Aug, from £7

JESSIE WARE, TABLE MANNERS

“Puns will be flowing and much hogwash talked “

Jessie Ware’s charming podcast makes its Fringe debut. Centred around food, family and recorded from her own dinner table, join Jessie and her mum Lennie and some very exciting guests for a dinner party chat.

Over-sharing guaranteed.

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose – Big Yin, 11am, 2-3 Aug, £19.50

RICHARD HERRING

The Hoovering Podcast Live with Jessica Fostekew 3 pm, 13th and 14th Aug. Monkey Barrel Comedy - Monkey Barrel 4 Jessica Fostekew’s hugely popular podcast all about food comes to Edinburgh for two nights only. Exploring the way that we interact with food through stories about scoffing it, Jess and guest will chow down on some local grub.

Previous guests include Jack Monroe, Jess Phillips MP, Monica Galetti, James Acaster, Desiree Burch, Fay Ripley and Simon Rimmer.

www.edfestmag.com

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Godfather of podcasting Richard Herring will be recording live every weekend of the Fringe. His guests will include the biggest names at the festival. Come along for Fringe gossip, hot tips on what to see, emergency questions, regret, faux pas and laughter.

The Stand New Town Theatre, 1.30 pm, 2-25th Aug (not 5, 12, 19), from £14

SECRET DINOSAUR CULT Forged at last year’s fringe, Secret Dinosaur Cult has gone from strength to strength.

Expect dinosaur facts, fresh comedy guests and talks about daddy issues and trauma, all wrapped up in the warm banter of Sofie Hagen and comedian and drag king Jodie Mitchell.

Bedlam Theatre, times vary, 5, 6, 13, 20 Aug, 13, 20, from £8.

MATT FORDE’S POLITICAL PARTY PODCAST The Political Party Podcast is regularly in the Top 10 Comedy Podcasts on iTunes Previous guests include Tony Blair, Nigel Farage, Ruth Davidson MSP and Alistair Campbell. Join Matt for some searing political discussion.

Gilded Balloon Teviot - Debating Hall 3pm, 14 Aug, 1.30pm, 20th, from £10.50.

THE GUILTY FEMINIST Deborah Frances White’s podcast is a comedy powerhouse with over 60 million downloads since its launch three years ago. It specialises in discussions about the noble goals of 21st-century feminists and the hypocrisies and insecurities which undermine them.

Pleasance Courtyard –The Grand, 4pm, 2-4 Aug, from £15

THE BUGLE LIVE The Bugle podcast trumpets up-to-theminute satire straight into their 50-odd million listeners’ ears. Catch them live at The Stand where puns will be flowing and much hogwash talked.

The Stand New Town Theatre – Grand Hall, Times vary. 16, 19 Aug, £16

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MY EDINBURGH PRUE LEITH

OYSTERS FOR STARTERS AND MAIN The Bake Off presenter, novelist and businesswoman also makes an excellent guide to Edinburgh’s best restaurants WORDS CLAIRE SMITH

PHOTOGRAPHY DAVID LOFTUS

“P

eople often ask me what is my favourite meal, or what would I eat on death row,” says Prue Leith. “I think it would be the lunch I had at Ondine in Edinburgh the day I got married: oysters for starter, oysters for main and treacle tart and custard to finish.”

Restaurateur, novelist, television personality and businesswoman Prue Leith has a long connection with Edinburgh (she’s the chancellor of Queen Margaret University), which deepened when she married John Playfair at Lothian Chambers on George IV Bridge eight years ago.

“He was brought up in the city – one of his ancestors is the architect William Playfair [who designed the eastern part of the New Town].”

As well as writing numerous cookery books, Leith has just completed The Lost Son, the final novel in her Angelotti Chronicles trilogy.

The story centres on a secret adoption and what happens when Tom, the son Laura Angelotti gave up at birth, comes back into the family’s life.

The whole subject of adoption, it turns out,

“I remember Tom Kitchin opening and everybody raving about it because it was so good. We had dinner there the night before we married’

is very close to Leith’s heart. “My daughter is adopted and she has just adopted a daughter. She also made a film about going back to Cambodia to look for her original parents. My husband is adopted too – he looked for his birth mother in his fifties and stayed friends with her until she died.

“What was interesting for me writing the book was to make sure Tom went through the right process. The Norcap organisation, which my husband used to track down his parents, doesn’t exist any more.”

Leith’s Angelotti Chronicles follow the fortunes of an Italian restaurant-owning dynasty, with the ups and downs of business helping to create a fascinating backdrop to family life. “The things that interest me,” she says, “are food, business and love.

“I think people who come from abroad have a lot of get up and go.” Leith herself was born in Cape Town. “When I used to hire people, I would often go for people from South Africa and Australia. They seemed to be more up for new things.”

She began coming regularly to Edinburgh 25 years ago when her company won the contract for catering at the EICC. “We cooked really good British food and everyone thought it was extraordinary because there wasn’t that much good food around at the time.”

Edinburgh has since become one of the UK’s foodie hotspots. “I remember Tom Kitchin opening and everybody raving about it because it was so good. We had dinner there the night before we married, and the other day we had a brilliant meal at his pub, the Scran & Scallie. I’m a big fan.

“I also like the Gardener’s Cottage at the bottom of Calton Hill. I heard the same people have opened a new restaurant at the redeveloped Observatory there.”

She became a presenter of Great British Bake Off in 2017, when her friend Mary Berry decided to stand down. “It has certainly made a big difference to my life. Before, if I went out, one or two people might stop and say hello. Now I get stopped a lot.

But I like it. It’s flattering and people are generally very kind.”

She’s not sure if the public are baking more or just spectating – but she reckons programmes like Bake Off help get children interested in cooking.

“I think there is a tendency for people to eat around a table less frequently. The answer is to teach children to cook – to get them to love what they eat and be interested in it. Then it’s easy.”

As well as appearing at the Book Festival, Leith is planning to dive into the Fringe. “The last time I went with some friends who were really into it.

We did three shows a day, one stand-up show, one musical and one piece of theatre. We didn’t see any big famous companies – just three different things a day. It was lovely. I’m really looking forward to it.”

WHERE & WHEN Prue Leith, New York Times Main Theatre, Edinburgh International Book Festival, 10 August, 3.15pm, £0-£25. edbookfest.co.uk

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Its outdoor personality is revealed in the subtle infusion of Grand Fir needles that complement the native taste of its juniper cousin, helping to summon the fresh aromas of the pure mountain air.

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FESTIVALS MAG BACK COVER.pdf

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