Edinburgh Festival - Part 2 The Review Show

Welcome to the second review show, perched across from the Edinburgh

Castle, the city is packed full of drama, music and comedy. Tonight we

help you to a selection of festival delight, the odd disappointment,

and live music too. Our panel samples four very

physical comedy shows, from Michael Winslow's Thousands of Noise, to

mime. Simhon Callow joins us in an unfamiliar guise with an extract of

his Edinburgh show. Photography as you have never seen it before, with

a high-voltage exhibition from Hiroshi Sugimoto. The oldest

winners of the Edinburgh prize announced. A bevy of fringe shows,

dealing with an Edinburgh preoccupation, alcohol. Shakespeare,

Edinburgh style, including King Lear in Mandarin.

Joining me, with our live studio audience, to discuss all of, that

are the academic and writer, Sarah Churchwell, author and critic, Paul

Morley, the broadcaster Susan Hitch, and Simhon Callow will be along

later. Now our panel, audience and festival goers are hardly strangers

to the joys and perils of alcohol. It virtually defines the month.

Thisery, three shows have decided not to safe the booze until after

the show. Alcohol, bevy, growing, liquor, the

demon drink is a social lubricant at the Edinburgh Fringe, alcohol

has played its part as creative catalyst and emotional crutch for

many shows, few have gone for total immersion.

This experiment is as to whether or not alcohol is a means to create

greater creativity and artistic confidence, is at the scam assembly

Square. It came after her own seven-day experiment with alcohol

and performed entirely sober. I embarked on the experiment, I

wanted to find out whether I was a better artist when I was drunk. I

found out, yes I am a better artist, but I don't want that to be a

factor in my own practice. It was really dangerous, I didn't really

100% understand how harmful alcohol is to your body and your brain.

was then when the man in our house was a stranger, it was then that I

asked you to leave. After two or three drinks an artist's

imagination and physicality can become quite heightened, after a

few mother than, it becomes self- indulgent. A lot of things can

relax your imagination and body, it doesn't always have to be booze.

Alcohol, indiscretions and tales of nights on the lash throughout UK,

are the main subjects of Thirsty, from fringe winners Paper Birds, it

was weaved together to find one night of excess, and what is it

about alcohol that makes it so pref vent in our society. - prevalent in

our society. Randy makes a return to the

Edinburgh Fringe, with the solo show Randy Is Sober. That is what

happens when you take over the beer goggles, the scantily clad seducts

re, reveals herself. I don't think drink something a problem, it is

what people do here. There is the shows and the partying that goes

along with the shows. Since coming here sober I have seen a new side

to the city, a side I didn't know existed. Did you know there is a

castle here. It was a sobering experience. Let's deal with Thirsty,

they set up a hot-line taking drunken stories, stories of

drunkenness, did you enjoy it? is interesting seeing the

performances trying to find muscles of protest, they are trying to find

something beyond material to make themselves or us laugh. It was like

watching the first signs of some sense of what the state of the nai,

but the first thing they come across is their own alcoholic

consumption and the consumption of others. It was interesting to see

the muscles of some kind of comment on where we are as a nation come

back, it was slight low sad it happens to be about alcohol, and -

slightly sad it happens to be a about alcohol in a post reality

television sort of way. It was not an analysis about how and why, is

it really about being creative. It felt like they were scratching the

surface. It was very dark, all dark in their own way. What about the

idea of Thirsty, it looked like so many towns on a Saturday night?

was setting up to be a really powerful little show, with these

two women, who were really kind of showing what it feels like. My

problem is it wants to go to a very dark place but it seriously pulls

its punches. It sets up a date rape situation, but doesn't have the

courage to go through with the story and make the audience feel it.

