At the Fringe

So, I'm at the Edinburgh festival. This is bigger than I realised, as there's a book festival going on as well as the international one (which is all ballet, opera and worthy stuff like that) and the 'Fringe' (which is what I'm really here for).

I've not come close to maintaining my planned itinerary of several shows a day, it's too easy to get lost watching street performers and not bother with the actual shows. What I've seen so far is:


"I the Dictator" A one-man show that only got four audience members at the showing I went to. I could see that it was pretty flawed, theres an overlong tap-dance sequence and the actor gets needlessly naked at one point. It threw out the accusation that the Nazis offered Chaplin money to make changes to his satire of Hitler 'The Great Dictator', but I've subsequently been unable to find any evidence of this on the net. Perhaps it was just illustrating the pitfalls of compromising your viewpoint (whether artistic or political) as a small compromise today might seem to be a major collaboration in the light of subsequent events. It was better than the turnout implied, but not one I'd recommend.



"Adolf" Another one-man show, starring Pip Utton, who is much lorded as a great talent (at least by the people I met in the queue). It was pretty good (and made me realise how much Davros in 'Genesis of the Daleks' (his only worthwhile appearance) was modelled on Hitler, which you'd think was obvious, but it's even more obvious when you see someone playing Hitler). This was pretty good, but perhaps tried a little too hard to drive home the message that fascism is always at the door of our collective minds, and we only have to let it in. I don't know, that feels a bit like preaching to the converted. This would be something worth telling the local neo-nazis, but few of them are likely to come to a performance. Still, the calm two-facedness of Utton's Hitler was at once amusing, and chilling. One moment he's speaking about his civilian staff as 'idiots' whom he doesn't wan to see, but then he goes to them and delivers a heart-rending speech thanking them for their loyalty and their friendship. I suppose we don't *know*, and that this is just theatre, but Utton's Hitler felt very real, to the point where I was wondering if he was really this two-faced, or whether he had some kind of multiple-personality-disorder. I think when you're wondering about the mental health of a stage-character, (although, this is Hitler, so you're hardly likely to think he was sane) the actor and writer have managed to imbue that character with more than the usual depth.


"The Dumb Waiter" A Harold Pinter play. I think this is the first I've seen by him, and on this basis I wouldn't watch another. It was well performed by the actors, in fact they did a great job. The problem was entirely that the play didn't make any larger kind of sense to me. Two hit-men squabble in a room where they are hiding-out, awaiting further orders. The room contains a dumb-waiter which delivers requests for meals that panic the hit-men into sending up whatever food they have. Though this was in places funny, I didn't see what it was all about. Was the whole thing with people upstairs requesting meals that the hit-men couldn't provide saying something about class, or god, or what? By the end I just didn't care. I suspect this is one of those plays where people would tell me that 'I'm just not clever enough to get it'. Look, I'm a writer myself, and writing in any medium is a means of communication, if you have to have the writers intentions explained to you, or have some study notes to hand to understand the work, then the writer has failed to do his job.

"The Future of the City", this was a book-festival discussion about where cities were going. Some interesting points got raised, but I think it was a little miss-named. One pundit was discussing 'iconic' architecture and how bad it is, where the other one was a poet who celebrates the 'edgelands', the in-between undeveloped places that are let run wild. While both did a good job the discussion was mostly focused on aesthetics, with little debate about what will happen to our cities if the oil runs out, how we're going to deal with the increasing number of old people living in cities, whether we could learn anything from simulations of cities, etc, etc.

"Incoming!" a talk about meteorites. Very noticeable by having an (almost!) all-male queue. Every woman who came up and asked "What is this queue for?" pulled a face when told "meteorites." Meantime, an all-female queue built up alongside us. Unable to contain my curiosity I went over and asked them what their queue was for, and was told that it was an appearance by the authoress of a Victorian class melodrama with lashings of sex. My lecture about "You know, meteorites might be important, you shouldn't take this 'That's a boy thing' attitude" died unspoken on my lips, because by extension I should so some interest in their thing, but Victorian melodrama: no thanks.

