The Edinburgh Festival

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September 4th 2011

Published: April 1st 2012

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We are the Foreigners

Edinburgh Castle

The castle serves as the backdrop for the Tattoo

The month of August turned Edinburgh into a mad-house. Despite the, generally acknowledged, poorer than average weather this relatively small European city is certainly a pumping party town for a surprisingly large part of the year. I always thought that it was all the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that really kicked things off, but there are things happening year round:

• The International Film Festival (We saw a couple movies; Angel's Crest stuck out the most as a heart-wrentcher that really makes you think about perspectives)
• The Jazz Festival
• Art Festivals
• International Festival
• Book Festival
• Story Telling Fest
• Military Tattoo
• And the Fringe Festival

We'll focus on the last two here since they were the main reason we decided to leave our luxurious highland home for the big city.

The Tattoo

Dan started to notice the Military Tattoo early at the beginning of August, as he works in a pub in the Old Town beneath the castle. Tourists had been around for a while and Dan enjoyed working the 'beer garden' at his work. The 18 degree days were wonderful times to be outside, and chatting with everyone just made it that much better. It wasn't

The procession

The performers filed out of the castle gate and onto the promenade.

long before many of the patrons reason for being in the city was the Tattoo; a military display of drill that is nothing short of amazing entertainment. It was preformed nightly at the castle Esplinade (twice on Saturdays) and always finished with fireworks around 10pm that would make most people jump, look outside, and ask the staff 'What was that??'; despite lively conversations and live music. From what Dan's gleaned, the international festival seems to be one that really started things back in the olden days, and the rest have built up around it. (Wikipedia helped out with that).

Anyways we're gonna tell you about our experience without muddling it up with too many facts that you can find on the events' websites.

The Tattoo was great. There were many different military bands present: New Guinnea, Germany, Netherlands, and of course Scottish to name a few. The show started with the pipe bands pouring (very orderlyishly) out of the castle gates, and across the draw bridge to form up on the Esplinade, doing a march past, and some very precise drill. Really impressive. Next up, the Netherlanders. This was one of the funnier, and most surprising of the

The Dutch on their bicycles

bands. As most people know, and we were lucky enough to experience first hand, the main mode of transportation there is the bicycle. We had seen the racks of bike's as we entered the stadium but hadn't thought much of it. It was great to see the band ride out, playing their instruments. They all had one hand on the bars and the other taking care or their instruments. It was so fun seeing the precussion bolted to the bike's; and at the (what we can only assume to be) the amazing accuracy of the xylophonist. There's was also quite a comidic routine, with a flat tire repair for the commanding officer, and a wobbley crash resulting in the bike being taken off on a stretcher with the soldier being left in the middle of the parade ground; how the Dutch love thier cycles.

The Bavarians (who had spent some time at Dan's pub) also had some fun things. Despite not riding in on anything unexpected, they wore the traditional Bavarian dress (Lederhosen), and they had a lot more... untraditional instruments... or more traditional. We're not sure. We'll tell you what they were and you decide how traditional or

...and playing their instruments

non-traditional the instrument is. They played all of the more mondernly-known marching band instruments; brass, woodwinds, and precussion. They also brought out the good ol' squeezebox, and the spoons, for the Oompah Band portion. There was a trio of alpine horns for another part, and a quartet that played an anvil.

Those were the bits that stood out the most to us, but the other groups were great as well. The New Guinean band had some amazing drill, where they did a rotating cross, formed an anchor, and generally looked great. There was also a quick display/race of cannons being tranported, mantled, shot, dismantled, done a phew times. In the haste at least one man was run over by his own team, he ran to catch up, but I think it was over by the time he caught up.

The Fringe

We'll try to give a wee list and blurb of the shows we saw, or heard that we should've seen. In no particular order (or else the order we find them in the program, or remember them):

Abi Roberts Takes You Up The Aisle

A Cabaret where she tells the story of her finding love

Precucycles

Yes, they are born on bikes.

after a divorce and working on her preparations and trepidations about walking up the aisle for a second time.

• Ali McGregor's Something Old, Something New - Our first Cabaret. A Jazz cabaret preformed by a renowned Australian artist. A great show were she covered many different songs and genres. It was a great intro for us (she was our second show all told) to the fringe and cabarets. Loved it.

• Cabaret Whore: More! More! More! - Amazing show split into quarters based on 4 characters (all played/sang by the same artist). One being a lady advanced in years with a very distinct voice. An eastern european lady whom god played the ukulelea through (since no one can learn to play this instrument); best joke: "Came to the UK on a scam to work in the sex trade, but when she got here there were no jobs and she had to become a school teacher." Another character was a classy French lady; best joke: after discussing how terrible the English language is since it steals all the words from other languages, and winding down the show, "There would be no encore since they don't do them

Photo 16

in France, they don't even have a word for them." There was also a child actress star trying to make a come back, but was having some difficulties getting along with her doll co-star.
• The Damsel in Shining Armor - A great story about a girl who start traveling who's mantra through out the show was "One must create melodrama in ones own life. Best line of this play was when she responded to her mother's inquiery as to what kind of artist she was moving to Paris to become with "... A struggling one."
• The Axis of Awesome - We didn't actually see this one, but they are a comedy muscial group that we heard great things about and you can easily find things by them on YouTube.
• How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse: The End is Nigh - Need we say more?? Educational, Entertaining, and Essential for anyone wanting to make it through humanities darkest hours. Plus each 'class' got to compete as to thier survival rate.
• Jeff Mirza's Jihad: Heresy Or Hearsay - This one turned out to be standup comedy instead of the informative witty discussion Dan had been expecting.
• Kaos Theory (Dangerous Science) - Explosions,

Parade-side assictance

Some one ran out of air.