I felt that about a lot of the stories. I agreed they were

superficial in the sense they were just beginning to ask pretty

obvious questions, oh, is alcohol bad for us, and conclude alcohol is

bad for us. 50 minutes later I think I already knew that. That

earnestness is also the death of comedy. The dark ones weren't dark

enough and the funny ones killed the jokes. I was going to say a

jaded palate, but for some people looking at Thirsty and Seven Day

Drunk, it was still shocking? didn't think it was. I don't think

we were discovering anything we didn't already know. But when they

were good that was what was good about them. Something like Thirsty,

I didn't mind it didn't have a shocker at the end, it was that

wearying disappointment of a world in which expectations are low

already. Two very good performances by the women. Moving on to Seven

Day Drunk, that was accompanied by film of her with various

professionals and the way she was when she was drunk. It was a bit

like a BBC documentary? That side of it must be sell wraited. It is

better to see this kind of movement of comedy away from the whole Sean

Lock and others. There was a movement of something interesting,

and there was a multimedia element. I would give the Thirsty girls six

half hours immediately on what they were. It was the material, again,

the fact that what it needed to be, as a lot of these things need to be,

they need to be written. At the moment, you will find this more as

we go along, in Edinburgh at the moment you need to do very little

to get hysterical laughter, everyone is really needing to laugh.

Desperation to laugh. In Seven Day Drunk, there was moments where she

was actually just talking horrifically about the impact, I

think that alcohol had on her childhood? It wasn't funny or

properly written or shaped. wasn't really meant to be comedy?

No, but the audience expected it to be. We are back to the audience

waiting to laugh and to be allowed to laugh. There was something very

peculiar about the mismatch between the audience and the content.

was dreadful stories there, about the friend? It was underdeveloped,

time limitations all the shows are about 50 minutes, you start to feel

the need of a two-hour show. She tells a little bit about the friend,

she disappears, she tells stories about her own experiences, it turns

out she had a really full on problem which the show touches on.

She did say the studies showed her creativity was heightened when she

was drunk? She couldn't find Euston Station though. I didn't find the

creativity about what was on stage, the fluffy props, that was thrown

away. Interesting premise, and idea, not going any way. As a performer

there was a lot of things there, it was an interesting combination as a

performer. They hugely transcend the material they wrote for

themselves. Then there is the sober puppet, this is Randy is Sober,

this is a new sobriety, which is going through. Frankie Boyle has

stopped drinking and others, this idea that people want to be sober.

The whole history of comedy in a way is fuelled with behind the

scenes there is alcohol. The greatest comedians are all there

because of alcohol. It is an interesting moment about self-

consciousness, they want to talk about something, and they want to

display something. I got a feeling tonight with all the drinking

alcohol comedies, we were eves dropping on people with a lot of

problems and using this an opportunity to tell bus their

problems. That is what a lot of comedy is about? But transcendantly

so, because they were different sorts of problems, grander and more

epic. It has to connect with the audience. My problem with Randy is

Sober, it was the full extent of narccasism, and it was about him

and his problems. It was a puppet, it was like shut up and go away.

wish he would go out. It is almost like we can only take it from a

Sesame Street puppet. It immediately distances you from

it. If you want to learn more about the shows the details are on the

website. The James Tait Memorial Prize has Iris Murdoch and Zadie

Smith and John Carey as previous winners. We found out this year's

winners. Authors in the running for this

year's Tait - James Tait Prize are now being announced. The James Tait

Black Memorial Prize has been won by Hilary Spurling.

The winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction is Tatjani Soli.

The book, as you say is as much about Vietnam ass about her. Is

that because you have an obsession with Vietnam? I do, I was

interested in the war because the books I read before I wrote this

were all from the soldiers' perspective, I'm from southern

California and we have a huge Vietnamese community there, they

talk about their country as a beautiful place torn apart by the

war, and we don't talk about that. I thought it would be interesting

about the way we go into countries we don't know what we do to them.

Australian-born Tatjani Soli, The Lotus Eaters, tells the story of a

female combat photographer who falls in love in the final moments

of the Vietnam War. Something I found very distinctive about The

Lotus Eaters is it has the pace and "from the front of the embassy

gates to the other side of the Boulevard, not static, passive

crowd, but a turbulent ocean of people, around motorcycles and

islands of stacked suitcase, people surging and dashing themselves up

against the solid gates of the embassy front, like waves crashing

against the rocks of a forbidden coast, falling back on to

themselves. What was it about Pearl Buck, there

were lots of missionary children around the world? Pearl is unique,

because she was the person who explained the east to the west.

