Edinburgh Festival: A Review Show Special The Review Show

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL REVIEW SHOW FKR D597E/01 BRD000000

.

With almost 3,000 shows, around 300 venues

and more than 24,000 artistes in town,

it can only be Edinburgh in August

and the biggest cultural festival in the world.

You know, it's never too late to follow your dreams, Alien Boy!

WHIP CRACKS

Hello and welcome to this Review Show Special

from a rather windy Calton Hill in Edinburgh,

bringing you all the very best of the fest,

including everything from art to acrobats,

books to Beckett and comedy to cabaret.

Coming up, David Baddiel is among the stand-ups

who'll be telling me about the ineluctable lure of the Fringe,

I'll be giving you a heads-up

on an exhibition about Mary, Queen of Scots,

and we'll be looking forward to a season of Samuel Beckett classics.

First, though, the Book Festival kicked off this weekend

with Roddy Doyle, here to discuss his latest novel, The Guts.

After 26 years, it's the follow-up to his hugely popular book,

The Commitments, which, having already been made into

a smash-hit movie, is currently being adapted for the stage.

-One, two...

-# Mustang Sally... #

In The Commitments, muso Jimmy Rabbitte

rallies together a troupe of jobless soulsters

to form a new group.

-Do you want to be in a band?

-What?

The film and its soundtrack were hugely successful,

and now, years later, rehearsals have begun

for The Commitments, the musical.

-Is this the band, is it?

-Yeah.

I bet you U2 are shitting themselves.

I caught up with Roddy Doyle at the Palace Theatre.

Now, for a long time you said you never wanted The Commitments

-to be a musical.

-Yeah.

-So, what changed your mind?

In my house, there's a division between the two people

who watch The Sound Of Music and the three people who get up and walk out

when it starts, and I'd be one of the walkers, you know?

I think...going to a few with my children, as they got older,

was a revelation, so I began to warm towards the idea.

It would be very hard to wipe Alan Parker's film from your brain.

-Very, very hard. That's why I haven't watched it in years.

-Really?

I haven't watched it, not because I don't like it,

because I do, I love it... I suppose I felt a bit

smothered by the whole experience, I think, or overwhelmed almost,

and I didn't want to be defined by it.

I didn't want to be "the person who wrote The Commitments".

I'm more relaxed about it now.

Was it not quite terrifying, approaching a musical?

Presumably you have the songs there, of course.

It was terrifying to a degree, because I'd never written one,

so it was brand new, but on the other hand, you know,

certainly at my point in life,

to do something that I had never done before was quite exciting, really.

The big joy for me was choosing songs that would

propel the story on stage, because it's not based on the film.

It's based on the novel.

So it's a completely different body of songs, and that was great.

-I loved that, really.

-But it was THE book

of late-20th-century urban poverty in the Republic of Ireland,

and yet that makes it sound like a misery book, doesn't it?

I just felt when I started The Commitments,

I remember quite clearly, early 1986, something clicked it.

This was the tone that I wanted.

Working-class kids who were quite happy being working-class kids,

and although a lot of them were facing a future of unemployment,

they weren't going to be limited by that.

They could still laugh, they could still enjoy life.

-Are you all choir girls, then?

-We are.

Well, you've got fair voices

but you're not putting much of THAT into it.

Oh, Jesus.

These much-loved character have been resurrected in The Guts,

which revisits the irrepressible Jimmy Rabbitte 26 years on.

-Here you are, back with Jimmy...

-Yeah.

-He is now in his late 40s.

-He is.

He's now middle-class-ish,

middle-aged, midlife crisis

-and cancer.

-Yeah.

And watching everyone around him have their houses repossessed,

and everything else, while he's doing OK, thank you very much, in that sense.

So what was the Ireland that you were portraying

with the new book, The Guts?

Well, I think the reason to drag Jimmy

back from his happy post-Commitments retirement and add years to his life

came from the early reports on the economic crisis in Ireland.

The word "recession" came back into everyday usage,

and was a real "boo" word, so to speak.

And if I remember right, and I probably don't,

but in the mid, late-'80s,

Ireland was in recession, but nobody used the word,

-because most of us thought it was normal life...

-Yeah.

-..in Ireland.

It had been a colony, poor country, basket case of Europe

and most of us were quite content with that definition.

We looked around and agreed, really. Just got on with our life.

The last one was normal life, but then we found a different normality

and now we're back into a different normality again.

So I began to think about Jimmy and his parents and his whole family,

really, wondering how different this one was, because this one is a shock.

But you twinned the shock of that with the shock of Jimmy's cancer.

-Yeah.

-Now, why did you decide that Jimmy would have cancer?

It seems a strange question, but it now actually infuses

the conversation of middle-aged people, doesn't it?

Yes. That's one of the reasons.

For Eireans, it's often there in the conversation with football, you know?

I've lost friends to it and others have come through chemo

and survived, so just thought, I suppose,

I've been writing about middle age since I became middle-aged

and you may as well use... the humiliation of it all.

I haven't had cancer, luckily, and hope not to.

"Aoife was doing his worrying for him.

"That wasn't true. He was worried.

"Although all of his worry - he couldn't think further than

"two or three days from now,

"when the nausea would haul him out of his life.

"Something by Ennio Morricone. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

"For when they were carrying the coffin."