Still, this is an important observation, because it underlines something I've encountered all through my life, which is that there are important things that most (British) women just don't want to know about. Now, with meteorites, they might have a case, I mean, how important are meteorites? But this same phenomenon appeared when the first computers turned up. I've written before about how, in my childhood, I knew women were cutting themselves out of the future by rejecting computers, and that when they were under-represented in computing jobs, they'd blame it on men. I've watched it happen exactly as predicted. Similarly they were, in my youth, very under-represented in the Sci-Fi crowd. That sounds unimportant, but it isn't, it directly ties into the fact that they're under-represented in well-paid jobs in IT and engineering, as many of the boys who went into those fields were inspired to do so by Sci-Fi. This is something Fantasy doesn't give you. I've got nothing against fantasy, and personally intend to write some myself, but fantasy doesn't inspire you to interact with the physical world, but rather to flee it. However, at Eastercon I was quite shocked by the number of women there, and even asked a few "How are you here?" Quite a few of them weren't British though, and this links back to the whole story of who "Lt. Mary Sue" was, and the fact that women in the US were writing Trek fan-fiction, while women in the UK were reading Jane Austen. Again, I've got nothing against Jane Austen, but she inspires you to go and do english literature, and wind up as a housewife, rather than go and do chemistry, and wind up earning your own money in biotech.

This 'women don't do techy things' seems very much to be a British thing, which is bad news for Britain. In Britain I once went to a book-club where the women rebelled against reading 'Neuromancer', because it was too techy and made their heads explode. This is in the 2005, when neuromancer was already 20 years old. However, I see a lot of American women blogging about how they loved cyberpunk as girls, and are now working as computer-programmers (Aliette de Bodard, who won this years BSFA award, works in advanced machine vision. Is she British? No.) I DREAD to think what educated Chinese and Indian women are spending their time doing, because I think Britain is moving into a future where everyone else not only has bigger populations than ours, but their productive population is multiplied because their women can also do technical things, whereas ours are good at cookery and art appreciation. Which is not to say that we don't need cookery and art appreciation (I think everyone should be taught more of the former, men in particular, it might help with the obesity problems we're facing), but I just think that when a group of literate women in 2005 balk at Neuromancer something's seriously ***ed up.

Uh, and the talk was pretty good. The speaker had two amusing and amazing stories about meteorites, for instance that the romans were worshipping one for a while, and that one was registered as 'lost property' by British rail, and they refused to turn it over to the British Museum on that basis. I wonder who they were expecting to come by and say "Excuse me, I think I dropped something on your planet?"

"Malfi" A performance of "The duchess of Malfi" with gangsters-and-jazz-club visuals. I was pretty impressed by this, although the language got a little hard to follow in places it was wonderful, and I've downloaded a copy of the text to hunt for it for stuff I can nick to use in stories of my own (we call it 'references', but it's basically theft). The cast did an excellent job, but unlike 'The Dumb Waiter' it was the story that was the star of the show, and the many great-sounding lines that people deliver. The only flaw was the 'everyone dies' ending, which happened so fast as to be a little comical.

Anyways, sometime about now I got a story rejection after being in someone's shortlist for a long time, (look, just reject me already, don't shortlist me and get my hopes up and then do it!) and sank into a pit of despair, hating all and everyone.

"The Arabian Nights". A performance by a (shudder) 'youth' theatre, with (shudder ^ 3) musical performances. The plot concerns a King who, betrayed in love (huh, I should be so lucky! At least he was getting some action before the betrayal) sinks into a pit of despair, hating all and everyone, (he's a king for ***ks sake! Get over it, king! Eat some gold! It's not like you're an ageing writer who just had another story rejection) and so resolves to marry a different girl every night, and have them executed(!?!) in the morning.