There are no competitors to that post. A millionaire best-selling

author by the time of her death in 1973, Pearl Buck's name is almost

forgotten by today's readers, a fact rectifying by the novel

Burying the Bones. She was a noble prize literature winner back in

1958. The astonishing history behind her writing is revealed.

the daughter of Chinese commission rees, she used her impressions of

her adopted home as a back drop for her writing. She lived through a

fascinating period of Chinese history, through growing up with

them, she came to understand how the ordinary people of China lived

through the last years of the empire. That just happened a little

over a couple of hours ago. Sarah, both books started with places

rather than characters. Pearl Buck, an almost forgotten author and the

period she was writing about almost forgotten as well? Pearl Buck, as

an American growing up, The Good Earth was given to you to read,

she's completely forgotten. Because she's too popular fiction? The fact

is, and what Spurling's book brings out so clearly. I didn't realise

she was bileft-wing usual, she spoke Mandarin from childhood. She

explained the east to the west for the first time. I had no idea she

had such a horrifically difficult childhood, her sisters dying and

her absent missionary father? a bilingual and bicultural

childhood. The Burying The Bone Pearl Buck In China title comes

from the fact that this child her self - herself was going out of the

compound and finding bits of girl babies left out for the dogs to eat.

There is a moment when she finds an arm and a leg and finds her own

rituals for burying them. There is this thing that Spurling gives

about digesting the rock sometimes in popular fiction is very good.

is like an academic exercise told so brilliantly, she takes you into

fiction and changes her mother's death here and there. It is a fans

particular telling of a character, and how somebody become as writer,

the fact it is so beautifully written is fantastic. I love the

fact, and it seems so important now, that she goes to the book to write

the book to find out about China, and does it through the filter of a

great American. It creates a dichotomy about the difference

between the two, the superpower shift. We can find out so much from

this. Hilary Spurling has told me she has been on a book tour of Asia

and been to China, the Chinese people she meets are buying the

book, they don't know about their own history of that period? It is a

dissident voice. Not just as an American actually writing in

Chinese and translating it back, but dissident within the Chinese

culture in writing about the people that the Chinese don't like to do.

The communist thing, the Americans hater her and the Chinese hated her,

she disappeared into the void. Talking about Tatjani Soli's book,

The Lotus Eaters, here we have the young woman who wants to be the

jock camerawoman getting all the best shots. You remember all this

from Vietnam, but it was all about the men? This is a woman in some

sense who is trying to be man, and discovering very quickly she can't.

The whole impetus of the story is this young woman going out there

and immediately failing, gradually stepping back from it and learning

a different way to do it. It is a huge great love story with an

enormous amount of emotional charge to it. I liked the history and

emotion in it, you ended informed from within. I didn't like it very

much. I read it back-to-back with the Spurling, it suffered in

comparison. What I felt here was this attempt to write this epic

love story, it is driven by a very sentimental idea, yes it is about a

woman in a man's world, but the men are the ones who will redeem her

and show her how to live her life properly. I found it clumsily

written, it said things like she met her match in female form at

last. That was a direct quotation, I will show it to you. The idea of

looking back on Vietnam, the great book, Dispatches, that for me was

the great book about Vietnam and journalism? There was the missing

thing between Apeople lips Now and Mills and Boon. It was submerged

into a cliched role model, the Californian blonde, the mysterious

eastern guy she falls for. The cliches kept come overcoming the

central power. I don't think it was so cliched. The quote was awful.

But for all that it seemed to me there are kind of moments in this

kind of war, when the cliche is given by the roles you have in the

war. And actually that was done rather well. The jock, Sam Darrow,

the heroic reporter has a nuanced set of problems, he's hiding behind

by enjoying a stereotype. It says it within that the story is never

told through the female voice, this was the great opportunity and

didn't do it. Both of those books are available in good book shops.

Now to get new the mood for Michael Winslow and the pyjama Men. We're

joined by a performer wowing the audience, here is Lilli La Scala,

with the intriguingly titled Will You Love Me When I am skae mutton.