That whole love of music, it kind of drives the book.

It does, yeah.

Jimmy wouldn't be far off me in that regard. He's a fan.

I deliberately, when I was writing The Commitments,

made him the manager. He's off the stage.

He doesn't know how to play an instrument.

He doesn't know the language.

-And now he's trying to play one?

-Yes. I added that.

That's as near to autobiography as you'll get.

I bought a trumpet some years ago, about two years ago,

and started trying to learn to play it.

-And?

-With limited success. Very limited success.

I could struggle through Hey, Jude, and at least one of my children

recognises it for what it is, and the dog barks.

But I decided at that point, I remember thinking,

"Will I do that? Will I bring it in?"

Because I've never been overly tempted to bring in

any elements of my own life into the stories.

-In Jimmy, there's this tremendous lust for life now.

-Oh, yeah.

Again, that was one of the discoveries.

I don't plan too meticulously when I start to write.

Once I knew he was going to come out the other end with the cancer,

he probably sooner than would be the reality

re-defines his relationship with his older children.

Because there is a form of grief, I think,

when you go from the simple relationship - filling the car

and bringing them places and standing on the side of football pitches

and watching them - and then it becomes complicated

when independence kicks in and they do exactly what you would hoped

they would do, but actually you're deeply hurt when they do it.

And it takes a while to fill that gap, if you're lucky. But Jimmy does.

-There's hints of it towards the end.

-He does.

He also has an affair with Imelda Quirke,

who was the lead singer in The Commitments.

Jimmy is in the throes of chemotherapy,

so I suppose common sense is parked for a bit

and the moral compass, I would imagine, wobbles a bit.

"There were all sorts of reasons why he shouldn't have done it,

"and all sorts of reasons why he shouldn't have been able to do it,

"but he put his hands on the skin of a woman he didn't really know,

"didn't know well, and he pushed all the worries and doubts away.

"He'd given Imelda the best five minutes she'd had all week."

Also in the book, which I think is a generational thing as well,

-is that Jimmy and his son in a way share love of the same music.

-Yeah.

That whole connection between generations, over music,

-do you have that with your children?

-You know, one of my children

asked me, "Did you ever hear of a band called Supertramp?"

THEY CHUCKLE

Which made my day. "And did you ever hear of a fella called Frank Zappa?"

You know?

And you'll suddenly feel useful, somehow or other.

I don't know. You're something of a musical legend all of a sudden.

If it's rock'n'roll, I think a lot of fathers

would have a lot in common with their children.

-Roddy Doyle, thank you very much. Thank you.

-Thank you.

The Guts is available now, and The Commitments

opens at the Palace Theatre in London in September.

The Edinburgh International Festival also launched this weekend,

bringing the creme de la creme of theatre, opera,

dance and music from around the world to Edinburgh's stages.

This year it features a raft of plays,

films and radio dramas by Samuel Beckett

in a celebration of his ground-breaking approach to writing.

Back!

While Beckett's most famous works were for the stage,

his plays for TV and radio enabled him to use recorded sounds

and images to explore his often-absurd approach to life.

ALARM CLOCK RINGS

Now, taking his work full circle,

Beckett At The Festival has adapted some of those works for the stage.

WOMAN: Preferable in all respects.

Kinder.

Stronger.

More intelligent.

Eh Joe - the first play Beckett wrote for television - explores how

one man alone in his bedroom is forced to face up to his past.

Michael Gambon stars in this acclaimed production,

directed by Atom Egoyan.

Wait till he starts talking to you.

When you're done with yourself.

Or you're dead dead.

Sitting there in your foul old wrapper.

This is really a study in what performance means,

because you're seeing a figure on stage

who seems quite immobile and still,

but you're seeing this face that's so full of detail

and emotion,

and reconciling the two is, I think, quite magical.

How is your Lord these days?

It is a live 26-minute shot, and the actor,

while he's sitting on the bed, is being projected up to a camera

which is projecting back on to a gauze,

so it's a live sort of film performance,

but we see the large 18-foot-high face

and it goes in seven times, I think, until it just comes to here.

It is a mid-shot at first, but you also see the actor on the bed,

a very diminutive one, and that gives it a sort of poignancy.

And that is something that you won't get

when you look at Eh Joe as a piece of television.

Penelope Wilton, who provides the voice in Eh Joe, also features

in Rockaby, one of the Beckett films being shown at the festival.

All eyes.

All sides.

High and low.

Directed by Richard Eyre, Rockaby is a study in old age

and focuses upon a woman reciting a poem

whilst in a rocking chair.

The sources of Rockaby are very, very simple and very clear.

His mother had Alzheimer's,

then called senile dementia.

She was in a home that was just by the Dublin Grand Canal

and he could look up and see her in the window of that home,

a large Georgian window, rocking away.

The day came

In the end came

The close of a long day

When she said to herself

Whom else?

Time she stopped.

ECHOING: Time she stopped.

People misunderstand Beckett, I think, very, very badly

and think that his plays are liable to infinite interpretation.

He hated the idea that you could veer from what essentially

he saw as a sort of musical score.

The recurring image of the lone figure on stage that features

in much of Beckett's work is also the focus of First Love,

the stage adaptation of his 1946 novella

directed by Michael Colgan and starring Peter Egan.

