Dog, Book, and Scandal by Bard Heads:

At the Edinburgh Fringe, I've just been to see Bard Heads: Dog, Book, and Scandal:  The write up drew me in, I think because I'm a bit of a sucker for alternative timelines and counterfactuals and this kind of 'what happened next?' story beguiles that same bit of mind. It said this:
"In Dog, Book and Scandal, Friar Laurence faces criticism over star-crossed lovers’ fiasco. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, Bard Heads catches up with Friar Laurence one year on from the tragedy. Written and performed by Richard Curnow"
Well, I enjoyed the performance. The actor (for 'tis a monologue in three main voices) comes over in the main character as a humane and likeable soul: a winsome performance. The other two characters are a bit cartooney but really they are the foil for the main character so that is not necessarily a fault. Some echoes and quotes from Romeo and Juliet form part of the text. The Shakespearean Tudor, however, doesn't fill the time and much of it is in a reasonably contemporary English (though at one or two points I wondered whether a more 'classic'-sounding phrase than "man up" might have have been found). However, to have attempted the whole thing in a Tudor-English style would almost certainly have been a mistake.

The play explores (spoiler alert!) how Friar Laurence is coping a year on in exile in Mantua where he's settled down into a useful existence as an apothecary's assistant (and helped prosper the business it seems). Richard Curnow, the actor, plays the apothecary for the purposes of setting up a dialogue with the friar; the apothecary being the voice of cynical godlessness (and also of a right to choose to die) poking and prodding the doubting, would-be-humanistic theist who is the friar. Perhaps there is a whiff of the pantomime villain about this character, but then, some of Shakespeare's characters have this at times and so I don't rate it a defect, necessarily. At the end of the play the friar has conceded to cynicism but has also bounced back somewhat from it. Faith has been tested to destruction but a resurrection of sorts also takes place - a more ambiguous faith but perhaps more hopeful.

I did feel it a shame that the meaning of faith was more fully explored: we get a tantalising glimpse of a move from a dogmatic faith which tries to act up to certainty towards a faith that is more about trust -though trust in what is where the ambiguity stays. Perhaps it needs to in order not to engender or collude with further versions of dogmatic faith?

I enjoyed the use of lines of the prayer "God be in my head..." to give a sense of a depth of faith to the friar that is not cartoonish but rather can be seen to be wide-ranging in the friar's piety, giving a sense of a real spirituality.

The other character produced for the play is that of Juliet's nurse. Again, she's a bit of a cartoon complete with rustic accent (which seemed to have linguistic features from the west country and the north east of England, though perhaps this was some move towards original pronunciation?). The nurse serves to situate the friar back into the Verona scene by being a representative voice of those who appreciate the friar and do not blame him for his part in the matter of the death of two star-crossed lovers. The nurse also serves (as a gossipy character) to give some of the narrative background.

I loved the dog of the title whom we never meet in person but the fact that it is called 'Jesus' gives a few little wry puns with a smidgeon of significance within the play -and it's nice that this is not overdone; just sitting there discreetly.

Altogether, I definite "go and see" if you're in Edinburgh at a little before 3pm on August 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, or 16.

Forest Fringe

Wish I'd come across this set-up before we went to Edinburgh. It's the kind of thing I'd have been interested in in general anyway. So here's hoping I'll remember next year. Here's what they're about.
Forest Fringe: "Now heading in fifth year, we’re an artist-led organisation making space for risk and experimentation at the Edinburgh Festival and beyond. We’ve worked with artists from a range of different backgrounds and contexts to help them develop new and exciting work, from one-on-one encounters to epic folk operas, from posters for imaginary events to a whole travelling library of intimate audio experiences. More than anything else we want to try and make a home for artists and for projects that couldn’t find one elsewhere. We want to be where people go when they’ve had an incredible idea they don’t know what to do with. We’ll help try and find somewhere for that idea to exist, and an audience to encounter it."

Bashir Lazar

Of all the things I've seen at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Bashir Lazhar is probably the one that stays with me.

It started life as a play in French set in Quebec, you can read a bit more here: Coolopolis: Bashir Lazar, quickie drama review: "It tells of an Algerian immigrant who loses his family to fire and then comes here, fakes teaching credentials and becomes a passionate and committed substitute teacher. However some of his methods are misconstrued by the bureaucrats, which leads to some conflict."
What I enjoyed about it was that I could tell it was working on several levels for me but I've not yet fully teased them apart, but it's a good feeling. There's some play with writing both on a blackboard but also on other surfaces and even on the characters themselves. This motif mixes with the theme of identity (with a subtext, I suppose, of narrative's role in identity formation). What I was left with, though, was the way that this version took what was evidently a one-actor play and put one another actor in who plays at the fringes of the monologue but at the end gains a speaking part which gives a sense of hope that, despite the bleakness of what has happened to Bashir Lazhar, our lives can nevertheless have a positive impact and enebale others to find their voices. Ironically -from my perspective- this atheist character illustrates the idea that in is losing our lives for others that we find it. Or perhaps, it is in opening our narrative out to others' stories, that our narration finds significance. Again ironically, because this perspective is explicitly rejected in the commentary offered by Bashir.

This is a moving play well presented. If you are going to the Edinburgh Fringe this year, go to see this play. It's in Assembly Two at 1425hrs.

Love Labours Won

I didn't manage to get to a machine with enough time to blog this earlier, so it's had to await our return home. However, this is another of the recommendations I'd give for the Edinburgh Fringe. It's a kind of Shakespeare reconstruction both in language and in the style of plot and presentation. It's an
able script and I loved the way that it was done by and all-female cast (I assume in a kind of gender mirror image to the original Shakespeare). On the downside -and this is but minor criticism- sometimes the metre of the verse became a bit too predicable and somehow oppressive, pantomimey: it needed a few more clever breaks and sharing of clauses across lines.

I was also quite surprised by how Buddhist the 'moral' at the end of the play was. Though the thing about desire was capable of being read Christianly, I don't think that it was intended so: it seemed to be echoing a contemporary concern with spirituality referencing Buddhist ideas. I may be wrong, but ...

Play's website

Miracle in Rwanda

Regular visitors will have realised that I've not been blogging much lately. This is because I've been in Edinburgh enjoying several plays a day at the Festival. One of the plays really deserves a heads-up for the rest of you if you get a chnace to see it, the eponymous play is brilliant. Here's the mise-en-scene:

Immaculée's family was brutally murdered during the three-month slaughter that began in April 1994. Miraculously, Immaculée managed to survive. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently and cramped together in an undiscovered extra bathroom in a local pastor's home.

Probably the most dominent theme is forgiveness, beginning with Immaculée having to do a deal with God about praying to forgive trespasses in the Lord's prayer as she tries to say her rosary. The rest of the play returns to her praying various of the mysteries of the Rosary which act as a theological comment on the events and usher in a couple of visions one of Christ and another of Mary. The writing is good and the performance is good -really conveying to me, at least, the terror of the situation and something of the psych-spirituality of forgiving.

I'm thinking of getting the book as there must surely be more to reflect on around the theme of forgiveness in it.
Sneak peek at Miracle in Rwanda
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