# Two little lambs are in a field of clover

# A lamb and a she lamb # I will explain

# The he lamb gave the she lamb the once over

# Tend early she bleated this refrain

# Will you love me # When I'm mutton

# As you do now I'm lamb # Ba-ba black sheep tell me do

# Will you love me when I'm mutton # Like a true and fateful lamb

# Or will you tell me # I'm too tough to chew

# When my one and four a found is not so tender

# And there's no-one left upon my one and three

# When you're sitting in the ice with me darling

# Promise that you won't be cold to # Will you love me when I'm mutton

# As you do now I'm lamb # Ba-ba black sheep tell me do

# Will you love me when I'm mutton # Like a true and faithful lamb

# Although I'm cut up # And you feel cut up too

# When Cupid's dart is a skewer stuck in my shoulder

# And they have stuck a ticket where your tail should be

# When a butcher sells your kidney's love

# For four pence # Tell him that your heart belongs

to me # Will you love me on a Sunday

# When you're roasted like I am # And when your served up cold on

Monday too # Should we meet in the soup upon a

Tuesday # Or promise you won't hide behind

a pea # And on Wednesday when they call

us rissoles darling # Or say that you will still be

The one and only Lilli La Scala, more smu sick to come.

Comedy in - music to come. Comedy takes on many forms, we sent

our panelists to four shops that put the slapstick back in stand-up.

Whilst the stand-up is a great institution, there is still room

for some surprises, last year the big hit was the boy with the tape

in his face. This year there's a host of new comedy forms.

Michael Winslow, best known as Motor Mouth, from the Police

Academy films, makes his Edinburgh debut. He may have only one trick,

but it is working oned couts, because he has a million - on the

counds, he has a millions boyss. don't have to pay for anything - on

the crowds, he has a million voices. I don't have to pay for anything, I

just do the noise. The Pyjama Men are back to packed

performances. They use preposterous situations with mime and different

voices. It is just right here between these two chair doors.

After seven years on the comedy circuit, and sharing a training

with the likes of Mike Myers, and Bill Murray, they have Surrealism

with a mass market appeal. Nice to meet you. Pleasure all mine.

are you? I'm fine. Would you like some tea? I love tea? Delicious, it

is too good. The I am of Doctor Brown adopts a different approach.

A graduate of French clowning school, this too is a minimalist

approach. Toying, sometimes literally, with audience

expectations, and using minute gesture, he enacting everything

from a Peking Opera to a Starbucks barista.

Two dancers performing in cabaret over the years, but bringing their

first show to Edinburgh, it is giddy clowning to taboo breaking

sequences, the performance is based So what is it about physical

comdough that we return to it again and again. In a time where

comedians struggle to satirise the every-changing political landscape,

and panel show one-liners dominate the screens. Is the physicality of

comedy that appeals, or is clowning good old fashioned fun.