It fulfils a lifetime's ambition, I think,

for me to be doing First Love.

It's a sensational, beautiful piece of writing. It's very personal.

It's quite personal to me, because I come from an Irish background.

My father was a Dubliner,

so there are rhythms in it, and refrains, that...

I can feel my father in them at times,

and that's both upsetting and also, um, rewarding.

"I thought of Anna then.

"I, who had learned to think of nothing, nothing except my pains,

"a quick think through,

"and what steps to take, not to perish offhand

"of hunger or cold or shame."

"But never on any account of living beings, as such."

The references...

and you can only say this immodestly,

and I'm not trying to be immodest, because I don't have

anything like the intellect, but the intellect was extraordinary.

And when you get that and live with that work, you'll realise what

those references are doing,

and the in-jokes that are there.

And they're right through...

For example, they're right through First Love,

they're through the trilogy and most of the plays.

The choice of a word is absolutely, to him, supreme.

WOMAN: 'Ohh!

'Poor woman.

'All alone in that ruinous old house.'

It's perhaps the adaptations of two of his radio plays -

Embers and All That Fall - staged by Dublin-based Pan Pan Theatre,

where audiences are able to appreciate Beckett's writing at its purist.

MAN: 'We are sitting on the Strand.'

'I mention it because the sound is so strange,

'so unlike the sound of the sea,

'that if you didn't see what it was you wouldn't know what it was.'

With the incorporation of technology,

Pan Pan have created atmospheric listening chambers

that envelope the audience in a multilayered theatrical experience.

WOMAN: 'How can I go on?

'What have I done to deserve all this?

'What? What?'

FOOTSTEPS

'So long ago. No. No.'

I think Beckett is of the most extraordinary integrity and purity.

His influence has been enormous.

Every single thing that he wrote makes you think.

'So long ago.

'No. No.'

The Beckett programme begins with Eh Joe on the 23rd of August.

Now, Edinburgh has become a Mecca for the stand-up fraternity -

it's after all where the likes of Steve Coogan, The Mighty Boosh

and The League Of Gentlemen all made their names.

But to what extent is the Fringe still a launch pad for new comics

and why do famous names come back again and again?

Is it for the pleasure or the pain?

David Baddiel has played Wembley Arena

and had numerous hit TV shows but now he's returned

to his stand-up roots with his first solo fringe show in 15 years.

I heard her say to her friend, "Oh, look,

"there's that bloke out of Skinner and Garibaldi."

I'm Irish, by the way.

Aisling Bea broke through last year, winning the annual "So You Think You're Funny?" competition,

and is back for her very first full Fringe run.

And Caroline Rhea,

star of the US hit TV show Sabrina The Teenage Witch,

who's chosen to spend August playing one of Edinburgh's hallowed halls.

Everyone's like, "People tell me that I look just like you."

I'm like, "You do look like me. You also look like a snowman and a baby."

Well, the three of them are with me now.

Aisling, first of all, I mean, that was the big break for you last year,

the first time a woman in 20 years has got "So You Think You're Funny?"

Yes, it boggled scientists trying to work out what happened.

But you got a show out of it, a whole show for this year.

Yeah, I did, it's brilliant, and I'm back at the Gilded Balloon as well,

where the whole competition kind of comes out of.

Erm, so hopefully people will come and laugh.

Do you think there's all this expectation,

"This is the woman that won 'So You Think You're Funny?' last year.

"We'll see if you're funny this year."

Yeah, "So you think you're funny, do ya?!"

Someone rang me up when I won last year,

someone from an Irish radio station rang me up, and they're like,

"So I hear you won the So You Think You're Funny Do Ya competition?"

And I'm like, "No, there's no 'Do Ya' at the end.

"That's just your sarcasm."

It is an incredibly aggressive title for a thing, though -

So You Think You're Funny, question mark.

There is a thing about Edinburgh now, isn't there?

15 years since you last did stand-up here,

now you're doing a show about not being so famous.

It's such a deathly sentence, isn't it, "15 years ago"?

Yeah, well, the show I'm doing now is about coming back to do stuff

and it's about fame, in a kind of very...

I'm really kind of celebrating the ludicrousness of being

in and out of fame for a long time.

And actually, one of the things I try to sort of talk about is

the fact that I think fame's talked about in two ways in our culture,

as this bauble that Simon Cowell says we all want

or as a really tragic narrative, this kind of Amy Whitehouse, Janis Joplin,

the roar of the crowd versus the pain of the empty hotel room.

My experience of fame is a third way, which is like

being on a Ryanair flight and trying to keep a seat I haven't paid for

for priority seating for my children and a bloke going, "David Baddiel, you're so tight."

That's my experience of fame, you know, being in an Aldi's car park

and a man giving me career advice, Andrew Lloyd Webber saying,

"Hello, Ben Elton." That kind of stuff, that's my experience of fame.

I went to Auschwitz a few years ago.

Not as an inmate, don't worry, I just...

You know, you can go there now, it's fine.

I went there and I was standing at the very site of the gas chambers

and a man who'd been staring at me for a while came over

and he stood by me for a little while, and I thought,

"He's going to say something, of great insight,

"of deep truth, of real moral value about the human condition."

And he said, "Dave, when's Fantasy Football coming back?"