Electrocusions. What could one want more from an educational proformance.
• 2 Comedians, 1 Bucket - A couple of Irish standups. 50% were pretty good, the other half had their moments.
• Evil, the musical - This was one of the stranger ones that must've had a moral in there some where. They had great music and voices, but the story seemed to lack substance; made up for with the shear fun that everyone seemed to be having.
• Bashir Lazhar - A story about an Algerian teacher in Canada. Developed at the U of A (Alberta) it has since been turned into a film!!! A very interesting story showing some raw emotion and really making you think about how harsh culture shock can be.
• Blonde compassion - One of the Free Fringe ones we attended. It was about a lady trying to change her lifestyle and trying to find inner peace. Had some hard realization moments that made you feel for the character. Unfortunatly some acting that couldn't really draw Dan in.
• Dances for Wolves - Oh wow. This one was a hilarious cabarat (and inner monologue) of 5 strippers who where all competing for a 1 million GBP contract to dance

Great Drill

Don't know how you organize that without the overhead view.

for some football club (soccer team). It was all about each ones history, personality, and why they were dancing. It was in a relativly small venue and when they were singing about the perverts watching them they must've made uncomfortable eye contact with all the men there.
• Fleeto - We went to this one on the recommendation of a flatmate. It and Wee Andy were linked by a common back story, and several characters. This one follows a friend of Andys, after Andy is a victim of knife violence (a real problem in certain parts of the UK). It follows his friend, Mackie, wrestling with his feelings, and how he attempts retribution for his friend and gets drawn in to the dark life that innocent Andy became a victim of. So well acted; you could feel the rage, the pain. The dialogue was very poetic and really drew you in.
• Free run - A fun high energy show all about Parcour and fitness. They made a wee story to have it all go along to; but Dan enjoyed it more before he realized there was a story. Ashley just enjoyed all the fit, shirtless men. It was a great show,

The German band

with a little multimedia; but more women need to do Parcour. The only girl in it was a martial artist (not even going to pretend to know the dicipline) and seemed like a role was just kind of made up for her to slip into the story.
• Perffection - Good story all about body image and self aceptance. Three players told this story about a woman's insecurity and her man's inability to understand it, and how it strained their relationship. We still aren't sure if the two women were playing one character; how he saw her, and how she saw herself.
• Rosie thorn, butter would not melt - We found this one through the Theatre Ninja web site and so got the tickets for free. This one woman show told the story of a '50s-esque, stepford type lady and her desire to stay at the top of her neighbourhood. The artist did a wonderful job of becoming slowly unhinged and we were never sure if we should be laughing at the situation, or feel bad for her.
• Swamp juice - A shadow puppet show. It was in short, inspired. The Montreal based creator and presentor used all kinds of rubbish

Alpine horned

My throat felt a little better for some reason.

in order to project his story onto the back drop. There was even a 3D shadow puppet portion (good, old fashion, red/blue glasses provided). Whether the story was very basic, or I was just totally awed by the shadowpuppetry is hard to tell.
• Female hitchhiker:the truth about getting around - Being that we are travelling we thought this could be fun. The story wasn't what we expected, it wasn't very linear, and (while it seemed to be based on reality) the artist couldn't really make us care about the story. It was a stationary monologue that seemed very awkward.
• Wee Andy - As aforementioned, this and Fleeto shared a back story and several characters. It shared the poetic delivery and passion of Fleeto, but followed the police detective and how he wrestled with the case. It also offered insight as to how the social structure perpetuated the problem.
• Tous Le Cochon - Another work found through Theatre Ninja. This one sounded humorous, but wasn't. I was an interesting delivery of the story where a couple introduced meat/pork into a little town, and their dependance on meat and lust for it was destroying them when supply was running low. A radio

Lumbering Jack

Or should we say 'Johannes'?? Fun way to make music.

broadcast played in the background, begging with the towns people to realize their folly and how the couple had had such a negative impact on their lives. As the audience we were in the couples home and watched how they reacted to what they were hearing; ending in a rather disturbing manner. The live music, costumes, and method of telling the story were all great and ingenuitive. The fact that it seemed like we were supposed to be vegetarians by the end was a little off putting. Also, when they finished and bowed, they announced that they were still working on it and that any suggestions and comments were more than welcome. While it makes sense that your work may always be growing and evolving, the fact that they were getting people to pay 5 GBP for a play that at the end they would admit wasn't finished seemed a little underhanded; thankfully we hadn't ended up paying.

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