I must apologise, we didn't warn you about the nudity in the short

film. Let's begin with Michael and his

amazing noises. Was there anything more, was there

a development in this show, or a series of amazing noises? It was a

series of amazing noises. He makes amazing noises amazingly. The only

thing is when he is doing something that is an amazing noise, suddenly

being Jimi Hendrix, I get very excited by that, I don't get

excited by the bong bong noise on the the aeroplane. It is an

outstanding skill but it was a long time. It happens to be filtered

through popular culture, he does the Star Wars stick, it is Michael

Winslow and 142 voices, it is not ten thousand. And ultimately it is

a skill, a talent, an ability. And maybe 30 seconds on Saturday night

show, once every four years that would be enough. The audience loved

him? Everyone is having hysterics, they would have had hysterics if he

took a breath. Everyone is so hyped up and pumped up. There were a lot

of lads? Some need to be drunk and some don't. They just want to be

relieved. Not only is it filtered through pop culture but the

decision to do it as stand-up act. If he could find a different

skeleton to build the frai framework of noises around it might

be good. As a comedian I found him unfunny, he had a joke about 949

channels on TV and nothing on. That is a 30-year-old joke. We saw a lot

of flesh in the Two Ronies, this couple of girls looked like thing

one and two out of Dr Suess. liked the synchronised swimming in

the nude, they were nice girls, and the audience wanted them to be

nicely nude. It was a terribly sad show. The genesis of the show that

you discovered came towards the end with this very unhappy first sexual

experience, with Tim in the back bedroom, you thought you haven't

worked this out. This could be the genesis of good stuff. This could

be alcohol, this could be the genesis of good stuff, but here it

isn't. It is getting excited by taking your clothes off and

everyone being nice about it. joyless, the funny thing about

doing the synchronised swimming to Bohemian Rhapsody. The thing about

the music is that is the funny thing. Whether naked or not, it is

funny because of Bohemian Rhapsody. There were muscles coming into play,

they were annoyed about certain things happening in comedy and in

the nation, the only way to find a vow Kabylie to show it was doing

the nudity in your face thing. There is the thing if nothing else

works take your clothes off? want a grander subversion. Its not

very subversive, if it was the 1940s it would be. Let's look at

Doctor Brown, who trained as a mime artist with a clown in Paris, and

it was all about small movements and making the audience really hang

on. He had total control over the audience when I was there?

audience absolutely loved it. We had an audience in stitches. I

think for me, again, I'm sounding like a broken record, we had a

superlative performer, he was fabulous, but the material was thin.

You have one big joke here, just build a show out of this. Part of

his gag is about the delay, it is about those little tiny movements

and waiting for the audience to wait for it, there is not enough

pay-off. I kept waiting for the big, and it has to build somewhere. It

is a sexual game he's playing towards the end, I kept thinking

there is no cloim max, that might be the joke. - Climax, that might

be the joke. I know this is a clown, it is

filtered with indie clothing, but it is a clown and mime. He wants to

be chaplainesque. This one is like the missing link between Mr Bean

and Charles Mansen. The audience, this reliance on the audience doing

your bidding. He really needs the audience. Because I would love to

be able to go out and do eight minutes, and the fact that he can

that's a skill. So he has a skill. But again it is the kind of skill

of like, God you have a talent, brilliant. He spent an awful lot of

time skrunching his eyes up to do it. There is something interesting

about the Chinese robe and the hat and the fact that he screws up his

eyes and says "Kentucky flied chicken". That was the weakest

line? If this was a stereotype of an Afro-Caribbean or somebody Irish,

comedy does it, but it immediately gets sub conscious, but Chinese, I

think we're a bit racist about it. The Pyjama Men, they do a bit of

mime, comedy and physicality, did you like it? I loved t I thought it

was intelligent, they were really skilled, they did stuff with the

skills. This extraordinary story based in hospital that then turns

into a search for aliens, it is completely mad. You know who they

are, they become a whole lot of different people, it is crazy but

in reality. They disappear the characters but when it comes back

you know it, because they do it so well? It took me five minutes they

were doing improv, classic improv, cracking each other up because they

were saying things they didn't expect T the other shows felt drawn

out and thin, this one was pistol fast. The Marion net thing? Largely

im - it was interesting because it was language and words striving for

meaning. I have to give a mention to the side kick, the beautiful

voices, like Nick Drake. Trying hard not to crack up all the way

through. All the information about what we cover son the website.

Simhon Callow has adopt - is on the website. Simon Callow has adopted

many guises and he's in the Edinburgh Festival. Here is his

show, Tuesdays At Tesco. He's always barking out orders, giving

command, holding out his paw to get anything, in order to get served.

Get him the glass of water, I do to the tap, three steps. I come back

three steps, not very difficult. Not very tiring. He could do it,

really. Not crippled, yet. I am, I put things in the drawers

and wardrobes, I say things like I never thought I would be putting

away your clothes one way. He seas "pity's sake, trousers, you could

wear trousers". My name, I say, is Pauline. I'm delighted to say that

Simon joins us now, but sadly not in that lovely suit. We come to

look at art, but just before we do that. You have been selling out all

the time, is it an extraordinary experience to be with the wonderful

audience at Edinburgh? It is, the Assembly Hall is an amazing theatre,

considering it is the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland, it is a

theatrical space with a fabulous relationship with the audience and

fabulous acoustics. You have time to do other things, we are going on

to the Edinburgh Art Festival, two unique and different offerings.