LAUGHTER

It's funny. I'm kind of at a stage where I'm deciding...

-It's my first show and I'm deciding not to read any reviews.

-Yeah.

-That's where it begins.

-Comedy, the whole job...

Yes, that's where it begins! Wah!

-And then your good friends go, "Don't read the Herald!"

-"Don't! Don't!"

You've got this kind of schizophrenic existence this time,

because you're a star, a big Canadian star in America,

you've got a stand-up and you've got a kids' show.

-Why do you still enjoy stand-up so much?

-Why do I still do it?! I know!

You know what, first of all, I've got nothing to lose,

because I feel like I've had quite a decent career, so if nothing else

-good ever happens I'm still very happy with how it's gone.

-Yeah.

And it's the one thing that I love and it helps me

process my life, and I think I started doing stand-up cos I thought

I was so unique, and what I am is completely like everyone else.

Especially in Scotland, cos we all look alike.

We all are cartilage based...

Yeah, the Scottish shtick is a thing with you, isn't it?

-Well, you know what, I'm Canadian, so this is our mother ship.

-Is it?

Yeah, my grandparents are Scottish.

-I came here all the time.

-Do you have Scotticisms,

things that are kind of weirdly Scottish that you do?

I love how dramatic everything is here.

I mean, the fact that there's a castle in the backdrop.

There is traffic, you know, and the woman said,

"The traffic is quite dire!" I was like, "Really, it's OK."

But everything is so, like...

And I was clothes shopping and there was a very proper sales lady.

As I was going into the dressing room she said something which I thought was quite mean,

which was, "Good luck." And I...

Odd.

It was so Scottish, cos you guys are so... What is that word?

Mean. Anyway, as I was going into the dressing room and she said,

"Good luck," I...

When I came out I was having a moment of denial and I said,

"Is this too big on me?"

And she said, "Quite the opposite, madam.

"Quite the opposite."

There's something nice about stand-up, no matter what level you get to, that you never...

I've found doing stand-up that I now have a job for life and it doesn't

sort of matter what you look like or what you do as long as you're funny.

-And that's what keeps you going.

-Yeah. As long as you're funny!

-Yeah, you're still in your 20s!

-If you go to America...

-NORTH AMERICAN ACCENT:

-I work hard! What is this?! Whatever!

I'd love to see the film where Liam Neeson sees a bit of trouble

and just walks on by. You know, goes home, has an egg for his tea.

That'd be nice, Liam. That should be an acting challenge for you.

In America, do people think you're Scottish? Because I think Americans don't know the difference between...

I think Americans know the Irish thing.

I found in Canada... I was in Canada last week,

for the Montreal Festival, and they didn't totally know...

They didn't immediately hear the accent straightaway.

-I had to go down the "potato potato" route.

-You said "potato" a lot?

Just kind of going in, "Potato potato?"

"Potato. Oh, now you know.

"We're grand. We're off." But it did take a while.

But did you come here last year,

-did you really think, "This is going to be a life changer?"

-No, I didn't.

I came and did a play and I wanted to get...

I think there's something about... Especially doing the show this year,

there's something about doing your job, like an hour, 30 times in a row,

that it's just going to make you a better stand-up.

Because there'll be dud gigs and bad gigs and to sustain stand-up

and telling stories for an hour is completely different

to a 20-minute set, or a seven-minute set.

I mean, the competition was seven to eight minutes last year,

and that doesn't really...

It's like an advert for what you do, and it's so nice to have the space.

I'm shocked how...erm...

how much this city encourages stand-up and how it's got all

these venues, and yet the brutality of some of the reviews that I...

I will not read my own, don't worry. The cruelty in which...

And you're just like, you know,

the objective here is we're all trying to make everybody laugh.

You know, the fact that they take it so seriously.

I think there's an issue as well...

Comedy's a massive thing now, and there's a lot of critics,

but I have thought for a while that it's an issue for critics,

comedy, because it's the only art form where they're really not needed.

-Because, really, if the audience are laughing, it is working.

-Yes.

-Exactly.

-That's why quite a lot of critics... I've read this,

I remember AA Gill once saying,

"I prefer comedy which doesn't really make the audience laugh,"

and I thought, "What you mean is, you prefer comedy where you can still tell us readers

"whether or not this thing is working,

"because otherwise, if it's laughing, why do you need a critic?"

Well, thank you all very much indeed.

Well, you can see Caroline until the 22nd and Aisling until the 26th,

both at the Gilded Balloon,

and David finishes his run tonight but is on tour in October.

Leading choreographers from Mark Morris to Michael Clark,

Lucinda Childs to Pina Bausch, have staged work here in Edinburgh

but contemporary dance can be one of the most misunderstood of art forms.

Pete Shenton and Tom Roden, aka New Art Club, have made it their mission

to bring new audiences to the world of dance,

so we asked them for the low-down

on what to expect from this year's movers and shakers.

With so much dance going on here at the Edinburgh Festival,

it can be hard to decide what to go and see.

You could try using Pete's technique.

Which has its pros and cons.

Or you could get somebody who knows what they're talking about

to be your guide.

With everything from pure movement

to surreal retellings of great stories

and with choreographers using all manner of theatrical devices,

including film, spoken word and even physical comedy...

You can be bombarded with images or taken deep into intimate moments.

