Thespian THOUGHTS

by Ralph Oswick

Edinburgh Festival

I thought my early morning bus was a good place to overhear odd and intriguing snippets of conversation, but having attended Edinburgh Festival last week I’ve decided theatre queues and foyers are a far richer source. Like the man shouting into his mobile phone that he’d liked haughty and dirty but not the other two. What on earth was that about?

And the young woman complaining that the performance of Ovid’s Metamorphoses she had just seen was a long Latin poem when she thought it would be ‘like that thing when Jeff Goldblum turns into a fly’.

The festival and fringe sell around a million tickets between them. The queue for Simon Callow’s splendid Shakespearian one man tour de force snaked along several streets outside the venue. That for the Tattoo appeared to encircle the castle twice. Vast crowds gathered to cheer the street theatre shows and every possible surface was plastered with posters. You couldn’t take a step without an eccentrically dressed and over-eager leaflet pusher grabbing your attention. Outside a colourful tent in the park yet another line was forming. ‘Must be something on’ commented a woman, oblivious to the festival frenzy around her.

I took the plunge and bought a ticket for an avant-garde opera production about the demise of the Aztecs under the might of the conquistadors. All the male protagonists were counter-tenors. Montezuma had clearly been working out for the part. Although sounding a bit like Lady Margaret, he looked magnificent with his loin cloth and gleaming pectorals. The old lady behind me was unimpressed. I can’t make out if it’s a man or a woman she said in a loud stage whisper to her companion. He’s got such large breasts! Some men do, dear, came the answer.

The production was certainly different. Cortes had a snarling Alsatian with which to intimidate the Mexicans. Also included were disembowelling, much rape and pillage, suicide, torture, a woman crawling backwards up a staircase while continuing to sing and naked sex scenes on the apron stage that left little to the imagination. As the curtain fell, leaving the audience stunned, said companion was heard to declare in shocked Morningside tones ‘Well, that’s the first time I’ve seen a dog in an opera'.

BATH CHRONICLE