This is photography, but basically I wonder if I can call it that. I'm

not using a camera, there is no lens, this is the direct exposure

of minature electric sparks on to the fresh film. The man was a great

scientist, mathematitions, he asolted with Michael Faraday at

that time, he was into the study of static electricity. There is no

book how to do it. It is more a regular scientific approach. The

power itself, it is electric charges. So it is amazing. It is

very organic form as it is created. Right now I'm using 400,000 voltage,

I have to risk my life. Sometimes it hits me, it is very painful. But

I proved that I'm still alive, so it's not life and death situations

yet. Also on show a series of works in

which Sugimoto reinterprets a technique developed by Fox Talbot

before the birth of photography, and using the pioneer's own

original negatives to create new prints. He tested many of his

botanical specimens to be placed on top of the photo sensitised paper,

and leaving them outside one day. And he removed the samples and then

there is clearly a record of the shapes. So it is a very

experimental thing. As you can see many of them are very painter

quality, and ghost quality, a spooky kind of thing.

Sugimoto's work is at the Scottish national gallery of modern art,

which is where last year, Turner Prize winner, Martin Creed,

unveiled a new work in neon. This year he has yet another

installation, this time it is very, very different, in fact, I'm

standing on it. Creed has clad a staircase of 104

steps, built in 1899, and connecting the city's north bridge

to wavely train station, in different types of marble in

different colours from around the world. Comised by the Edinburgh art

fest - commissioned by the Edinburgh Art Festival, and to show

the importance of the city, it is a luxurious renovation of an unloved

artery. Will the public enjoy this new piece of public art.

Let's begin with the Sugimoto, and the electric images first. It was a

mix of ethey areal and incredibly powerful. - Etheral and incredibly

powerful. These huge canvasses in intense black and white. You can't

tell what they are, they could be abstract paintings almost, or could

be representations of the human nervous system, they could be

lightning, they are called Lightning Fields, they form shapes

like great abstract art, it creates intense archetypal shapes, the

power of it is the sensational thing. It is the black and the

white, hitting you between the eyes. The power of it, is also 400 though

volt, Sugimoto, he says himself - 400,000 volts, Sugimoto, he says

himself, is pushing it, all the power blasting out on to the sheet.

It is a Frankenstein like being present at the creation of it. He's

photographing mystery. He's making you think this sort of thing is

aliens on the planet. If I was doing science fiction these would

be the aliens. Everything comes from nature, it is primal? It is

extraordinary, anyone watching The Code, there is this thing about

fractals and he says everything follows this shape, and you walk in

and there it is. It becomes the building block of everything around

us. It was extraordinary to see it done in light and dark. In an

explosive and dark and dangerous way. He doctored it by putting salt

down as well. It was the salt that gives you that incredible fizzy

images? The depth of it is extraordinary. The nearest thing I

had seen when you go to the optician and they take a photograph

of the back of your eye. You realise you are recognising in had

the thing that is seen, the picture of the receptor that sees it.

other thing on the other gallery, completely different, but connected,

is that Sugimoto spent a year, he said his profits for one year went

into a small collection of Henry Fox Talbot image, he took so long.

He has brought back ghosts from the dead? They are gorgeous, they all

have double dates, a date in the 19th century and the date right now.

They are the date of the making of the original and his remaking it,

and it is in that gap the ghosts happen. They are unfor the gettable,

and some of the most - unforgettable, and some of the most

equisite images I have ever seen. Eerie and haunting, the words get

used a lot, but they apply. They are the most spectacular

photographs I have seen. Also comparing to what else we have

within talking about, it is the matter of factness of the way he

has done it. He doesn't have to reveal if he was drunk when he

first had the thought, does it heighten creativity. It gets to the

essence of how to express how you feel about something. There is

something supernatural about them, it is almost what a Victorian

spiritualist might have tried to kop convey on to a plate. Utterly

overwhelming, in a completely different intensity. Last week we

were talking about the lace done on brass, and also the fern, the

images you are bringing back, almost bringing back the leaves to

life. Yes, but the people, as if they are trying to come back into

our world in some way. They do. don't think I would like to be

there at night? One back in the mists of time and one far into the

future. We have Victorian spiritualism, and also a Japanese

obsession with ghosts and shadows. It is two artists collaborating

over two-and-a-half centuries. would never believe the photographs

were by the same person. A word on the steps, did it heighten your

experience? It is the heart and soul of the festival, it is

Edinburgh itself. The spaces, here wonderfully every step is gorgeous.