It can be completely abstract, and on occasion, utterly meaningless.

This year possibly the most abstract...

And in dance terms, therefore the most traditional...

Is the LA dance project.

This is the company from celebrity dancer

and choreographer Benjamin Millepied.

Not only are they presenting work by two renowned masters

of contemporary dance, Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe,

but also a piece by Millepied himself.

But even in these seemingly abstract dance pieces, you might see meaning.

The snaking, intertwining bodies of the dancers

may suggest a relationship of support and trust.

The work of a comedy double act is similarly based on trust.

It just manifests itself in a slightly different way.

The next piece, by Korean artist Hyo Jin Kim,

has a stronger relationship to narrative

and uses projected images in film to create and manipulate meaning.

The piece plays around with scale, and pitches the human body

against images as varied as a 1950s classic of Korean cinema...

..and enormous fish.

In Jose Montalvo's Don Quichotte du Trocadero

the already surreal narrative is transformed into a series of imagistic episodes.

It also uses specially created film projection in order to shift location

and to illuminate the interior world of the characters' imaginations.

This allows it to move around freely inside the narrative,

providing a comic discourse between the live and the filmed elements.

So, if you're thinking of coming to see some dance in Edinburgh this year,

you can expect plenty of visual and physical stimulation.

Probably some film, and even people talking to you.

Or, to each other.

Yeah. Or to each other.

But they probably won't be trying to tell you any kind of story

with a clear narrative - so in the words of the great funk philosopher George Clinton,

free your mind and your ass will follow.

# Free your mind and your ass will follow

# The kingdom of heaven is within

# Free your mind

# And your ass will follow

# The kingdom of heaven is within

# Yeah...

# Mmm... #

New Art Club are at the Assembly in Edinburgh

until the 26th of the month.

From modern dance to modern opera, American Lulu relocates

Alban Berg's femme fatale to New York,

with Angel Blue taking the lead role

in this collaboration by Scottish Opera and The Opera Group.

We caught up with the company during their rehearsals.

-# Can't you tell me your name?

-# No, it would make me uneasy

# You're so secretive

# I'm secretive? I never needed to be... #

This interpretation of Lulu is by the composer Olga Neuwirth.

Olga chose to set the piece in the United States of America

across the civil rights era, the civil rights revolution.

And I think the reason for doing that

is that she wanted to say that this is a piece

not only about gender and about sexuality, but also about race.

And that it's a piece about what it is to be a human in its broadest sense. It's about human rights.

San Francisco-based soprano Angel Blue

plays the young and beautiful dancer, whose world is torn apart by the jealous

and controlling men and women desperate to be her lovers.

# ..I remember

# The times that we used to have... #

'It's a political piece, for sure.

'And in the end you sort of see Lulu kind of just,'

in a very violent manner,

feel that that's the way that she has to sort everything out in her life.

She kind of shuts off to people.

# Slowly You have to slow down

# How dare you just turn up like that... #

'I love it because it's nothing like me as a person.

'I just, I really sort of enjoy being,'

for lack of a better word, crazy.

I like the journey that she makes, I think she starts out

'kind of innocent, but I think you just sort of see her just go down

'a downward spiral,

'and hopefully that will never happen to me in my real life

'but I do enjoy playing her because she has... She's like an onion.'

Peel an onion, many layers and everything -

that's how I feel about Lulu.

SHE SINGS

American Lulu is at the King's Theatre

on the 30th and 31st of August,

and also at the Young Vic in London in September.

Fringe theatre now,

and this year a number of new plays set out to tackle

some of the most shocking and significant events in recent history.

Chalk Farm, by ThickSkin, is an explosive new play about love

and blame during the 2011 London riots.

There's this loud cracking noise like frying bacon,

and a bunch of kids are peeling away the smashed window

like big strips of sunburnt skin.

Ram Singh starts the engine...

After much acclaim for her version of Mies Julie last year,

Yale farmer returns with Nirbhaya,

a devastating exploration of violence against women in India,

highlighted by the gang rape on a Delhi bus in December last year.

And closer to home in more ways than one, Making News

is a satire on the BBC, as things go very wrong in the newsroom.

We're all in this together, Rachel.

Yes.

-And we all know our place?

-Yes.

Good. Let's hope it isn't Salford.

Well, with me to give me their verdict on these plays are the playwright Mark Ravenhill,

Lyn Gardner from The Guardian and the broadcaster Gyles Brandreth.

First of all, Gyles, Making News. An easy target, the BBC, do you think?

An easy target indeed, therefore we are fulfilling here

what their premise is.

They say if you do something critical of the BBC,

the BBC has to give it extra attention.

So here we are, hundreds of plays on, we are focusing on one

which is basically a corporate drama about the Corporation.

A new Acting Head of News has just been appointed,

played by Suki Webster. She has a dilemma.

A young reporter from Panorama arrives

with what he thinks is a hot story.

A cult has been uncovered, a million people -

is it funded by the BBC itself?

The best of the performances was from somebody called Hal Cruttenden,

who is the star newsreader,

who comes really from the Reginald Bosanquet generation.

That suit is cursed!

That's the suit I wore during the Crisis of the Forbidden Angle.

This is the biggest news story of the year.

-The DG selected you personally.

-Get someone else!

-There is no-one else.

-This is suicide! Career suicide!