I have always had a problem with this story, in that this King kills a thousand completely innocent young women (after bonking them first) and GETS AWAY WITH IT. Apparently a serial killer can deploy the "I lost control after a broken heart, but I'm better now" defence and get away with it, if he's a king.

But anyways, I do love the Arabian Nights despite the moral issues, so I automatically bought a ticket, completely unaware of the aforementioned 'yoof' and 'music'. On discovering these issues after I'd bought a ticket (they had cunningly kept them quiet) I sat with a sinking heart waiting for the awfulness to kick off.

It was absolutely ****ing brilliant. It featured the appearance of a '40-thieves' closely modelled on Rik Mayall's "Alright my lads! Who are we? We're the ****ing SAS!" out of 'Whoops Apocalypse', and the young cast gave truly great performances, all the way through I was peering at them thinking "How *old* are you, that you can do this stuff so well?" (This was a question that got a little fraught during a little belly-dancing action, 'cause I admit I was thinking "I'd like to know how old these girls are before I watch all this dancing and shaking around, please?" But everyone got their turn at a major role (there being so many in the 1001 nights) and everyone seemed really rather good at it.

I left the theatre feeling uplifted. If you see one show on the fringe, go and see this, it's dumb and fun and doesn't require you to study any passnotes before you can enjoy it, and it has good musical numbers too. You don't have to leave your brain outside the door, but if it starts giving you any shit you should certainly threaten if with grounding for a month.

"Fantasmagoriana" A show about MARY SHELLY, progenitor of science fiction and my adopted mother. This was one where maybe the plot wasn't so great, but the actors had a lot more to work with than Harold Pinter hands out, and they went for it like mad people. It was pretty much a scream, all the characters were great. I would like to believe that Mary Shelley (at this point she's "Godwin") was the charming and clever woman depicted here, and in fact all the characters were genuinely likeable. Byron is an idiot and a brat, but he's a likeable idiot and brat. My one concern was that Mary is stealing Percy Shelley from a previous marriage to one 'Harriet', and I wondered what the untold story of Harriet was while these clever people glitter and laugh and write horror stories on the banks of Lake Geneva, and meanwhile back in England...

Other than that, I've spent a lot of time watching street performances and hanging out in bars and cafes. Edinburgh is a bit of a desert for two important things, free wifi that actually works, and decent real ale. I did find one bar that has Bacchus Kriek cherry-flavored beer on tap (Hollyrood No 9) but other than that I've not had much in the way of drinks that lit up my tastebuds. The main thing I've enjoyed eating up here so far is haggis on toast.

The most impressive street performances have all been people who can make music with next to nothing. One guys was twanging out 'twinkle twinkle little star' on a balloon with some elastic through it, hooked up to a guitar amp. Pull the elastic in and out to alter its length and the note, the balloon provides the resonating chamber. 'Twinkle twinkle little star wasn't very impressive though. The he launched into 'Smells like teen spirit', and that was.

Two guys hitting what appear to be three railway sleepers. This doesn't sound very impressive, but they were really moving fast, and creating complex rhythms from the three sleepers, which were different lengths. Once they got going, the sound was really impressive. Must keep them fit too.

But best of all was 'MC Xander' a hippie dude who was beatboxing with a loop-deck that can record and loopback brief snatches of sound, and a bunch of guitar effects pedals. All actual sound provided by his voice. I've seen this done before, but this guy really took it to another level, and he's a born showman too. I saw women in their sixties dancing (and they could dance too!). Once he'd recorded a sound, and it was being played back, it swiftly became impossible to believe that the sound had been produced by his voice. He did a drum-and-bass number that really was quite startling. The police came to tell him he was too loud, and the crowd he'd gathered were not best pleased. If you see a white guy with dreadlocks beatboxing in Edinburgh this week, stop and take a listen, he's worth it.

That's all I've got to report for now!