It is a gorgeous celebration. Joos a regeneration it is a great thing

to do. There is a wonderful joke, Martin Creed is a man who won the

prize for a lightbulb you turn on and off, and how expensive the

steps are! If that has galvanised you into action, you can see

Hiroshi Sugimoto's Lightning Fields at the Scottish national gallery of

modern art, and the steps are there for ever. On to Edinburgh

International Festival, bringing a global exoticism to Edinburgh's

theatres. The connection between Asian art and Shakespeare might not

be apparent. But dramatic story telling lies at the heart of both.

A one man King Lear in Mandarin, and The Tempest in a 5th century

Korea, are two of the works given a distinctly Asian flavour. Wu Hsing-

Kuo was designed as an Asians or son Wells, he has performed in an

ambitious one man adaptation of King Lear.

Portraying multiple characters, including at one point himself,

make-up and costume are a key ingredient to the show. With just

one interval, he has even worked in an on-stage costume change.

Opening tonight at the festival theatre is the Shanghai Peking

Opera's reinvention of hamlet, The Revenge Of Prince Zizan, the action

on stage is as much about the costume, acrobatics and music as

the text. There is this cliche that in a anglophile context doing

Shakespeare is all about getting the words right, in traditional

Asian theatre, where there is Korean or Chinese, Taiwanese or

Japanese, it is about visualisation. When people tour a play they

especially, across so many national and cultural borders, they want it

to offer things that audiences can immediately hook on to. Rounding

off the Shakespearian triology, it is transported to 5th century Korea.

This makes historical fact with Shakespearian fiction resulting in

a some what surreal take on the Bard. When a play travels different

aspects of it would emerge. That would otherwise we would not see,

in a more traditional western interpretation. It is about

activating the dormant elements in these play, and allowing us to see

these plays from a completely fresh perspective.

We're going to concentrate on the ones we have seen, we have seen

Lear and The Tempest. First of all, the Korean Tempest? It wasn't

completely crazy. The idea of using a Korean forum to show Shakespeare

was wonderfully refreshing. It was so bizarre, it must have been what

it was like in first seeing Shakespeare trying to work out what

was happening. The comedy was replaced by costumes. It made me

very, very happy. It also enlivened me, it refreshed me, I didn't feel

it was silliness, I felt there was something really interesting going

on. Did you find it a happy experience, a visual feast

definitely? I loved the opening scene, the storm itself. I was

interested in the commentary that they are bringing bits of

Shakespeare dormant. Which is certainly true, I didn't know there

was a version of The Tempest where one of the characters hands an

auber gene to another. There is the other thing about the pillow and

giving birth to the pillow. It is not your father's Tempest, it is

very unusual. At the end of it I felt it was a wonderful Korean play

that had nothing to do with Shakespeare. What about the two

headed? The monster, separated a Siamese twin separated. I'm

inclined to agree with you, it is not unShakespearian at all. It

plugs into myths, Korean myths as well as Shakespearian myths. It is

also a 5th century Korean story? With a kind of directness, and this

agrarian feel, so many animals wandering around the stage.

sorts. Ducks you have we have just seen. People were dressed in straw

and things. I wasn't sure we needed the Shakespeare. I really wasn't

sure what it was doing there. think one after the other to create

this other thing that needs the Shakespeare, because it wouldn't go

there without the Shakespeare. The Shakespeare is crucial. It wouldn't

go to where it goes as a production. What a genius idea to have Prospro

start the Tempest on drums, he was playing magnificently. We have to

talk about the music. It is all the oriental forms of theatre are

musical theatre, the songs of the wind instruments, the pipe, which

is almost like a tabor, a medieval instrument, but at times like a

saxaphone, sometimes it is wildly sexy, keening rifts, fantastic.