Do they capture the whole atmosphere of crisis in the BBC?

This is obviously a crazy story, but do they capture that well?

Well, there are a little bit too few of them

to create the drama within the newsroom there should be.

There seems to be quite a lot of leisurely time taken,

and there's a fair bit of disappearing behind the water cooler

to do some light bonking, which I have to tell you -

I work on The One Show, where none of that ever happens.

-And maybe it does on news, you'd be better placed to tell us about that.

-Couldn't say a word.

Lyn, what about Phill Jupitus as the DG?

Phill Jupitus is Phill Jupitus, he's not really the DG,

but nobody on that stage really is acting other than Hal.

And I think that Gyles makes it sound considerably more

interesting than it actually is.

I enjoyed it. I went with the flow. It's Edinburgh, it was a fun show, it was topical.

I enjoyed the performances.

Well, another play, again with the news at its heart

but a much more serious affair and reflecting on something

that happened in 2011, is Chalk Farm, about the riots. You saw that.

Now, this is a two-hander, a mother and her son.

Yeah, and it's an extraordinary insight I think into

what happened that summer, which we've all been looking for.

It deals with the fact that there is no easy answer.

Very early on the young son has a speech at the beginning

saying this was about everything and nothing.

But then it takes us into the heart of this relationship between mother and son -

a mother who's really proud to be living in Chalk Farm.

She feels she's doing the best by her boy,

and then he gets drawn into the nights of the riots.

But it's after that that she comes to this realisation that

because the riots have happened, now people are perceiving

a whole section of society as being chavs and scum.

No right to live here amongst good law-abiding citizens.

Should be hounded up, or locked away, or worse.

And she's screaming now, proper yelling,

and all I can see is my little Jamie, in dim light,

with the curtains closed, breathing softly like an angel

and I'm thinking, "You don't know. You don't know him."

This idea of the rich and poor living cheek by jowl very much at the heart of the problem.

I think it really captures that sense of, what has happened to us

when we have such a broadening gap between the rich and the poor?

And is there any society left, is there any shared ground left

between this hugely torn apart society?

You saw that as well, Lyn. Is it too sympathetic?

Well, no, I think that actually it's a deceptively simple play

about a really complex issue.

And I think it puts things very beautifully

and very movingly about the way that it explores,

that it's possible to have two women living on opposite sides of a road,

and yet the gulf between them is impossible to breach.

And what about the staging? Because there's music, video, text...

A really complex staging,

very hard to do at the Fringe, where the turnover is very fast-moving.

I thought it was an incredibly accomplished production.

I thought, am I just being impressed because it's on the Fringe

and we're normally expecting a few black drapes and a couple of lighting states?

But actually I think on any level, the combination of underscoring - the score was fantastic,

the use of video worked, the movement worked, the precision of the acting -

I think in any context, it's an incredibly thought through and accomplished production.

This is it. This is it!

It doesn't get better than this.

Well, Lyn, you went to see a drama not only based

on the true story of the dreadful rape and subsequent death of the young woman

on the bus in India, but the performers on stage

have suffered the kind of abuse that's being portrayed in the drama.

I would say that this is a show which almost defies criticism

to some extent, because it is so extraordinarily powerful.

To be sitting there in a theatre,

and in a way what you're actually doing is bearing witness

to the stories of these women,

who in one case has been serially abused by the men in her life,

other women who have been raped,

a woman who stands on stage in really quite obvious distress

telling us how her husband and his brother poured kerosene over her

in front of her small child and set alight to her.

So it's a hugely powerful show.

In that moment, you understood what they were doing.

They wanted to kill you.

SHE SPEAKS SOUTH ASIAN LANGUAGE

"If you are going to burn me - do it," you said.

SHE SPEAKS SOUTH ASIAN LANGUAGE

He lit the match and threw it.

The stark, horrific quality of what was being said

contrasted with some of the more beautiful moments.

I think it uses ritual in a really sophisticated

and very interesting way theatrically.

And I think that that absolutely helps the audience

actually bear something which is almost unbearable to watch, it is really, really harrowing.

Isn't that the joy of Edinburgh - at one stage you can get a complete drama like this

that clearly involves catharsis as well, and then you can go away and you can be calm

and see something completely hilarious.

It is the very roller coaster of it, and the variety of quality and content.

And it doesn't mean you'll forget it.

Audiences at Edinburgh do expect this whole variety of experience.

Is it still the place that you think that you find the most excitement, culturally, jammed into three weeks?

I think the great thing about Edinburgh is the emphasis on the new.

What is rewarded here is new work.

Sometimes that can just mean the novel and the freakish,

but also sometimes it genuinely means the innovative and the fresh.

And Lyn, Mark in his opening address on the Fringe

talks about the danger of becoming too cosy if you're funded.

You refer to New Labour, for example, as creating a liberal arts that wasn't critical enough.

Yes, and I think one of the things about Edinburgh is of course

that most people are here absolutely unfunded.

That they've had to find other ways to raise the money in order to get here.

For a lot of young companies you see that spirit

where they say, "We're going to make art, come what may."

I think one of the things I'm saying is, as artists our ultimate duty is

to tell the truth, and is public subsidy one way to get ourselves

in the position where we can tell the truth?

Quite possibly, but it may not be the only context.