Moving on to talk about the Lear you have done lots of one-man shows,

it is a big ask to put Lear on stage, he is Gonerail, and Cordelia.

These actors are super-actors, they dance, they sing to a high operatic

level, they do sword fights like you have never seen before. Huge

tumbling effects. This man, the Lear, this is a very, very personal

thing for him. It is a little inaccurate to call it a one-man

Lear, it is one man's Lear. Susan, it is also Lear but also about the

actor himself? It is an investigation of what it is to be

an actor. You start, it seems to me there are two ways of doing this

kind of one-man show, can you do what central Europe very often does,

which is string the solliquays and see what it does to the actor, or

not. He does both. In doing so raises questions about what he's

doing as an actor doing either. Sometimes I think almost that quest

overwhelms Lear himself, in the end Lear is almost not present, when he

comes back as the ghost of Lear he's in a dialogue with himself.

is a play about Lear, you can't overstate the tour de force of his

performance, he moves in sequence through them. He starts as Lear,

then the fool, then Goneril, Cordelia, and Regan, then he ends

as Edmund on the rock. Is there anything this man can't do. Each

one a fully realised character. is pure performance, the

interpretation is performance. Interpreting Shakespeare through

the opera, it is the wonderful notion, transnational culture has

always been pop or cinema, suddenly you see the first mum merings of

transnational culture because these people from China and Korea are

translating Shakespeare. Is it working? Absolutely, it is the sign

of something really new, something that was spoiled and jaded by what

we have so far. Both shows are playing at the festival. Audiences

at the festivals are getting younger and older, beside me at

Simon's show was a new born baby suckling. Everyone was enjoying it

massively but an elderly gentleman behind me was snoring. Joining us

in the studio is the BBC arts editor, Will Gompertz, you have

been looking at the mature end of things on the stage.

I have, they are a feisty bunch. Oscar Wilde said the tragedy of old

age is not feeling old it is feeling young. The pe formers I

have been meeting this week have been - performers I have been

meeting this week have been feeling young, but challenging the cliche

that anything over 65 is waiting to be carted off.

I have come to meet some representatives of a section of

society who have been in the news a lot. A fed up, angry,

disenfranchised group, who refuse to be marginalised and ignored.

This could be a lively encounter. Hello. Welcome to an emerging new

wave at Edinburgh, OAPs. By that I mean old aged performers. Vicky is

an actor in a play called Still Life Dreaming, about cognitive

ageing. None of us acted until we were about 60-65. I never dreamt of

acting, as my last child left home to go off to university, I decided

to find something that I would like to try out, I found the Spare Time

Theatre Company, whose remit is to give a voice to the unvoiced. J why

does our thinking get slower, what is the key to keeping us all sharp

as a knife. This is Diana, who is performing in a conversation with

Carmel, a dance piece celebrating the ageing process, based around

her 80th birthday. I'm exhausted, can we sit down? I suppose so.

is it important to have roles, such as the one you are in, for older

people? To let everybody else in the world know that there is hope

and happiness if you keep on going. And indeed, you are lucky if you

keep on going. When I go through airport security,

it sounds like I just hit the jackpot in Vegas, I love flying,

have you flown? Not recently. is a shame, because now they

explore your sensitive areas. is a taste of the show, she's 7 8

years old. When I say something edgy and rude, they think isn't

that funny from that old lady, it isn't, it is just like when you say

it. What I want to achieve is other women in their 60s and 70s trying a

new career. I don't care what it is, want to be an astronaut, go ahead

do it. I'm very vain, when I look into the mirror and see the old

woman, I think how can anyone stand to look at me, when I talk they are

in love, that's great. The message from this year's festival is clear,

if you are looking for hot new talent, check out the old aged

performers. Thanks to Will, he's back next week

with more surprises. That's it for tonight. My thanks to my guests. I

will be joined by Paul and my other guest, we will be discussing the

new novel by Sapphire, author of Precious, you can find choice added

extras and all details of tonight's show on the website.

Don't forget, you can hear more about what's going on in Edinburgh