But we have to fight and fight and find whatever resources that we can to be able to tell the truth.

Thanks to my guests, Gyles, Lynne and Mark, and all three plays continue throughout the Fringe.

Well, amidst all this plethora of performance,

there are some titans of art in the capital this summer.

At the Queen's Gallery,

a collection of anatomical studies by Leonardo da Vinci

are on show alongside CT and MRI scans,

in an exhibition that seeks to show the artist's understanding

of the human form was way ahead of its time.

Mexico's foremost contemporary artist Gabriel Orozco's

geometric forms are showcased

at The Fruitmarket Gallery.

And there's a homecoming for Peter Doig,

an Edinburgh-born painter who spent many years in the Caribbean.

Doig's first major exhibition in the country of his birth

features his lush large-scale canvases, whose vivid palettes

link him to great colourists such as Gauguin and Matisse.

Meanwhile, at the National Museum of Scotland,

a major exhibition brings together paintings, jewellery and maps

and textiles to illustrate the life and times of Mary, Queen of Scots.

I met the poet and playwright Liz Lochhead, writer of Mary Queen Of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off,

to discuss one of the most controversial characters in Scottish history.

Perhaps best-known for the manner of her death,

the execution which was sanctioned by her cousin Elizabeth I,

this exhibition chronicles an eventful life,

filled with bereavement, adultery, religious conflict and imprisonment.

I think that there's always been a complete fascination with Mary

in Scotland, because she exists

as much in myth as she does in history.

I don't mean untruth, I mean deep myth, deep dreams.

So if you're a Catholic Irish Scot, culturally,

or a Protestant Scot,

you're brought up with a totally different view of what this woman was.

For one she's a she-devil and for another she's a saint.

So it's fascinating, it's a very dramatic story.

No wonder, Kirsty, that there are literally hundreds of plays,

operas and everything about these two women.

'At the age of 15, Mary married Francois, the Dauphin of France,

'but by her 18th birthday she was widowed and returned to Scotland.'

There she was, a widow and a virgin,

and she said, "My heart keeps watch for one who's gone."

And there she is in white, which is the colour of mourning.

No jewellery, very sober,

and the start of what's going to be a very hard life for her.

Because of course her mother died six months previously,

Mary of Guise had died in Edinburgh Castle, where she'd been put.

And she knew - she must have known at this point that she was

-entering an incredibly turbulent time.

-I don't think she did.

I don't feel she did.

I feel that she came to Scotland and got a very rude awakening, really.

'Violence marred Mary's life.

'She witnessed the assassination of her secretary David Rizzio,

'and following the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley,

'Mary married the Earl of Bothwell.

'Letters allegedly sent from Mary to Bothwell

'appear to incriminate the couple in Darnley's death.'

Of course we've got no proof that this is actually the truth,

but if you are a playwright like me

you'd be daft not to go for that story because it is a much better story.

But whether or not these letters are genuine

we don't historically know, but it seems to me

that Darnley murdered Rizzio, her secretary, her favourite,

because he was made very jealous, so he plotted with some nobles

and then Darnley had to be murdered as well,

probably by Bothwell and Mary, I think.

It was also essentially a tussle between two incredibly strong women.

At a time when by and large men were the ones who had power.

But here were two women fighting over thrones.

Yes - two women, two different kingdoms,

in the one little green island. I find that completely fascinating.

And they went about it in such a different way.

Elizabeth's such a wonderful character as well,

but what an irony that Elizabeth prevailed during her lifetime.

She never married, she never got into the position that Mary got into all the time

with men and sex and child-bearing,

because somebody could seize the child and get rid of the Queen.

So Elizabeth absolutely refused to do that, but the irony is

that of course it was then Mary's son who succeeded her.

-And it leads to the Union of the Crowns.

-James the VI and I.

And the Union of the Crowns leads 100 years later

to the Union of the Parliaments, which might or might not be disentangled again.

-This is such an extraordinary thing of beauty.

-And strangeness.

So what we think is that Mary and Bess of Hardwick

embroidered all these different, almost like, motifs.

Mm-hm. Symbolic motifs.

And then it was put together into this amazing...

The story of her life, told in a strange symbolic way, and we don't understand the symbols

necessarily, but we're kind of intrigued by them, and we know that

she was making up a sort of poetic version of her life within it.

The Dauphin is a dolphin, and things like this.

And a very strange representation of Darnley as a tortoise

climbing a palm tree. Incredible.

What does it say, something like "Virtue flourishes from its wounds"?

Very sad and strange.

Incredible feeling of melancholy comes of this

very beautiful, large embroidery. A real feeling of sadness.

And of course eventually she's been in captivity so long,

Elizabeth's put off signing her death warrant, and then there's finally the Babington Plot.

And here is this most extraordinary letter by Mary's son

begging for his mother's life.

To his godmother, Elizabeth I.

"Madam and dear sister, if you could have known

"what has agitated my mind..."

Could just really be PR, it could be him trying to convince

the Scottish people that he's sticking up for his mother,

but of course they're all in these incredible dilemmas

because they've got to be seen to be doing certain things.

It's very like politicians nowadays in so many ways -

people have to keep face up all the time.

And Elizabeth, when she's actually signing this death warrant,

she's got to convince herself that she's not really doing it.

And it's all those positions

that everybody was getting put into which are so difficult for them.

It's a difficult position that Mary's been in,

it's a terribly difficult position for Elizabeth to be in,

it's a difficult position for this son to be in,

to seem to condone the murder of his mother.

And he can't look as if he does.

So because there's all these dilemmas it makes a fantastic dramatic story.

Mary, Queen of Scots is at the National Museum of Scotland

until 17th November, and you can see a Culture Show special

on Leonardo da Vinci on Wednesday on BBC Two.

With space at a premium, everything from a public toilet to a climbing centre

have been transformed into a stage in Edinburgh.

One of the newest and most inventive venues is Summerhall,

formerly The Royal School of Veterinary Studies.

Launched in 2011,

it's quickly earned a reputation for its eclectic and edgy programming

of visual arts, theatre, dance, music, film and spoken word.

Summerhall is an artistic village, which is very special.

We have people here year-round -

studios, office space and artistic community coming together.

The Festival is our flagship month where we have a distinct programme.

It's really exciting, top-quality work

that we pitch to an audience between the Fringe and the International Festival.

One of the highlights at Summerhall this year is Michael Nyman's

Nyman With A Movie Camera, a pun both linguistic and visual

on Dziga Vertov's documentary classic Man With A Movie Camera.

Nyman, probably best known for his Oscar-winning film scores,

has been working on this most personal of projects for ten years.

But this is the first time he's been able to present it

in all its mesmerising complexity.

What I've had the good fortune to do here in Summerhall

was to realise a project that I've been thinking about

for the whole period that I've been editing and constantly re-editing

and filming, and constantly re-filming and adding new footage

to all these versions of Nyman With A Movie Camera.

Which is to show six, eight, ten different versions, simultaneously,

in a large room, with what I've always called a forest of screens.

This has never been possible to do until now at Summerhall.

On the one hand it is a very strict homage

to Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera.

But on the other hand in a sense I am the cameraman,

I am the photographer,

we're living in a digital age, it's a kind of huge explosion.

Summerhall's former incarnation as a vet school gives the venue

a brilliantly adaptable and highly idiosyncratic quality.

They say that in some of its 400 spaces,

you can still smell the formaldehyde.

In the former anatomy lecture theatre,

pianist and entertainer Will Pickvance is staging a show

named, appropriately enough, Anatomy Of The Piano.

The piano has evolved from two distinct genetic lineages.

'I've been playing pianos up and down the land for many a year,'

and I've often found that some of the cheaper,

more honky-tonk instruments have a generosity about them, whereas

some of the more expensive grand pianos can be a little bit mean-spirited.

So, I thought, I'll take a piano apart and see if

I can find out why that might be.

We see clearly that the grand piano has a spine

running down the left-hand side of the body.

The upgrade, by contrast, is spineless.

There is a nice symmetry obviously, because it's an old anatomy theatre

where they used to pull pigs and sheep and dogs and cows apart

and look at how they're put together, so why not a piano?

But it's going to be more humane.

It's been suggested that the grand piano might mate successfully

with the upright.

Producing a baby grand.

I have a love of pianos, and I wouldn't want to see one treated badly.

Summerhall is all about unexpected discoveries, odd collisions, constant surprises.

It's a place where carnival and celebration coexist with contemplation and reflection.

We were all sitting around the dinner table. It was about eight o'clock.

There were loud bangs...

Perhaps one of the most profoundly moving performances at Summerhall

this Festival is The Tin Ring. Based on the book of the same name

by Holocaust survivor Zdenka Fantlova,

it's an unforgettable testament to the strength of the human spirit.

They burst in. There was a lot of shouting, aggression.

"Aufstehen!

"Aufstehen! Achtung, achtung!"

They grabbed my father.

"Name?!"

He replied - "Ernst Fantl."

"What?!"

"Jew, Ernst Fantl" - and then they hit him.

The picture that stayed in my mind is my father

standing at the door, looking us over

as though he wanted to make a mental picture of the family,

and said only these words.

"Just keep calm. Remember, calmness is strength."

In certain situations there are only two types.

Those who consider themselves victims - well,

if you consider yourself a victim, you become a victim.

The other half - well, you know, actually it's less than half,

very few in fact - are observers.

I was an observer.

After 50 years, I conceived the idea that I have to write it down

as a document.

Not only about myself but about those who didn't make it,

and that will make a document for the future generations, as a warning.

Not only what happened, but what can happen again.

It didn't frighten me.

Because I wasn't a victim.

And if you're not a victim, you stand a better chance, of course.

I think what people get out of it - because I asked them once,

"What do you take home from this play?"

And the answer was, "The value of life."

Summerhall's Festival programme runs until 25th August.

We'll be back next Sunday with more from Edinburgh

on our regular review show, including Grid Iron's Leaving Planet Earth,

and an exhibition of work by Nam June Paik.

For even more highlights, including artist Peter Doig,

this year's standout stand-ups,

and an exclusive film from Scottish Ballet,

you can press red now to see At The Edinburgh Festival

presented by Sue Perkins, or watch on BBC iPlayer from tomorrow.

We leave you tonight with music from Steel Harmony, long-term

collaborators with the artist Jeremy Deller, who has an exhibition

at Jupiter Artland, a sculpture park on the edge of the city. Goodnight.

MUSIC: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd