Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018

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FESTIVAL e d i u G LIST.CO.UK/FESTIVAL

318WS SHTHOE ESSEUNITDIEAL

2018

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ART

BOOKS FRINGE INTERNATIONAL JAZZ CITY GUIDE

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RIP IT UP TACITA DEAN DYLAN MORAN CHELSEA CLINTON DICK & DOM MICA PARIS

WAYNE MCGREGOR DAVID BADDIEL &

THE E AT ULTIM EST PROT ORMS ST D N A B RGH U B N I ED

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Cirque Berserk!

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Ken

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The Song of Lunch

Gyles Brandreth

Colin Cloud

Comedy, Theatre, Dance, Kids’ shows... and so much more.

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2 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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E D I N B U R G H F E S T I VA L G U I D E 20 1 8

CONTENTS

FRONTLINES & FEATURES News in Brief

11

NHS landmark, BSL at EIF

Frontlines

12

Bad injuries, naughty words

Pussy Riot

16

Russian art-punks speak out

Horror

20

Chilling with Goblin and ‘Elvis’

Chelsea Clinton

27

Ex-First Daughter gets inspired

ART Tacita Dean

38

How to film uncomfortable actors

Rembrandt

40

Art world hails Dutch Master

BOOKS Rip it Up

48

Tracking Scottish pop history

Young Adult Fiction

53

Pioneers of a crossover genre

FRINGE Comedy

58

Lolly Adefope, Dylan Moran

Dance

72

Cirque Alfonse, The Troth

PICK U

P OUR

FREE

WEEKL Y ISSUES FESTIVAL O 1, 8, 15 N WED AUG

Kids

76

Dick & Dom, Denim Juniors

Music

82

Gruff Rhys, Century Song

Theatre

87

Toxic masculinity, celebs

INTERNATIONAL Wayne McGregor

104

Making science and dance click

The Beggar’s Opera

108

How music can savage reputations

Samuel Beckett

110

Edinburgh embraces an Irish icon

JAZZ Amythyst Kiah

118

Southern Gothic star’s ideal combination

‘I HONESTLY THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A BIT SHIT’

OTHER FESTIVALS

BADDIEL AND SKINNER GET PHILOSOPHICAL ON PAGE 32

Old Town

126

Southside

133

New Town

140

West End

145

Published in July 2018 by The List Ltd Head Office: 14 High Street Edinburgh EH1 1TE Tel: 0131 550 3050 list.co.uk

Fringe by the Sea

CITY GUIDE

©2018 The List Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of The List Ltd. ISSN: 1744-3903

Extensive efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication; however the publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors it may contain.

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121

Mica Paris takes on a jazz legend

Printed by Acorn Web Offset Ltd, W. Yorkshire Maps ©2018 The List Ltd.

Leith and Broughton Street

151

INDEX 3-Z

160

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FESTIVAL BOOKING INFORMATION PHOTO: CHRIS SCOTT

EDINBURGH ART FESTIVAL 26 Jul–26 Aug edinburghartfestival.com Telephone booking: Please call individual venues. Many events are free but ticketed

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL 11–27 Aug edbookfest.co.uk Telephone booking: 0345 373 5888 In person: The Hub, Castlehill; Entrance Tent in Charlotte Square Gardens; George Street box office

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE 3–27 Aug edfringe.com Telephone booking: 0131 226 0000 In person: Fringe box office, High Street; Virgin Money Half Price Hut, Mound Precinct

e m o c l e W With the world hellbent on sowing division and creating friction where it doesn’t belong, thank heavens for the Edinburgh Festival. Whether your cultural bag is art, books, comedy, dance, music or theatre, July and August are times for bringing people together in a riot of fun.

Talking of stramashes, there’s going to be a right old art / music / theatre explosion when Russian anarcho-punks Pussy Riot tear off the balaclavas and unleash their energetic brand of protest. We hear from them as they return to Scotland with an anti-authoritarian message that’s loud and clear. A quieter revolution is also going on as our cover star Lolly Adefope delivers another quality character-comedy show. We talk to her just before she heads for the Hollywood hills. In these scary times, a controlled fright is somehow reassuring. So let’s welcome Italian rock outfit Goblin as they play live soundtracks to scary movies, while Rob Kemp has a chainsaw and isn’t afraid to use it as he buries the opposition in The Elvis Dead.

What else? We speak to artist Tacita Dean about actors, chat with comedian Dylan Moran about salmon and squirrels (sort of), and hear from Mica Paris about Ella Fitzgerald. Plus we quaff coffee with Baddiel and Skinner, chew the fat with Chelsea Clinton about inspiring women, exchange rude words with Cirque Alfonse and get scientific in the company of Wayne McGregor.

If all that doesn’t whet your appetite ahead of another festival season, nothing will. As well as this essential Edinburgh Festival Guide featuring a City Guide packed with all the best capital bars and restaurants, we’ll be lovingly putting together three weekly magazines in August and keeping you in the loop with the best online coverage at list.co.uk/festival and @thelistmagazine.

It’s almost here. So be prepared to get stuck in as the world’s biggest arts festival rolls majestically into town.

Brian Donaldson EDINBURGH FESTIVAL GUIDE EDITOR EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 3–27 Aug eif.co.uk Telephone booking: 0131 473 2000 In person: The Hub, Castlehill

CONTRIBUTORS Festival Guide Editor Brian Donaldson City Guide Editor Jo Laidlaw Words Kelly Apter, Deborah Chu, Neil Cooper, Brian Donaldson, Mark Fisher, Katharine Gemmell, Donald Hutera, Malcolm Jack, Craig McLean, Carol Main, Henry Northmore, Arusa Qureshi, Jay Richardson, Claire Sawers, Fiona Shepherd, Yasmin Sulaiman, Gareth K Vile

EDINBURGH JAZZ & BLUES FESTIVAL 13–22 Jul edinburghjazzfestival.com Telephone booking: 0131 473 2000 In person: The Hub, Castlehill

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DIGITAL Andy Bowles, Andy Carmichael, Sharon Irish, Alan Miller, Stuart Moir CONTENT & EDITORIAL Scott Henderson, Deborah Chu, Katharine Gemmell, Alex Johnston, Henry Northmore, Murray Robertson ADVERTISING & SPONSORSHIP Brendan Miles, Sheri Friers, Debbie Thomson, Jessica Rodgers, Rachel Cree, Ross Foley, Craig Angus, Amy Clark, Paul Murphie, Jakob Van Den Berg

PRODUCTION Design Lucy Munro, Seonaid Rafferty, Stuart Polson Subeditors Arusa Qureshi, Brian Donaldson, Kenza Marland THE LIST Editor Arusa Qureshi Head of Accounting & HR Sarah Reddie Director Robin Hodge CEO Simon Dessain

SPONSORS COMEDY AT

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5 2

TOP

PHOTO: KATY SERGENT

PHOTO: ANDREJ USPENSKI

Another year and another Edinburgh Festival with far too much to see and just over a month to catch it all. Across these pages, you’ll find a chainsaw-wielding ‘Elvis’, a dance legend saying goodbye, a notorious anti-opera and an exposé of niche fetishes as we point you in the direction of some unmissable events PHOTO: MATT CROCKETT

INTERNATIONAL

JAZZ

WAYNE MCGREGOR

AMYTHYST KIAH

With algorithms determining the content of his show on each night, McGregor’s Autobiography is set to be a unique and invigorating dance experience. See page 104. Festival Theatre, 11–13 Aug.

Armed with her self-styled ‘Southern Gothic alt-country blues’, this Tennessee guitar legend in the making is reaping the benefits of having worked very hard all the way to the top. See page 118.

George Square Gardens, 18 & 19 Jul.

FRINGE

DICK & DOM One of the purveyors of gunge-tastic kids TV, messrs McCourt and Wood face off in an hour stamped by mischief.

While not claiming to have matured, the duo insist they have a show with broad appeal. See page 76. Underbelly, 1–12 Aug.

PHOTO: MATTHEW THOMPSON

FRINGE

LOLLY ADEFOPE After two highly successful Fringe hours and with exciting new screen roles in the can, Lolly is on the brink of greatness. Catch her while you can, people. See page 58. Pleasance Courtyard, 1–26 Aug.

INTERNATIONAL

WAITING FOR GODOT Still as vital and relevant as ever, Samuel Beckett’s absurdist tale packed with tragedy and comedy is given a much-heralded treatment

by Galway’s Druid. See page 110. Royal Lyceum Theatre, 3–12 Aug.

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PHOTO: GUILLAUME MORIN

5

TOP 25 FRONTLINES

FRINGE

BOOKS

FRINGE

FRINGE BY THE SEA

CIRQUE ALFONSE

RIP IT UP

DYLAN MORAN

MICA PARIS

After their monster hit Barbu from 2015, the Quebec company get all ecclesiastical on us with a wild romp featuring the rudest word in the FrenchCanadian lexicon. See page 72.

Underbelly’s Circus Hub, 4–25 Aug.

Affable disc-spinner Vic Galloway is here to mark his publication about Scottish pop history, featuring everyone from Gerry Rafferty to Jesus and Mary Chain, and Blue Nile (pictured) to Biffy Clyro.

See page 48. Spark Theatre, 16 Aug.

With Dr Cosmos, the Edinburgh-based Irish stand-up master is set to get down and dirty with this modern world, albeit from a side-on and surrealistically skewed vantage point. See page 70.

Various venues, 14–26 Aug.

This British soul-pop icon of the 20th century has done a fine job at reinventing herself of late and is here with her interpretation of the Ella Fitzgerald songbook. See page 121. North Berwick Harbour, 5 Aug.

PHOTO: GUILLAUME MORIN

INTERNATIONAL

FRINGE

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

GRUFF RHYS

John Gay’s 17th century satirical opera had a poke at the Italian productions which were all the rage then (and now) and punctured the egos of some celebs from that period. See page 108. King’s Theatre, 16–19 Aug.

The Super Furry Animal launches his Fringe debut with Resist Phony Encores!, a story and song-laden affair which should reward those who know his Babelsberg inside out. See page 82. Pleasance Courtyard, 17–25 Aug.

PHOTO: DANIEL HUGHES

PHOTO: MARIEKE MACKLON

INTERNATIONAL

FRINGE

JAZZ

FRINGE

LIGHT ON THE SHORE

ANIMALCOLM

SCOTTISH NEW WAVE

BABY FACE

Another top-class contemporary music bill is laid on by the EIF featuring Mogwai, Honeyblood (pictured), Karine Polwart, Lau, Sacred Paws, King Creosote and, yep, many, many more.

See page 103. Leith Theatre, 9–25 Aug.

The third children’s book by David Baddiel is given a musical theatre makeover for its heart-warming tale of a boy who is less than keen on animals being taken to a farm for his school trip.

See page 32. Gilded Balloon, 1–19 Aug.

A fresh generation of players and singers are making an impression on the Scottish jazz scene, and this gig showcases a number of them including the Fergus McCreadie Trio. See page 119. Teviot Row, 14 Jul.

A disturbing but vital piece of work from Katy Dye in which niche fetishes are exposed and society’s ongoing obsession with infantilising women is explored to devastating effect. See page 87. Summerhall, 1–26 Aug.

»

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PHOTO: NICK RASMUSSEN

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FRONTLINES TOP 25

SPARK 100 The Muriel Spark centenary is cranked up in August with events featuring the likes of Ali Smith, Alan Taylor and Janice Galloway (pictured). See page 47.

Charlotte Square Gardens and Spark Theatre, various dates.

NATALIE PALAMIDES Having ran off with the Best Newcomer prize last Fringe, this comic-clown-improviser could have rested on a bunch of laurels. Not a chance though, as she returns as Nate, a bigoted bloke who needs to see the light.

See page 57. Pleasance Courtyard, 1–26 Aug.

PHOTO: JEAN-LOUIS FERNANDEZ

BOOKS

FRINGE

ART

TACITA DEAN She may come from a distinguished film background but the former Turner Prize nominee insists that cinema is not her thing. So why is she making art with a crew of acclaimed actors? See page 38.

Fruitmarket Gallery, 7 Jul–30 Sep.

PHOTO: STEVE ULLATHORNE

INTERNATIONAL

XENOS FRINGE

PUSSY RIOT

In his final ever performances in a full-length show, the great Akram Khan confronts the tragedy of war and torment of the ‘stranger’ in a piece which provides some potential for redemption and hope. See page 114. Festival Theatre, 16–18 Aug.

The Russian collective have landed themselves in trouble with Putin and the church these past few years. If you think they care a jot, think again and check out their Riot Days. See page 16.

Summerhall, 10–19 Aug.

OTHER FESTIVALS

EDINBURGH FOOD FESTIVAL

LOST VOICE GUY The recently crowned Britain’s Got Talent champion is here to trash a few misconceptions about disability and the disabled with his Inspiration Porn. See page 64. Gilded Balloon, 1–26 Aug.

PHOTO: ROGER JONES

Featuring hop-forward beverages, a Spanish tapas trailer, Southeast Asian delicacies and falafel wizardry, this year’s Food Fest is already bringing us out into serious tummyrumble mode. See page 122.

Assembly George Square Gardens, 25–29 Jul.

FRINGE

ART

REMBRANDT

FRINGE

GOBLIN Claudio Simonetti’s Italian rock band provide the live soundtrack to two classic horror movies from the 1970s, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Argento’s soon-to-be-remade Suspiria.

See page 20. Summerhall, 5 & 6 Aug.

The Dutch Master is put under a specifically British microscope as we explore the works that led him to becoming ever more popular over here across the past four centuries. See page 40.

Scottish National Gallery, 7 Jul–14 Oct.

FRINGE

THE ELVIS DEAD After securing cult status last year by revamping Presley numbers to fit with The Evil Dead 2, Rob Kemp allows us a second chance to witness these gory yet glorious goings-on. See page 21.

Pleasance Courtyard, 1–25 Aug.

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60 MIN

A LL TH E LI G HTS A R E O N S U M M E R H A LL

55 MIN

C I R C O A E R E O A N D TH O M M O N C K TO N

TH E A RTI ST A S S E M B LY R OX Y

TE AT TE R I M E TA M O R F O O S I

50 MIN

11 : 4 0 1 6:20 17:25

AC E - P R O D U C TI O N

TH E SAU NA S U M M E R H A LL

COCK , COCK ..

W H O’ S TH E R E ?

65 MIN

1 8 :45

S A M I R A E L AG OZ

S TA R T T O F I N N I S H . F I

/

25 MIN

I M A I D U OZ E E

TH I S I S TH E TITLE DA N C E B A S E

LU M O C O M PA N Y

50 MIN

21:00

19:30

S U M M E R H A LL

WIRE DO C S O UTH

@ S TA R T T O F I N N I S H

AU G U S T 1 - 2 7

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EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2018

First Snow / Première neige CanadaHub - King’s Hall, 1 – 26 August

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A National Theatre of Scotland, Théâtre PàP and Hôtel-Motel production

Right

My Left Foot

The M us i cal

Assembly Roxy, 1 – 27 August Access provision on all dates, relaxed performance 19 August A Birds of Paradise Theatre Company and National Theatre of Scotland production

Midsummer The Hub, 2 – 26 August A National Theatre of Scotland and Edinburgh International Festival production

Book now for these unmissable productions nationaltheatrescotland.com

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NEWS IN BRIEF PHOTO: STEVE ULLATHORNE

––––––– Snippets of stuff from rom acr across ross the festiv festival –––––––

IN RUDE HEALTH Last year, Edinburgh marked the 70th anniversaries of both the Fringe and International festivals. This time around, there are a pile of shows and events to signal the same birthday for the National Health Service. At the Traverse, Mark Thomas (pictured) will be putting the NHS through its own check-up while at Summerhall, Michael Pinchbeck does the same with A Fortunate Man. Also at that venue, Gary McNair delivers After the Cuts, a drama which imagines a world without the NHS, and Jeremy Weller has local carers and health professionals discussing their own experiences in Where it Hurts. Over at Underbelly, Orange Skies Theatre also imagines a post-NHS Britain for In Addition. At the Book Festival, comedian Adam Kay reflects on his own time as a junior doctor, while Owen Sheers has created a film-poem entitled ‘To Provide the People’ which charts the NHS’ 1948 birth and tells the story of one day in the life of a regional hospital.

CARNIVAL ATMOSPHERE

PHOTO: HILLARIE JASON

The Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival unveils its seventh Festival Carnival in Princes Street Gardens on 15 July, kicking off at 1.30pm. Over 800 performers will take part in an explosion of sound and colour for a truly international event that will feature participants from the far-flung likes of Iceland, South Africa, Italy, Trinidad, Brazil and Cuba.

SIGN UP The Edinburgh International Festival has hooked up with Inkblot Collective so that British Sign Language users can get hold of discounted tickets with good views of the signer for a number of shows: Cold Blood (6 Aug, 8pm), Waiting for Godot (10 Aug, 7.30pm), Midsummer (17 Aug, 8pm), HOME (24 Aug, 8pm; pictured) and The End of Eddy (26 Aug, 2pm).

THE ILLUSTRATOR MAN Quite a difference a year makes for Iranian illustrator Ehsan Abdollahi. In 2017 he was refused a visa to attend the Book Festival but this year he’s the Illustrator in Residence. During the month, he shares a stage with award-winning African-American poet Eloise Greenfield to unveil some Puppy Poetry, and at the Big Draw, anyone of any age can help him create a giant collage. list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 11

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FRON T L IN E S ––––––– Puns | Injuries | Swears –––––––

BREAK A LEG

(AND OTHER INJURIES)

Bite sized fun with Chris Turner

Some brave soldiers are back at the festival despite having crocked themselves during a previous Edinburgh. Read on and feel their pain Ankles, eyes, teeth and nipples: you name it and chances are a performer at the Edinburgh Fringe has damaged it. While the cobbles all across the city are notorious for causing a sprain or two (particularly to the inebriated thesp or toobusy BlackBerrying PR), the stage has also proved to be a danger zone which has broken (or at least severely hindered) some Fringe runs.

Consider the case of poor Adam Riches who slipped in a pool of Yakult while in the midst of a choreographed onstage fight. He got back on the showbusiness horse a few days later ‘utterly off my cake on morphine doing two shows a day for the remaining two weeks of the festival’. The show also had to go on for Marcus Brigstocke who damaged a leg while recreating his podium dancing days at the Ministry of Sound: after a stint at A&E, he delivered the rest of his dates on crutches.

Knees can be a bugger to repair and Barry Ferns kept skinning his while doing shows on Arthur’s Seat; one of George Rigden’s packed in while jumping off stage to sing to an audience member; and Aaron Calvert was left limping around after tackling a thief backstage. You have to feel sympathy for Jim Campbell who

received a black eye after a drunk ‘fan’ threw a shoe at him, while Anya Anastasia suffered faint scarring after a chemical clashing between daisy-shaped nipple covers and UV reactive body-paint resulted in ripping and bleeding. Ouch.

Everyone knows that we have to be good to our teeth, but all the flossing in the world won’t prevent some calamities occurring. Adam Rowe was left with a chipped tooth after leaning off his stage to high-five a ten-year-old boy who had just declared that ‘twat’ was his favourite swearword, while Chris Turner recalls his denture falling out of his mouth during the kids show he appeared in last year: ‘they thought it was funny, so I started doing it in every kids show. I tried it in my solo show but the adults did not think it was so funny.’ The above picture may be the cause of the grownups’ lack of humour. And Welsh stand-up Lloyd Langford was minding his own business in the Pleasance Courtyard when one of his teeth just simply fell out: ‘you know the Fringe can be a tough month when your own skull starts self-destructing.’

■ See list.co.uk/festival for many more tales from those who have been hurt in the line of Fringe duty.

HERE COMES THE PUN Another Fringe and another set of the finest / most cringe-inducing slices of wordplay to be brought together in one place. ‘Enjoy’ . . .

Job-Cher Stardumb Sex Shells Tinderella Your Bard God Digger App and

Down Like a Sturgeon Focus Groupies Climate Strange Twat Out of Hell Say It Isn’t Show Villain: DeBlanks

Apocalypse Cow Me, Myself and AI Morning Wordship Putting on the Blitz Lady and the Cramp The Bi-Polar Express Treesonous Thoughts

Splash Test Dummies Orwell That Ends Well Clash of the Tight Tens The Birds and the Beats When Harassy Met Sally NeverMind the BusStops

Brexit Through the Gift Shop You’ve Got to Be Kidney Me! Mao That’s What I Call Music!

Why Do Nerds Suddenly Appear?

Float Like a Butterfly, John Hastings Like a Bee

■ Full details of shows at list.co.uk/festival

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The home of live experiences.

Learn more: +44 (0) 800 652 4993 workwithus@eventbrite.com

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FRONTLINES FEATURE ART FEATURE HEADLINE HERE

IN THE REALM OF THE CENSORS PHOTO: STEVE ULLATHORNE

DO THEY KNOW IT’S

In 2012, Stuart Goldsmith’s show title Prick was reconfigured in some of his publicity material with the ‘i’ being turned upside down in order to avoid the overly sensitive from taking offence. This year a theatre show called Pricks has squeezed past the censors without a hitch but we’re not in a post-asterisk world just yet.

Below is a list of shows whose titles have been quasi-redacted. No prizes for working out the missing letters . . .

Am I F#*kable?

F*ck Off F**k You Pay Me Holy Sh*t We All Die C*nts

DOUGLAS WALKER According to the Racing Minds’ improv gang member ‘the only thing more devastating than finding out that Santa doesn’t exist is finding out that he does’.

>>

>>

GUY MASTERSON Possibly not a satire on rising costs in Edinburgh during August, but in A Christmas Carol, Fringe icon Masterson is being an unScrooge by playing all the characters.

>>

>>

Yuletide greetings and festive salutations from a quartet of Fringe folks

JARRED CHRISTMAS This Kiwi guy doesn’t need to shoehorn himself into a December-related round-up, for his dad (aka Father Christmas) is called Chris and he has an actual auntie Carol.

The Importance of Being Earnest as Performed by Three F*cking Queens and a Duck Seven Ways to Calm the F**k Down Nevermind the B*llocks, Here’s Markus Birdman The Year of Magical F*cking Queen of the F*cking World: The Second Coming

PHOTO: CHRIS JEPSON

MYRA DUBOIS South Yorkshire’s finest, Ms Dubois, wishes you a very ‘Myra Christmas’ with some seasonal singalongs and acerbic anecdotes culled from festive times of yore.

Awkward Conversations With Animals I’ve F*cked

Queen C*nt: Sacred or Profane?

When Will These Fascist Bastards All Be Lined Up and F*cking Shot?!? . . . and yet these three inexplicably escaped the censors’ scissors . . .

How to Drink Wine Like a Wanker Eat Sleep Shit Shag Jokes from a Shithole

NOT CHRISTMAS?

PHOTO: IDIL SUKAN

FAMILY PLOT Last year, Trygve Wakenshaw beguiled audiences with his toddler son Phineas. Slotting into that role this time around is Beth Vyse with her baby son Henry (pictured), as she plays fictional semi-celeb Olive Hands who is making one last attempt to get back on daytime TV. Grown-up kid and journo Rebecca Wilcox appears with Esther Rantzen in a reflection on her mum’s showbiz life, while Philadelphia uncle and niece magician duo John and Claire Lenahan dabble in noisy conjuring for Loud and Louder.

Paul Merton and his wife Suki Webster are part of the Impro Chums, while Helen Rutter and hubbie Rob

■ Full details of shows at list.co.uk/festival

There may be a reason why the chemistry between some people on stage seems almost too natural

Rouse play a couple going through a tumultuous period in The Ladder. Over at the Book Festival, more married couples abound with Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman penning a new crime-writing novel together as ‘Ambrose Parry’, while wedded pair Charlotte and Adam Guillain discuss magic, giants and jellybeans. To mark the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, his daughter Zindzi and great-grandchildren Zazi and Ziwelene will be on stage to discuss his 27 years in prison.

Sibling rivalries may spill onstage when identical twins and Aussie musical comics Benjamin and James Stevenson ask us to Spot

the Difference, while Alexandra and Kate Donnachie discuss growing up in theatre work 3 Years, 1 Week and a Lemon Drizzle. Nicola and Rosie Dempsey become embittered musical comedy duo Flo & Joan, and Maddy ‘n’ Marina Bye do their absurdist sketch show thing as Siblings.

In the circus world, brothers Bibi and Bichu Tesfamariam return in Circus Abyssinia, and two relatives called You and Me fling themselves about in acrobatics show Sisters, while back at Charlotte Square Gardens, Isabel and Imogen Greenberg discuss Greek goddess Athena.

■ Full details of shows at list.co.uk/ festival

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IImage by Niall Walker/Mihaela Bodlovic Traverse Theatre (Scotland) is a Limited Company (SC076037) and a Scottish Charity (SC002368) with its Registered Office at 10 Cambridge Street, Edinburgh EH1 2ED

WORLD PREMIERE A TRAVERSE THEATRE COMPANY AND RAW MATERIAL CO-PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH REGULAR MUSIC

5 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 26 AUG 0131 228 1404 traverse.co.uk

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PUSSY RIOT

CRY

In 2012 Pussy Riot made global headlines for their antiPutin protests in churches and on the streets. As the art, theatre and music collective bring their punk manifesto to Edinburgh, they assure Arusa Qureshi that nothing will stop them from speaking out

PHOTO: PERRY BRANDON

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PUSSY RIOT

F

or many women around the world, 2018 has been a year of reckoning. While discussions of sexual assault, gender-based discrimination and the importance of feminism in the 21st century remain permanent fixtures in contemporary discourse, never have these discussions penetrated the public mindset in quite the same way as they have this year. With Time’s Up and #MeToo adding a new level of engagement with women’s issues and female empowerment, the global consciousness has shifted in a way that feels real and irrevocable.

Beyond the fight against patriarchy and sexual violence, women have been at the forefront of social justice movements and human rights causes for decades. After gaining notoriety for their ‘Punk Prayer’ in 2012, which attacked the Orthodox Church’s support for President Vladimir Putin, Pussy Riot have long been a source of inspiration to a new generation of feminists, spreading awareness through their message of punk protest and anti-authoritarianism.

‘Political murders, new anti-constitutional laws, violence of police and “patriotic activists”, arrests, terrible prison terms and attacks against independent media: this is the reality in Russia,’ states Pussy Riot as one entity via email. ‘Anyone can get a prison term for just a post or comment on Facebook nowadays.

Pussy Riot always resists the growing oppressions of the Russian authorities against any oppositional activity in our country. We call for solidarity with political prisoners in our regular shows and festivals, and contribute a significant part of our income to political prisoners and independent human rights media. For all these actions we and our supporters have been detained many times by the police, spent many days and nights in prison cells, been fined and handed community service orders by different courts. But we will not stop.’

The last mass anti-Putin protest in Russia on 5 May 2018, initiated by lawyer and activist Alexei Navalny, led to 1600 protesters being detained nationwide with many being confronted by nationalist violence and administrative arrests. As Pussy Riot notes, ‘the aggression against oppositional and human rights activities became especially severe after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, when the Kremlin and the mass media started its propaganda against “enemies of Russia”.’

When Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich were imprisoned for ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’ after that performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, their sentencing triggered a series of solidarity marches in cities the world over.

But despite their punk persona and adoption of riot grrrl-esque themes, Pussy Riot’s music is just one element of their global appeal.

‘From the very beginning, Pussy Riot was a protest art collective of different creative people: contemporary artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers. The punk band was just the “surface” of the collective. Nobody knew the members of this mysterious band and we changed nicknames; the only form of Pussy Riot’s public appearances was unexpected short protest action with girls

in balaclavas singing one song. Every action has been filmed and edited with recorded song, then videos have been disseminated via the internet.’

Social media has certainly been vital for the collective, whose protest songs, videos and actions have reached millions of people through Facebook and Twitter. While anonymity was one of their initial goals, some members of Pussy Riot have inadvertently become public figures as a result of the publicity that surrounded their 2012 trial and the way it has resonated with activists everywhere since.

‘At the end of 2013, Nadya and Maria had been released from prison. Since then, in most cases, we did not hide our faces, and step by step we started to perform on stage. Now we have two main stage shows: Riot Days, which combines music, theatre and video, and Nadya’s show with her more recent songs.’

Riot Days, the accompanying piece to Alyokhina’s memoir of the same name, traces the ascent of Pussy Riot, from the performance, trial and incarceration to their subsequent protests.

The show is an exploration of resistance, with Alyokhina joining a host of collaborators to share her story through the medium of performance art.

‘All components of Riot Days – the dramatic narrative, music and video – are equally important. We use old songs of Pussy Riot with new arrangements and live performances by the AWOTT (Asian Women on the Telephone) duo.’

The response to Riot Days has been everything that Pussy Riot could have wished for. ‘It’s been incredible – both from the public and press – everywhere we’ve presented Riot Days which includes the USA, UK, Australia, Germany and many other countries in continental Europe. We should say that we met one of the warmest audiences in the planet at our only Scottish show at The Art School in Glasgow last November. That’s why we are eager to play ten shows in a row at the Edinburgh Fringe and we hope to again feel this unique spiritual connection with the Scottish public.’

Ultimately, the world needs women like Pussy Riot; women whose actions are a regular reminder of the multiple tipping points that we as a society have endured. Women who do not sit in silence and apologise for their existence but instead challenge gender norms and structural oppression where they see fit. ‘We hope to continue exploring new ways of artistic expression in the future and we are sure that we will always react to the most crucial issues of our society, trying to do whatever possible to help create a new reality.’

Riot Days is described as their ‘punk manifesto’, and as the collective prepare to bring the touring piece to Edinburgh, their message and mission statement remain intact. ‘We fight for freedom and equal rights, in all senses of these words. We aim to passionately deliver to Fringe audiences our key Riot Days message: everyone can be Pussy Riot. Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day.’

Pussy Riot: Riot Days, Summerhall, 0131 560 1581, 10–19 Aug, 7pm, £17.50.

PHOTOS: JACK KIRWIN

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HORROR: GOBLIN

MONSTERS

AND SUPER 20 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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GOBLIN: HORROR

Our horror special kicks off with Italian prog rockers Goblin as they prepare to send chills down spines at two live soundtrack shows. Henry Northmore talks to the band’s leader Claudio Simonetti about bringing cult classics Suspiria and Dawn of the Dead out of the vaults and back to life

I

t starts with twinkling bells and a heavy resonating bass, before you hear gargled ‘la la la’ vocals. This creepy nursery rhyme sound makes way for synths and galloping guitar as the theme music to Suspiria kicks in. No one makes film soundtracks quite like Goblin.

Starting with 1975’s Profondo Rosso, the Italian prog rockers practically became the house band for director Dario Argento’s startling horror movies. However, their collaboration came about virtually by accident. ‘The original soundtrack started with Giorgio Gaslini,’ explains Goblin’s founding member, composer and keyboardist Claudio Simonetti. ‘He’s a big composer but Dario didn’t like the full orchestra; he preferred a rock sound. That’s the real story of Goblin. We were lucky because Gaslini left the film over a problem he had with Dario and we composed most of the soundtrack.’

At Summerhall, Simonetti’s band will perform a series of very special gigs, playing a live score to Suspiria (1977) and George A Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead (1978). Both films represent the pinnacle of ‘70s horror cinema. Suspiria is a bizarre tale of murder and witches at a remote ballet school in Germany, a haunting and visually stunning piece of work that’s arguably Argento’s masterpiece. ‘After the big success of Profondo Rosso, Dario decided to call us again,’ remembers Simonetti.

‘But he said “this is a different film so I need very particular music, not prog rock. I want the music to make people always feel the witches are there even when they are not on screen”.’

The score is a disorientating and sometimes discordant mix of classical, rock, jazz and folk, and becomes integral to the film’s mood and feel, heightening the terror and setting the viewer on edge. ‘We did Profondo Rosso in just ten days but with Suspiria we spent two months in the studio searching for new sounds from different instruments like the bouzouki, the tabla and the big Moog,’ recalls Simonetti. ‘We did a lot of experimental music that I think even now sounds very modern.’

Goblin’s soundtracking of Suspiria is rather uncannily timed with a remake being released later this year. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, it stars Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson and Chloë Grace Moretz, while Thom Yorke is writing a new score.

Dawn of the Dead is perhaps the greatest zombie movie of all time, a bleak satire on consumer culture in which a group of survivors seek shelter at an abandoned shopping mall. However, fans in the UK and US probably only know bits and pieces of Goblin’s soundtrack which was written specifically for the Italian market. ‘Dario distributed the film in Italy while the original soundtrack was made up of library music chosen by Romero. But Dario didn’t like it and he decided to put in our soundtrack instead.’

Argento also cut 20 minutes from the film for a tighter running time, making Goblin’s score even more intense. Despite working on Dawn of the Dead, Simonetti hadn’t met the director until recently. ‘I was lucky to meet Romero before he died [in 2017], and had a chance to

talk with him. I got to ask what he thought of our soundtrack and he said “I love it”. I asked him why he used this very boring music and he said “I wanted to give the film this vintage sound but your music is more fitting”. So I officially had permission from George.’

The distinctive Goblin sound can be heard on many cult horror films (such as Patrick, Contamination and Tenebrae) before the band split during the ‘80s, briefly coming together again in 2000 for Argento’s Sleepless. There have been partial reunions and one-off performances but old wounds haven’t fully healed, and Simonetti is fairly elusive when asked why Goblin broke up. Several incarnations of the band, numbering various members, have toured under names like Back to the Goblin, Goblin Rebirth, New Goblin and The Goblin Keys. Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin features his band Daemonia faithfully recreating their classic soundtracks.

Fuelled by the explosion in vinyl and labels like Death Waltz Recording Company and Waxwork Records, there’s a new appreciation for horror soundtracks. Legendary director John Carpenter (Halloween, Prince of Darkness, They Live) is now playing his synth-heavy scores to sold-out crowds around the world.

‘I know him very well,’ says Simonetti. ‘I’m a big fan of his and I know he’s a big fan of us.

There are a lot of horror movies now but the music doesn’t seem to be as important as it was in the ‘70s.’

Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin Perform Suspiria, 5 Aug, 5.30pm & 6 Aug, 8.30pm.

Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin Perform Dawn of the Dead, 5 Aug, 8.20pm & 6 Aug, 5.30pm.

Events at Summerhall, 0131 560 1581, £26.

Chilling out: (main pic) Claudio Simonetti with Dario Argento; (above) Simonetti and his Goblin incarnation do their live soundtrack thing

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FEATURE

PHOT

THE KING

GER

O: RO S

JONE

The Elvis Dead earned Rob Kemp plaudits and prizes for creating the cult comedy hit at last year’s Fringe. While aiming not to be pigeonholed, he tells Brian Donaldson that his chainsaw will stay switched on for some time yet

OF SHOCK ‘N’ ROLL ‘I

’m looking at it now and thinking “this is a silly idea”.’ Rob Kemp is talking about Wheel of Shows, his all-new hour for this year’s Fringe but he could so easily be reflecting back on his early feelings towards The Elvis Dead. For that show, Kemp reworked Elvis songs to fit the plot of The Evil Dead 2 while wielding a mock chainsaw as scenes from the comedically gory movie played on screen behind him.

It may have had the classic hallmark of ‘the things you come up with during a long night in the pub’, but The Elvis Dead proved to be the sleeper cult hit from last year’s Fringe with a run at Monkey Barrel that gained a steady reputation, great reviews and an increasingly hardcore fanbase. Having ended the festival by winning a Malcolm Hardee Award and earning a nomination for Best Newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, this examinations officer at a Walsall school (he handed his notice in a few months ago but is still on call as a consultant) is also back with the show that got him noticed.

‘People liked it and I’m very proud of it, but I’m not actually a musical act,’ Kemp insists.

‘I did a thing because no one was looking at me. It was a show that I knew I’d enjoy doing regardless, so it’s really odd to have gone from this thing where it’s me titting around to having lots of people coming to see it in Edinburgh.’

On the back of that success, Kemp was invited to do the show at the House of Horrors Festival in Germany, followed by a run at London’s Soho Theatre. He has tried to open lines of communication with Bruce Campbell, the iconic actor of The Evil Dead films who Kemp effectively plays on stage, in the hope that he might come and see the show. ‘If I get tweeted

after a show, people tag him in as well, so he’s probably sick to death of it. I did go to a book signing in London and I just said to his face that his work inspired me and that I was doing this show and that I’d be honoured if he came to see it. He gave me a really polite “no”. So, he hasn’t seen it yet, but if I ever make it to Vegas . . . ’ Inevitably, people have been throwing in their tuppenceworth for suggestions to mash up more movies and music. How about the tale of two Russian pop singers and a classic vampire legend (NosferaTatu)? Or The Fab Four with Tim Burton’s obnoxious ghost (BeatlesJuice)? Or East Kilbride’s post-punk band and Leatherface (The Jesus And Mary Chain Saw Massacre)? At the moment, Kemp seems most intrigued by The Thing White Duke, which would merge the very icky 1982 John Carpenter horror with David Bowie’s ever-altering image.

For Wheel of Shows, Kemp is dissecting the direction in which his comedy career is going.

‘The idea is about me trying to follow up a surprisingly successful show without letting people’s expectations down but also not putting myself into a box. It’s about me not just being known as the singing movie guy.’

Rob Kemp: The Elvis Dead, Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–25 Aug (not 6 & 7, 13 & 14, 20 & 21), 10.20pm, £10–£12 (£9–£11). Previews 1–3 Aug, £7.

Rob Kemp’s Wheel of Shows, Monkey Barrel, Blair Street, 0131 225 5149, 3–26 Aug (not 13), 1.15pm, £5 in advance or donations at the venue.

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HORROR: BOOKS

PUBLISH AND BE

PUT THE

FRIGHTENERS ON If you have the stomach for yet more terror, here’s a further bunch of spooky festival goings-on

I

DAMNED Sally Gardner, Charlie Higson and Darren Shan are experts in penning stories that leave readers on edge. Ahead of their Book Festival event about the art of horror writing, Deborah Chu hears that less is more

A

n event on horror writing may seem oddly-placed in the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s children’s programme. Or rather, its inclusion is testament to a literary mode that – despite centuries of critics thumbing their noses at such ‘genre fiction’ – has secured a storied lineage that stretches from Mary Shelley to Stephen King, and whose psychological insight has garnered increasing academic scrutiny as well as mass audience appeal.

The panel for How to Write Horror is populated by three prolific and stylistically diverse authors. In 2009, Charlie Higson published the first novel of his post-apocalyptic zombie-horror series, The Enemy, and after seven instalments it culminated in The End (2015). Sally Gardner’s first full-length novel, I, Coriander, nabbed the Smarties Book Prize in 2005 and her Maggot Moon (2012) won the Costa Children’s Book Prize and the Carnegie Medal. She’s written a darkly evocative take on lycanthropy in Tinder (2013) and her latest novel, My Side of the Diamond, was released last year. They are joined by Darren Shan, whose YA series The Saga of Darren Shan was adapted into the 2009 film Cirque du Freak, while he has also delved into the world of demons for his Demonata series and grappled with the undead in Zom-B. Aimed at horror enthusiasts and emerging writers alike, the panel will discuss the secret to crafting monstrous characters and paranormal narratives that seize upon the dark corners of the imagination. ‘Horror and fear are each other’s companion,’ Gardner says. ‘Good horror writing lets your imagination do the work and is powerful enough to play upon all your fears.’ As such, the one piece of advice that she would give all budding horror writers is that less is often more. ‘The unseen and the unknown are far more frightening than when you are told exactly what the monster looks like.’

n the same way that you simply have to choose between Blur and Oasis, Pepsi and Coke, and Sesame Street or The Muppets, some horror fans refuse to love both Dracula and Frankenstein. Those who will merrily lap up the key classic creations of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley have a treat in store with Let Them Call it Mischief’s tongue-in-cheek / fangs-in-throat Dracula at the Pleasance (below), while over at the Book Festival, Andy Davidson and Ahmed Saadawi discuss their own adaptations of Shelley’s monstrous story, relocating it to, respectively, the back roads of Texas and US-occupied Baghdad.

Back at the Pleasance, comedy-horror maestros Kill the Beast return with Director’s Cut about the worst movie ever made, while kids’ theatre-makers Tall Stories take a step into the unknown with their first show for grown-ups, a version of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost. In BADD, 1980s America is gripped by a Satanic panic with fears that Dungeons and Dragons may be the gateway to Luciferian hell for its nation’s youth.

At the Edinburgh International Festival, the eerie Brothers Grimm fairytale Hansel & Gretel is given the operatic treatment at the Usher Hall, while at Underbelly, Australian stand-up Laura Davis performs her show as a ghost. Will Seaward sends chills across the late-night Gilded Balloon crowds with his Spooky Midnight Ghost Stories V while Topcliffe House Productions tell a Scary Story at the all-too appropriate Vault venue. And at Assembly, Heaven Burns recalls the tale of a 17th century ‘witch-pricker’ in Morayshire who may not be quite as he seems . . .

Remember: at the festival, no one can hear you scream.

Full details of shows at list.co.uk/festival

How to Write Horror, Charlotte Square Gardens, 0345 373 5888, 13 Aug, 11.45am, £5.

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CHELSEA CLINTON

DAUGHTER IN AWE Chelsea Clinton has known first-hand what the patriarchy will do to undermine ambitious women. Ahead of two book events in Edinburgh, she tells Arusa Qureshi about some influential historical figures who defied orthodoxy

W

hen Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell formally silenced Elizabeth Warren on the Senate floor last year for her criticisms of Jeff Sessions, his response to her censure inadvertently created a feminist battle cry: ‘she was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.’

For author, activist and former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton, Senator Warren’s efforts weren’t merely an act of resistance but a clarion call to women everywhere who are repeatedly held back, reproached and vilified for speaking out. ‘As I was thinking about how to talk about that moment to my children,’ Clinton explains, ‘I started thinking about the many American women who have inspired me with their persistence and how often our country has been driven forward by women who persisted.’

Clinton’s bestselling 2017 picture book She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World introduced young readers to important figures throughout US history who persevered in their fight to be heard, despite the many hurdles along the way. With Warren’s dismissal reverberating in feminist spaces around the world, Clinton was encouraged to continue in her mission to uphold the tales of history’s greatest women and their many contributions. For the sequel to She Persisted, Clinton once again teams up with illustrator Alexandra Boiger, this time drawing attention to another set of women whose impact has been felt globally.

‘My greatest motivation was really the reaction from readers,’ Clinton says when asked about her reasons for looking beyond the USA. ‘I was overwhelmed by the number of young readers, mainly girls, though some boys too, who would come to my events and tell me about their favourite characters and why they were so happy they now knew about Virginia Apgar or how they wanted to go into space like Sally Ride. And I also was struck by the reaction from their parents or grandparents who would bring them saying we wish we had more books like this that

>>

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CHELSEA CLINTON

centred on powerful women. That was so affirming to me, and I thought “we need to tell even more stories of remarkable women who have positively changed the course of history”. So I wrote the second book.’

Both publications feature women who have thrived in their respective fields, despite the odds being stacked against them, from Harriet Tubman and Sonia Sotomayor to Marie Curie and Malala Yousafzai. ‘It was important to me to have a mix of stories that might be familiar, and stories that are powerful but should be more well-known. Beyond that, it was important to make sure that we were not only representing women but that it was a diverse group across areas of time, geography, work and background.’

Some of the women’s stories have long compelled Clinton. ‘I’ve looked up to Wangari Maathai for as long as I can remember,’ she states. ‘I remember watching Yuan Yuan Tan dance when I was at Stanford and recall when I first heard Leymah Gbowee speak about her courageous peace-making work. I am so thankful to be able to share Mary Verghese’s story about bringing functional rehabilitation medicine to India, and Aisha Rateb’s story about fighting for equal rights and justice in Egypt: I didn’t know either of those until I started working on She Persisted Around the World and am so grateful that I now do.’

Persistence is a quality that women around the world have embraced, and books like She Persisted are vital in motivating young women of all backgrounds to maintain their dogged determination and to use their voices effectively to shape history. ‘For so long, we’ve had a majority of books, even for young readers, that have focused on the achievements and accomplishments of men,’ notes Clinton. ‘And we also know in the US that historically we’ve had more white girl figures that have stories centred around them than girls of colour. So I think it’s always the right time to try to remediate that, to centre more positive, empowering stories on women broadly and women of colour specifically. Representation matters and it’s crucial to ensuring that all children can believe that everyone’s dreams are equally valued. Period.’

As Clinton prepares to introduce young readers at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to the inspirational women featured in her two books, she has a clear goal in mind. ‘I quote Sally Ride in the first She Persisted: “you can’t be what you can’t see”. Closing that imagination gap is so important for kids; for girls to think they can do anything and for boys to recognise that girls have every right to see themselves in any career, pursuing any dream. I want every young reader to be able to see themselves in these stories and I want them to feel emboldened by the stories of women who persisted before them and who are still persisting today.’

>>

Inspiring Women with Chelsea Clinton, 19 Aug, 1.30pm, £5; Chelsea Clinton with Sally Magnusson, 20 Aug, 10am, £12 (£10). Events at Charlotte Square Gardens, 0345 373 5888.

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e: t i t e p p a r u Fo llow yo

ADVERTISING FEATURE

7 INSTA FEEDS TO FOLLOW BEFORE THE EDINBURGH FOOD FESTIVAL

With stalls, talks and demos taking place over five days, there’s plenty to look forward to at the Edinburgh Food Festival The Edinburgh Food Festival rolls into town from 25–29 July, in just enough time to pack in a little bit of padding before the August madness really gets into gear. The completely free event will take over Assembly George Square Gardens once again, with a line-up of over 20 local food and drink producers set to cook up a storm for visitors of all ages. Highlights include Ting Thai Caravan’s return to the Gardens after a six-year absence, demos a-plenty from the likes of Slow Food Scotland, as well as talks from industry experts like whisky consultant Blair Bowman, who’ll be discussing all things gin.

All this and … prosecco pong too? Yep, organisers have announced plans to stage Edinburgh’s first ever official prosecco pong contest in association with Poco Prosecco. There’s no need for non-drinkers to miss out on the fun though – Beetle Juice, the VW cocktail and mocktail bar, will also be running a fruit juice pong contest with the chance to win a mocktail.

? y r g n u h g Feelin

HIT FOLLOW ON OUR PICK OF THE INSTA FEEDS FROM THE FESTIVAL’S BRILLIANT FOOD STALLS

JARVIS PICKLE

CHICK + PEA

FYNE ALES

BEETLE JUICE

THE PRAGUE SHACK

MIOD RAW HONEY

Specialising in pies, Borders-based Jarvis Pickle will bring their golden meat, fish and veggie-filled pastry pockets to the festival, fresh from winning a tray-load of prizes at the British Pie Awards. @jarvispickle

As regular visitors to Edinburgh’s street food fairs, they’ll be dispensing freshly made falafel on locally made flatbread from their bright blue van, but do not, on any account, miss the halloumi fries. @chickandpeafood

Scottish farm brewery Fyne Ales will be on hand to make sure you don’t go thirsty. Brewing since 2001, they try to work in harmony with nature in their isolated location, drawing their brewing water straight from the hills. @fyneales

A cocktail bar in a VW van. What more could anyone want? Expect fun and fruity cocktails and mocktails from the Beetle Juice team. @beetlejuiceltd

There’s really not enough Eastern European food in Edinburgh – the Prague Shack aims to change all that with a range of delicious, homemade specialities made from recipes stolen from their grandma’s cupboard. @pragueshack

With 60 years of beekeeping experience, Miod will be bringing their signature raw honey to the festival as well as a beautiful glass beehive, to teach us all a little bit more about these fascinating creatures and their tasty honey. @miod.co

The Edinburgh Food Festival, Assembly George Square Gardens, 25–29 Jul. Open from noon–late Wed–Fri and 10am–late Sat/Sun. Free entry. list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 29

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ART FEATURE HEADLINE HERE

CANADA EDINBURGH FESTIVALS 2018

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FEATURE HEADLINE HERE ART

Canada is back this summer with more than 70 acts offering something for everyone across the city.

From circus to skating, from a cappella to cutting edge new theatre, acclaimed classical performers and literary delights – Canada takes its place among the very best of Edinburgh’s festival treats.

To see it all, check out The List’s dedicated Canada brochure, or visit list.co.uk/canada

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LAD T Frank Skinner and David Baddiel are back at this year’s Fringe with stage plays to their names rather than performing the stand-up comedy that helped forge their reputations. Craig McLean asks them about early Edinburgh memories, dirty flats and whether you can be both a bloke and woke

I

n the Hampstead branch of Starbucks on an early summer morning, confusion abounds. Does one play a ‘playwright’ make, Frank Skinner ponders? Is David Baddiel’s new show actually on at the Fringe? And what kind of beast is said new show anyway?

‘So this is a play based on a book that you haven’t written?’ says a puzzled Skinner to his old sparring, joking, flat-sharing and Fantasy Footballing partner.

‘Well, I wrote the book, but I didn’t write the adaptation.

And it’s a musical,’ clarifies Baddiel, having first called his agent to confirm that AniMalcolm is indeed being staged in Edinburgh (he’s been on tour since the start of the year with My Family: Not the Sitcom, so a little diary confusion is understandable).

AniMalcolm is based on Baddiel’s third children’s book.

Nina’s Got News was written by Skinner under the auspices of a joint initiative from BBC Arts and comedy agents Avalon to ‘encourage writers to step out of their comfort zone and write their debut play, which will then be produced for the Edinburgh Fringe’.

Cue more confusion: despite living on the same nearby north London street and being pals of almost three decades’ standing, Baddiel admits he knows nothing about Nina’s Got News.

‘I knew you’d done it,’ the 54-year-old acknowledges, ‘but what’s it about?’

Skinner, 61, squirms behind his flagon of latte. ‘It’s . . . erm . . . I haven’t really told anyone what it’s about. But part of it is about belief. Not so much religious belief, just the art of believing. The other thing is: can you remain friends

32 THE L LI LIST IST ST | Ed Edi E Edinburgh diin d nbu nb bu b urgh urgh rg gh Fe gh F Festival essti stttiival iva va val all Guide Gu G uide id id de e2 20 201 2018 0118 | lis 0 llist.co.uk/festival li istt. is t.c ..c co o..u o.u .uk/festival

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FRANK SKINNER & DAVID BADDIEL

IDINGS after a sexual relationship? So Nina hears a revelation butt I don’t want to tell you what that is. But I will tell you thatt I’m not in it.’

David, how do you feel about seeing your work ? translated by other people into a different medium?

Baddiel: Well, the people who are making it are in rehearsalss

in a south London church hall, and last night on my way too a gig in Aldershot, I popped in to see it. I honestly thoughtt it would be a bit shit (I suppose you can print that) but itt wasn’t. It was really beautiful and I was in pieces at the end..

They’ve written songs and that’s key: they’re all great. Andd the actors are all brilliant. So I feel a bit of a twat now.

Skinner: But most children’s entertainment isn’t great..

With one exception: I saw Noggin the Nog at Leicesterr Square Theatre and it was really good. In fact they now usee a quote from me on the poster: ‘Better Than Hamilton’. Butt Hamilton is shit. It’s exposition set to music.

What were your first experiences of the Fringe?

Skinner: I went in 1987 in a play. I was working at a collegee

and they asked me to join the cast, playing a copper. Hee h was racist against the Irish and I was interviewing an Irish terrorist suspect. We came on stage to Sham 69.

Baddiel: That sounds like the most ‘80s thing in Edinburgh h ever! I was in Edinburgh in 1982 doing street theatre withh the Merry Mac Fun Company and we were shit. But in ‘87,, I co-hosted the 12:12 Cabaret at the Pleasance, which Frankk came to see. One night, one of the comedians got stuck inn traffic so his keyboard player had to go on solo. After aboutt five minutes the audience are shouting and booing, then a man gets up and pours a pint of beer over the poor guy’ss head. Luckily, Chris Lynam came on and saved the gig byy sticking fireworks up his arse to the tune of ‘There’s Noo Business Like Show Business’.

Skinner: Before that, the only comedy I’d seen was stufff like Bernard Manning. Seeing those guys at the Pleasancee absolutely triggered it all off and made me want to doo comedy.

Then in the summer of 1991, the year Frank won the Perrier, you shared an Edinburgh flat . . .

Baddiel: It was Frank and Denis Leary and a novelty act, a

bloke who balanced an ironing board on his chin.

Skinner: I was telling Denis about my marriage breaking g up, and in the corner of the room there’s this guy balancingg furniture on his chin.

Baddiel: That is Edinburgh! I was up with Rob Newman n that year doing three nights at the Playhouse and recording a

>> llist.co.uk/festival li lis list iis st.c t.c co.uk/ o..u o.u uk k//ffestival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 33 k/f

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DAVID BADDIEL & FRANK SKINNER

video there. I remember having to tell Frank off because the flat was so dirty. I’m not that clean, but Frank . . . put it this way: we had a cleaning lady when we lived together round here and she refused to go in Frank’s room.

>>

Flatmates became workmates with the hugely successful ‘90s TV show Fantasy Football League. What’s your view now on the show’s relationship with Lad Culture?

Baddiel: The only difficult question I had when I was on Desert

Boys will be boys: (from top left clockwise) David Baddiel and Frank Skinner at Absolute Radio in 2010; Baddiel with brother Ivor and dad Colin; Skinner on stage; Baddiel performs My Family: Not the Sitcom; Skinner kicking a ball about in his youth (sadly, his beloved West Brom never came calling)

Island Discs recently was ‘how do you feel about being the poster boy for a generation of men who should know better?’ And I would defend this still: part of what Frank and I were doing with comedy in the ‘90s was a reaction against very, very stifling political correctness.

Skinner: I remember doing a gig in The White Horse in Brixton and referred to ‘my girlfriend’. And someone said ‘oh, you own her, do you?’ That was a pretty right-on place. But the first time I heard the phrase ‘New Lads’ was in [defunct London listings magazine] City Limits, when you and Rob were on the cover. And Rob said something like ‘it’s all about liking football and being a little bit sexist’.

Baddiel: You’d have to ask Rob Newman about that. I’m sure he would deny that because Rob Newman is very right-on indeed now.

Very woke indeed.

Skinner: If you think about the New Lad magazines, it involved a lot of brilliant writing about football, about films, about fashion. And actually, I think it made it OK for heterosexual blokes who liked football and beer to talk seriously about . . . stuff. People think of Liz Hurley in her underwear and that’s it. But it was a lot more than that.

Finally, in the spirit of Frank’s inspired poster quote for Noggin the Nog, could you each offer one for your own Edinburgh 2018 theatrical excursion?

Baddiel: ‘Fun for all the family’: ’cause I don’t think that’s ever

been said before.

Skinner: ‘Who knew?’

Nina’s Got News by Frank Skinner, Pleasance Dome, Bristo Square, 0131 556 6550, 4–26 Aug, 2.50pm, £14–£16 (£13–£14). Previews 1–3 Aug, £8.

David Baddiel’s AniMalcolm, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 4–19 Aug (not 13), 11.30am, £11– £12 (£9–£10; family ticket £36–£40). Previews 1–3 Aug, £7.

34 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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36 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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ART

EDINBURGH ART FESTIV AL 26 JUL–26 AU

G

SHILPA GUPTA One of the leading lights in the Edinburgh Art Festival’s Commissions programme this year, Mumbai artist Shilpa Gupta has put together an evocative sound installation. Her piece features 100 microphones hanging from the ceiling, with 100 metal rods piercing 100 pieces of paper, each of which has a different portion of poetry written on it. Over the course of an hour, those sections of verse are played with a world map of languages being heard from English to Spanish and Hindi to Azeri as the simple but effective message is made that freedom of expression is in a parlous state wherever on the globe you happen to be.

■ Shilpa Gupta: For, in your tongue I cannot hide – 100 Jailed Poets, The Fire Station at Edinburgh College of Art, Lauriston Place, 0131 226 6558, 26 Jul–26 Aug, Mon– Sun, 10am–6pm, free.

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ART TACITA DEAN

ACTING UP Deanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gallery: (from top left clockwise) Event for a Stage, Tacita Dean, A Muse

38 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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PHOTO:

TACITA DEAN ART

CATHY CARVER (LEFT) JI M MCHU GH

While filmmaking may be in her family’s blood, artist Tacita Dean has no intention of ever entering the movie business. She tells Neil Cooper that her own films reflect some desire to confront a creative blindspot

‘I

’ve always been slightly afraid of actors,’ Tacita Dean confesses. Given that her Fruitmarket show Woman With a Red Hat (which opens hot on the heels of a trilogy of solo exhibitions running concurrently across London) is based entirely around theatrical performance, this sounds like an odd thing to say. Especially as its centrepiece, 2015’s ‘Event for a Stage’, is an hour-long film featuring a solo performance by Tony Award-winning actor Stephen Dillane in a black box theatre space, dressed as Oedipus.

‘Working with Stephen was a huge learning curve for me,’ says Dean, whose artistic career began with the YBA generation and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1998. ‘I don’t think I work with actors in a functional way, and that’s all to do with my inability, wilfully or otherwise, to work within linear narrative cinema. I tell stories, but I struggle with linear narrative and I wonder why I can’t go there.’

‘Event for a Stage’ was commissioned for the Sydney Biennale and filmed over four nights in an auditorium where Dean hands Dillane pages of a script one by one from the front row. There are reminiscences about Dillane’s family, some storytelling, and lines from The Tempest, while the actor also announces the changing of film reels for the two cameras capturing him.

Also on show are other actors featuring in shorter films made last year. In ‘A Muse’, Ben Whishaw reaches out through space and time to poet and essayist Anne Carson. ‘Providence’ has David Warner transported to a field of hummingbirds. As a kind of grand finale, ‘His Picture in Little’ brings together Dillane, Whishaw and Warner, who have all uttered the words which make up that film’s title while playing Hamlet.

The oldest piece in the exhibition is ‘Foley Artist’ from 1996, a soundwork which partly features Tim Pigott-Smith performing lines from Henry IV, Part 2. ‘I used Ben and David in the tradition of art and not in the tradition of acting,’ says Dean. ‘It’s a bit like asking them to sit for a portrait. Actors are uncomfortable if they’re not being directed, even in a small way.’

While in no way calculated, a sense of theatre has permeated throughout much of Dean’s work. It was there perhaps most explicitly in ‘Stillness’, her 2008 film of Merce Cunningham performing to John Cage’s composition ‘4’33’. It was there again in ‘Play as Cast’ (2004–2005), which enlarged a monochrome production shot of a play onto the safety curtain of Vienna Opera House.Then there is

‘Die Regimentstochter’ from 2005, comprising a group of 36 vintage theatre and opera programmes that she found in a German flea market.

Having exhibited them at her 2006 Tate St Ives show, the work now belongs to the German government. This is why they won’t be seen at the Fruitmarket. Two other works will: the blackboard-based ‘When first I raised The Tempest’ (2016) is a storyboard for an imaginary film while 2001’s ‘The Russian Ending’ reimagines a set of found postcards as stills from fictitious disaster movies.

‘I’ve always used theatrical language,’ says Dean, her words a series of unrehearsed fractures that eventually connect into mini-monologues.

‘Even early on with my blackboard pieces, I used stage directions like “exeunt”. When I write about my work I call them “asides”, so it must be there somewhere.’

Dean’s grandfather was Basil Dean, a pioneering film producer who co-founded Ealing Studios, and went on to make movies with the likes of George Formby and Gracie Fields. Given that he died when she was 11, there is no direct influence, but she thinks that ‘maybe hearing about all that left its mark’.

Dean’s latest film, not being shown in Edinburgh, is called ‘Antigone’.

She began working on it more than 20 years ago, visiting the Sundance Film Festival to learn how to write scripts from some of the greats. The result is more arthouse than multiplex. ‘It’s about stage fright,’ Dean says, ‘and came out of what happens when you lose your way.’

With her theatrical beginnings, middles and possible endings presented as a body of work in Woman With a Red Hat, might Dean ever go the whole hog and enter the movie industry?

‘No,’ says this reluctant auteur. ‘The whole process of making “Antigone” after going to Sundance confirmed to me that I need the blindness of working as an artist rather than a film director. I have to get it all from underneath rather than left or right. For 20 years, I was carrying around this idea of writing a script, but I came back from Sundance and even with everything I’d learned there, I couldn’t do it. I write and I make films, so why can’t I do that?’

She answers herself. ‘Probably because I don’t want to. I need to not know where I’m going. If there’s one thing I understand about my work is that I don’t want to know the entry point. I need to be blind.’

Tacita Dean: Woman With a Red Hat, Fruitmarket Gallery, Market Street, 0131 225 2383, 7 Jul–30 Sep, Mon–Sun, 11am– 6pm, free. list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 39

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ART REMBRANDT

GOING DUTCH

40 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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REMBRANDT ART

As Edinburgh prepares to explore how British attitudes towards the epic work of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn changed over 400 years, we spoke to artists and gallerists about the Old Master’s influence, skill and legacy

ROBERT POWELL

ROSIE RAZZALL

ARTIST

CURATOR OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS, ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST

I can see that I’ve consulted a lot of Rembrandt for my exhibition at the Fine Art Society. There are five books on him open on the studio floor.

Looking often at his work is to recalibrate my sense of quality and to try and dissuade myself from getting sloppy. Each image brings with it a swarm of pleasures and the ways that any person can learn from them are many.

However, I think these are things that I have tried to plunder from Rembrandt recently: his compositions that peer through architecture or slope up stairways; pictures that are segmented by ledges and platforms; the astonishing clarity he is able to bring forth from a dark puzzle of cross-hatching; those magnificent, voluptuous costumes that have no root in a time or place but are there for the sensual pleasure of the clothes and taste of the exotic (I’ve been copying quite a few of his mad hats).

The enjoyment in the construction of a picture like ‘The French Bed’ where an extra leg has been added to a couple making love, just to see what it might look like.

But what I really aspire to is that respect for every inhabitant of the picture: however gruesome or insignificant, they are rendered humane.

■ Robert Powell: Between the Lost Places, The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh, Dundas Street, 0131 557 4050, 20 Jul–3 Sep, Mon–Fri, 10am–6pm, Sat, 11am–2pm, free.

JILLY DOBSON MANAGING DIRECTOR, OPEN EYE GALLERY

In the early 1960s, upon moving into student digs in Edinburgh’s Rose Street, John Bellany found a large abandoned chest full of French edition prints of Old Masters, among them Dürer, da Vinci and Rembrandt. John festooned his wall with the prints, which then became inspirational to his work. He favoured the realism and grittiness of Rembrandt’s work

as well as his determination to depict true life rather than the idealised, softer-edged scenes of later 18th and 19th century artists.

Bellany’s dark and powerful paintings from the ’60s were significantly inspired by Rembrandt: one of his most famous paintings, ‘Allegory’, nods a head at Rembrandt’s ‘Slaughtered Ox’. Some of his later works are also a homage. ‘Danaë’ and ‘Susanna’, both painted in 1990, depict the tale of Susanna and the Elders, a Biblical story painted by Rembrandt in 1647. In Bellany’s 1990 piece he also captures the true voluptuousness and enticement of Greek mythology’s Danaë, whom Rembrandt painted in 1636.

Throughout Bellany’s life, Rembrandt remained an inspiration; he had a true respect and admiration for his practice, and he continued to salute the great artist.

■ John Bellany (1942–2013): The Wild Days, Open Eye Gallery, Abercromby Place, 0131 557 1020, 28 Jul–27 Aug, Mon–Fri, 10am–6pm, Sat, 10am–4pm, free.

The Venetian painter Canaletto is best known for his view paintings of Venice that were especially collected by British Grand Tourists as souvenirs of their time in the magical watery city.

But Canaletto’s subjects – city views – had their roots in Dutch painting of the 17th century, of which Rembrandt was one of the leading artists, as well as Jan van der Heyden and Pieter Neefs the Elder. Canaletto must have been familiar with the work of these artists, with their ability to manipulate perspective and their focus on everyday life.

One of the most striking works by Canaletto in The Queen’s Gallery show is a drawing of the lagoon on a long, thin strip of paper, with a ship and its rigging beautifully observed at the centre.

This drawing allows the visitor to get a fuller picture of Canaletto’s work beyond the more familiar tourist views of Venice, and is a work that in its maritime subject and handling of pen and ink seems incredibly Dutch.

■ Canaletto & the Art of Venice, The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Royal Mile, 0131 556 5100, until 21 Oct, Mon–Sun, 9.30am–6pm, £7.20 (£6.60).

THOMAS FLANAGAN MARKETING OFFICER, EDINBURGH PRINTMAKERS

During the 19th century there was an air of experimentation heralded, in part, by a sudden influx of new aesthetic theories and artistic manifestos. In this climate, many of the Old Masters turned to printmaking as an experimental medium.

Rembrandt frequently used etching, developing an innovative technique that stemmed from an exploration of every stage of the process.

>>

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ART REMBRANDT

>> Sometimes he would cut his etching plates into unorthodox shapes and use them for smaller studies that would later be integrated into other works. He also often reworked his plates, embellishing the same image with different permutations and demonstrating how one idea could be taken to several different conclusions.

In this way, Rembrandt might have heralded the mass-produced multiples of 20th-century printmaking, which often exhaust the possible instantiations of an image.

This notion finds direct expression in the work of Andy Warhol, for example, who frequently printed the same image in a terrific range of colours. Certainly, Rembrandt’s approach to etching finds expression throughout contemporary printmaking practice, where images and fragments are repurposed again and again, with printmakers frequently integrating previous creations into new artworks.

■ Nàdar / Prakriti, Edinburgh Printmakers, Union Street, 0131 557 2479, 26 Jul–20 Oct, Tue–Sat, 10am–6pm, free.

RAQIB SHAW ARTIST

My painterly education began with Rembrandt. He taught me two things: the importance of good draughtsmanship and the discipline required to push one’s craft to a romantic extreme.

I remember quite clearly the first Rembrandt work I encountered. In a tatty book tucked away in the school library as I idly flicked through the pages, there it was: ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’. I thought: ‘magnificent!’

I was 11 years old at the time and living in Kashmir. In the years before the civil war, Kashmir was an oasis of religious tolerance, a space of possibility and free thinking where one could be educated at a Catholic school. We were encouraged to look at artists such as Rembrandt depicting a story from the Old Testament’s Book of Daniel alongside the mythic battlegrounds of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

These fond memories inform a vast historic and geographic psychic region that my own paintings attempt to navigate.

Often, when I reach an impasse, I find myself seeking advice from these Old Masters, in the hope they will provide me with the continued confidence to further my exploration of art.

■ Raqib Shaw: Reinventing the Old Masters, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Belford Road, 0131 624 6200, until 28 Oct, Mon–Sun, 10am–5pm (Jul, Sep & Oct), Mon–Sun, 10am–6pm (Aug), free.

Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master, Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, 0131 624 6200, 7 Jul– 14 Oct, Mon–Sun, 10am–5pm, Thu, 10am–7pm (Jul, Sep & Oct), Mon– Sun, 10am–6pm, Thu, 10am–7pm (Aug), £13.50 (£11.50).

Masterly works: (main pic) Girl at a Window; (previous page) Self-portrait, aged 51; (above) Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt; A Man in Armour

42 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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W

CRAFT THE PERFECT FESTIVAL: 9 design essentials for the ultimate

Edinburgh Style Kit If you want to stand out from the crowd this year, the rain poncho and free tote left over from your last trip isn’t going to cut it. Time to shop. The Craft Scotland Summer Show is packed full of lovely things from Scotland’s most talented makers. We pick some of our favourite pieces ahead of the show’s opening on 3 August.

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1. Long day after a long night? Wake up with Myer Halliday’s stylish slipcast ceramic mugs (from £20).

For extra style points, fill them with coffee from hot local roasters Williams and Johnson.

2. Made with handwoven Harris Tweed, Catherine Aitken’s rucksacks (£145) are supercool, super-luxe and not too bulky – but there’s still plenty of room for a Fringe programme and all your other bits and bobs.

3. Sun shining? Make the most of it with a lunchtime picnic on the Meadows – Lucy Engels’ bright, beautiful blanket (from £450) is backed with heavyweight linen so it’s really practical too.

4. Whether it’s classical music, theatre or dance, a night at the Edinburgh International Festival calls for sophistication: this stunningly simple Heather Woof necklace (£950) is just the ticket.

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5. Contactless buskers are a thing now, but if you want to go old-school and keep some change handy this coin purse by Jude Gove (£20) is ideal. It’s good for nipping to the bar with too.

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6. Sometimes August is about just going with the flow. Fiona McIntosh’s graphic prints (from £40) are perfect for dressing your outfit up or down, effortlessly taking your look from day to night.

7. Charlotte Square is an oasis of calm, so don’t let bad weather keep you out of the Book Festival. A Green Thomas scarf (from £95) is cosy for snuggling under the stars or kicking back in the Spiegeltent.

8. Looking for a souvenir? You can do better than a pile of ticket stubs. Lauren Smith’s unique patchwork pins (£15) are colourful, gorgeous, and easy to slip into your hand luggage.

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9. Edinburgh is bursting with creativity and if you’re feeling inspired why not unleash your imagination with one of Craft Scotland’s workshops (from £35)? Make a purse, learn to mosaic or get set for your next trip to Mary’s Milk Bar and carve your own wooden spoon with Object Company.

PHOTO: 1 GREENSHOOTS; 2 LINDA JONES; 3 LUCY ENGELS; 4 JAMES ROBERTSON; 5 HELEN MACDONALD; 6 ALISTAIR CLARK; 7 GREEN THOMAS; 8 DUNCAN COWLES; 9 GREIG JACKSON

The Craft Scotland Summer Show 2018, 3–26 August, White Stuff, Venue 205, 89 George Street. Open daily, free entry. If you can’t wait until August, visit the the Craft Marketplace to start shopping now at craftscotland.org/shop. list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 43

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n i W TS E K C TI

THE LIST

festival Party The List kicks off the Edinburgh Festival season in style with our award-nominated Festival Party on Thu 2 Aug. We’ve curated a programme of some of our favourite performers from the worlds of comedy, theatre and dance to get your festival buzz going. Enjoy drinks courtesy of our sponsors Blue Moon and Edinburgh Gin and experience something unique in our exciting Eventbrite room, new for this year’s party.

Grab a snack by Popchips and fill your boots with Bonnie Burrito, who’ll be set up and selling their range of Mexican goodies. Take a virtual reality adventure with Viarama and tour the party in headphones with Silent Adventures, bustin’ a move along the way. When you

wake up the next day, you’ll know the festival has well and truly started…

We’ll also be unveiling a new Instagram scavenger hunt with some great prizes to be claimed – just follow #ListFestivalParty for details.

This exclusive event is invitation only and we’re giving our readers the chance to be there too. To be in with a chance of winning a pair of tickets to The List Festival Party at Summerhall on Thu 2 Aug (9pm–3am), just log on to list.co.uk/offers and tell us:

Who are our drinks sponsors at this year’s The List Festival Party?

VIRTUAL REALITY

Competition closes Fri 27 Jul 2018. Entrants must be over 18 years old. No cash alternative. The List’s usual rules apply.

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HIGHLIGHTS ART

AND GAGOSIAN

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

QUARRY Comprised of three sculptural objects, former Slade student and teacher Phyllida Barlow has delivered a multi-part work for the evoctive environs of Jupiter Artland’s woodlands. Jupiter Artland, Bonnington House Steadings, Wilkieston, 01506 889900, 10am– 5pm, £8.50 (£4.50–£6).

NADAR / PRAKRITI Indian artist Ravi Agarwal makes his solo UK debut with an interrogation into nature and landscape via a series of new print works. Edinburgh Printmakers, Union Street, 0131 557 2479, 26 Jul–20 Oct, Tue–Sat, 10am–6pm.

Liberty: Art Fabrics & Fashions

IN FOCUS The development of fine art photography from Scotland is In Focus here with a selection of work on show from the 19th century to now, featuring the likes of Christine Borland, Dalziel + Scullion, Calum Colvin and Wendy McMurdo. City Art Centre, Market Street, 0131 529 3993, 7 Jul–12 May, Mon–Sun, 10am–5pm.

PHOTO: COURT ESY

JACOB’S LADDER Featuring work from Cornelia Parker, George Méliès, David Austen and the crews of Apollo 8 and 9, this analyses humankind’s often complex relationship with outer space. Ingleby, Barony Street, 0131 556 4441, 26 Jul–20 Oct, Tue–Sat, 11am–5pm (Jul, Sep & Oct), Mon–Sat, 11am–5pm (Aug).

Jenny Saville

ROSS BIRRELL & DAVID HARDING: TRIPTYCH Using film, music and mosaic, Birrell and Harding will explore issues of flight and dispossession, with the majestic and haunting sound of Henryk Górecki’s ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ framing this collaboration. Trinity Apse, Chalmers Close, High Street, 0131 226 6558, 26 Jul–26 Aug, Mon–Sun, 10am– 6pm.

NOW In SNGMA’s blockbuster summer exhibition, themes of body, performance and materiality are explored by Jenny Saville, Sara Barker, Christine Borland, Robin Rhode, Markus Schinwald and Catherine Street. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Belford Road, 0131 624 6200, until 16 Sep, Mon– Sun, 10am–5pm (Jul, Sep), Mon–Sun, 10am–6pm (Aug).

PHOTO: ALLAN POLLOK-MORRIS

VICTORIA CROWE A former Edinburgh College of Art teacher, Crowe exhibits paintings at The Scottish Gallery and portraits at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, with subjects in the latter including Sir Peter Higgs, psychiatrist RD Laing and poet Kathleen Raine. A Certain Light: The Scottish Gallery, Dundas Street, 0131 558 1200, 2 Aug–1 Sep, Mon–Fri, 10am–6pm, Sat, 10am–4pm; Beyond Likeness: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Queen Street, 0131 624 6200, until 18 Nov, Mon–Sun, 10am–5pm (Jul, Sep–Nov), Mon–Sun, 10am–6pm (Aug).

OF THE ARTIST

Exploration of outer space, an interrogation of nature, analysis of the body and some political street magic make for yet another ambitious Edinburgh Art Festival programme

Phyllida Barlow

RUTH EWAN: SYMPATHETIC MAGICK Magic will be spilling onto the Edinburgh streets as Ewan hooks up with conjuror Ian Saville to devise a series of ‘political tricks’. Various venues, 0131 226 6558, 26 Jul–26 Aug, Mon–Sun, 10am–6pm.

PLATFORM 2018 This year’s showcase for emerging artists features an all-female lineup displaying video work, soundbased art, performance and screen installations. City Art Centre, Market Street, 0131 529 3993, 27 Jul–26 Aug, Mon–Sun, 10am–5pm.

LIBERTY: ART FABRICS & FASHION A celebration of Liberty’s impact on fashion since 1875. Dovecot Gallery, Infirmary Street, 0131 550 3660, 28 Jul–12 Jan, Mon–Sat, 10.30am– 5.30pm (Jul, Sep–Jan), Mon–Wed, Fri–Sun, 10.30am–5.30pm, Thu, 10.30am–8pm (Aug), £9 (£4.50).

Triptych

All events free unless stated list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 45

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y r e v In e ur! colo

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BOOKS MURIEL SPARK 100

PHOTO: © LONDON EVENING STANDARD. USED WITH KIND PERMISSION HR

Celebrations to mark the centenary of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie writer go into overdrive at Charlotte Square Gardens. Among the events commemorating her are a rehearsed reading of Doctors of Philosophy, a discussion plus excerpts of the Memento Mori radio version, Rosemary Goring exploring The Girls of Slender Means, and Ali Smith presenting a version of her Muriel Spark Society Annual Lecture from last year.

■ Muriel Spark 100, Charlotte Square Gardens and Spark Theatre, 0345 373 5888, various dates. Full details at list.co.uk/festival.

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EDINBURGH INTERNA BOOK FESTTIONAL IVAL 11–27 AUG

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BOOKS RIP IT UP

Zesty & Fresh d ...an n o t grea ys! a d i hol

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RIP IT UP BOOKS

TEARING DOWN THE

WALLS W Wherever you look this year, Rip it Up will be there. As an e exhibition, a publication, TV documentary, special gigs and Book Festival event, there’ll be no avoiding the colourful sstory of Scottish pop music. We kick this feature off with an extract from Vic Galloway’s book, about Scotland’s vibrant post-punk live scene and the rise of an iconic Glasgow venue At the end of the ’70s with the arrival of punk, a new set of grassroots venues appeared. The music was back-to-basics and groups were still trying to find their feet. Like its emerging DIY label scene, Scotland truly began to blossom at this time.

Initially Glasgow held on to its dirty-denim, hard rock reputation for a while. But with the Lord Provost banning punk from the city, if you couldn’t get over to Edinburgh for your new-wave kicks then the main supporters of the scene were to be found in nearby Paisley. The Silver Thread Hotel and Bungalow Bar are now recognised for their illustrious punk credentials with Generation X, Buzzcocks, The Rezillos, and other acts, passing through their hallowed doors.

Edinburgh saw the cream of the crop play its mid-sized venues, revelling in its reputation as an international tour destination. Previously known as the Pentland Club in the ’60s, Tiffany’s in Stockbridge became a hive of punk, reggae and new-wave activity with Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, Steel Pulse and the Two Tone Tour playing its stage.

The White Elephant Club, which had booked acts such as Slade and Writing on the Wall, changed its name to Valentino’s to play host to bands like Adam & the Ants, The Cure and The Fall. Spoilt for choice, Edinburgh also had Clouds (later known as Coasters and then The Network) and The Nite Club on Greenside Place next to the Playhouse, welcoming to Scotland U2, Depeche Mode, Ramones, The Damned, Dexys Midnight Runners, and many more.

Perhaps the most influential of all punk gigs in Scotland took place in the Edinburgh Playhouse itself. The Clash’s ‘White Riot’ package tour in 1977 saw The Jam, The Buzzcocks, Subway Sect, The Slits, as well as the headliners, instigate a Scottish post-punk revolution in its grand surroundings.

Members of Orange Juice, Josef K, and The Fire Engines were all in attendance and experienced an epiphany.

Taking the place of The Apollo in the hearts of Glasgow audiences is the Barrowland Ballroom (‘Barrowlands’ or simply the ‘Barras’). A venue with three separate lifetimes, it was originally built above its famous market in Glasgow’s east end in 1934 to house the dance bands of the era. In 1958 the venue shockingly burned to the ground, but reopened again in 1960 to nurture the rock’n’roll generation and beat boom with a sprung dancefloor and star-encrusted, curved ceiling. Falling into disrepair due to stiff competition, it was mothballed by the late ’70s, though very briefly revived as a roller-disco in 1981. When Edinburgh promoters Regular Music were on the hunt for somewhere to stage a concert and video-shoot for the Simple Minds’ breakthrough hit Waterfront in 1982, the dusty, vacant Barrowlands and its spectacular neon sign were ignited once more.

The Barrowlands has continued at pace to this day, with innumerable gigs and very little refurbishment. Its atmosphere and vibe have gained a worldwide reputation with artists as diverse as Foo Fighters, Steve Earle and Public Enemy all singing its hallelujahs. Various songs have been written about it, and the Ulster rockers Stiff Little Fingers have played there on St Patrick’s Day every year since 1992. All Scottish bands of any standing would rather play the Barras than anywhere else on earth, and recently Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad, Young Fathers and streetwise songwriter Gerry Cinnamon have had that honour. It is a veritable Glasgow institution and if ever threatened with closure there would be riots on the streets.

Vic Galloway, Spark Theatre, George Street, 0345 373 5888, 16 Aug, 8.45pm, £12 (£10); Rip it Up is out now published by NMS Enterprises Limited; Rip it Up exhibition, National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, 0300 123 6789, until 25 Nov, 10am– 5pm, £10 (£7–£8; under 12s free). list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 49

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‘It’s not often that Perth bum-rushes the ghetto’ We spoke to a number of authors appearing at the Book Festival about one moment in Scottish pop history that sticks in their memory. The responses were diverse . . .

Tartan troubadours: (from left) Gerry Cinnamon, Gerry Rafferty, Alex Kapranos

AMBROSE PARRY AKA CHRIS BROOKMYRE & MARISA HAETZMAN Big Country performing ‘Fields of Fire’ on Top of the Pops in 1983

Soft & Velvety ...but wn e o d sn't oing k o m as jacket

Like everyone was quietly tiptoeing around with a hangover after punk’s party, the early ’80s felt like an insipid pantomime of synth pop and New Romantic poseurs until Stuart Adamson decided he’d had enough and reinvented the guitar.

We both had the same experience, sitting in our living rooms reading, with TOTP on in the background. Then came a skirl of noise like nothing we had heard before. It sounded like bagpipes, except it was guitars, which is a good thing, because bagpipes are awful. And there were checked shirts and neckerchiefs, a bold ‘sit down, son’ to all the Bowie wannabes stinking up the charts.

Safe to say we were instantly sold. Before we met, we had bought the same albums and been to the same shows. We bonded over Big Country and that song still gives us tingles.

■ 26 Aug, 5pm, £12 (£10).

OLGA WOJTAS Alex Kapranos delivering the Edinburgh Lecture in 2005

One of my jobs as a higher education correspondent was to cover the prestigious Edinburgh Lectures, sponsored by Edinburgh’s universities and council. Speakers included Stephen Hawking, Mikhail Gorbachev and FW De Klerk. And, one glorious year, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand.

He was fabulous: witty, knowledgeable, engaging, thought-provoking. He had taught English and IT at Anniesland College and was also involved in the college’s work in assimilating asylum-

seekers into the local population. Musicians and lecturers should share a similar interest in performance and delivery, he said. ‘If you want to get ideas across to people and the facts to stay in people’s minds, you have to entertain them to some degree.’ I went back to the office warbling ‘It’s always better on holiday / so much better on holiday / That’s why we only work when / we need the money.’ But sometimes work isn’t half bad.

■ 15 Aug (with ES Thomson), noon, £12 (£10).

LIN ANDERSON Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly appearing as The Humblebums at Glasgow University Union in 1971

It was the only occasion I ever saw Gerry live, but I bought and loved his music. He was said to have learned Irish and Scottish folk songs from his mother, just as I had. And he was heavily influenced

by The Beatles and Bob Dylan: another match.

I loved his mellow voice and beautiful lyrics and, of all the songs, I think ‘Baker Street’ is still unbeatable. Though I have a very big soft spot for The Humblebums number ‘Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway’. That night was my first date with my future husband, and I had the feeling my father ‘wouldn’t like his hair’ either.

■ 20 Aug (with Antti Tuomainen), 5.15pm, £12 (£10).

PETER ROSS Gerry Cinnamon at Barrowlands in 2017

It was four days till Christmas, Black Friday, and the Barrowland sign shone down on the bevvied punters queueing for the show. Necking Buckie dregs, banging the shutters of Bairds, they sang Gerry Cinnamon’s name to the tune of ‘Give it

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11 — 27 August 2018 Including: Rose McGowan Zindzi Mandela Ali Smith Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Chelsea Clinton Ian Rankin Susan Calman Karl Ove Knausgaard Yaba Badoe DJ Semtex Laura Bates Frank Quitely Akala Gina Miller

100 Years of Muriel Spark Yanis Varoufakis Jackie Kay A L Kennedy Philip Pullman Rachel Kushner Chris Hoy Val McDermid David Walliams Afua Hirsch Mark Beaumont Maggie O’Farrell Mark Cousins The Last Poets

900 authors from 55 countries in 800 events Book & browse events: edbookfest.co.uk @edbookfest list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 51

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BOOKS RIP IT UP

Scottish trailblazers: (clockwise) Average White Band, Alan McGee, The Amazing Snakeheads

Up’ by KC & The Sunshine Band. An hour before the gig and already we had hit the sweet spot of reckless, feckless and couldn’t-give-a-feckness.

Inside it was, as one must say, pure mental.

Beautiful mayhem. Perhaps the rowdiest crowd since the sainted days of The Pogues. Gerry C, in Dylan cap and trackie top, played ‘Diamonds in the Mud’, a hymn to this city and these people, falling to his knees, tears in his eyes, overcome by the moment and the sentiment and the love. Those stars on the ceiling, man: they had nothing on the stars in the room, the star on the stage.

great. They were polite but baffled. Afterwards, walking home, feeling friendless, Alan McGee stopped me and asked if I knew where he could get something to eat.

‘Down there,’ I said. ‘Grosvenor Café.’

‘I used to know this place.’ He looked into the mid-distance. ‘I used to live here . . . ’ It was friendly overture, a conversational opener, but I was massively offended by his hair style*.

‘Fuck off,’ I said.

And that attitude, I realized, was probably why I hadn’t made any friends.

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■ 19 Aug (with Tania Skarynkina), 3.30pm, £8 (£6).

STUART COSGROVE Average White Band triumphs over the Godfather of Soul in 1975

Rich & Smooth sn't t doe ...bu e a trust hav und f

I am a passionate advocate of answer records, the great tradition where hit singles are either reprised or mocked by rival artists. In February 1975, Tayside’s Average White Band (AWB) defied orthodoxy and raced to the top of the R&B charts in America with their evergreen party tune ‘Pick Up the Pieces’. Their success was an anomaly in what were still racially-profiled record sales, and so it came to pass that a Scottish band became the first white group to top the black charts.

It was a song that resonated with me as AWB’s Alan Gorrie had been at my school and had once fronted Perth’s best beat band, The Vikings.

But as I basked in Scottish success, the Godfather of Soul James Brown raged incandescently. He rush-released an answer record ‘Pick Up the Pieces (One By One)’ by AABB (Above Average Black Band). Much to the Godfather’s disgust, his record sank like a stone and was hidden away for years until it became a rare groove underground classic.

It’s not often that Perth bum-rushes the ghetto, so I relish the story to this day.

■ Spark Theatre, George Street, 22 Aug, 8.45pm, £12 (£10).

DENISE MINA An off-chance meeting with ‘Alan McGee’ in 1987

In 1987 I went to see The Mighty Lemon Drops at the QM. I had just started law school and was struggling to make friends. I forced some classmates to come to the gig, which was

*I don’t know if it was Alan McGee. It was well before he was famous and I don’t want to falsely accuse him of having had a ponytail.

■ Spark Theatre, George Street, 14 Aug (with Liam McIlvanney), 9.45pm, £12 (£10).

ALAN PARKS The Amazing Snakeheads in 2014

Dingwalls.

The dressing room is chaos.

Too many drugs, too many people, too many bottles of Buckfast.

Too many cracks beginning to show.

Dale, William, Jordy.

Hyped up. Angry.

There’s a phrase, ‘like catching lightning in a bottle’.

That’s what they did that night.

It was genuinely shocking.

I’ve never seen or heard a band perform like it.

Some unholy trinity of Link Wray, The Birthday Party and someone playing a James King & The Lonewolves record in another room.

Rock and Roll, maybe something more than that.

Two days later William broke his leg.

The dominos started to fall.

The cracks got wider.

They never played together again.

■ 19 Aug (with Claire Askew), 8.30pm, £8 (£6).

All events at Charlotte Square Gardens unless stated, 0345 373 5888.

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YOUNG ADULT FICTION BOOKS

BR I GH T SPAR KS In Edinburgh this August, Young Adult fiction events feature heroin addiction, mental health and scary dolls.

Katharine Gemmell tracks a bunch of authors from this burgeoning genre who are heading to the Book Festival

Y

oung Adult fiction is the ultimate crossover category. While it’s intended for people below the age of 18, over half of its readers are actually older. This publishing category has become increasingly lucrative over the past few years and, far from the days of cheesy romances, it finds itself with a mass of skilful writers who tackle real issues (mental health, sexuality, drug addiction) that young people are facing now. The category is also leading the way for diversity in literature with a broad representation of race, class and gender being a defining feature of contemporary YA fiction.

This year the Book Festival has appearances and events from a number of big names in the Young Adult publishing category. Holly Bourne, best-selling British author of The Spinster Club series discusses her new book, Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes?. Her works deal with topics from feminism to mental health, while Juno Dawson (novelist, Stonewall activist and proponent for LGBTQ+ representation in literature) talks about her new publication Clean, an honest portrayal of a girl battling with a heroin addiction.

Another writer who deals with drug dependency in his work is the legendary Melvin Burgess. Known as a pioneer of Young Adult Fiction, Burgess is a Carnegie Medal-winning author and has over 20 novels under his belt. His first book, 1996’s Junk (its US title was Smack), encouraged literature for list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 53

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BOOKS YOUNG ADULT FICTION

young people to focus on hard-hitting, difficult issues and, with its focus on hooked teenagers, was highly controversial at the time. Brian Conaghan also dealt with tough subject matter in his 2014 novel When Mr Dog Bites (featuring a lad with Tourette’s), while his new book, The Weight of a Thousand Feathers, portrays a boy who has to look after his sick mum while simultaneously trying to be a regular teenager.

Fans of YA fantasy fiction will be pleased with appearances from Marcus Sedgwick, author of the Raven Mysteries, and the Elf Girl & Raven Boy series, and proud owner of many literary prizes. Here, he presents his new title, The Monsters We Deserve, a dark read about imagination. They will also be excited by an event with Alice Broadway, one of the bestselling YA writers of 2017, who earlier this year released Spark, the sequel to her successful, female-led fantasy Ink. This time, the main character Leora questions her own identity and sense of belonging.

Another interesting offering in the programme comes from Lin Man-Chiu, a best-selling Taiwanese children’s author, whose work The Ventriloquist’s Daughter is a scary piece about a nightmarish doll. And Cathy Forde, writer of the much-loved novel Fat Boy Swim, the story of an overweight child who overcomes bullies, will chat about that book being adapted into a musical theatre piece by Visible Fictions. As an added treat, scenes and musical numbers from it will also be performed.

Alice Broadway and LJ MacWhirter, 11 Aug, 6.30pm, £5.

Lin Man-Chiu and Paul Magrs, 13 Aug, 6.15pm, £5.

Holly Bourne and Cat Clarke, Spark Theatre, George Street, 16 Aug, 5.30pm, £5.

Juno Dawson, Spark Theatre, George Street, 17 Aug, 5.30pm, £5.

Brian Conaghan and Karmele Jaio, 19 Aug, 5pm, £8 (£6).

Melvin Burgess and Steven Camden, 22 Aug, 5.45pm, £5.

Cathy Forde, 24 Aug, 6.30pm, £8 (£6).

Marcus Sedgwick and Frances Hardinge, 26 Aug, 11am, £5.

■ All events at Charlotte Square Gardens unless stated, 0345 373 5888.

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HIGHLIGHTS BOOKS

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS The distinguished calm of Charlotte Square Gardens is split asunder by a storm of opinions from writers who have variously survived incarceration, taken on misogyny, faced off with religion and battled with cancer NGUGI WA THIONG’O While he was being held in prison for a year during the 1970s, this acclaimed Kenyan writer penned Devil on the Cross, the novel many consider to be his masterpiece. His recently published memoirs recall that traumatic period of isolation and separation. 11 Aug, 6.45pm, £12 (£10).

some words to exchange about the state of heavy metal today. 18 Aug, 8.30pm, £12 (£10).

ELVIS MCGONAGALL & MURRAY LACHLAN YOUNG Part of the Babble On spoken word strand, two masters from the satirical side of the poetry tracks come together for an event that will ask, in the words of Murray Lachlan Young, ‘How Freakin’ Zeitgeist Are You?’. 19 Aug, 3.30pm, £12 (£10).

ALI SMITH WITH NICOLA STURGEON At the halfway point of her four-part ‘seasons’ series, this seems like a very good time for the Invernessborn, Cambridge-based author to reflect on Autumn and Winter with the brighter Spring and Summer still to come. The country’s First Minister asks the question. 20 Aug, 5pm, £12 (£10).

Julia Donaldson

ROSE MCGOWAN WITH AFUA HIRSCH In conversation with journalist Hirsch, McGowan will discuss her part in letting the world know about the abusive horror that can exist when powerful men believe they are effectively untouchable. 13 Aug, 3.15pm, £12 (£10).

THE LAST POETS Having clearly enjoyed the Edinburgh Book Festival experience as much as their audience did in 2017, The Last Poets crew return immediately to perform tracks from their first album in two decades. 23 Aug, 8.30pm, £12 (£10).

Rose McGowan

Murray Lachlan Young

JULIA DONALDSON & LYDIA MONKS Illustrator Lydia Monks and The Gruffalo writer Julia Donaldson come our way to have a chat about their latest collaborative publication, The Girl, the Bear and the Magic Shoes, and consider exactly just what it takes to make the perfect picture book for those small people. 25 Aug, 3.15pm, £5.

KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD Word on the street is that his sixvolume autobiographical fiction, the somewhat controversially entitled My Struggle, is owned by one in ten people in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Norway homeland (a quick statistical check suggests that this amounts to about half a million individuals: impressive or what?) and now he brings that mammoth project to a conclusion with the rather ideally named The End. Having launched the book in 2012 playing one of the festival’s smaller rooms, Knausgaard is now a headline act. What, we are all wondering, does he turn his literary attention to now? 25 Aug, 5pm, £12 (£10).

All events at Charlotte Square Gardens, 0345 373 5888

RICHARD DAWKINS Here’s a man who’s not short of an opinion or two, most of which are certain to upset someone of a religious bent. Ruth Wishart chairs. 14 Aug, 3.15pm, £12 (£10).

DAG SOLSTAD A three-time winner of the Norwegian Critics Prize, Solstad pops in with a new translated novel. Originally published back home in 1999, T Singer revolves around love and solitude in a small Scandinavian town.

15 Aug, 5.45pm, £12 (£10).

BRUCE DICKINSON The chap who put the iron into Iron Maiden has fought off cancer, loves a bit of fencing (the sword kind) and is something of an aviation entrepreneur. And he might have

Ngugi wa Thiong’o

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Whyte & Mackayy sponsors Underbelly comedy at the Fringe 2018.

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FRINGE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL F RINGE 3–27 AUG

NATALIE PALAMIDES Last year was a triumph for Pittsburgh’s Natalie Palamides as she broke into the Fringe pack to snap up the Best Newcomer Award. Her victorious hour, Laid, was a show about maternal instincts and the delicate nature of life, and starred an array of eggs. For this year’s hour, Palamides becomes the eponymous Nate, a man who is desperate to respect women but can’t help being just another regular guy.

Comparisons will no doubt be made with Zoë Coombs Marr who transformed herself into the sad misogynistic loser Dave in 2016, but Palamides will bring a distinctive stamp onto the gender debate in her latest show to be directed by Doctor Brown.

■ Natalie Palamides: Nate, Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–26 Aug (not 13), 6pm, £11–£13 (£10–£12).

Previews 1–3 Aug, £7.

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LOLLY COMEDY | FRINGE

TIMES A LOLLY After two acclaimed character comedy shows, Lolly Adefope is on the brink of global fame. She tells Yasmin Sulaiman that tapping into bad dates and awful job interviews helps her create hilarity

I

t’s rare that a comedian is missed from the throng after just two years at the Fringe.

But after a storming 2015 and 2016, Lolly Adefope was a noticeable absence last August. That’s not to say life’s been quiet for the character comedian. On the contrary, part of the reason for this Edinburgh absence was due to her filming a Hollywood action comedy, The Spy Who Dumped Me, in Budapest with an all-star cast that included Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan and Gillian Anderson. Plus, she’s also in Miracle Workers, a new sitcom set in heaven starring Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi, and due to air on American cable channel TBS this autumn.

But for now, she’s heading back to Scotland’s capital with Lolly 3, another hour of silly voices, exaggerated characters and pointed social observations. ‘I watched quite a lot of Catherine Tate when I was younger,’ she tells me over the phone. ‘I’ve always been able to do accents. I have this weird thing where I just speak in a northern accent quite naturally even though I’m not from the north: I just have this weird affinity for accents.’

Lolly’s 2015 debut, framed around an open-mic night, was a great showcase for her varied character skills, but for most comedy fans it was Lolly 2 that really put her on the map. Built around a gameshow host, that hour skewered critics who claimed she doesn’t talk about race enough, as well as those who said she talked about race too much. It was a powerful and witty takedown that got a consistently good reaction from Fringe comedy fans in 2016, a year that, let’s face it, was a turning point for the institutional manifestation of racism in the UK. ‘I think I noticed a lot more people of colour in the audience compared to my other shows,’ Lolly says of that year. ‘I’m always quite worried about coming across preachy if I mention anything where it’s not just completely jokes. But I felt like people were really on board with it; I never felt there was a night where people were like “what is

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ROLE WITH IT Here’s a further quintet of funny females in character mode

BRYONY TWYDLE Presenting a gaggle of creations, Twydle (below) introduces us to an Eton schoolboy, an embittered shopping channel host and a driving-awareness instructor.

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–27 Aug (not 15), 8.30pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9).

Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.50.

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PHOTOS: MATT CROCKETT

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Whyte & Mackay sponsors Underbelly comedy at the Fringe 2018.

8.

she talking about?” I think it’s because the issues I was discussing were quite clear. I was really happy with it and people came up to me after and mentioned that they wouldn’t normally see shows like that. I felt like I was doing something new.’

This year’s offering, Lolly 3, is still in development, but there are a few details she can share. ‘At the moment, the show is a documentary, so it’s a character show finding out who the real Lolly Adefope is, from those who knew her best. So I play people I’m related to and people I’ve worked with in the past, in the style of one of those high-budget Netflix docs but as a stage version. It’s exploring comedy itself and my decision to be a character comedian.’

That’s a decision that was made, conveniently, after a visit to Edinburgh and a trip to see sketch group Sheeps. ‘I looked up where they were performing and it was at [former comedy club] The Invisible Dot, so I was like “OK, this is the place where people that I like perform”. I did an internship there and then realised I wanted to perform and so started doing open-mic gigs in London.’

When Adefope was younger, she knew she wanted to do comedy of some kind, and going to Edinburgh helped her realise she had choices.

‘In my head, comedy was mainly stand-up, but I never felt comfortable with that. Edinburgh made me realise there was a way to do comedy without feeling completely vulnerable. Being used to doing silly voices and accents all the time, the comedy lent itself to that a bit better. I speak in different accents quite a lot, annoyingly; I don’t really have a sense of what my stand-up persona would be, but I knew I could do characters.

It’s a slightly less scary version of doing stand-up.’

The inspiration for those characters comes from varied sources. ‘It’ll either be people that I know or heard about or something I’ve seen on TV or on Twitter. They tend to start off with a character trait that I find annoying: it might be something that I’ve noticed in myself. I’ll try and match that with a voice that isn’t mine and then make it something you can laugh at.’

If you’ve ever been on a bad date or had a terrible audition or job interview, you’ll notice a searing honesty in Lolly’s sketches. ‘Definitely the dating ones are all based on real-life experiences,’ she laughs. ‘It’s trying to turn something quite depressing into something you can laugh at; otherwise it’s just too sad to bear. All of the dating bits and the audition bits are based on true experiences. It works better to use the truth of it.’ Here’s to more truthful comedy from Lolly Adefope in 2018.

Lolly Adefope: Lolly 3, Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–26 Aug (not 14), 5.45pm, £10–£12 (£9–£11).

Previews 1–3 Aug, £8.

SUSAN HARRISON ‘Inspired by sadness and performed with joy’, Harrison insists that her new show will be ‘funnier than it sounds’. Judging by her track record of committed character work, this will definitely be one to catch. Voodoo Rooms, West Register Street, 0131 226 0000, 4–25 Aug (not 13), 2pm, free (donations).

MARNY GODDEN Whether she’s donning a moustache or showing off just one tooth, this former Grandees member is one of the more unique character acts in the game. This time around, she’s offering a small insight into the inspirations behind her concoctions. Heroes @ The Hive, Niddry Street, 0131 226 0000, 3–27 Aug (not 8, 15, 22), 6.20pm, £5 in advance or donations at the venue.

ANDREA SPISTO This poet and theatre-maker transforms into Miss Venezuela for a show which explores the meaning of womanhood. Just the Tonic at The Mash House, Guthrie Street, 0330 220 1212, 2–26 Aug (not 13), 10.10pm, £7 in advance or donations at the venue.

EMMA SIDI Another one of those future stars you get these days, Sidi shows off the Faces of Grace.

There will most likely be dancing.

Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–26 Aug (not 25), 8.30pm, £7.50–£10 (£7–£9).

Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.

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CanadaHub a program of work from coast to coast

Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hall 41A S Clerk St 0131 560 1581

1 - 26 AUGUST Presenters of the award-winning production of Mouthpiece (Stage Award), Fringe First winners Old Stock, Foreign Radical, and Counting Sheep. canadahubfringe.com #canadahubfringe

Cunning Concepts & Creations present an original Native Earth Performing Arts production in association with Summerhall

Huff

a raw and powerful story of Indigenous resilience

QuipTake, Pandemic Theatre, and The Theatre Centre present in association with Summerhall

Daughter a wickedly humourous confrontation of toxic masculinity

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Ming Hon presents in association with Summerhall

Chase Scenes

3 women run for their lives in this absurd, non-stop action-comedy-thriller romp

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop presents in association with Summerhall

Famous Puppet Death Scenes an unrelenting massacre of little tiny people

National Theatre of Scotland, Théâtre PÀP and Hôtel-Motel present in association with Summerhall

First Snow/ Première neige the past, present and possible futures collide in an unlikely family reunion in Québec

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FRINGE | COMEDY DISABLED COMEDIANS

‘We’re happy to call each other blinkies and wheelies’ Being disabled hasn’t prevented a number of Fringe comedians from striving towards the top. Jay Richardson talks to them about tackling misconceptions, dealing with ‘normos’ and getting more political

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Bristo Square.

ee Ridley has never experienced a heckle. ‘But I do have comebacks stored just in case. I’m dying to use them one day.’ The recently-crowned Britain’s Got Talent winner, better known as Lost Voice Guy, speaks with a synthesiser on a tablet after cerebral palsy robbed him of speech as a child. He’s used to being afforded ‘special’ treatment but with Inspiration Porn, the Geordie rejects the label of a triumph-against-theodds role model. ‘I’ve gotten used to it and it’s not particularly something I’ve asked to be,’ he says. ‘But it comes with the territory. I take the piss out of it in my show but I’m also getting comfortable with it. If it helps other people, then it’s a good thing.’

Jamie MacDonald has never faced audience abuse either. But he’s in no rush. ‘That sounds like a call to arms,’ the blind comic laughs. A self-described ‘blinky’, he argues that most disabled people have developed a pretty robust sense of humour anyway. ‘There’s stuff that we find quite amusing amongst ourselves. But say it to a roomful of “normos” and they think it’s outrageously funny because it’s so naughty and taboo,’ the Glaswegian observes. ‘But that’s only because of their arbitrary constructions. We’re happy to call each other “blinkies” and “wheelies”.’

Becoming a stand-up was partly about ‘owning’ his sight loss. ‘People treat you funny,’ he says. ‘Rightly or wrongly, assumptions are made and that fucks you up a little bit sometimes. When I talk about it on stage, people get to see who you really are, as opposed to assuming.’

That’s certainly one of the primary motivations for Laurence Clark’s latest hour, An Irresponsible Father’s Guide to Parenting, in which the CP-suffering comic confronts the online trolls who saw his BBC One documentary, We Won’t Drop the Baby, and thought they ought to tell him why he and his wife weren’t fit to raise children. ‘It’s so personal and did get to me a little bit,’ Clark admits. ‘Going through life, we don’t really think about how we’re perceived by the general public. But that gave me a little insight. And a whole load of misconceptions that I could build my show around.’

Routines about children (with that don’t-they-say-the-funniest-things cliché) invariably risk cynicism. But Clark’s kids were desperate to feature in his hour. ‘I struggled for ages to find a way to involve them that didn’t feel exploitative or just added on,’ he explains. ‘So I’ve picked out some of the social media comments and got the kids to read them out loud on video, saying whether they think they reflect our day-to-day lives.’ Parenting with a disability also features in his fellow Scouser Chris McCausland’s multi-faceted show, Speaky Blinder. It’s a relatable topic for many but with an oblique angle. ‘Growing up, I loved Eddie Izzard’s scattergun comedy,’

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FRINGE | COMEDY DISABLED COMEDIANS

PHOTO: AEMEN SUKKAR PHOTO: STEVE ULLATHORNE

>> Visit our Surprisinglyy Smooth Fringe nge Bar at Underbelly, erbelly, Bristo Square. are.

PHOTO: STEVE ULLATHORNE

WE’LL MAKE AN EXCEPTION IN YOUR CASE.

he recalls. ‘And I really liked the way he talked about transvestitism. He kept it to the bare minimum, left them time to be interested rather than hammering them over the head with it and boring them by becoming predictable. So that’s the approach I’ve chosen, keeping the blind jokes to a minimum so they’re still surprising.’

Like all of those interviewed (who unite in describing Edinburgh as an accessibility nightmare for those with mobility and sobriety issues, thanks to ancient architecture, cobbles and endless hills, as well as the disgraceful reluctance of some taxis to pick up wheelchair users), McCausland would love to be able to perform an hour without referencing his disability. Yet even after appearing on Live at the Apollo, he realises there’s still some way to go. ‘When I get shown up to the microphone, I have to break that ice because some are still thinking “fucking hell, what have we got here”?’

Rosie Jones agrees that ‘we’re not there yet. We have to address the disabled elephant in the room, as I say in one of my jokes, because people see and hear me and can’t help but feel a little awkward. My aim is to get over that awkwardness and say I’m not disabled. I’m just Rosie.’

Even so, for her first full-length hour, Jones is imagining the alternative life she might have led if complications at birth hadn’t led to her developing CP. ‘Would I be in comedy if I were able-bodied?’ she wonders. ‘Possibly not. I do love to think about where she is. Although I think about her a lot, it doesn’t feel like her’s was ever meant to be my life. There have been times where I’ve wanted to be able-bodied. But my disability made me stronger. And right now, I’m happy and a better person for it. We’re all evolving and coming to terms with who we are. By next year I might be a much worse person.’

Granted licence to ‘say things fellow comedians could never dare, it’s fun to see if I can shock. But I don’t take it for granted,’ she clarifies. ‘Disability needs to be laughed at to make it more approachable.’ She feels nagging pressure to ‘represent and to pave the way for younger, disabled comics. That shouldn’t keep me awake at night but it does.’

Just appearing on stage becomes a campaigning, if not a political act, Clark suggests, ‘because you’re giving audiences perspectives they might not have heard before’. Amidst more general material, MacDonald is criticising the disability allowance directly ‘not in the sense that I feel like a crusader or voicepiece, but because it really fucked me off that I had to go in and compete in what was essentially a disability gameshow, being asked questions to get points. OK, so being registered blind is the bonus ball but the whole thing was pretty sketchy. People with autism are absolutely shafted. Audiences have been coming up afterwards and explaining to me the trouble they or their d.’ family have been through. It’s really bad.’ owing more Similarly, Ridley finds himself growing nt seems to political by accident. ‘The government want to help me write my jokes. I had a point to prove when I began stand-up comedy. But now I m too.’ feel I have a responsibility and platform McCausland admits that he’s pushedd back, if ould write only psychologically. ‘I realised I could eing blind. loads of really funny things about being But I wanted to make people forget about it. All I’ve ever wanted is to compete in the mainstream rking with. and be as good as the comics I’m working Nothing to do with ticking boxes.’

Chris McCausland: Speaky Blinder, 0 0395, 4–26 Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 –£10). Previews 1–3 Aug (not 13), 6.35pm, £10–£12 (£8–£10).

Aug, £6.50. mbly Rooms, George Jamie MacDonald: Blinkered, Assembly not 11), 8.25pm, Street, 0131 623 3030, 4–26 Aug (not ews 2 & 3 Aug, £7. £10.50–£11.50 (£8.50–£9.50). Previews ather’s Guide to Laurence Clark: An Irresponsible Father’s e Theatre, George Parenting, Assembly George Square not 14), 5.40pm, Square, 0131 623 3030, 4–26 Aug (not £10–£12 (£9–£11). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £6. ilded Balloon Teviot, Lost Voice Guy: Inspiration Porn, Gilded 6 Aug (not 13), Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 4–26 4pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9). Previews 1–3 Aug, £6. sance Courtyard, Rosie Jones: Fifteen Minutes, Pleasance ug (not 13), Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–26 Aug ews 1–3 Aug, £6.

8.30pm, £7.50–£10 (£6.50–£9). Previews

Disable and willing: (previous page) Lost Voice Guy; (from top to bottom) Jamie MacDonald, Chris McCausland, Rosie Jones, Laurence Clark

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+++++ BRITISH THEATRE GUIDE

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XXXXXX COMEDY | FRINGE SCOTTISH COMEDIANS COMEDY | FRINGE PHOT O: ST E VE UL LATH ORNE

T PHO B O: RO ERTO IUTI

RICC

JUST JOCKING Scotland’s reputation for churning out quality comedians will only continue if the latest raft of stand-ups is anything to go by. Here, an octet of them sell us their Fringe show in a mere 25 words

CHRISTOPHER MACARTHUR-BOYD It’s not Scottish to big yourself up. You’re raised to ‘stop showing off!’ I personally find selfpromotion an unattractive quality. Come if you do too. Christopher Macarthur-Boyd: Home Sweet Home, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 4–26 Aug (not 13), 10.15pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9). Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.

ASHLEY STORRIE A heaping pile of hilarity, with a chewy centre of self-depreciation that makes you feel better about your own bad decisions. You’re welcome. Ashley Storrie: Adulting, Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, West Nicolson Street, 0131 667 7533, 2–26 Aug, 8pm, free (donations).

GARETH WAUGH

JAMIE DALGLEISH Edinburgh in August isn’t the ‘real’ Scotland. I will (not literally) take you on a trip through life’s hilarity in one of Glasgow’s toughest areas. Jamie Dalgleish: From Buckfast to Middle ddle Class, The Stand 4, 0131 558 9005, 3–26 Aug (not 13), 4.45pm, £8 (£7). Preview 1 Aug, g, £7 (£6).

JAY LAFFERTY

OTO

R PH PHY

GRA

My primary teacher nailed it: ‘loves to distract others with constant chatter’. It’s called the gift of the gab.

Unfortunately some gifts just can’t be returned. Jay Lafferty: Wheesht!, Gilded Balloon Teviot, t,

With no USP Richard Brown relies on jokes Not dead relatives No emotional Manipulation found here We all die alone lone Richard Brown: own: You Are Nott My Audience, The Coffee House, se, High Street, 0131 226 0026, 2–26 Aug (not 13), ), 7.30pm, free e (donations).

APIE

My fantastically odd new show sees me become the sexy, glamorous comedienne I’ve always secretly (maybe) been. Offbeat wit exploring

Scottish, planet-travelling comedian has been single for a decade. Enjoy a hysterical show about a man putting himself out there on a global scale. Chris Henry: Around the World in 80 Dates, Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–27 Aug (not 15), 8.10pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9). Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.50.

RICHARD BROWN

TO: N

ELEANOR MORTON

CHRIS HENRY

Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 4–27 Aug (not 20), 6.30pm, £10 (£9). Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.

PHO

Most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done? Mine’s worse. Let me share it with you. Hip hopper.

Underachiever. Backpacker. Stories to make you go ‘oh boy . . . ’ Gareth Waugh: Oh Boy!, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 4–26 Aug, 3pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9). Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.

sexism and gender. Eleanor Morton: Great Title, Glamorous Photo, The Stand 4, 0131 558 9005, 3–25 Aug (not 13, 20), 12.05pm, £9 (£8). Preview 1 Aug, £8 (£7).

Scots wha ha-ha: (from far right, clockwise) Jamie Dalgleish, Richard Brown, Chris Henry, Christopher Macarthur-Boyd, Ashley Storrie, Gareth Waugh, Jay Lafferty, Eleanor Morton

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FRINGE | COMEDY DYLAN MORAN

‘I’m organising the squirrels’ Dylan Moran is back with another gifted, semi-surrealistic stand-up show.

Brian Donaldson meets him to discuss the allure of Edinburgh and the importance of not being too earnest

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YOU’LL BE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BAR. Whyte & Mackay ackay sponsors Underbelly comedy at the Fringe 2018.

8.

ffable and chatty, Dylan Moran in the flesh is far from the curmudgeonly character he once portrayed over three series of Channel 4 sitcom Black Books. Apologising for taking us down some ‘philosophical rabbit holes’, he’s sipping Americanos and water, and doodling frequently on his notepad as we chat in a café in Edinburgh, the city he has called home for over two decades. It’s the place where he scored glory in 1996 by becoming, at the age of 24, the youngest winner of the Perrier Award.

Newspapers the following day showed a tired and emotional Moran slumped with his prize, cementing another of his public tropes: that of the artistic Irishman who takes a drink. These days, he certainly seems content and relaxed in his own skin, even if the weight of the world is trying to land itself on his shoulders.

‘I find it easier than I did 25 years ago, because I don’t care,’ he suggests when asked whether he feels blue about the state of the planet as he wakes up of a morning. ‘That’s the gift that age gives you. You learn that you cannot care. There is a level of care that you can’t sustain, and people who say that you are diminishing your humanity if you switch off are wrong. That is my contention.’

Whether he really is so distant towards the current domestic and global crises that constantly swirl around our heads might be open to debate. Certainly his humour has long preferred to focus on giddy imagery, semi-surrealist meanderings and flights of evocative phrasing that are way beyond the wildest dreams of his competitors in the field.

As Moran prepares to deliver Dr Cosmos across various venues in the capital, he pays little heed to those who might downplay the Edinburgh Festival.

After all, this month-long jamboree ultimately proved a boon to his career which led to movie roles in the likes of Calvary and Shaun of the Dead, plus memorable TV roles such as Bernard Black in Black Books and Ian Lyons in How Do You Want Me?. ‘This is the comedy stream of the world and all the salmon come here to mosh and die. It’s an incredible phenomenon; you can’t say it’s good or it’s bad: it’s like talking about a nebula or cluster of stars. It’s just a huge and incredible thing. How can you do anything other than marvel that it happens every year?’

A gifted writer and deep thinker, Moran nevertheless insists that profundity is not what he’s here to offer.

‘I want people to come in and have a great time and go home feeling better. I’m not going to ask people to understand anything too complicated or anything that I feel can’t be understood. A lot of it is about pulling the squirrels out of the bag and giving them a name or a number. I’m organising the squirrels.’

Dylan Moran: Dr Cosmos, The Stand New Town Theatre, George Street, 0131 558 9005, 14 Aug, 7.20pm; The Stand, York Place, 0131 558 9005, 15–19 Aug, 6.30pm; Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre, Rose Street, 0131 622 6552, 22–26 Aug, 7.30pm; Assembly Hall, Mound Place, 0131 623 3030, 23–25 Aug, 9.10pm.

All shows £17.50.

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Stu And Garry’s Fringe Improv Show

The One-Thirty Comedy Cabaret

3-26 Aug | £6 | 1:30pm | 14+

3-11 Aug | £5 | 1:35pm | 14+

The Five Thirty

Cabaret

STAND 1 THE STAND COMEDY CLUB

THE BEST OF NORTHERN

3-26 Aug | £6 | 5:30pm | 14+

25 Aug | £10/£9 | 1:35pm | 14+

STAND 1 THE STAND COMEDY CLUB

The Best Of Irish Comedy

THE BEST OF

3-26 Aug | £12/£10 | 6:35pm | 16+

3-26 (Not Mon-Wed) | £4 | 10:30pm | 18+

The Best Of SCOTTISH Comedy

3-26 Aug | £15/£13 | 8:20pm | 16+

STAND 3 THE STAND COMEDY CLUB

3-25 (Fri & Sat Only) | £15/£13 | 18+ 3-25 Aug (Fri & Sat Only) | £15/£13 | 11:45pm | 18+

STAND 1 THE STAND COMEDY CLUB

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FRINGE | DANCE CIRQUE ALFONSE

PHOTO: LYNN POULIN

E C N A D E G FRIN

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CIRQUE ALFONSE DANCE | FRINGE

CROSS PURPOSES Joining their congregation to worship at the shrine of Cirque Alfonse, Mark Fisher has a religious vision when Tabarnak turns out to be more than the Quebec company intended

PHOTO: GUILLAUME MORIN

PHOTO: ALEXANDRE GALLIEZ

PHOTO: AUDRIC GAGNON

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ay what you like about Jesus, but he never did acrobatics on the cross.

Nor, for that matter, did the fallen angels tumble from heaven on the end of a rope. And I bet you’ve never seen a priest spinning two chain censers at high velocity into the air. In the world of Quebec’s Cirque Alfonse, however, this is all part of the ecclesiastical show. That and a bishop blowing up a condom to form a mitre, a human tower mirroring the shape of a stained-glass window, and a baptism that’s not far off water torture.

Correction: this is what I believe I saw in the company’s Tabarnak on its recent run in Paris.

Belief is a fickle thing, however, and perhaps I was suffering from the warped vision of a lapsed Catholic. Was I just seeing things? If so, I’m not the only one. People remark on such symbolism all the time, says founder member Antoine Carabinier Lépine, but half of it was accidental. ‘It’s funny because there are so many pictures that we didn’t think about when we were creating it,’ he says, the morning after the show. ‘There’s a lot of opportunity for the audience to create their own pictures. But, for sure, it’s fascinating how many pictures you can make from the church because there are so many symbols.’

With its latest homespun spectacle of big beards and bigger feats of gymnastic daring, the company that brought us the ‘electro trad cabaret’ of Barbu in 2015 has switched tone for

a slow-burning service of French-Canadian folk and community bonding. The religious theme is less to do with god than the church’s cultural role within this province. ‘In Quebec, the church used to be really strong,’ says Carabinier Lépine who performs alongside his partner, a sister and extended family in the close-knit company. ‘It’s still a big symbol, but now church halls are used for bingo, wrestling matches and bazaars, while the main church spaces are empty.’

Careful to avoid cultural caricature, the show alludes to such Canadian essentials as snow shoes, roller skates and hockey sticks as the scene moves from basement jumble sale to social barn dance.

‘We are atheist and didn’t grow up with the church apart from going to Mass at Christmas, but we still feel that Quebec was strongly religious before,’ Carabinier Lépine says. ‘In every small village, the church was the centre point. The show is about what makes people feel good to be together and to sing together.

Normally in circus shows, you have solos so you can rest, but this is a group act with all of us together. It’s more tiring because you don’t have any breaks, but it’s a nice group feeling that keeps us in the same mood and matches the theme of bringing people together.’

There is one provocation, however. The word ‘tabarnak’ in Quebecois French is the rudest of the rude. A literal translation is merely ‘tabernacle’ (the box that contains the Eucharist), but on the streets of Montreal, where

swearing draws on Catholic liturgy, it is like the c-word and f-word combined. ‘It’s the worst swear word you can say in Quebec,’ Carabinier Lépine laughs. ‘We thought it’d be nice to have a word that represented Quebec and the church at the same time.’

It says something for Cirque Alfonse’s innocent intent that Tabarnak has skirted controversy. The show even made its debut in a local church, aided by the priest. ‘He wasn’t offended but his superior was worried about it.

The most offensive thing is the title. We’re not trashing religion. At the end, everyone feels together whatever religion you are.’

What’s especially attractive about the company is their lack of glamour. When the show starts they’re lolling around on stage doing their knitting. They catch the audience’s eye and make no pretence at showbiz mystery.

Hirsute and stocky (if uncommonly muscular) they are quite unlike the svelte performers of glitzier circuses. Recognising fellow human beings, we root for them all the more.

‘We try to be ourselves,’ says Carabinier Lépine. ‘We don’t play roles. We’re not actors, we’re acrobats. It feels more natural to be ourselves. We’re talking about Quebec people: we are what we are.’

Cirque Alfonse: Tabarnak, Underbelly’s Circus Hub, The Meadows, 0131 510 0395, 4–25 Aug (not 8, 13, 20), 7pm, £17.50–£19.50 (£16.50–£18.50).

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FRINGE | DANCE THE TROTH

FIVE SOLO SHOWS

IT’S NOT OVER YET . . .

AND HOW TO SURVIVE THE FUTURE

DANCE AKADEMI When Gary Clarke embarked on The Troth, he quickly learned some valuable history lessons. Donald Hutera hears how the choreographer charmed audiences in India

C

horeographer Gary Clarke is a storyteller whose chief tools of the trade are dance and theatre.

He’s been garlanded for his efforts too, receiving both a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award and a UK Theatre Award on the back of his production COAL, a stirring entertainment based on the miners’ strikes of the mid-‘80s.

It was the success of COAL that led directly to Clarke’s invitation to create a show by the progressive, London-based South Asian dance organisation Akademi. ‘Mira [Kaushik, Akademi’s director] was struck by my ability to tell a story through dance,’ he says, ‘especially as she was looking for someone who could work with a story close to her heart.’

The Troth is a fictional tale of love and self-sacrifice set during World War I. Based on a classic Hindi short story dating from 1915, in Clarke and company’s skilful hands it serves as the springboard for a poignant romance between a Sikh soldier and a woman (played by 2015’s BBC Young Dancer finalist Vidya Patel) who will remain out of his reach.

Significantly, the show’s historical foundation lies in an unjustly neglected and brutal fact: of the more than one million Indian soldiers who served in the Allied Forces 100 years ago, an estimated 60,000 lost their lives. ‘When Mira first approached me, I was confused,’ Clarke admits. ‘I knew so little about Indian culture, World War I or South Asian dance.’

Intensive meetings with experts in Indian literature, dance and warfare eventually waylaid his qualms, allowing Clarke to put his own stamp on sensitive material. He’s gone from being ‘incredibly nervous’ to ‘incredibly proud,’ mentioning audiences in India – where the show has already toured – chanting and clapping. ‘I was told “Gary, you captured the heart of India”. As a white British male, I didn’t expect that.’

The Troth, Army @ The Fringe: Summerhall, East Claremont Street, 0131 580 1581, 11–25 Aug (not 12 & 13, 19 & 20), 8.30pm, £12 (£10). Preview 10 Aug, £10 (£8).

Blending imagery and movement, Tess Letham (pictured) takes a journey through a collection of scenes that are by turn humorous, tragic and alluring, and all derived from major life events.

Dance Base, Grassmarket, 0131 225 5525, 7–12 Aug, 3.20pm, £13 (£11).

Previews 3–5 Aug, £11 (£9).

THE ARTIST What to do when the muse has disappeared? This one-man physical theatre and contemporary circus show taps into that overwhelming artistic fear.

Assembly Roxy, Roxburgh Place, 0131 623 3030, 3–27 Aug (not 14), 4.20pm, £12–£13 (£10–£11). Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £9.

THE KINKENS This one-woman tragi-comedy is the tale of ‘an idiot attempting to answer the unanswerable’. Just the Tonic at The Caves, Cowgate, 0330 220 1212, 2–26 Aug (not 13), 11.30am, £5 in advance or donations at the venue.

FOLDING ECHOES Joseph Lee Wai-Nang’s show is as much about audience perceptions as it is about a performer’s intentions. Lines are explored and spaces are opened up. Dance Base, Grassmarket, 0131 225 5525, 15–26 Aug (not 20), 6pm, £13 (£11). Preview 14 Aug, £11 (£9).

5 DAYS OF FALLING The inability of men to express their emotions is at the core of this piece, as a young man’s journey into isolation shines a light on the taboo subject of male suicide. ZOO Charteris, Pleasance, 0131 662 6892, 19–26 Aug, 3.40pm, £10 (£9).

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BRITAIN’S BIGGEST THEATRE-CIRCUS SPECTACULAR! +++++

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‘Thrilling, lling death-defying death-defying, glorio glorious’

‘Great for or kids and even better for adults!’

DAILY EXPRESS

THE SUN

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‘Heart-stoppingly good fun’

‘A NutriBullet ullet of contemporary circus!’

TIME OUT

THE TIMES

ZIPPOS PRESENTS

R E A L

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PLUS SOME 1.30PM MATINEES 150

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11TH YEAR! THE ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH SHOW!

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‘Achingly funny.

Worth seeing again and again.’

Mail on Sunday

Time Out Critics’ Choice

1 – 26 AUGUST, 6PM

plus 11.30pm late show on 12 Aug

www.pleasance.co.uk | 0131 556 6550

Original artwork design: BoomEnts.com.

#####

‘Had me weeping with laughter… you absolutely have to go.’

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FRINGE | KIDS DICK & DOM

S D I K E G N I R F

CHAOS THEORY

After Trevor & Simon and Ant & Dec, Dick & Dom were the next cheeky-chappie kids’ TV double act. Ahead of their Edinburgh debut, the pair chat to Jay Richardson about health and safety, meeting their heroes and those celebs who couldn’t handle the gunge

C

hildren’s TV legends Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood, better known as Dick & Dom, are making their Edinburgh Fringe debut.

The BAFTA-winning show Dick & Dom in da Bungalow was a huge hit on CBBC in the noughties and though they’ve scarcely been off television since, the pair still found time to play King Arthur and Patsy in Monty Python musical Spamalot. Channelling their chaos into a live stage show about winning the last fish finger, they’re promising as much mischief and mayhem as ever . . .

What brings you to the Fringe?

Dick: It’s something we’ve always dreamed about and then the

When you’re recording, you never see or meet your audience. Doing this, you get instant gratification and feedback. It’s fantastic.

Dick: How did you know about our itches?

How has your relationship lasted 22 years?

Dom: Blackmail. No, it’s a genuine friendship. If you respect each other’s

wants, needs and differences of opinion, make each other laugh and like being in each other’s company, then it’ll work. You can’t manufacture that. Many have tried but it doesn’t work unless it happens naturally.

opportunity came up. So why not?

In da Bungalow was manic. With the greatest of respect, do you still throw yourself into your shows as hard?

Dom: I would hope there is great respect in that. Obviously, we’re older

Do you enjoy mixing live shows with television? Does it scratch a different itch?

Dom: It does. Our backgrounds are on stage, so we feel comfortable.

and our bodies don’t let us do things they used to. But we still try to give as much as possible. Our crowds vary from our current audience at CBBC to students and middle 20s who used to watch In da Bungalow, and to

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DICK & DOM KIDS | FRINGE

people in their 30s and 40s. In Edinburgh we’ll carry on as if it were the early 2000s.

Dick: It’s not just for 8 to 12-year-olds. There are jokes for everyone.

removed from the studio. We were live on BBC One, came to the end game and everyone went ‘where’s Rachel?’

Dick: We made the situation 20 times worse and then carried on.

Presumably some original viewers are now bringing their kids?

Dick: Absolutely. It’s a bit weird.

Dom: Because we began in 1996 we’re almost into grandchildren territory.

Did some jokes sail close to the wind for a young audience?

Dom: As far as we were aware, everything was completely above board.

What games feature in the live show?

Dick: One is Dick & Dom’s Roody Song, which are swearwords you

can use without being told off. We put them into a song and whichever side sings the Roody Song best is the winner.

Is there plenty of gunge?

Dom: Sadly not. There is a game called Musical Splatudes. It’s like

musical statues but if you move you get a sort-of pie in the face. There’s less mess because we live in a boring age of health and safety. The stage can’t get messy because the kids might slip over and sue you. They don’t want traditional pies in the face because it stings their eyes. We still use water. Even then you get the odd one complaining.

Dick: The H2O-intolerant.

Apparently, East 17’s Tony Mortimer suffers from gungeparanoia because of how often it happened to him in the 1990s Dom: Do you know what? When we meet anyone that’s been on any of

our shows, they have nothing but the fondest memories. Iwan Thomas, the athlete, said what an amazing time he’d had. And that was about 15 years ago now. I don’t think we scarred anyone . . .

Dick: Jim Bowen. God rest his soul.

Dom: He said ‘lads, please, I’m off to a wedding after this. Can you do me a favour and not get any of that milkshake on my suit?’ So of course, like naughty children, we did it. I understood his disappointment. Oh, and Rachel Stevens walked off when she found out that she was about to get covered in custard. She was picked up by her management and

We were just trying to get the ratings up and wouldn’t have known if anything wasn’t as it should have been.

Dick: Talk to our management.

Do you have insurance like Ant & Dec in case one of you dies or is otherwise incapacitated?

Dom: No. We might get each other’s CD collection but that’s about it.

And you once shared a flat?

Dom: Yeah, we lived in about five different homes around west London.

Living and working together was great fun. And then we both got our missuses. And that stopped.

What was performing Spamalot like?

Dick: Tough, actually; the script was huge, real West End theatre. And

we met the Pythons.

Dom: When you have to sing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ in front of Eric Idle, that’s hugely nerve-wracking.

Dick: We grew up on the Pythons and that’s where a lot of our humour comes from. A proud moment.

Could In da Bungalow ever be revived?

Dick: We wouldn’t bring it back as a series, but if there was an

opportunity for a one-off special then we’d certainly consider it as an interesting bit of nostalgia. Never say never.

Dick & Dom: Dick v Dom, Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–12 Aug, 1pm, £12.50–£14.50 (£9–£13.50). Previews 1–3 Aug, £9.

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FRINGE | KIDS DENIM JUNIORS

FIVE SCIENCE SHOWS

MARK THOMPSON’S SPECTACULAR SCIENCE SHOW Does matter really matter? In this show it certainly does, as the Stargazing Live presenter (pictured) experiments with screaming jelly babies and exploding toothpaste in a way that both entertains and answers many questions. Gilded Balloon at the Museum, Lothian Street, 0131 622 6552, 4–26 Aug (not 13), 4.30pm, £10 (£8; family ticket £32).

Preview 3 Aug, £6.

JEAN THERAPY Drag sensations Denim are toning their show down two notches to accommodate a new breed of younger fans. Arusa Qureshi hears how all they want to do is make the world a better place

I

n a time of universal division, drag queens have become somewhat unexpected but important role models for young people. Queer pop supergroup Denim don’t take this responsibility lightly, having created a new show especially for the next generation. ‘When I was a kid in the Middle East, I had no access to any kind of queer imagery or identities,’ Glamrou explains. ‘So, I suppose the inspiration for this show is my child-self; I hope that it provides a space for young kids to witness the power of being queer to avoid any shame and anxiety later in life.’

The Denim Juniors is all about providing a family-friendly drag experience with music, dancing and plenty of glitter. ‘Kids love us!’ Elektra continues. ‘Whether it’s the incredible singing, the stunning make-up or the chocolate bribes, I couldn’t say. But seriously, we performed at Port Eliot Festival in front of hundreds of people and there were a few rows of children who just went wild. It was so special to perform transgressive material to an audience of young people that visibly enjoyed the story, the colours and the sounds.’

It’s not just about the glamour though, but the message too: Denim are all about showing kids that it’s OK to express yourself, be yourself and love yourself. ‘We want to show that anything is possible,’ notes Crystal. ‘And that being yourself can come in any form, in any dress or pair of heels or persona.’

‘Like the fabric, Denim is for everyone,’ adds Aphrodite. ‘Whether you’re a flare-wearing kinda kid, a boot-cut grandpa, a mom-jean mother of four, or a straight-leg dad, the Denim Queens are here to help. Our shows are about the strength of queer family and our message is always brought to glittering life through the power of pop.’

If drag can be considered an antidote to the intolerance and hate that exists in today’s world, Glamrou, Aphrodite, Crystal, Elektra and Shirley remind us of the power of individuality in the fight against adversity.

Denim: The Denim Juniors, Assembly George Square Gardens, George Square, 0131 623 3030, 4–19 Aug (not 13), 4.35pm, £9–10 (£8–9). Preview 3 Aug, £5.

BRAINIAC LIVE! Exploding bins. Combusting microwaves.

Spectacular stunts. We’re not sure that a Fringe science show can possibly need anything else. Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–27 Aug (not 13), 11am, £12–£15 (£10–£13). Previews 1–3 Aug, £10.

SCIENCE MAGIC Irish comic and science guy Donal Vaughan is back once again with his show featuring a potato rocket launcher and a sick unicorn. Laughing Horse @ The Free Sisters, 0131 622 6801, 30 Jul–1 Aug, 12.15pm, 2–26 Aug, noon & 1.15pm, free (donations).

THE TIME MACHINE This one takes the science and adds a bit of fiction into the mix (yep, it’s sci-fi, folks) as HG Wells’ timeless classic is given a fresh twist with puppets and soundscapes. Scottish Storytelling Centre, High Street, 0131 556 9579, 3–19 Aug (not 15), 2.30pm, £10 (£8; family ticket £32).

Preview 2 Aug, £6.

THE AMAZING BUBBLE MAN This is Louis Pearl’s 12th year at the Fringe and once more he’ll be combining craft and comedy to show us exactly how bubbles are formed. Underbelly, George Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–27 Aug, 1.30pm, £11–£12 (£8–£9). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £7.

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FRINGE | MUSIC GRUFF RHYS

C I S U M E G N FRI

ANIMAL MAGNETISM He may consider himself to be a low-key operator, but Gruff Rhys has still built up a loyal and vocal fanbase. Malcolm Jack fills in some gaps as he chats to the Super Furrys leader about his Fringe debut

‘I

don’t have a very authoritarian voice,’ concedes Gruff Rhys, before pausing thoughtfully for what feels like an age and a bit, something he does many times throughout our conversation. ‘And people respond to authority, I think, in live concerts,’ he continues, eventually.

‘They like people saying “put your hands in the air” or stuff like that. All kinds of insane commands that people follow blindly. They give themselves in to the moment if they’re told by the right person. But I don’t really have that charisma. So I’ve put my energy into signs and pictures so I’ll see how far I can get with that.’

Rhys is being hard on himself by suggesting that he wants for charisma. As well as his solo artist role, he’s the frontman of Welsh psychedelic odd-rock wonders Super Furry Animals and one half of electronic duo Neon Neon alongside Boom Bip. Along the way, he’s proven himself one of the most peculiar, inspired and melodically gifted voices in British music from the last 20 years and more, and has built a vast and loyal following.

But to chat with him over the phone from his home in Cardiff, as he charmingly ponders forever over his every mellowly mellifluous utterance – as if awaiting translations to come from his native Welsh – one can perfectly understand the point Rhys makes about how snappy verbal communication isn’t exactly his strong suit.

Which, as Rhys explains, is precisely why he’s taken to using simple commands and instructions written on cue cards to engage with his public over the last decade or so: potted examples being ‘PROLONGED APPLAUSE’, ‘LOUD’ and ‘APE SHIT!’. Cards such as these will form a key component of his debut Fringe show, Resist Phony Encores!, which features a mixed bag of songs written

throughout his life in different guises, up to and including his latest superb solo album Babelsberg. Arranged in a semi-biographical fashion, the show also encompasses a look at ‘the amazing history of signs in protest and in music’.

If you were fortunate enough to catch Rhys’ previous solo tour back in 2014, in support of his sprawling and utterly ingenious album-book-film-app project American Interior, then you’ll have a rough idea of the template for Resist Phony Encores!.

A historical-psychographic-biographical pop opus based on the story of John Evans – an 18th century Caernarfon farm labourer turned explorer who embarked upon a search up the Missouri River for a mythical Welsh-speaking Indian tribe – the live experience of American Interior was part concert part PowerPoint presentation, starring Evans resurrected as a stuffed toy avatar.

In Resist Phony Encores!, does Rhys himself become a kind-of John Evans for the piece? ‘Err, yeah . . . ’ he contemplates, ‘but it’ll be a different kind of journey. A journey into song. It’s not following a physical trajectory.’

With Super Furry Animals having returned to touring over the last few years following a long hiatus, do the band have any plans to make and release that longawaited tenth album? Not any time soon, Rhys tells me in a characteristically slanted fashion. ‘Living in a decimal culture, I’m a bit spooked by the fact that we’ve only made nine records. It doesn’t seem right.’

Gruff Rhys: Resist Phony Encores!, Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 17–25 Aug (not 20), 11pm, £21.50–£23.50 (£19.50–£21.50).

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FRINGE | MUSIC CENTURY SONG

PHOTO: JOHN LAUENER

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ALI MCGREGOR: DECADENCE

HISTORY CHANNELLED Arusa Qureshi finds that a new innovative opera-theatre piece by Neema Bickersteth creates a fresh if unconventional exploration of womanhood and race across 100 years

H

istory has a tendency to erase the contributions and experiences of black women, despite their significant role across movements and milestones. With an emphasis on these untold histories, Century Song uses a multi-dimensional fusion of artforms to interrogate 100 years in North America from the perspective of a black woman.

‘As a classical singer, once I got to the point in my career where I felt immersed in the form and no longer a student of it, I began to question the form itself,’ creator and soprano Neema Bickersteth explains. ‘I love this music but I began to feel constricted in my expression of it. How do I, as a black person singing white European roles from another era, connect personally to it?’

Created with collaborators Ross Manson (direction) and Kate Alton (choreography), Century Song features Bickersteth in a one-woman performance of classical songs, live improvised instrumental music, dance and projected animations. ‘The songs and movement together are the woman’s expression,’ says Bickersteth. ‘She’s immersed in projections that are sometimes her surroundings or the set, and at other times they are visual art from the given time period: both perhaps represent her state. Two musicians provide the soundtrack that propels her forward. We built all of this together over years, so every piece of the show works in tandem with every other piece.’

Featuring songs by composers ranging from Rachmaninoff and Messiaen to John Cage and Reza Jacobs, Century Song is an unconventional journey through history in which we follow one woman as she experiences the changing realities of each new era. ‘For me it is a meditation, a super physical, vocal, expressive meditation,’ Bickersteth concludes. ‘I hope people can come and let their brains shut off for a bit and experience some history through this focussed but unusual lens.’

Century Song, ZOO Southside, Nicolson Street, 0131 662 6892, 3–18 Aug (not 8, 15), 3pm, £12–£14 (£10–£12).

By now well and truly crowned as cabaret royalty, the La Clique alumna will be mashing up the likes of Britney and Blur with good ole’ New Orleans jazz.

Assembly Hall, Mound Place, 0131 623 3030, 4–12 Aug (not 8), 6pm, £12–£13 (£11–£12). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £10.

MICHELLE MCMANUS: RELOADED Stories and songs from the Pop Idol victor as she belts out numbers from the ‘80s to the here and now. The Stand 3, York Place, 0131 558 9005, 3–26 Aug (not 13 & 14, 20 & 21), 6.10pm, £12 (£10).

MICHAEL GRIFFITHS: SONGS BY KYLIE Hard to believe the pint-sized Aussie legend is half a century old now, but the maestro Griffiths will be taking us back in time with everything from ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ to ‘Locomotion’ and, probably, back again. Assembly George Square Theatre, George Square, 0131 623 3030, 3–26 Aug (not 13), 5.20pm, £10–£12. Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £6.

KATE DIMBLEBY: SING HAPPY In collaboration with Cal McCrystal, the singing supremo brings us a show featuring a vocal looper, an ironing board and tunes that will, we’re assured, leave us all feeling a little bit cheerier about the world. Frankenstein Pub, George IV Bridge, 0131 226 0000, 13–27 Aug, noon, £6.50 in advance or donations at the venue.

COURTNEY ACT: UNDER THE COVERS Celebrity Big Brother champion Ms Act goes through the repertoire from Queen to Madonna with ease, grace and sass.

Underbelly’s Circus Hub, The Meadows, 0131 510 0395, 3–18 Aug (not 7 & 8, 13), 6pm, £18–£21 (£17–£20).

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E R T A E H T E G N I R F

TOXIC MASCULINITY THEATRE | FRINGE

START MANSPREADINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; THE NEWS With institutions and individuals being exposed on a weekly basis for their toxic masculinity, the moment is ripe for artists to tackle this issue head-on. Claire Sawers talks to the festival writers and performers declaring time up on fetid machismo >> Baby Face

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FRINGE | THEATRE TOXIC MASCULINITY

B

rexit, Trump, mental health and gender are all popping up as themes for shows coming to this year’s festival. But another big 2018 theme rearing its ugly head might join a few dots between them all. ‘Toxic masculinity’, or the more dangerous, extreme aspects of macho culture, is a hot topic in our #MeToo world within a culture where mansplainers, incels and locker-room banterers walk amongst us.

Scanning Fringe listings for shows exploring masculinity’s more poisonous sides, you’ll find the play Angry Alan about a man ‘about to lose his shit’ because his girlfriend has just discovered feminism. Ulster American looks at escalating violence and abuses of power, while Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair write about playground violence and myths of masculinity in Square Go. The relationships between grandfathers and their grandsons are explored in Old Boy, while Mary Jane Wells writes and performs solo show Heroine about a survivor of sexual trauma in the US military. And over at the Edinburgh International Festival, Katie Mitchell reworks Marguerite Duras’ La Maladie de la Mort, a sexwork thriller about a man who pays a woman to teach him how to love, without her speaking at any point.

To unpack the fetid, bloodstained and athlete’s foot-ridden sock drawer of toxic masculinity, I spoke to three performers approaching the topic from cis-male, cis-female and queer standpoints. UK writer / performance artist Katy Dye looks at society’s often sinister tendency to infantilise women in her play Baby Face in which she sucks a dummy and climbs into a high chair to examine the niche sexual fetish of ABDLG (Adult Baby Daddy’s Little Girl). Birmingham-based dancer Johnny Autin uses spoken word, dance and comedy to tell stories about homophobia, male insecurities and feminism in Queer Words. And representing the most vilified, privileged group of all (the straight, white male) is Canadian playwright Adam Lazarus with his disturbing satire Daughter.

‘Masculinity itself is not toxic,’ Autin clarifies. ‘But perpetuating certain myths, that men should “grow a pair” or that “boys don’t cry” creates a dangerous culture of suppressed emotions. What follows is a crisis of masculinity and terrible mental health in men.’

‘Taking traditionally “masculine” qualities to the extreme becomes toxic and backfires on men and others,’ says Dye. ‘I wanted to take these very subtle notions of “maleness” and push stereotypes to the extreme.

PHOTO: THE OTHER RICHARD

Angry Alan

Daughter

In the case of “daddy” figures, the urge to protect or provide or care isn’t toxic, but removing someone’s choice or control and taking away their power . . . that’s toxic. And definitely not sexy.’ Dye believes toxic masculinity often comes from feeling threatened or emasculated. ‘As women get more control in more areas, men can react in two ways: they either embrace feminism and evolve, or cling to a nostalgic, outdated sense of identity, and regress.’

Lazarus started writing Daughter while his wife was expecting their second child. ‘I was thinking about how we bring up our daughters. Then I realised it’s not about teaching girls not to be assaulted while the boys go play basketball: I’d be playing right into that whole trope. It’s about raising our sons to think about what behaviour is actually acceptable.

Awful “dude” talk, aggression and sexism are still so deeply ingrained, and so problematic.’

Like Dye, Lazarus plays up certain negative stereotypes on stage, pushing into deeply uncomfortable areas, making audiences consider where they draw lines. Just as things get awkward when Dye coyly chats up a man then asks him to spoon-feed her, Lazarus acts out a frazzled parenting scene where he pushes a crying child down onto a bed and shouts intimidatingly in her face.

‘The stories get progressively worse,’ says Lazarus. ‘I ask the crowd if they think stuff is OK, and people drop out as the show goes on. It’s a messy, funny show that gets pretty dark but it’s meant to provoke a reaction. It’s about calling out stuff that really shouldn’t continue.

Excusing stuff by saying “oh, you know, boys will be boys!” is not OK. Neither is having zero culpability, zero remorse and zero willingness to change. When men and women don’t call out bad behaviour in the workplace, in families and from friends, that’s contributing to it too.’

Lazarus says the reactions from men and women towards Daughter have been positive. He doesn’t intend his show to provide solutions or quick answers, it’s more about opening up a conversation. At the end he hands out a free ‘zine with art and writing, pointing people to resources

>>

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Meet your newest Fringe hub

INTERACTIVE THEATRE INTERNATIONAL at v119 For the first time in its 11-year history at the Fringe, ITI has its own hub: all four ITI comedy shows will be staged at The Principal Edinburgh, George Street, Thu 2–Mon 27 Aug. With its grand spaces, a listed facade, a vibrant restaurant and bar, and a bustling coffee shop, it’s the principal stop on the street – and in August you can see four shows there as well as collect tickets for any other Fringe show venue from the ITI ticket collection box office. What’s not to love!

SIGNOR BAFFO’S RESTAURANT Signor Baffo’s Restaurant is a delightful interactive treat for children aged 3+ and their families. In a maelstrom of mime and culinary chaos, Signor Baffo answers all those important questions, like how a chicken lays an egg, and how a sausage rolls. It’s all supremely silly and comes with generous helpings of fun, mischief and adventure – plus a pancake for the kids and tea/coffee for the parents.

PAMELA’S PALACE Pamela’s Palace brings a tidal wave of hairspray and glitz in a completely new immersive show that’s as funny as it is moving. Invited to enter Pamela’s buzzing hair and beauty salon, audiences join the drama – and the laughs – as the secrets and lies behind the glamour are revealed. This bittersweet Fringe premiere celebrates the vulnerability and strength of everyone trying to make their way in a noisy and unforgiving world, and comes with nibbles and a glass of fizz.

THE WEDDING RECEPTION The Wedding Reception returns with more confetti and chaos in ‘two hours of riotous immersive comedy’ (The Stage). Become a guest at this surprise, not-so-civilised wedding party where four actors play nine characters in a whirlwind of laughter that includes gatecrashers, misbehaving family, a 3-course meal – and maybe even some dancing!

FAULTY TOWERS THE DINING EXPERIENCE Faulty Towers The Dining Experience is the 5-star show where Basil, Sybill and Manuel serve a 3-course meal and a good, strong dollop of mayhem in their infamously rambunctious manner. And it’s 70% improvised so it’s never the same twice! Fully immersive and highly interactive, it’s a truly unique comedy where chaos reigns right from the start.

ITI creates and produces immersive theatre at the light-entertainment end of the spectrum. Its ‘everyman’ comedy is designed to appeal to everyone who enjoys good fun but isn’t necessarily keen on going to a physical theatre space. The company’s flagship show, Faulty Towers The Dining Experience, was born in 1997 and is still growing as it continues to tour the world. The Wedding Reception/Confetti & Chaos, Pamela’s Palace and Signor Baffo’s Restaurant are its latest productions. list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 89

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FRINGE | THEATRE TOXIC MASCULINITY

Square Go

talk about feelings, genders, sexuality. The lines are more blurred, and there can be less confusion and more acceptance. My personal belief is that we are all both male and female: of course, you can be caring and brave, and you can be decisive and vulnerable. In the future, things are going to be way more fluid. We won’t talk so much about masculine and feminine: people will be people!’

Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner, Underbelly, Cowgate, 0131 510 0395, 4–26 Aug (not 13), 3.20pm, £12–£14 (£13). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £9.

Baby Face, Summerhall, 0131 560 1581, 3–26 Aug (not 5, 13, 20), 1.30pm, £7–£9. Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £5.

Daughter, CanadaHub @ King’s Hall, South Clerk Street, 0131 560 1581, 3–26 Aug (not 6 & 7, 13 & 14, 20 & 21), 12.30pm, £9–£11. Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £9.

Heroine, Assembly Hall, Mound Place, 0131 623 3030, 3–27 Aug (not 8, 21), noon, £10–£12 (£9–£11). Preview 2 Aug, £8.

La Maladie de la Mort, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Grindlay Street, 0131 473 2000, 16 & 17 Aug, 8pm, 18 Aug, 3pm & 8pm, 19 Aug, 3pm, £17–£35.

Old Boy, Scottish Storytelling Centre, High Street, 0131 556 9579, 18 & 19, 24–26 Aug, 11am, £10 (£8; family ticket £32).

Queer Words, Greenside @ Infirmary Street, 0131 557 2124, 13–25 Aug (not 19), 4.15pm, £10 (£8).

Square Go, Summerhall, 0131 560 1581, 4–26 Aug (not 7, 14, 21, 25), 8.20pm, £15–£17 (£13–£15). Previews 1, 3 Aug, £9.

<< he’s gathered from women’s groups, Planned Parenthood, traumarecovery centres and the White Ribbon Campaign against violence towards women. ‘I read that [right-wing professor / YouTube celebrity] Jordan Peterson had a chapter in his stupid book called “stand up straight with your shoulders back”. Why’s it not called “break down and cry for an hour”?’ laughs Lazarus.

Autin agrees that a root problem is men often not knowing, or not being properly taught, on how to behave. ‘Being unsure what to do with difficult emotions like shame, inadequacy and fear is a huge issue. It’s not just about how you treat others, it’s about how you treat yourself.

Going to the gym to get the six-pack and the iron body or shopping for the biggest watch is missing the point. Self-care and looking after your own mental health is something we really need to talk about.’

The patriarchy is still alive and well in the LGBT community, sighs Autin, as he remembers seeing a ‘no femmes, no fags, no blacks, no Asians’ slogan recently on Grindr. ‘There’s still such prejudice within an already prejudiced group: trans-misogyny and the refusal to accept feminine men is a horrible side of the queer world and another sad sign of toxic masculinity.’

Dye is also keen to point out toxic femininity too: she hates to see TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) shaming trans-women for not being ‘female’ enough, for example. ‘Some women are having an identity crisis too; it’s the same thing where people are feeling threatened. So they demonise people that confuse them. Why take those female aspects of your personality so seriously?’

‘Why all the fragility?’ agrees Lazarus. ‘Are you afraid that all your power will be lost? The fact that a woman would make you feel threatened is insane to me! If someone says you’re being an asshole or intimidating them, then it’s time to adjust.’

All three performers speak about toxic governments and policies, and how those messages trickle down into everyday life. Lazarus wrote his play before Donald Trump came into power; Dye finds certain paternalistic politicians and a certain British reliance on outdated gender roles and industries very troubling; and Autin is worried about the real dangers of banning trans-folk from the military.

Autin has experienced added stigma growing up as a queer man, but remains hopeful. ‘You already feel an outsider when growing up gay in a straight man’s world. But then, in the queer world, it’s also easier to

Ulster American, Traverse Theatre, Cambridge Street, 0131 228 1404, 3–26 Aug (not 6, 13, 20), various times, £20.50 (£15).

Preview 2 Aug, 11am, £13 (£9).

Heroine

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ASSEMBLY FESTIVAL PRESENTS THE CLASSIC SPRING PRODUCTION

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DRESS UP.

TELEGRAPH TELEGRA TEL L EG EGRA GRA PHH

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THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW.

WHATSONSTAGE WHATSONS WHA WHAT SONS ONS TAGE O GE

TIMES T S TIME

© 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

21:45

3 - 26 AUG

ASSEMBLY ROOMS GEORGE STREET

12:30

2 - 26 AUG

ASSEMBLY ROOMS GEORGE STREET

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FRINGE | THEATRE XXXXX

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MADDIE RICE THEATRE | FRINGE

PLAYING UP With three projects on the go, Fleabag actress Maddie Rice has a busy August ahead of her. Gareth K Vile hears from a writer and performer who simply can’t get enough of being on stage

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between laughter and sorrow – demonstrates that urban life offers the same challenges all around the world.

While Rice is resisting the temptation to take a break, she admits that the experience of writing and acting is a refreshing change to the pressures of performing a successful play written by someone else. ‘I should have given myself a rest,’ she laughs. ‘But I do have a month and a half where I’m not performing.’

Yet Rice can’t get enough of being on stage: Pickle Jar is not her only entry at the Fringe. ‘I’m going for a hat-trick! I’m doing a sketch show with Lead Pencil who I’ve been with for years and years. We’re doing a reunion show which doesn’t go to plan. And then with zazU, I’m doing a comedy quiz which is a Shooting Stars style show with different guests every day.’

Despite her TV fame, notably in Call the Midwife, Rice clearly loves live theatre and Edinburgh. ‘This will be my sixth year: I love the Fringe. I find it completely exhausting but there is nowhere else in the world like it. There is a reason we get addicted to going; people pretend that “this is my last year” and then the same faces are back every August!’

While Pickle Jar is serious stuff, Rice hasn’t abandoned the humour. ‘This play is very much treading that line between comedy and drama, which fits really well in Edinburgh. The audiences like that duality. It will make you laugh and feel something, maybe in the same beat. For me, that is what real life is like. In an hour, you can have a cry, laugh and get angry. That is why I started writing: I was either doing broad comedies or dark drama but I wanted to do something in the middle.’

Pickle Jar, Underbelly, Cowgate, 0131 510 0395, 4–26 Aug (not 14), 4.40pm, £10–£11 (£9– £10). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £7.

PHOTO: DAVID P SCOTT

ickle Jar tells a tale too often unheard: the formidable teacher guiding young lives in righteousness and wisdom, yet realising that in their own personal life, they are far from perfection.

Maddie Rice’s debut play has the TV actor and member of comic troupes zazU and Lead Pencil casting out into deeper waters.

‘I have always written comedy and I’m in a surreal sketch group called zazU,’ Rice says. ‘But I have always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to write drama because I act in a lot of drama. Now was the time to do it!’

The story of a teacher trying to balance work and personal life, safe-sex classes and Tinder hook-ups came easily to Rice given that her best friend works in education. ‘When we are younger, we have an image of people in roles of responsibility, like teachers and the police, and we assume them to be kind of flawless and sorted out. As you get older, you realise that they’re doing their job well but in their own life they don’t know how to deal with every situation. The play is about a young person who is struggling with being an adult, and what happens when your personal life collides with your work life.’

Pickle Jar, a solo show starring Rice herself, explores the whirlwind of contemporary life, where freedom is both opened up and constrained by social media, and the quest for intimacy becomes a series of interesting encounters rather than the traditional shortcut to marriage. Rice’s protagonist might encourage her students to be responsible but she’s likely to be doing this while nursing a hangover.

Rice observes that there are social pressures which accompany this apparently liberated age. ‘Women and less-privileged groups tend to blame themselves for things that are out of their control. And they feel that they need to take all this responsibility for things that are not their fault because of this empathetic need to remove responsibility from other people.’

Having toured with the runaway Fringe success Fleabag for the past five months, Rice is no stranger to the rigours of a monologue. Her enthusiasm for Fleabag, which took her to Australia, is evident as she recalls what has been a gruelling programme. ‘It was amazing.

The only bits I haven’t enjoyed are the road! I have loved it, though, to see what different places think of the show.’ The success of Fleabag’s tale of modern guilt – which shares Pickle Jar’s shifts

Lead Pencil, Underbelly, Cowgate, 0131 510 0395, 4–26 Aug (not 14), 7.40pm, £9.50– £10.50 (£8.50–£9.50). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £6.50. zazU: zazUtinany, Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–12 Aug, 10.35pm, £9–£10 (£8– £9). Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.50.

zazU

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The Pleasance, Summerhall and ZOO join forces once again to highlight the best theatre, dance, music and more taking place across all three venues. From jaw-dropping circus to performances for the little ones, you can expect to find something to suit all tastes via this exciting collaboration. With so much to choose from all over Fringe, why not let the Southside venues be your guides?

PLEASANCE

INFINITA

NO KIDS

FREEMAN

PROPELLER

FAMILIE FLÖZ Pleasance Courtyard, 60 Pleasance, EH8 9TJ | 2–7 Aug (not 13) | 1.30pm (1hr30) | £9 Previews | £12–£15.50 (£11–£14.50) After the sell-out success of Hotel Paradiso and a five star hit with Teatro Delusio, Germany’s mask theatre masters return to the Fringe with their next brilliant, visual comedy about our first and last steps in life. Played out in a succession of increasingly hilarious scenes, combining poignancy, astute observation and some superbly skilled slapstick. ‘Pure Magic’ (British Theatre Guide).

THEATRE AD INFINITUM Pleasance Courtyard, 60 Pleasance, EH8 9TJ | 1–27 Aug (not 8, 13 or 21) | 3.40pm (1hr20) | £6.50 Previews | £10.50–£13.50 (£9–£12.50) No Kids reveals the personal journey that real-life couple Nir Paldi and George Mann, embarked upon when they asked the question: as a gay couple, should we go out of our way to have children?

Theatre Ad Infinitum return in this distinctly queer piece mixing gender-bending musical cabaret and verbatim theatre.

STRICTLY ARTS THEATRE & THE PLEASANCE Pleasance Courtyard, 60 Pleasance, EH8 9TJ | 1–27 Aug (not 10) | 5pm (1hr) | £6 Previews | £8–£11 (£7–£10) Inspired by the first man in America to plead ‘insanity’ as his defence. Award-winning writer Camilla Whitehill and Strictly Arts expose the fundamental link between systemic racism and the decimation of the self.

History is bound to repeat itself, when the thumb is permanently bearing down on the loop button so has anything really changed?

THE NETWORK Pleasance Courtyard, 60 Pleasance, EH8 9TJ | 1–27 Aug (not 13 or 21) | 1pm (1hr) | £6 Previews | £7–£9 (£6–£8.50) The world sucks sometimes.

OK, a lot. But there’s nothing we can do about it. Is there? This show says yes there is. Maybe.

A devised piece about power and the possibility of change, directed by double Fringe First winner Caitlin Skinner (Woke ★ ★★★★, Sanitise ★★★★★) and co–created by The Network Ensemble (Snowflake ★★★★).

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SUMMERHALL

RIOT DAYS

THE FLOP

PUSSY RIOT Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL | 10–19 Aug | 7pm (3hr) | £17.50 With their specifically feminist retort to patriarchal power in Putin’s Russia, Pussy Riot have become one of the most important voices of the last 10 years. Riot Days merges punk, electronica, theatre, documentary footage and protest.

HIJINX THEATRE Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL | 3–26 Aug (not 13, 20) | 4.55pm (1hr) | £6 Previews | £12/£8 The creators of Fringe 2016 hit Meet Fred team up with clown supremos Spymonkey, to present an anarchic, hilarious slice of stupidity, with live music and unfeasibly large wigs. Can a cast of total idiots save a show about a flop... from being one?

LOVE SONG TO LAVENDER MENACE

COCK COCK … WHO’S THERE?

JAMES LEY IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE EDINBURGH Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL | 1–26 Aug (not 6, 13, 20) | 12.55pm (1hr15) | £7 Previews | £12/£10 Nostalgic bookseller Lewis and party–boy Glen are back in this hit gay romantic comedy set in 1980s Edinburgh. A funny, celebratory play about the radical, lesbian, gay and feminist bookshop which began in the cloakroom of Scotland’s first gay nightclub and became the beating heart of Edinburgh’s LGBT+ community.

SAMIRA ELAGOZ IN ASSOCIATION WITH FROM START TO FINNISH Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL | 3–26 Aug (not 8, 9, 20) | 6.45pm (1hr5) | £5 Previews | £10/£8 An award-winning performance about violence and intimacy.

Samira Elagoz takes us along on her personal research project across three continents.

From online platforms to close encounters, she showcases gender relations in their brutal and wonderful ambivalence.

WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING

ZOO

ALL THESE THINGS

WHAT THE MOON SAW

CENTURY SONG

LIVE ART BISTRO ZOO Southside, 117 Nicolson Street, EH8 9ER | 15 Aug | 5pm (12hr) | £20 (£17) Live Art Bistro take over ZOO Southside, doing what they do best: presenting 12 hours of transgressive and experimental performance from 5pm to 5am for the brave and the curious.

There will be nothing else at the Fringe like this event.

2FACED DANCE COMPANY ZOO Southside, 117 Nicolson Street, EH8 9ER | 12–26 Aug (not 15) | 11am (1hr) | £7 Previews | £9 (£7) A magical journey around the world... join Jack in this interactive tale of dance, circus and music. Bringing you dragons, boats, rooftops and surprises that will delight the whole family. ‘A friendly show... beautifully weighted’ (Independent).

VOLCANO (CANADA), RICHARD JORDAN PRODUCTIONS IN ASSOCIATION WITH CANADAHUB ZOO Southside, 117 Nicolson Street, EH8 9ER | 3–18 Aug (not 8, 15) | 3pm (55m) | £9 Previews | £12–£14 (£10–£12) Volcano, ‘Canada’s explosive new writing company’ (Independent) and Fringe First Award winners, creates a thrilling vocal work of visceral beauty exploring 100 years of black women’s unspoken history told through music and animated art. ‘Glorious!’ ★★★★★ (TheReviewsHub.com).

DET ANDRE TEATRET / THE OTHER THEATRE ZOO Charteris , 140 Pleasance, EH8 9RR | 3–26 Aug (not 7, 8, 13, 15, 20, 21, 22) | 2.15pm (1hr) | £10 (£9) Fresh from selling out the National Theatre in Oslo. Awardwinning poet Fredrik Høyer tells his critically acclaimed story about life, marathon, ultrarunners... whilst on a treadmill!

Beautiful, existential and exhaustingly funny.

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FRINGE | THEATRE CELEBRITIES

I’M A CELEBRITY The festival is a place where youthful ambitions are realised or thwarted. It’s also where many famous faces come to see what all the fuss is about. We look at a few of the celebs gracing Edinburgh this August

JASON DONOVAN

ESTHER RANTZEN

ROBERT BATHURST

While Irish dancer and performer Sarah Blanc tours with her love-letter to the man who donned the finest mullet in Neighbours history (for which there was a heap of competition, eh Kylie?), Jason himself is in town with a reflection on his four decades in the media spotlight. He’s 50 now, you know.

Alongside journo daughter Rebecca Wilcox, the founder of Childline fields questions about her own time in the entertainment industry. For those of a certain vintage, the show title of That’s Life! will immediately evoke memories of awkwardly shaped root vegetable and the hilarious sound of chattering canines.

The star of Cold Feet and Toast of London teams up with Rebecca Johnson (she’s Rob Brydon’s wife in The Trip) as ex-lovers meeting up years later in poet Christopher Reid’s The Song of Lunch. If that rings a bell, you may have seen the 2010 TV version starring Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman.

Jason Donovan and His Amazing Midlife Crisis, Assembly George Square Gardens, George Square, 0131 623 3030, 22–26 Aug, 3pm, £16–£18 (£15–£17).

Esther Rantzen: That’s Life!, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 10–12 Aug, 1.30pm, £15 (£13).

The Song of Lunch, Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–27 Aug (not 13), 2.20pm, £12.50–£14.50 (£11.50–£13.50). Previews 1–3 Aug, £8.

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CELEBRITIES THEATRE | FRINGE

Fame! What are their names?: OK, so from far left clockwise, it’s Jason Donovan, Robert Bathurst, Su Pollard, Maureen Lipman, Julie Hesmondhalgh, the Blue Peter crew, Esther Rantzen

. . . GET ME IN THE FRINGE! MAUREEN LIPMAN

JULIE HESMONDHALGH

SU POLLARD

BLUE PETER

She’s come a long way from entertaining relatives with impersonations of Alma Cogan, and here the star of late ‘70s sitcom Agony and those ‘80s BT adverts playing grandmum Beattie (get it?) moves into cabaret mode with early evening shows promising ‘rave, rollick and rant’.

To some she will forever be Corrie’s tragic Haley Cropper, though more recent admirers would point to crime business such as Broadchurch and Happy Valley as signs of her talent.

For this Fringe, she’s at the Trav in hubbie Ian Kershaw’s play about a unique love story on an unremarkable street.

Best known for Peggy Ollerenshaw, the easily-led and thoroughly daft wannabe Yellowcoat in ‘80s BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, she also stormed the hit parade in 1986 reaching number two with ‘Starting Together’.

In her Edinburgh debut, she plays hoarder Birdie who keeps stuff for a very good reason.

A gathering of true legends here as the likes of Peter Purves, Janet Ellis, Peter Duncan, Mark Curry and Tim Vincent pay their own homage to the show which launched in 1958 and made household names of many presenters, as well as some of the guests and studio pets. ‘Get down Shep!’ and so forth.

Maureen Lipman Is ‘Up for It’, Assembly George Square Theatre, George Square, 0131 623 3030, 3–12 Aug, 5.45pm, £17.50 (£16.50). Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £13.50.

The Greatest Play in the History of the World . . . , Traverse Theatre, Cambridge Street, 0131 228 1404, 3–26 Aug (not 6, 13, 20), various times, £20.50 (£15–£15.50).

Preview 2 Aug, 1.45pm, £9–£13.

Harpy, Underbelly, Cowgate, 0131 510 0395, 4–26 Aug (not 13), 4pm, £12–£13 (£11–£12).

Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £6.50.

Once Seen on Blue Peter, Assembly Rooms, George Street, 0131 623 3030, 4–26 Aug (not 13), 2.50pm, £19.50– £22.50.

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GRANT

ONLY

U K DA

RUARAIDH

ANDY

MURRAY

STOTT GRAY

TES

“Wickedly Mischievous”

11

SHOWS ONLY

THE TIMES

“Utter madness and fantastic fun.

An insane social experiment” ROBIN LEACH, LAS VEGAS REVIEW

A NEW PLAY BY RUARAIDH MURRAY

ONE MAN’S JUNK IS ANOTHER MAN’S TREASURE

“I have never seen an audience behave like this” THE SCOTSMAN

#MBGS @stillmisbehavin

10.30PM 8 - 18 AUGUST

GILDED BALLOON TEVIOT - DEBATING HALL

Komedia Entertainment and Gilded Balloon presents

7.45PM

GILDED BALLOON AT ROSE THEATRE - MAIN THEATRE

1 - 18 AUGUST (NOT 13)

AYE,

2 !993$-!ধ32 >-;,

ELVIS

THE SHUT-UP COMEDY FROM JAPAN!

ƛƲ MORNA YOUNG STARRING

JOYCE FALCONER (BBC RIVER CITY) DIRECTED BY

KEN ALEXANDER

“BEAUTIFUL AND TOUCHING” THE SCOTSMAN

7.30PM

1 - 18 AUGUST (NOT 14)

GILDED BALLOON AT THE MUSEUM - AUDITORIUM

7.30PM

1 - 26 AUGUST (NOT 9, 20)

“ENGAGINGLY DAFT COMEDY” THE HERALD

GILDED BALLOON AT ROSE THEATRE - BASEMENT

IN FOR A PENNY GILDED BALLOON & OTAGO THEATRE PRESENT...

BASED ON TRUE EVENTS

“I’M GOING TO PRISON...

FOR PARKING TICKETS!!!”

GILDED BALLOON & INSOLVENT PRODUCTIONS PRESENT...

THE PI£MAN COMETH

STARRING

LIBBY MCARTHUR

by Bryan Jackson & David Belcher

(BBC RIVER CITY, THE STEAMIE)

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY

DAVID COSGROVE (BAFTA SCOTLAND)

2.45PM

1 - 27 AUGUST (NOT 13)

GILDED BALLOON TEVIOT - NIGHTCLUB

BOOK TICKETS: 0131 622 6552 | gildedballoon.co.uk

2.30PM

1 - 26 AUGUST (NOT 13)

Gildedballoon

gildedballoon

GILDED BALLOON AT ROSE THEATRE - BASEMENT

@Gildedballoon | #GB2018

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HIGHLIGHTS FRINGE

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS From a Fringe programme that refuses to get smaller, we pick a mere 20 of the top attractions including a simian-based ventriloquist, a disc-spinning ‘80s legend, a breakdance crew escaping prison and a rather different type of gameshow LUKE WRIGHT Surely now is time for the Bard of Essex to have a shout at the Poet Laureate gig, what with it being up for grabs in 2019? In this new show, he looks at those verse-folk who have been given the nod (deservedly or otherwise) in the past. Bar Bados Complex, Cowgate, 0131 226 0000, 13–25 Aug, 3.45pm, free (donations).

THE DRAGON AND THE WHALES After their 2016 glory with Erin, Errol and the Earth Creatures, Modest Predicament are back with a kids show about the eponymous creatures trying to save an island under threat from pirates. Assembly Roxy, Roxburgh Place, 0131 623 3030, 4–27 Aug (not 13, 20), noon, £8–£9 (£6–£7; family ticket £26). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £6.

Sara Barron

TIM KEY Megadate has the ex-Coward on tremendous form as he recalls the time he hung around a bowling alley to escape a lost love and retrieve a disappeared bank card. There will be poems, short films and cheese recommendations. Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 16–26 Aug (not 21 & 22), 11.15pm, £14–£16 (£12–£14).

OSCiLLATE A fresh kind of tap show as Old Kent Road use their influences in electronic dance music, light and sound to offer a new take on human interaction. Dance Base, Grassmarket, 0131 225 5525, 16–26 Aug (not 20), 3.20pm, £13 (£11).

Preview 15 Aug, £11 (£9).

NINA CONTI It had to happen eventually. Not only has Nina Conti been working with Monkey for a very long time, she now is Monkey! Improvised ventriloquism chaos of a brilliant kind is assured.

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–27 Aug (not 13), 7pm, £16–£19 (£15–£18). Previews 1–3 Aug, £12.

WHAT GIRLS ARE MADE OF Once upon a time (the early ‘90s), Cora Bissett was a member of indie band Darlingheart, and here she gets back on stage to recollect those crazy times via her tour diaries.

Alex Edelman

Break Free

Traverse Theatre, Cambridge Street, 1404, C b id St t 0131 228 1404 5–26 Aug (not 6, 13, 20), various times, £21.50 (£15–£16.50). Previews 3 Aug, 7pm, 4 Aug, 10am, £15 (£9).

HAMILTON (LEWIS) Sounds like another one of those great pub ideas that got wonderfully out of hand, as King’s Head Theatre present a hip-hop musical about Britain’s most successful Formula 1 driver of all time. To date, LinManuel Miranda has not approved this message. Assembly George Square Studios, George Square, 0131 623 3030, 4–26 Aug (not 8, 15, 22), 9.30pm, £13–£15 (£12–£14).

Previews 1–3 Aug, £10.

SARA BARRON Author of The Harm in Asking and host of The Moth live storytelling phenomenon, Barron makes her Fringe debut with tales of her hubbie,

Kevin Rowland

child, WhatsApp and a dodgy script she wrote when she probably wouldn’t have known any better.

Just the Tonic at The Tron, Hunter Square, 0330 220 1212, 2–26 Aug (not 13), 3.40pm, £5 in advance or donations at the venue.

THE KEVIN ROWLAND DJ SHOW A thoroughly intriguing man who has had a fascinating and idiosyncratic career, the Dexys leader keeps the Summerhall floor jumping for four hours as he lets us in on his love of soul, reggae and funk, and spoils us with some hidden pop gems.

Summerhall, 0131 560 1581, 10 Aug, 11pm, £14.

THE APPROACH Following critically lauded sell-out runs in Dublin and Cork, Mark O’Rowe’s new play about hidden lives and games of survival comprises a stellar cast of three renowned Irish stage actresses, Cathy Belton, Derbhle Crotty and Aisling O’Sullivan.

Assembly Hall, Mound Place, 0131 623 3030, 4–26 Aug (not 8, 15, 22), 1.25pm, £12–£13. Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £11.

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FRINGE HIGHLIGHTS

JANEANE GAROFALO The last time that the Larry Sanders Show, West Wing and 24 star performed at the Fringe, America was a few months into an Obama administration. With a very different political animal in the White House, there’s a chance she might have some things to say about. Gilded Balloon Teviot, Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 4–19 Aug (not 13), 9.15pm, £13–£14 (£12–£13). Previews 1–3 Aug, £7.

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD GAME Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R Sheppard dissect the worst period in US history with a fourth-wall dismantling piece. Traverse Theatre, Cambridge Street, 0131 228 1404, 5–26 Aug (not 6, 13, 20, 25), various times, £21.50 (£15–£16.50). Previews 2 Aug, 7pm, 4 Aug, 5.30pm, £15 (£9).

IN CONVERSATION WITH Among those chatting about life and the like across the month are Mhairi Black, Judy Murray, Aamer Anwar, Mark Thomas, Donald Findlay, Barbara Dickson and KT Tunstall.

New Town Theatre, George Street, 0131 558 9005, 4–26 Aug, noon, £12.

DUST This immersive music and cinematic experience is a collaboration between Americana-noir band The Melomaniacs, filmmaker Lee Archer and photographer Jean-Luc Fievet.

Assembly Rooms, George Street, 0131 623 3030, 13–26 Aug, 9.30pm, £13–£15 (£12–£14).

Nina Conti

BREXIT Here’s a satirical play about something called ‘Brexit’? Nope, no idea. Mike McShane, Jo Caulfield and Hal Cruttenden are in it. Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–26 Aug (not 13, 20), 1.30pm, £12.50–£16.50 (£10–£14). Previews 1–3 Aug, £5.

BREAK FREE Japanese breakdance crew Wasabeats unleash their spinning, beatboxing and handstanding skills for a show about their attempts to get out of jail. Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0131 510 0395, 4–27 Aug (not 13), 4.35pm, £11–£12 (£10–£11).

Previews 1–3 Aug, £7.

PHOTO: NICOLA GELL

JAMALI MADDIX The impish host of Viceland’s Hate Thy Neighbour blows Vape Lord our way, featuring stories gleaned from his observations about this mad and caustic world. Monkey Barrel, Blair Street, 0131 225 5149, 3–26 Aug (not 13), 6pm, £8. Preview 2 Aug, £6 (£5). Pay in advance or donations at the venue.

ALEX EDELMAN The Best Newcomer Award winner from 2014 gets more political with his new show Just for Us, as he talks of the time he dropped into a neoNazi meeting. Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4–26 Aug, 8pm, £10–£14. Previews 1–3 Aug, £6.

THE MISS BEHAVE GAMESHOW Aided by her glam assistant Tiffany, y, Miss Behave unveils a brand new kind of political-ish gameshow, straight from the belly of Vegas.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, Bristo Square, 0131 622 6552, 8–18 Aug, g, 10.30pm, £12.50–£14 (£10.50–£12).

2).

Tall Stories

WILDE CREATURES For those aged five and way above e comes Tall Stories’ latest treat as they hey put on a selection of Oscar Wilde’ss fairytales. Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance, 0131 556 6550, 4, 6, 8,, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 26 Aug, 2.50pm, £9–£11 (£8–£10). Preview w2 Aug, £6.

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OSCiLLATE

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World Class Circus on the Meadows

Splashtest Dummies Australia Wolfgang By Circa Australia ARR We There Yet? Australia Shift UK Universoul USA Tabarnak Canada Circolombia Colombia Circus - Cision Australia Circus Abyssinia: Ethiopian Dreams Ethiopia

underbellyedinburgh

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12.30PM (1.30PM)

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INTERNATIONAL EDINB INTERNATUIROGH FESTIVALNAL 3–27 AUG

LIGHT ON THE SHORE The EIF’s continued love affair with contemporary music has helped keep bands and acts who would normally have popped up at the Fringe firmly on August’s agenda. And making excellent use of the revitalised Leith Theatre, the Light on the Shore strand has secured an array of top performers.

Among those heading away from the main festival strip are Mogwai, Alan Cumming, Julie Fowlis (pictured), Bossy Love, Anna Meredith, King Creosote and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

■ Light on the Shore, Leith Theatre, Ferry Road, 0131 473 2000, 9–25 Aug.

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH

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INTERNATIONAL WAYNE MCGREGOR

‘I had my whole genetic code sequenced’ A love of dance and science has bubbled away inside Wayne McGregor for years, emerging fully in his new piece, Autobiography. He tells Kelly Apter how buttons and algorithms dictate what happens on stage each night

3 August EIF.CO.UK

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WAYNE MCGREGOR INTERNATIONAL

PHOTO: RAVI DE EPRES

T

urning the pages of an autobiography, a certain formula usually unfolds: tales from childhood, building a career, the search for love, memories both happy and sad. But dance, of course, has the capacity to make the literal otherwise. So when Wayne McGregor announced he was creating a show called Autobiography, nobody expected a narrative re-telling of his boyhood in Stockport making up ballroom dances in his bedroom, starting his own company in 1992, or becoming the first contemporary dance artist to be appointed resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet.

Instead, the man whose love of science easily equals his feelings towards dance, decided to go much deeper. So while there might be shades of McGregor’s own life in this 2017 work, it’s what’s inside him (rather than his external world) that we’ll see on stage. ‘I had my whole

genetic code sequenced,’ states McGregor. ‘The company is 25 years old this year, and I didn’t want to do a retrospective but it did make me think about archive and autobiography in relation to that. And I also wanted to make a piece that wrote itself.’

As has undoubtedly been written many times in relation to McGregor, here comes the science bit: having given a sample of his saliva to the Genetics Clinic of the Future in the Netherlands, they sequenced his entire genome.

McGregor then created 23 sections of choreography, each with smaller sections inside them: some based on his genetic code, some based on memories and some inspired by ideas.

So now, the evening before each performance of Autobiography, he presses a button on a specially designed computer programme that uses his genetic code to come up with a series of rules which dictate the structure his next show will take. ‘The algorithm is banned from doing exactly the

same thing twice,’ says McGregor.

‘Obviously there are thousands of permutations, so the whole structure, the whole order of events, changes every time.’

Which means that on each occasion Autobiography is performed, it’s a completely different show. Fantastic for audience members keen to go again but what about the dancers who only find out the night before what they’ll be doing the following day?

‘At first it was a bit overwhelming,’ admits McGregor.

‘But they’ve got into the rhythm of it now. It’s quite exciting. I don’t like to rehearse it in the order that’s been chosen, so the dancers don’t know what it’s going to feel like until they’re actually doing it. Some of them might have to dance really intensely for the first 30 minutes and then have hardly anything to do in the second part, or it could be evenly distributed, or it could all be exhausting, or it could be quiet for ages and then knackering: that’s one of the

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INTERNATIONAL WAYNE MCGREGOR

PHOTO: PÅL HANSEN

Talking to McGregor about his work keeps you on your toes, especially if scientific and technological language isn’t your natural vocabulary. And yet watching the work itself brings no such challenge. As shown in previous productions such as Chroma, Atomos, Plus Minus Human and Tree of Codes (his new work for Paris Opera Ballet), even if you don’t understand the starting point, the movement and emotional intent is there for all to grab.

For McGregor, what came first: a love of dance or science? ‘I think I discovered science through dance,’ he says. ‘I was obviously interested in the body, and then I started to realise that new technologies were exposing aspects of the body that I never knew about. So I was able to see inside the head or understand chemically what was happening inside my body, and I became more and more fascinated. Running parallel with that, I had a passion for science-fiction and speculating about the future: I guess it all just amalgamated.’

PHOTO: RAVIDEEPRES/ALICIACLARKE

PHOTO: ANDREJ USPENSKI

PHOTO: JOEL CHESTER FILDES

>> 3 August EIF.CO.UK

beauties of the piece for them: they have to solve the problems in real time.’

If you’re sparing a thought for the performers on stage, diving headlong into the (relative) unknown each night, then more than a passing nod of appreciation has to go to the technical crew.

Designed by Ben Cullen Williams, a vast aluminium ceiling is raised or lowered to carve up the space, then illuminated by lighting designer Lucy Carter, a long-time McGregor collaborator.

Just like the choreography, the set, lighting and music structure (created by increasingly celebrated electronic composer, Jlin) changes with each push of that magic button.

‘The biggest challenge we’ve had has been that, technically, it’s a nightmare,’ says McGregor. ‘One of the things you do with a show is run it until it becomes smooth, but the whole point of this is that sometimes you have juxtapositions that will be really jarring. Usually every time we go into a new theatre we would run the first show and then the technicians can come in late the next day to run that same show once again. But with this, we have to do a tech rehearsal every single day.’

Story of his life: (main pic) Autobiography; (previous page) Atomos; (clockwise from top) Wayne McGregor, Plus Minus Human, Autobiography, Tree of Codes

Company Wayne McGregor: Autobiography, Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, 0131 473 2000, 11–13 Aug, 7.30pm, £14–£35.

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INTERNATIONAL THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

ACCESS ALL ARIAS Hailed as the world’s first satirical opera, John Gay’s notorious Beggar’s Opera was pitched at a mass audience. With a new EIF production set to land, Carol Main tracks the dramatic history of this 18th century cultural landmark

A

3 August EIF.CO.UK

s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’s new Beggar’s Opera limbers up for five shows at the King’s Theatre, it scores as the opera production receiving most performances at this year’s EIF. Although it may be a lot compared to the programme’s one-offs of Siegfried or Hansel & Gretel, it rather pales in the face of what has gone before.

Following the London premiere in 1728, John Gay’s ballad opera ran for an astonishing 62 nights. When put on at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith in 1920, there were 1463 performances, possibly the longest run of any opera ever. It inspired Brecht / Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) yet it’s not even in the top ten of operas performed now.

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THE BEGGAR’S OPERA INTERNATIONAL

All of which, em, beggars the question, what is it about this piece that made it so popular in the past? When Gay was writing it, the demand for Italian style opera, made familiar in London by Handel, was declining. Plots were too unrealistic, the language wasn’t understood and people were getting fed up with the overpaid and diva-like Italian singers. Spotting his chance, Gay, working with producer John Rich (it was said that The Beggar’s Opera made Rich gay and Gay rich) opted not just for the more popular ballad opera style but approached it as satire.

This was meant to be an opera that would appeal to everyone, of all classes, and it did. Gone were the Italian recitatives and embellished arias, and in their place were popular tunes (including Scottish ones) that people would know and leave the theatre singing. Ancient heroes of battles and crusades were cast aside, and in came criminals, thieves and prostitutes in a story which wouldn’t be a tragedy, but instead have a happy ending. Opera’s sung recitatives were out and in their place was spoken dialogue in English.

But Gay’s satire didn’t stop at making fun of Italian opera. His quarrelling ladies Polly Peachum and Lucy Lockit represented more than a nod to prima donnas Cuzzoni and Bordoni whose rivalry resulted in onstage fighting and pulling each other’s hair out. His main male characters, modelled on notorious criminals Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, lampooned contemporary English society, political corruption and the government of Robert Walpole, Britain’s de facto first PM. Walpole was widely accused of abusing his position, as well as adultery, and was the subject of much common gossip.

The Beggar’s Opera is a comedy burlesque which turns on its head a society where class is all, and its instant popularity owes as much to this satirical take as it does to poking fun at Italian opera. In Gay’s

play, the lower classes (the beggars) can be found looking down on the higher, more privileged classes. ‘All professions be-rogue one another’, sings Mr Peachum, the smart-ass gangmaster who turns criminals over to the courts, while personally benefitting from the proceeds of their crimes.

What he is singing about are the upper-class professions of law and politics having rather a lot in common with thieves and crooks, pursuing whatever is necessary for their own ends in becoming wealthy and powerful. Love and marriage don’t escape Gay’s savage pen either.

When her parents discover that their daughter, Polly, has secretly married seriously big-time villain and adulterer, Macheath, for love and not money, they are horrified. Marriage is portrayed as something that boils down to a financial contract which, of course, the upper classes had been doing for years with couplings arranged to build financial capital and status.

When Walpole went to see The Beggar’s Opera, apparently, and not surprisingly, he hated it. It seems, however, that he was alone in his dislike. The combination of commenting on cultural trends and events that people would recognise, along with exposing problems in society that are timeless, was what gripped audiences in these first performances of The Beggar’s Opera.

For this August, director Robert Carsen and dramaturg Ian Burton set their production in modern-day London with 21st century dialogue.

After almost 300 years, it’s time for contemporary audiences to be gripped by The Beggar’s Opera once again.

The Beggar’s Opera, King’s Theatre, Leven Street, 0131 473 2000, 16–18 Aug, 7.30pm, 18 & 19 Aug, 2.30pm, £16–£55.

PHOTOS: PATRICK BERGER

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BECKETT INTERNATIONAL

LOITERING WITH

INTENT The history of Samuel Beckett in Edinburgh is a long and distinguished one. As a new production of Waiting for Godot comes our way, Neil Cooper reflects on the Irish legend’s festival legacy

J

ust like Waiting for Godot’s existential double act Vladimir and Estragon, Samuel Beckett stood by patiently before being fully embraced into the metaphorical kirk of Edinburgh’s International Festival. For an artist whose sense of exile and outsiderdom has his detractors as much as his champions, perhaps it should come as no surprise that Beckett’s theatre work has largely been seen on the Fringe, where even then, it has felt hidden away in back-street venues.

The appearance of Druid Theatre’s internationally acclaimed production of Waiting for Godot at this year’s EIF, then, suggests that Beckett’s work has at last come out of the wilderness. This has been brewing for a few years now by way of a series of productions under former EIF director Jonathan Mills’ tenure.

Since the baton was passed to Fergus Linehan, however, the links feel umbilical. Growing up in Dublin with an actress mother and arts journalist father, Beckett’s shadow loomed large. While Linehan’s mother Rosaleen appeared buried up to her neck in sand as Winnie in Happy Days both on stage and screen, his father’s encounters with Beckett were more random affairs.

‘My dad was arts editor of The Irish Times,’ Linehan says of his father, also called Fergus. ‘Samuel Beckett wouldn’t do any interviews. He would meet various journalists but on the proviso that the conversations weren’t recorded or written down. My dad would go over to Paris and he’d have all these questions, but all Beckett wanted to talk about was the Irish rugby team, cricket and football.’

The earliest sightings of Beckett’s work at EIF was in 1984, when a ten-day mini-Beckett festival featured New York’s Harold Clurman Theatre in residence at the Church Hill Theatre with a triple bill of Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe and What Where. Another double bill by the American group featured performances of A Piece of Monologue and That Time. Also at Church Hill, and in portents of things to come, seminal comic actor Max Wall (who had appeared in Waiting for Godot in 1979 and Krapp’s Last Tape in 1984) performed Malone Dies.

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INTERNATIONAL BECKETT

>> PHOTO: ROS KAVANAGH

Happy days at the EIF: (from top to bottom) I’ll Go On, Eh Joe, Embers

Beckett’s trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, would be adapted and performed on the Fringe in 1986 by Barry McGovern under the title of I’ll Go On. Twenty-seven years later, McGovern would revive this solo tour de force for EIF as part of the most extensive Beckett season since 1984.

The groundwork had been done in 2012, when McGovern performed the Gate Theatre’s staging of Beckett’s 1953 novel, Watt. With the interior monologues of his prose inviting themselves to be spoken out loud, the 2013 season focused, not on Beckett’s stage plays, but on renderings of prose by way of I’ll Go On and Peter Egan’s performance of a short story, ‘First Love’, plus rarely seen and heard TV and radio works.

A wordless Michael Gambon appeared in Eh Joe, haunted by Penelope Wilton’s disembodied voice in a piece first broadcast on German TV and on the BBC in 1966, and here brought to semi-cinematic life by Canadian film director Atom Egoyan.

Another Dublin company, Pan Pan, gave audacious stagings of Embers and All That Fall, radio plays dating from the late ‘50s which can now be recognised as early examples of sound art. In Pan Pan’s renderings, they became closer to immersive installations than pure theatre (it should be noted that the original broadcast of All That Fall led directly to the setting up of BBC Radiophonic Workshop).

As well as the five productions, EIF also hosted screenings of Beckett on Film, an epic exercise featuring all 19 of the writer’s dramatic works filmed utilising an array of maverick directors and performers. This included a production of Waiting for Godot featuring McGovern, David Mamet directing Harold Pinter, Rebecca Pidgeon and John Gielgud in Catastrophe, and Breath directed by visual art provocateur Damien Hirst.

Beckett on Film was initiated and co-produced by Michael Colgan, the former artistic director of the Gate who, in 1991, produced Beckett’s entire dramatic canon onstage in Dublin. This was restaged in New York in 1996, and then in London three years later. The Edinburgh screenings of Beckett on Film was a neat sleight of hand that gave audiences a chance to see a wider spectrum of work than might normally be possible.

Last year, McGovern returned to Edinburgh to perform Krapp’s Last Tape, Beckett’s tragi-comic rummage through an old man’s audio diary. Druid’s presentation this year of Waiting for Godot has been a long time coming. ‘I didn’t think the world needed another production of Godot,’ says Druid’s Garry Hynes, who previously directed the play in 1982. ‘But the company wanted to do it, and when I looked at it again, something had shifted.’

Hynes’ work with Druid has included DruidSynge and DruidMurphy, marathon renderings of work by JM Synge and Tom Murphy. Might a DruidBeckett be in the offing?

‘I don’t think so,’ says Hynes. ‘I’m not sure I’d want to go into that world, or put the audience into that world, for so long.’

One of the earliest Edinburgh sightings of Godot was on the Fringe in 1967 at the Traverse, then in its Grassmarket home, when Gordon McDougall directed John Sheddon and a young Richard Wilson as Didi and Gogo. Half a century later, it seems, the waiting has finally stopped.

Waiting for Godot, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Grindlay Street, 0131 473 2000, 4–12 Aug (not 7), 7.30pm, 5, 11 Aug, 2.30pm, £17–£35. Preview 3 Aug, 7.30pm, £12–£32.

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PIANISTS FEATURE HEADLINE HERE INTERNATIONAL

PHOTOS: BETH CHALMERS

While contemporary music has made fresh strides into the EIF programme in recent years, the top brass of classical musicians are still descending on Edinburgh.

Brian Donaldson notes that Edinburgh is about to host an impressive array of pianists

KEY PLAYERS T

he Edinburgh International Festival is well used to being graced by some of the finest musicians to ever take their seat at a piano. In a recent run-down by Classic FM of the top 25 pianists of all time, among their number were Leif Ove Andsnes, Alfred Brendel, Mitsuko Uchida, Stephen Hough and Maria João Pires, all of whom have left their mark on the capital in the last six years.

So which of this year’s breed will make the cut for whichever publication or radio station is next to do a similar countdown? Edinburgh is certainly not going to be short of a world-class pianist or two come August. Pierre-Laurent Aimard is this year’s International Festival Artist in Residence and, as a former pupil of Messiaen, is viewed as the pre-eminent interpreter of the organist and ornithologist’s music.

Handy then, that Aimard will be performing a number of Messiaen’s works during the three concerts he’s appearing in, including a very special event where he’s joined by Tamara Stefanovich whom The Guardian described in 2016 as ‘fearlessly uncompromising’. The pair will hook up on Brahms’ ‘Sonata for Two Pianos’ as well as Messiaen’s ‘Visions de l’Amen’ (Queen’s Hall, 24 Aug).

A renowned improviser, Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero is likely to stick to the script when she joins The Orchestra of the Americas (a youth ensemble featuring accomplished musicians from North and South America aged 18 to 30) to play Tchaikovsky’s ‘Piano Concerto No 1’ (Usher Hall, 7 Aug).

Polish virtuoso Krystian Zimerman made a promise to Leonard Bernstein before the conductor’s death in 1990. Having worked together throughout the ‘80s with the Vienna Philharmonic, the American insisted that the Pole would do a live performance of his Symphony No 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety’ when he reached the grand old age of 100. Bernstein may have passed aged 72, but his musical legacy very much lives on, with Zimerman able to fulfil that vow in Edinburgh when he performs alongside the London Symphony Orchestra as conducted by Simon Rattle (Usher Hall, 10 Aug).

Katia Labèque, the elder of those famous pianoplaying French sisters, shares a stage with her friend and longstanding violin partner Viktoria Mullova: Arvo Pärt and Schumann are among the composers they’ll be tackling. Marc-André Hamelin has two concerts lined up with The Takács Quartet, his own long-term collaborators, featuring pieces by Dvorák and Dohnányi (Queen’s Hall, 10 & 11 Aug) while fortepiano master Ronald Brautigam takes us back in time to hear exactly how Chopin and Mendelssohn would have sounded in the 19th century (Queen’s Hall, 13 Aug).

And yet, among this banquet of international talent, Scots can be proud of their very own Steven Osborne who teams up with Canada’s violin soloist James Ehnes for a lush evening of Brahms, Prokofiev, Debussy and Ravel (Queen’s Hall, 23 Aug).

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INTERNATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

PHOTO: NEDDA AFS

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

FIVE TELEGRAMS Another dramatic outdoor event kicks off this year’s festivities with regular EIF collaborators 59 Productions hooking up with the 2016 Scottish Album of the Year award-winner Anna Meredith for a memorable tribute to the end of World War I. Festival Square, Lothian Road, 3 Aug, 10.30pm, free.

LA CENERENTOLA Rossini’s Cinderella makeover is ramped up further by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim’s vibrant production. But will kindness triumph over selfishness in this version?

Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, 24–26 Aug, 7.15pm, £28–£96.

THE PRISONER In a world which seems to have forgotten the meaning of justice, it will always take theatre-makers such as Peter Brook to help people remember the importance of such fundamental rights. A multi-national cast is brought together to bring this subject into sharp relief. Royal Lyceum Theatre, Grindlay Street, 22–26 Aug, 7.30pm, 25 Aug, 2.30pm, £17–£35.

BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA As part of the celebrations for Leonard Bernstein’s centenary, his protégé Marin Alsop conducts over two evenings with the assistance of pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for the opening event and violinist Nicola Benedetti on night two. Usher Hall, Lothian Road, 24 Aug, 7.30pm, 25 Aug, 7.45pm, £15–£47.

COLD BLOOD It might not immediately sound like ‘your thing’, but this cinema-dance show from Belgium’s Michèle Anne De Mey and Jaco Van Dormael which uses only hands should have you

St Vincent

leaving the theatre with a spring in your step. King’s Theatre, Leven Street, 4–6 Aug, 8pm; 5 Aug, 3pm, £14–£32.

PHOTO: JULIEN LAMBERT

LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Sir Simon Rattle and Gustav Mahler have been making amazing music together for a number of years, and here the outgoing Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra principal conductor leads the London Symphony Orchestra in the composer’s final completed symphony. Usher Hall, Lothian Road, 10 Aug, 7.30pm, 11 Aug, 7pm, £16–£49.

ST VINCENT Experimental pop is never an easy cocktail to handle but Annie Clark aka St Vincent has the staggering ability to make increasingly inventive music palatable to ears which require hooks and melodies. There’s no need to Fear the Future with Annie around.

Edinburgh Playhouse, Greenside Place, 26 Aug, 8pm, £25–£40.

THE END OF EDDY Édouard Louis’ autobiographical novel about a young gay man growing up in a tough French environment is given the full-on collaborative treatment with London’s Unicorn Theatre and Scotland’s Untitled Projects among those involved. The Studio, Potterrow, 21–26 Aug, 7pm, 23–26 Aug, 2pm, £22 (£11).

Cold Blood

little appetite for and understanding of. Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, 16–18 Aug, 8pm, £14–£35.

PHOTO: JEAN LOUIS FERNANDEZ

PHOTO: HUGO GLENDINNING

The End of Eddy

ARI

An experimental pop sorcerer, a legend’s swansong, some dancing hands and a whole bunch of fireworks (literally and metaphorically) will help set August alight

XENOS A bittersweet moment here as the mighty Akram Khan makes his final full-length performances with a solo show which pays tribute to the soldiers from India who fought in a conflict (World War I) which they had

XENOS

VIRGIN MONEY FIREWORKS CONCERT The explosive end to another festival season will be here almost before we know it. Say goodbye to August ‘18 with a selection of Leonard Bernstein works and Holst’s The Planets in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s wonderfully capable hands. Ross Theatre, Princes Street Gardens, 27 Aug, 9pm, £15.50–£34.

For tickets call 0131 473 2000

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PRESENTS

BY DAVEY ANDERSON

YOU ARE NO LONGER ALONE

2016 for The Interference

@peppscotland www.pepperdinedrama.com

for Why Do You Stand There in the Rain?

12.30PM (1.45PM) 02 - 16 AUGUST 2018

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Lliam Paterson

A first operatic adventure for 6 to 18 month olds

The Herald

EDINBURGH ACADEMY 7 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 19 AUG | 10am & 11.30am Also touring to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, Perth, Motherwell & Lerwick

The Observer

A co-production with Manchester International Festival & Improbable

scottishopera.org.uk Registered in Scotland Number SC037531 Scottish Charity Number SC019787

Supported by Scottish Operaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Education Angels & New Commissions Circle

116 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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JAZZ EDINBU JAZZ & BLRUGH FESTIVAL ES 13–22 JUL

KEYON HARROLD When Wynton Marsalis talks of someone being ‘the future of the trumpet’, you better sit up and take notice. Preferring the term ‘social music activist’ to any description that contains the word ‘jazz’, Keyon Harrold is keen for his music to be ear-worm hummable rather than losing its listener in a swamp of technique and improv. If you saw Don Cheadle’s turn in biopic Miles Ahead as the man behind the Birth of the Cool, you’ll have heard Harrold’s playing as he brought Davis’ sound to cinematic life. For Harrold’s Edinburgh appearance, you can expect to hear plenty tunes from his 2017 debut album, The Mugician.

■ Keyon Harrold, George Square Spiegeltent, George Square, 0131 473 2000, 14 Jul, 7.30pm, £20.50.

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JAZZ AMYTHYST KIAH

DEEP SOUTH Amythyst Kiah first performed an original song at her mother’s funeral. Years later, she’s become a staple of the Edinburgh Jazz Festival and tells Malcolm Jack that technical ability and emotional intensity are a perfect combination

A

fter teaching herself to play guitar from VHS tapes, CD-ROMs and DVDs in her youth, Amythyst Kiah has risen to prominence after a long and rigorous training in her field as a self-styled purveyor of ‘Southern Gothic alt-country blues’. Kiah went on to study bluegrass, old time and country music at East Tennessee State University, before songwriting and performing for a living in her late 20s and early 30s.

Of course, it’s by no means necessary nor even preferable for a musician to have an academic grounding, but in the case of Kiah’s craft, richly steeped as it is in social and cultural history, it somehow enhances the appeal. ‘It’s always been important for me to really understand what I’m doing beyond the nuts and bolts,’ she says, over the phone from her favourite coffee shop in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Yet don’t assume that her technical ability comes at the expense of emotional potency because her stuff’s packed full of that too. If you want to know about emotion and Amythyst Kiah, then know this: her first significant performance of one of her own songs for an audience came in 2004 aged 17, when she sang at her mother’s funeral.

‘I put all the feelings that I had into the song,’ she remembers. ‘And I let it be a capsule for whatever my despair or sadness was. I performed the song and my dad said “I don’t understand how you were able to hold it together”.’

The moment of playing that song and the response she got was a turning point. ‘I still didn’t know whether or not I was going to pursue music as a

profession. My dad had always really encouraged me about my singing and guitar playing: he bought me a guitar when I was 13. But even then he especially was like “um, you should probably do something with this”.’

Fast forward the best part of 20 years and Kiah is fast making a name for herself internationally with her powerful mixture of southern roots music, bluegrass, old ballads and country-style blues.

‘And then the gothic part comes in, where I guess a lot of the songs that I do are related to people facing adversity, facing struggle, dealing with loss. In my childhood, I dealt with some intense instances of loss and different aspects of feeling alienated and strange.’

She felt like a misfit playing bluegrass at first too, until her education began to teach her otherwise.

‘Along with millions of other people probably, all I knew of bluegrass music was The Beverly Hillbillies,’ Kiah laughs. ‘All my life I was used to being the only black person in the room; I grew up in suburbia and went to predominantly white schools, so that wasn’t really the issue per se, but the connotation of bluegrass music was white, conservative, bigoted.

But when I started reading the history, I learned there was way more to it than that. Southern music is a hybrid of African indigenous traditions and British Celtic music traditions as well as various European and South American influences. Once I learned all that, this music (regardless of what your political persuasion is or your religion, your race, whatever) is America’s music. And anyone can play it.’

Amythyst Kiah, Piccolo, George Square, 0131 473 2000, 18 Jul, 7pm, 19 Jul, 6pm, £12.

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SCOTTISH NEW WAVE JAZZ

new sensations

FIVE MORE HIGHLIGHTS

Scotland has no shortage of top jazz players of a certain vintage. Brian Donaldson bends his ears towards some of the nation’s finest young acts

W

hile the 2018 Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival is awash with established Scottish figures such as Tommy Smith, Carol Kidd, Brian Kellock, Konrad Wiszniewski and Colin Steele, some observers are more likely to be excited by the raft of emerging talent on display. Given that we’re deep into the heart of Scotland’s Year of Young People, it’s fitting that a number of fresh performers will be lighting up the capital this July. And nowhere is that better exemplified than at Teviot Row for the New Wave of Scottish Jazz night (14 Jul). Across two hours, you’ll hear the Mark Hendry Octet, Luca Manning with Alan Benzie, and the Fergus McCreadie Trio.

At 20, McCreadie led his band to their debut album last year. Turas (Gaelic for ‘journey’) had some critics namechecking McCoy Tyner and Esbjörn Svensson as sonic touchstones for McCreadie’s piano work. Also aged 20, bassist Mark Hendry has been praised for his maturity and ability to create magic across various genres. His octet plays at the New Wave show, while he’s aiming to drag around 23 musicians up on stage for his Large Ensemble show (Teviot Row, 20 Jul).

At just 18, Glasgow’s Luca Manning has both time and a velvety set of tonsils on his side. Almost taking on veteran status is Manning’s pianist, Alan Benzie, who is well into his 20s now, having become the BBC Scotland Jazz Musician winner a decade ago when he was 17. He’s packed a lot into his years including a period studying at Berklee College of Music, playing with Tommy Smith’s Youth Jazz Orchestra, and spending time in Japan, a country whose culture has heavily influenced his sound.

As well as the acts on this New Wave night, other young Scottish talent can be viewed over the festival’s duration including the Matt Carmichael Quartet, Fraser Urquhart, The Alyn Cosker Group, Georgia Cécile and the Tom Gibbs Quartet.

New Wave of Scottish Jazz, Teviot Row, Bristo Square, 0131 473 2000, 14 Jul, 8.30pm, £12.50. Full listings of gigs at list.co.uk/festival.

ZARA MCFARLANE MOBO Award winner, Later With . . . Jools Holland alumna and former student of musical theatre, London soul and jazz singer McFarlane is riding the wave of further critical adulation after the release of her third album. Arise was dubbed by All About Jazz as ‘another magnificent record’. George Square Spiegeltent, George Square, 20 Jul, 7.30pm, £16.50.

MARTIN KERSHAW OCTET In the past, this fine alto sax player has paid tribute to and gleaned inspiration from the diverse likes of Art Pepper, Philip Larkin and Mervyn Peake. With a hot band at his disposal, Kershaw now delivers a homage to the late lamented avant-garde author David Foster Wallace. Piccolo, George Square, 19 Jul, 8.30pm, £12.50.

JERRON ‘BLIND BOY’ PAXTON A virtuosic display of early jazz from Paxton with a clutch of shows including an ‘adults only’ gig at 9pm on 20 Jul. Teviot Row, Bristo Square, 17 & 18 Jul, 5.30pm, 21 Jul, 4.30pm, £14; George Square Spiegeltent, George Square, 19 Jul, 6pm, 20 Jul, 5.30pm, £13.50; Teviot Row, Bristo Square, 20 Jul, 9pm, £14.50.

HAFTOR MEDBØE & JACOB KARLZON Only the finest Scandi jazz here with Norwegian pianist Medbøe joining forces with Swedish pianist Karlzon for an evening of cinematic soundscapes.

Piccolo, George Square, 20 Jul, 6pm, £14.50.

DAVE HOLLAND & ZAKIR HUSSAIN & CHRIS POTTER / TOMMY SMITH An all-star collective hailed as among the most influential musicians of the last half century must be doing something right if they’re being warmed up by tenor sax guru Tommy Smith. Assembly Hall, Mound Place, 22 Jul, 4pm, £25.50–£27.50.

Fergus McCreadie Trio

For tickets call 0131 473 2000

list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 119

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GLASGOW â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;14 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sally Lewisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; script is nuanced and powerful ... a painful and chilling play about a very difficult topic, handled with the utmost care and sensitivity.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Broadway Baby (Praise for Sallyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2016 EdFringe debut How is Uncle John?)

A new play by EVA Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;CONNOR Directed by JIM CULLETON With EVA Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;CONNOR & CIARAN Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;BRIEN

Inside the lives and minds of four men, when a traumatic event sets the picture unravelling...

Performed by Neil Gwynne (Scaramouche Jones, UK tour)

Directed by award-winning Benet Catty Written by best-selling author Sally Lewis

SUMMERHALL 5.55pm, Wed 1st - Sun 26th Aug, 2018 Summerhall Box Office: 0131 560 1581

Critical acclaim for MAZ AND BRICKS: POWERFUL EXQUISITE EXTRAORDINARY PROVOCATIVE RIVETING

120 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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r e h t O FESTIVALS

ELLA ELLA ELLA Marking the centenary of jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, British soul pop icon Mica Paris has embarked on a fresh sonic adventure. She tells Fiona Shepherd that her journey has led to more uncharted waters

I

t has been 30 years since Mica Paris first made an elegant splash with the sweet soul pop of her debut hit ‘My One Temptation’, leading to a brace of prestige collaborations with many of her heroes from Prince to Bobby Womack, and Natalie Cole to Dave Gilmour. Since then she’s bobbed in and out of the spotlight as a radio and television presenter and personality (from What Not to Wear to Strictly Come Dancing) as well as stage and screen actress, most recently taking on the powerhouse role of Mama Morton in the UK touring production of Chicago. She’s busier than ever, yet hasn’t released an album in nine years.

But even that is about to change, thanks to another of her alltime musical heroes. To the delight of her jazz-loving dad, Paris has progressed from her south London soul and gospel roots to embrace the intuitive phrasing and spontaneous scatting of jazz,

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embarking on a series of concerts celebrating the centenary of Ella Fitzgerald.

‘Jazz is feel,’ she says of her latest territory. ‘When you do pop, the structure of the song must remain the same all the time. Jazz is very much spiritual: you let the music take you where it’s gonna go and you don’t know where the hell that is.’

Fitzgerald fans will be aware that her centenary year was 2017 but Paris’ tribute has been so successful that she’s trucked right on to meet demand, and will bring her Ella show to Fringe by the Sea. A two-song EP recorded with the Guy Barker Jazz Orchestra has led to plans for a full album of Ella standards. ‘I just went for things that blew my head off,’ says Paris of the tricky task of representing such a rich and varied repertoire. ‘“Love for Sale” is a great song: how can you not want that?’

>>

26/06/2018 13:16

OTHER FESTIVALS FRINGE BY THE SEA / FOOD FESTIVAL

>> Paris has been so inspired by her jazz odyssey that she’s working on another album, this one featuring original material co-written and produced with her Britsoul contemporary Omar, and she’s also developing a play of Fitzgerald’s life in which she will star. ‘I felt she hadn’t been given the props; no one was celebrating her life,’ Paris says. ‘A lot of people don’t really know what happened and it was pretty amazing. She was managing her own band. She was a feminist and didn’t know it.’

Paris hasn’t stopped there though. She’s also writing a book, I Should Have Known Better, on iconic but troubled singers such as Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse, and interviewing the great female singers of our times for a new Radio 2 series called Mica Meets.

‘Basically, everything I’m doing right now is about women: how powerful women succeeded but also how hard it is being a career woman in general. There are artists all around getting to own more of their work, and that’s great, but it’s tougher to get your stuff promoted. You do still need the power of the industry behind it. You could do it on your own but it’s so much harder because people don’t listen to anything but money. Women will get respect in all industries, I believe, when we get paid the same.’

The Time’s Up and #MeToo movements have shone a bright spotlight on sexism and inequality, but Paris is mindful that change is a long time coming, expressing some relief that her elder daughter Monet quickly abandoned notions of embarking on a music career.

‘I’ve had nothing but wars with my career because all I’ve ever done is fight for what I want,’ she says. ‘It hasn’t stopped; I’m still doing it 30 years later. I came into music wanting to do everything and I still feel like that. I’d love to make a country album, a gospel album, to have lots of different records in different genres, but the industry hasn’t really allowed me to do that. Now I’m in a place where that industry is different and there is way more freedom. This is my third wave. I’m riding it, so let’s see where it takes me.’

Mica Paris Sings Ella Fitzgerald, Simpson Spiegeltent, North Berwick Harbour, 5 Aug, 9.30pm, £30.

OTHER FRINGE BY THE SEA HIGHLIGHTS North Berwick once again hosts a rather superb Fringe by the Sea (3–12 Aug) with some exceptional music being laid on this year.

Damon Gough aka Badly Drawn Boy (pictured) delivers an acoustic set while Fun Boy Three and Specials’ legend Terry Hall mans the decks for a top-notch DJ night, and The Sugarhill Gang join forces with The Furious Five. On the Scottish pop front, ‘80s stars Hipsway consolidate their 2016 reformation with an anticipated gig, and Edinburgh’s Broken Records will be smashing it up at The Major Minor Music Club for families. Other sonic delights come from Withered Hand, Rachel Newton, Bombskare and Geno Washington.

Comedy treats include Phil Kay, Jerry Sadowitz, Lynn Ruth Miller, Phil Nichol, Mark Steel and Seymour Mace while there are screenings of animated film classics Finding Nemo, Studio Ghibli’s The Red Turtle, Muppet Treasure Island and The Little Mermaid. Can you spot a vague theme there?

■ Full details of shows at list.co.uk/festival.

MAKE EDINBURGH PLATE AGAIN Deborah Chu samples the delights ahead of this year’s Food Festival

An ultimate gathering for foodies, the Edinburgh Food Festival returns to fill George Square with the best of Scotland’s larder this July. Expect a fantastic showcase of international flavours, ranging from Ting Thai’s Southeast Asian fare to the Mediterranean offerings of falafel wizards Chick + Pea. British Street Food Award finalist Moskito will be trundling along in their Spanish tapas trailer, while The Prague Shack aims to serve up Eastern European dishes

just like your Czech grandma used to make.

But don’t count the Scots out yet: the great and good of Caledonian cooking will be making a splash, with Jarvis Pickle serving up heaven in a pastry pocket, and Scoff showcasing the carb-alicious comforts of cullen skink stew and stovies. Wash it down with hop-forward beverages from Fyne Ales who are lugging casks of their flavourful brews down from Argyll, and if you need a moment to digest, Blair Bowman will be

hosting a Gin Debate.

With such an exciting menu programmed, as well as activities on the weekend to please the kids, the Edinburgh Food Festival looks to prove that there’s nothing like a meal to bring people together. Last year they fed over 25,000 hungry folks, so expect good food and happy times for all.

■ Edinburgh Food Festival, Assembly George Square Gardens, George Square, 0131 623 3030, 25–29 Jul.

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TATTOO / JUST OTHER FESTIVALS

PHOTO: ROYAL EDINBURGH MILITARY TATTOO

THE

HIGH LIFE Katharine Gemmell finds that this year’s Tattoo is reaching for the sky Set in Edinburgh Castle’s shadow, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo brings together 24 performances to create a showcase of the world’s best military performers. For 2018, organisers are taking inspiration from Scotland’s Year of Young People and The Royal Air Force’s 100th anniversary to create its own unique theme of The Sky’s the Limit.

Through this topic, the performances will delve deep into a study of human potential and endeavour, whilst also touching on the exploration of gravity and history of flight.

Confirmed acts include enduring favourites

the Massed Pipes and Drums, the Massed Military Bands, the Tattoo Dance Company and Hjaltibonhoga Shetland Fiddlers. But Brigadier David Allfrey, Tattoo chief executive and producer said that fans should expect the usual twist that keeps the show fresh each year.

The 100-minute spectacle mixes music, dance, special effects and military pageantry to create a unique performance experience.

Every year, this event is a truly international affair with contributions from all over the UK, Commonwealth and rest of the world.

The Tattoo has sold out every year this century and organisers expect 2018 to be no different.

■ The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Edinburgh Castle, 0131 225 1188, 3–25 Aug, Mon–Fri, 9pm, Sat, 7.30pm, 10.30pm, £25–£340.

BEST OF THE REST OF THE FEST The Edinburgh International Television Festival (22–24 Aug) industry extravaganza once more

FREE SPIRITS

takes residency at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre with a host of intriguing speakers including Steve Coogan, Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee, Lennie James, Jed Mercurio and Joanna Lumley while Michaela Coel delivers the

At the Just Festival, South Africa is a prominent theme.

Brian Donaldson picks out some highlights across its programme

MacTaggart Lecture.

The 2018 Edinburgh Book Fringe (9–28 Aug) at Lighthouse

Celebrating humanity in all its diverse forms might not be in vogue for some of our world leaders, but the Edinburgh Festival has always promoted fairness and eclecticism in equal measure. At the heart of that mission is the Just Festival with its annual array of theatre, talks, music, dance and exhibitions.

For Let it Art, young people were challenged to come up with creative responses to terrorism and violence,

while Forward to Freedom is an exhibition of posters which tell the story of the British Anti-Apartheid movement. Still on South Africa, Mandela’s Legacy is a panel event which considers the lessons which were learned during reconciliation and asks whether the latest leadership is up to the task of taking their country forward.

Theatre productions include Apartheid-era drama The Island,

while David Greig’s Dr Korczak’s Example (pictured) is set in a Warsaw ghetto during World War II. Dance show Take Refuge Under My Shade follows the interlocking stories of three pregnant women, while musical delights include LA band ADAAWE and a cappella sensations Alabaster Box. ■ Just Festival, St John’s Church, Princes Street, 0745 377 0061, 3–26 Aug.

and Golden Hare bookshops will feature the likes of Sarah Churchwell, Tom Gauld and Terry Eagleton, while the Turing Festival (1 & 2 Aug) at the EICC dubs itself this year as ‘six mini-conferences under the one roof’.

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Celebrate Summer with Caorunn Gin at Hotel du Vin Edinburgh From 6th July throughout the Summer A peaceful yet vibrant outdoor sanctuary to escape the bustling festival crowds Caorunn Gin cocktails and al fresco dining. @CaorunnGin @hdv.brand

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11 Bristo Place, Edinburgh EH1 1EZ

26/06/2018 19:00

CITY GUIDE FESTIVAL TREATS Another year and another Edinburgh Festival is here again. The biggest party on the planet obviously needs sensational shows and amazing acts, but we all have to eat and drink, right? Over the following pages, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll push you in the direction of all the top bars and restaurants across the main spots of the capital city. We also have some folk offering a little local knowledge to help you along your way as the festival spirit begins to take hold. SlĂĄinte . . .

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

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EAT

Hanam's

Mother India's Café

3 Johnston Terrace, 0131 225 1329, hanams.com

3–5 Infirmary Street, 0131 524 9801, motherindiascafeedinburgh.co.uk

Bistro Deluxe by Paul Tamburrini

With deep-red walls, multi-coloured chandeliers and full-throated flavours, Hanam’s is a restaurant for those in search of robust sustenance. You may not think yourself familiar with Kurdish food but most of the dishes are recognisable: from flatbread; garlic-rich hummus; or grilled lamb and chicken; to thick, richly spiced coffee served with honey-oozing baklava. Whipped feta with dates is a salty and sharp, ideal for smearing on the impossibly light naan. Qozy lamb is braised on-the-bone and so tender Elvis would serenade it if he could, while kebabs are rich, juicy and smoky. Great for crowds, there’s a substantial outdoor terrace and generous BYOB policy.

Gimmick-free and easy to miss from the street, Mother India’s Café exudes the quiet confidence you'd expect from one of the city's most popular Indian restaurants. The menu is reassuringly small, with chefs prioritising quality over quantity to produce tapas-sized dishes like hearty chicken tikka shashlik, rich saag paneer and plenty of samosas and pakoras. The show-stealing specials are more unusual; expect dishes like tangy prawn methi malai masala, or foil-wrapped delicately spiced haddock dressed with Puy lentils and a spritz of lemon. Served as it’s ready and often at lightning speed, this place has quality Indian dining down to a delicious fine art.

81 Holyrood Road, 0344 879 9028, macdonaldhotels.co.uk

If Paul Tamburrini's restaurant was set in a New Town shabby-chic Edwardian dining room you'd have to sell your granny to get a table. And while the ‘hotel dining’ feeling in his eponymous venue can’t quite be shaken, it’s clear this chef is a force to be reckoned with.

A simply described gazpacho becomes a symphony of all things beetroot – just one example of the unbridled energy, flair and technique brought to every plate. Better spaces will undoubtedly come for a talent so red-hot so if you want to say you got there first, don’t wait until next August to get yourself down to Holyrood Road.

Lovage Restaurant Chop House Market Street Arch 15, East Market Street, 0131 629 1551, chophousesteak.co.uk

If the savoury aroma from the charcoal grill doesn't tempt you in, the eyecatching venue will. Housed in a former railway arch, it’s a lesson in great use of space – exposed stone, slate and metal work give a contemporary, urban feel.

Starters tend toward well-executed seafood, but the mains focus on steak. At the heart of the menu are sharing cuts sold by the 100g, which is how the restaurant suggest diners eat, but all their beef is aged for at least 35 days so there's a real intensity of flavour whatever you choose.

Sister branches in Leith and Bruntsfield stick to the same high standards.

38 St Mary's Street, 0131 557 5754, lovagerestaurant.co.uk

Eastern European flavours are combined with Scottish ingredients in this modern yet cosy restaurant. It brims with creative energy, which can sometimes overcomplicate a dish, but more often adds finesse. A pinkly perfect pigeon breast is a memorable starter alongside a haggis croquette, crispy sprout leaves and cranberries. Equally inspired is a terrine of wild boar and venison, warmed and crusted with pistachio and partnered with a well-judged fennel kimchi. Crème brûlée or dark chocolate mousse with liquid cherry filling are highlights of the dessert options, and a thoughtfully selected wine and beer list caps a well-rounded experience.

David Bann

Ondine 2 George IV Bridge, 0131 226 1888, ondinerestaurant.co.uk

MY PICKS

MAREC JOYCE TECHNICAL OPERATIONS MANAGER AT PLEASANCE

My festival highlight is a visit to the intimate setting of Mother India. They offer a fantastic choice of dishes, all served tapas style (I highly recommend patina lamb!). Although the restaurant seems tucked away, it is very popular so you must book in advance. The staff are extremely welcoming and, if given notice, will try and accommodate large groups. The Brass Monkey is always a great place to hang out with its big tables and good drinks. The friendly staff makes it a really relaxing environment.

At the top of its game since 2009, Ondine has a carefully honed reputation as Edinburgh's best fish restaurant (if not simply one of its best restaurants).

Service is on the formal side, with waiters always on hand to top up glasses.

Roasted or chilled seafood platters teeter with gleaming scallops, crab, mussels, clams, oysters and langoustines – all you’ll need is a side of hand-cut chips as accompaniment. While the prime spots in the large dining area are the peoplewatching window seats overlooking Victoria Street and George IV Bridge, there are also seats at the bar if you happen to find yourself in a more casual mood.

Petit Paris 38–40 Grassmarket, 0131 226 2442, petitparis-restaurant.co.uk

56–58 St Mary's Street, 0131 556 5888, davidbann.com

Michael Neave Kitchen & Whisky Bar

The Outsider

There’s something rather grown-up about vegetarian restaurant David Bann – it could be the classy, understated décor, or the stylish lighting. A main of Puy lentil shepherd’s pie with roasted vegetables is comforting but bested by spiced quinoa, spinach and walnut courgette wrap with a substantial rice arancino and rich beetroot chickpea purée. Desserts are done well: made-to-order hot apple and cinnamon tart is a delicate indulgence while ginger and lime homemade ice-cream in a chocolate ganache bowl manages the tricky task of balancing strong flavours.

There’s a solid, reasonably priced wine list and a pleasingly diverse range of beers too.

21 Old Fishmarket Close, 0131 226 4747, michaelneave.co.uk

15–16 George IV Bridge, 0131 226 3131, theoutsiderrestaurant.com

Down a steep, cobbled close off the Royal Mile, Michael Neave Kitchen & Whisky Bar feels like a discovery. A lavish array of whiskies and cocktails signal it’s time to spoil yourself in an understated dining room with generously spaced tables. Crab and avocado stack is brightly fresh, while beautiful pigeon carpaccio plays its slightly gamey notes against the earthy sweet crunch of candied walnuts. Borders lamb matches the light oat notes of skirlie-mash, while halibut fillet sits proudly above al dente chorizo and mussel risotto, all swirled in a rich, foamy bisque sauce.

An Edinburgh institution, the Outsider lives up to its name and refuses to bend to fickle food trends. From the playful wine list that swaps conventional tasting notes for more wistful musings, to their trademark chunky healthy lines (hearty portions of chargrilled skewered pieces with a coleslaw-stuffed pita), there is real confidence here. Mains range from fried gnocchi to ribeye steak and chips via a wide selection of fish dishes and the large lively dining room is carved up into a series of alcoves and smaller spaces, making it great for both large parties and intimate dinners.

Right in the heart of the Grassmarket hubbub, Petit Paris is a bustling little bistro packed full of rustic charm.

Checked table cloths, enamel street signs and vintage posters add a splash of colour to whitewashed walls.

The seasonal à la carte showcases straightforward comforting classics, like French onion soup, snails and rich boeuf bourguignon and there’s a decent drop of table wine to wash it all down with. Dozens of outdoor tables burst into life when the sun shines and relaxed front of house sets just the right tone, creating a cheery venue that does the simple things really well.

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In association with

and sweet neeps. Lobster thermidor is a journey of textures from salty Parmesan crisp via intense shellfish crème. Lisa Wedgwood's passion for wine is evident in the restaurant's extensive list – a truly exciting range from across the globe.

Pizzeria 1926

MY PICKS

White Horse Oyster & Seafood Bar 266 Canongate, 0131 629 5300, whitehorseoysterbar.co.uk

WATCHING THE BUDGET

Those show tickets soon add up. If you’re trying to keep a lid on the budget, these places won’t break the bank

THE BAKED POTATO SHOP 56 Cockburn Street, 0131 225 7572 If you haven’t had one of their enormous tatties during your trip, have you even been to Edinburgh?

Great veggie and vegan options and open late too.

BREAD MEATS BREAD Bread Meats Bread, 92 Lothian Road, 0131 225 3000, breadmeatsbread.com Contemporary diner with huge, high-quality and good value burgers. Good veg and vegan options too, including seitan and poutine.

CAFÉ RENROC 91 Montgomery Street, 0131 629 3727, caferenroc.co.uk This neighbourhood café is welcoming and chilled, perfect for taking a breather and cake loading before your next culture fix.

CHECKPOINT 3 Bristo Place, 0131 225 9352, checkpointedinburgh.com Checkpoint’s flexible menu style makes it a good option for any time of day or night. There’s an excellent value wine list too.

HARMONIUM 60 Henderson Street, Leith, 0131 555 3160, harmoniumbar. co.uk

Wedgwood the Restaurant 267 Canongate, 0131 558 8737, wedgwoodtherestaurant.co.uk

Celebrating 10 years, Wedgwood is a great spot for skilled cooking of locally sourced, seasonal and foraged delights. Exposed stone and

An innovative, casual bar/ diner down at the Shore, which is redefining vegan dining in Edinburgh.

PIZZA POSTO 16 Nicolson Street, 0131 557 9941, pizzaposto.co.uk Keeping it simple means keeping it affordable – with just eight pizzas on the menu plus a handful of salads and starters, Pizza Posto is brilliant value.

PIZZERIA 1926 85 Dalry Road, 0131 337 5757, pizzeria1926.com A taste of Naples – buzzing atmosphere, friendly staff and truly scrumptious pizzas. Best to book as it gets very busy.

PUNJABI JUNCTION 122–124 Leith Walk, 0131 281 0159, punjabijunction.org This social enterprise serves authentic, homemade Indian food in a brightly simple café setting at the bottom of Leith Walk.

TUPINIQUIM The Green Police Box, Middle Meadow Walk, Lauriston Place, tupiniquim.co.uk This ex-police box is something of an Edinburgh institution. Glutenfree sweet and savoury crepes served up by perennially cheery folks.

wood textures evoke the countryside, while the open kitchen creates a buzzy atmosphere. The wood pigeon starter reflects true skill; a refined take on a traditional stalwart, the game’s naturally earthy tang sings over intense haggis, billowy potatoes

Oysters were cheap and plentiful when the White Horse pub first opened in 1742, so it’s great to see them back at the heart of the bar today. Contemporary décor of dark grey, wood and stone with minimalist mariner touches echoes the seafood theme. Share a platter or a few small plates to sample the carefully sourced seafood, almost all from British waters. There are plump monkfish skewers with satay sauce; chargrilled octopus with ponzu; enormous crisp prawn tempura with wasabi mayonnaise; scotch-bonnet cured salmon; and sesame tuna. There is also a handful of main dishes and of course plenty of oysters, both raw and cooked.

DRINK Andrew Usher & Co 32b West Nicolson Street, 0131 662 1757, andrewushers.co.uk

Despite being named after the father of Scottish whisky, this basement bar focuses on beer. Barrels and beer mats decorate the walls and knowledgeable staff guide you to the perfect pint amongst their 20 rotating kegs and casks, with tasters to help along the way. There’s something for everyone in the fridges, with a selection of around 100 cans and bottles (these and growlers are available for take away). The menu is hearty enough to sustain an extended sampling session and the back bar’s shelves groan with interesting spirits including milk vodka, 40 gins and of course a whisky collection Mr Usher would be proud of.

The Bow Bar 80 West Bow, Victoria Street, 0131 226 7667, thebowbar.co.uk

On the historic curve of West Bow and Victoria Street, the Bow Bar remains delightfully traditional – but that’s not to say their choice of tipples is outdated. Somehow, this little nook fits in an astonishing three hundred single malts, plus eight cask ales and six kegs. Keeping things local, they dispense beer from Scottish brewers Fyne Ales, Tempest, Cromarty and others, as well as hunting down bottles of Belgian duppel, German lager and good ol all-American beer. During quieter hours, you may be left with only your thoughts for company, but what better time to appreciate this little treasure in all its glory?

Brewhemia 1a Market Street, 0131 226 9560, brewhemia.co.uk

Each of Brewhemia’s rooms is loosely themed around the story of a Leith

SHARON BURGESS MANAGING DIRECTOR AT ASSEMBLY

My favourite Edinburgh restaurant is Ting Thai Caravan on Teviot Place. It’s authentic, noisy, modern and very popular: if you have time to queue, the pay-off is worth it. I often go the traditionalist route with the sensational chicken pad Thai, but I’ve gone rogue on more than one occasion: dishes such as the sea bass or sticky pork are pretty special. Favourite bar is the Café Royal: it has an old-school style, music isn’t too loud, and is a great location for meeting friends before and after shows at the Assembly Rooms.

boy who travelled to Europe before returning home with influences from afar. There is a French-style boudoir, a subtly Scottish tartan taproom and a gin bothy which is part Highlands/part après-ski. The centrepiece is a large, copper-decked Czech beer palace, which also hosts a range of Fringe events. Good-quality food takes in brunch, steaks served on a hot stone, burgers and salads, as well as more distinctive dishes like a meaty lobster and crayfish cocktail and a wellpresented plate of German chicken schnitzel with bratkartoffeln (fried potatoes) and red cabbage coleslaw.

The City Café 19 Blair Street, 0131 220 0125, thecitycafe.co.uk

Over the decades the City Café has maintained its place in Edinburgh’s nightlife folklore simply by not changing too much. The Americanstyle diner look and feel hasn't budged and the menu is dependably unflashy, including burgers, hot dogs, club sandwiches, nacho plates and grazing boards. Breakfasts happily do not pretend to start your day healthily: there are sweet Belgian waffles, vanilla pancakes, French toast and varying styles of hollandaise and eggs.

A much-loved pool table and a great atmosphere make the City Café a strong recommendation for any time of day or night.

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whenever, wherever edinburgh lothian road | st andrew square | ocean terminal | livingston g glasgow george street | glasgow fort | silverburn urn

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MY PICKS

LEAH SILVERLOCK HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS AT GILDED BALLOON

You might think when you meet me that my favourite place to eat in Edinburgh would be in a stripped-back shipping container serving vegan, gluten-free, seasonal food on eco-friendly, reusable plates accompanied by well-executed signature serves: imagine a Checkpoint / Harmonium hybrid. You’re wrong. Do not let my highwaisted jeans and clearframed specs fool you: I am a hardcore lover of Snax.

The food there is quick and greasy, the drinks on offer are of the classic ‘juice’ variety and often served ice cold, perfect for my busy schedule.

In association with

Hemma 75 Holyrood Road, 0131 629 3327, bodabar.com/hemma

Slightly off the main Festival drag, the office-y look of Hemma’s exterior belies the cosiness inside, created by mismatched furniture, comfy sofas, fairy lights and table football.

During the day you’ll find a mixed crowd, including families – the bar is super-handy for Holyrood Park, there’s ample space for buggies and a decent kid’s menu too. There’s a strong selection of draught and bottled beers including Williams Bros ales and low alcohol beer; 14 wines, all by the glass; and a classic cocktail selection, with hearty and homely food along the lines of open and toasted sandwiches, salads, burgers and sharing platters.

CAFÉS Brew Lab 6–8 South College Street, 0131 662 8963, brewlabcoffee.co.uk

Whether it's a cosy armchair beside the window or a bench shared with strangers, Brew Lab offers something for the thoughtful, the gregarious and the serious coffee fan. Breakfast spans from fresh fruit to toast and jam, while lunch brings sandwiches to satisfy vegetarians, vegans and carnivores – feta, tzatziki, spiced courgette and sundried tomato baguette should ward off hunger pangs in style, and there are also soups and salads. In the evenings there is a simple menu, with a couple of beers and natural wines. But it’s coffee that stars here: all carefully sourced and expertly brewed.

The Holyrood 9A 9a Holyrood Road, 0131 556 5044, theholyrood.co.uk

This bar has a well-earned reputation as one of the city's best burger joints with over 16 meaty (and veggie) options on the menu, showcasing haggis, halloumi and everything in-between. It’s also a hotspot for beer lovers, with rotating taps showcasing local and international ales, ciders and beers – check the blackboard for the flavours of the month. There's a good breakfast on offer, too. The veggie choice is substantial, with vegetarian haggis, quorn sausage and the rest, while the Holyrood is a slap-up full Scottish. Beer, burgers and big breakfasts: it's a winning combination, alright.

Dovecot Café by Leo's Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, 0131 550 3660, dovecotstudios.com/gallery/café

Part of the Dovecot Studios, a lovely calm space in the heart of the hubbub, this café is managed by the same team as New Town coffee house Leo's Beanery; so naturally the coffee

is excellent, as are the cakes, soup, salads and sandwiches. There are strong veggie, vegan and gluten-free options, like hummus and roasted carrot, as well as classic combos like peppered pastrami, Jarlsberg and gherkin on sourdough. Salads like free-range chicken satay served with crunchy vegetables and peanuts are bright and full of flavour, and there are light breakfasts including toasted banana bread and yoghurt with nuts and seeds.

Gannet & Guga 3 The Arches, East Market Street, 0131 558 1762, gannetandguga.com

In one of the converted arches by Waverley train station, this rounded brick bunker has been decorated with origami birds on the ceiling and a tiny orange tree on the narrow bar – there’s only space for a max of eight stools, so be prepared to takeaway.

Build your own banh mi, choosing bread, filling and homemade pickles to create your lunch. There are delicious sandwiches ready to go too, including vegan choices, alongside a couple of daily changing soups.

Leave space for an excellent peanut butter cup or millionaire’s truffle.

Salt Horse Beer Shop & Bar 57–61 Blackfriars Street, 0131 558 8304, salthorse.beer

Divino Enoteca 5 Merchant Street, 0131 225 1770, divinoedinburgh.com

This cavernous wine bar and restaurant offers classy Italian dishes with some Scottish twists – roasted scallops, delicious egg ravioli stuffed with braised short rib of beef, and crisp, well-seasoned courgette fries are all recommended when there’s time to linger. But the real star of the show is the enomatic machine, a spaceship-like beastie imported from Italy. It keeps over 40 Italian and international wines fresh and available by the glass, meaning there is an incredible range to taste. If you just fancy a nibble to go along with your wine, the enoteca menu has a selection of antipasti, salumi and bruschetta.

Ecco Vino 19 Cockburn Street, 0131 225 1441, eccovinoedinburgh.com

If the name didn't tip you off, Ecco Vino's main pull is its wine selection.

Bottles adorn the walls and the wine list is long – if you're hoping to make it to the bottom, you'll need some fortifying olives to sustain you. If you're looking for something more substantial there are small plates to share, with a focus on seafood, like seared scallops and crab bruschetta, as well as bigger mains. It’s a cosy wee spot, great for people-watching by the picture window, or if you’re lucky and the sun is shining, there is a handful of outside tables.

Salt Horse has more than 350 beers to choose from, either in two-thirds of a pint glasses from one of the twelve regularly changing beer taps, or in bottles or cans from the attached beer shop next door, which also has café-style seating. The kitchen has been outsourced to burger company Meat Stack, who do a short, simple and effective list of burgers (including a vegetarian paneer option). Brietopped hot buffalo wings and beef dripping fries fill up on the side for a very reasonable price. Laid-back (though well-informed) service plus a cool hidden outdoor courtyard complete the picture.

Under the Stairs 3a Merchant Street, 0131 466 8550, underthestairs.org

This lively pub has been going strong since 2008. It’s a pleasing basement cocktail bar and restaurant, rather like being in a cosy yet stylish cave, with bonus fish tank. After advice from the knowledgeable staff, try an adventurous cocktail such as a Kung Fu Cantona (with rhubarb and hellfire bitters) or Red Mist Wash Over (with Vida mezcal and sun-dried tomato) – or stretch your beer muscles with a guest brew like sour peach pale ale.

There’s also a small but beautiful wine selection, tasty small plates and more substantial mains if you don’t like to share.

Lovecrumbs

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In association with

Brew Lab

Lovecrumbs 155 West Port, 0131 629 0626, lovecrumbs.co.uk

Though this cosy wee café serves a range of savoury options from breakfast through to lunch, the cakes are the stars here. Rhubarb and rose cake, lemon

MY PICKS

torte, cinnamon shortbread, vegan beetroot cake and daily gluten-free options; it’s always tough to choose your slice. Tea lovers will appreciate the flask of hot water that comes with the loose leaves (violet petal or lemongrass and marigold are both great), or there are strong hot chocolates too. Cushions on the window bench, pot plants and well-worn furniture and floorboards make the place feel relaxed, and a good spot for taking a breather.

Pumpkin Brown

Milk at the Fruitmarket Gallery Fruitmarket Gallery, 45 Market Street, 0131 226 8195, cafemilk. co.uk/the-fruitmarket-gallery

SYMEN GERLINGS BAR MANAGER AT THE STAND

Tucked away from the busier city centre on Broughton Road is The Other Place, so named by the boss as it is the other pub he owns. It’s a small pub with a massive beer and ample spirit selection, incredible food, and some of the friendliest staff in Edinburgh. It’s welcoming to tourists, locals and dogs, whether after a walk in the Botanics or cooling down from rock-climbing at nearby Alien Bloc. For more of a restaurant experience, The Doric on Market Street provides a more intimate dining environment.

Set in one of Edinburgh's best contemporary art spaces and just a stone’s throw from Waverley Station, this café is a busy spot serving a wide audience. Yet it retains a personable feel. A breakfast selection includes chorizo and scrambled egg burrito, or poached egg and smoked salmon on toast. Later choose from liberally filled sandwiches of chorizo, cheddar and quince on toast or a mushroom, feta and buckwheat wrap in Lebanese flatbread. Salads are also available, alongside daily-changing soup and frittata, making this bright space as much of a destination as the gallery itself.

The Milkman 7 Cockburn Street, themilkman.coffee

Small but perfectly formed, The Milkman offers impeccably sourced coffee, tea and hot chocolate, with a monthly guest espresso and single origin filter coffee. Cakes and pastries are supplied by local bakers, with glutenfree options. Inside, it’s exposed brick, industrial but cosy, with the window seat a prime spot for people watching.

The flat white is smooth and intense

with no hint of bitterness, while a gluten-free raspberry slice is better than many free-from offerings elsewhere.

Overall, The Milkman's just right for a quick pick-me-up in town or for killing time before catching the train or moving to the next venue.

Pumpkin Brown 16 Grassmarket, 0131 629 1720, pumpkinbrown.com

Based in the busy Grassmarket area, Pumpkin Brown’s creative menu is entirely gluten-free, dairy-free, raw and vegan. Don’t be surprised to see customers clicking away with their cameras before digging into the colourful butterfly smoothie bowl, presented like a work of art. Seasonal salads include pad Thai, packed full of carrots, peppers, salad leaves and courgette spaghetti and seasoned with a gloopy almond butter and soy dressing.

Follow that up with a chocolate raspberry vanilla slice, totally guilt-free.

The Scottish Café & Restaurant National Gallery of Scotland, The Mound, 0131 225 1550, contini.com/ scottish-cafe-and-restaurant

As excellent (and calming) as a visit to the National Gallery is, you don't need to visit there before popping into the Scottish Café. The setting is smart and airy, the service warm and welcoming, with each waiter wearing a badge showing the languages they speak – apparently there are 35 spoken in total. For breakfast there's a range of porridge, scones, hot breakfasts and rolls; lunch features Scottish classics like Cullen skink, haggis bonbons and venison burger, or sharing platters bursting with excellent local fish and cheeses. There’s a picture-perfect afternoon tea too.

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There’s so much happening in this student-friendly area that you could stay within its radius for the entirety of August and see more than your fair share of festival shows. The Pleasance Courtyard is the go-to spot for top names in comedy, theatre and kids entertainment as well as spying the stars of the future, while its sibling the Pleasance Dome is also a vibrant hub. The same goes for the Gilded Balloon Teviot which has music, theatre and kids shows keeping the place buzzing while it houses the notorious legend that is Late‘n’Live aka the place where some comedians come to ‘die’. The Underbelly thrives here too with a series of venues including the reopened McEwan Hall, and Assembly has Checkpoint and Roxy.

If you crave a little bit of greenery, George Square Gardens has shows under the Assembly and Underbelly umbrellas, is home to the Edinburgh Food Festival and lays on gigs at the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival. The Festival Theatre on Nicolson Street also gets jazzy in July, and is a beacon of excellence during the International Festival.

You’d think that was enough, wouldn’t you, except the ZOO venues, Queen’s Hall, Summerhall, Underbelly’s Circus Hub and King’s Hall (platforming the best of CanadaHub) are also covered in this zone.

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CITY GUIDE SOUTHSIDE

In association with

Ransacked Black Oven

HIDDEN VEG

Checkpoint

Maki & Ramen

3 Bristo Place, 0131 225 9352, checkpointedinburgh.com

75 Nicolson Street, makimakirestaurant.co.uk

Abandon three-course conventions.

Checkpoint shakes up the traditional menu, creating a place that really does feel like an extension of your own front room. Breakfast runs all day, lunch sees casual mains plus wee things to pick at, while dishes like moules and sea bass laksa join the party for dinner. There’s a well-priced wine list, a handful of interesting cocktails and some quirky European beers too. Checkpoint suits any occasion – and that’s far from damning with faint praise. Rather it's an acknowledgement of the restorative power of easy, breezy, good times that fit your mood, pocket and appetite.

Space is tight in this pocket-sized sushi bar (formerly Maki Maki), but find a free stool and you're in for a treat.

As chefs sharpen knives, slice open fish and carve veg into neat strips, choose from deep bowls of rich ramen, or plump for beautifully light, fresh sushi and sashimi; options include Scottish sea bass or mackerel, Thai squid, Vietnamese octopus or Japanese hamachi. Flavours are cleverly balanced, the presentation is excellent and the experience is memorable (depending on how much sake is enjoyed along with the food – there are four premium varieties to choose from).

The Rabbit Hole

Civerinos Slice When too many shows and too little time means your favourite plant-based restaurant is out of reach, these places have good options for vegans and veggies

ARCHIPELAGO BAKERY 39 Dundas Street, archipelagobakery.co.uk Artisan New Town bakery committed to delivering all the joys properly made bread can bring, with a range of tarts, strudels and salads for lunch.

BABA 130 George Street, 0131 527 4999, baba.restaurant This relative newcomer to the George Street scene offers superbly spiced, lavish Lavantine small plates with elegant cocktails in stylish surroundings.

ILLEGAL JACK’S 44–45 St Patrick Square, 0131 629 2722, illegaljacks.co.uk Top value homemade Tex-Mex to eat in or takeaway, with a commendable selection of vegan and veggie options and ingredients.

MOTHER INDIA’S CAFÉ 3–5 Infirmary Street, 0131 524 9801, motherindiascafeedinburgh. co.uk This tapas-style menu means you can taste a wider variety of freshly made, memorable dishes in a relaxed and informal establishment with speedy service.

THE PAKORA BAR 96 Hanover Street, 0131 225 1115 Small, quirky Indian street food bar

EAT Bombay Bicycle Club 6–6a Brougham Place, 0131 229 3839, bombaybicycleclubrestaurant.com

Decorated simply with posters reflecting the bicycle theme (the traditional vehicle in India for food delivery), the waiting staff here are highly skilled in their art.

Fig-stuffed paneer is a delightful starter,

serving vegan and veggie Punjabi food until 1am during August.

Good breakfasts too.

RANSACKED BLACK OVEN 27–29 Marshall Street, 0131 667 7001, ransackedblackoven. co.uk Tasty, filling, fresh food inspired by Persian street fare – the crispy fried halloumi is the stuff dreams are made of and the vegan ice-cream is a highlight.

TANJORE 6–8 Clerk Street, 0131 478 6518, tanjore.co.uk South Indian restaurant serving delicious, good-value dishes and (arguably) the best dosas in the city in a casual café-style setting with free BYOB. UNION OF GENIUS 8 Forrest Road, 0131 226 4436, unionofgenius.com Tiny soup café using locally sourced ingredients to create wholesome, comforting, betterthan-homemade soups. Perfect for a pit stop.

WAGAMAMA 5 St Andrew Square/1 Castle Terrace/Ocean Terminal, wagamama.com Long known as veggie-friendly, Wagamama now have an extensive vegan menu. Handy city centre locations make it a great choice for a plant-powered pit-stop.

while tandoor salmon is so delicious you understand why it's also offered as a main. The biryani is the star of the party though, topped with a baked-on naan crown. Once broken, aromas of mint complement the prawns within and provide a fresh take on a familiar dish.

Complete with a comprehensive bar menu and a selection of traditional and refreshing desserts, this is a great spot to enjoy quality Indian dining.

49 Forrest Road, 0131 225 4026, civerinos.com

Whether it's a 20-inch pizza pie that you fancy or just a slice, this is the place to go. Located close to the university, there is a huge range of options: try the signature pizza with pepperoni, Sicilian sausage and rosemary; the classic margherita; or the king of New York – a pizza-style reuben sandwich complete with pickles. The unusual grandma slice – Sicilian pan pizza cooked with lots of olive oil – is worth checking out too.

You can sit-in or take-away, and the whole team’s passion shines through every aspect of the operation.

Illegal Jack's 44–45 St Patrick Square, 0131 629 2722, illegaljacks.co.uk

Serving quality Tex-Mex food at seriously good-value prices, it's little wonder Illegal Jack's is popular.

Owner and head chef Jack Muir's unfussy restaurant is an ideal place to relax over a taco or two, though everything on the menu can also be taken away. Vegans are well-catered for, with jackfruit carnitas, veggie chilli and veggie haggis all served up as fillings, each available topped with vegan cheese and drizzled with fabulous homemade hot sauce. Meat options are high-quality – steak from Perthshire, and haggis ‘locally caught' in West Lothian. Great for a quick, cheap bite that doesn’t compromise on taste or quality.

11 Roseneath Street, 0131 229 7953, therabbitholerestaurant.com

This neighbourhood bistro uses subdued lighting against soft greys and natural wood to create an intimate, relaxed experience. In the kitchen, Sicilian and Canadian roots combine to create seasonal menus of classic French-inspired dishes with creativity and flair, complemented by a varied, appealing wine list. Pan-seared pigeon is delicately presented alongside roasted beetroot, panko-crusted snails, dill aioli and balsamic red wine jus – on paper a busy dish, but actually a typically intelligent balance of flavours and textures. Moist poached sole with smooth cauliflower purée, sautéed garlicky spinach, curried cauliflower florets and curry oil bursts with aromatic flavours.

Ransacked Black Oven 27–29 Marshall Street, 0131 667 7001, ransackedblackoven.co.uk

LeftField

A recent addition to the Edinburgh Uni quarter, great-value Ransacked Black Oven is inspired by Persian street food.

Bread is baked in the titular wood-fired oven, creating whisper-light, delicious sourdough pita to dip in grassy fresh olive oil then dredge in aromatic dukkah. Assemble a kebab from a choice of salads, spreads, and fillings – halloumi dipped in cumin-seasoned flour and fried crisp is the stuff of Arabian dreams. Flatbread pizzas are thin, crispy and liberally smothered in toppings like smoky chorizo, sweet onion marmalade and sharp olives, while those with a sweet tooth will thrill to the pudding kebabs.

12 Barclay Terrace, 0131 229 1394, leftfieldedinburgh.co.uk

Spoon

LeftField is a welcoming, relaxed neighbourhood eatery in a stripped– back space, commanding impressive, uninterrupted views over Bruntsfield Links. The straightforward menu features Scottish ingredients served simply, such as starters of Shetland mussels and chicken liver pâté, and mains like beef burger, chicken or charred cauliflower. Scottish Borders beef is prominent, with slabs of rump, sirloin, ribeye and fillet steak, all at least 8oz and matured for 28 days, served with proper chunky, crunchy chips. Confident, charming and uncomplicated, to the point of appearing effortless – it’s the kind of place every neighbourhood deserves.

6a Nicolson Street, 0131 623 1752, spoonedinburgh.co.uk

Kitsch lamp shades, wispy curtains and mismatched furniture help turn this big-windowed room into a relaxed and informal bistro. The varied menu is built around local suppliers and changes regularly. Substantial breakfasts include meaty fried options alongside fruit or veg alternatives, lunch mixes soup and sandwiches with larger offerings such as turkey escalope or grilled salmon. Dinner ranges from veggie dishes such as charred aubergine and courgette curry or beetroot rösti with bulgur wheat, to lamb chops and pork belly, all washed down with modestly priced wine.

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SOUTHSIDE CITY GUIDE

Civerinos Slice

Ting Thai Caravan

LeftField

8–9 Teviot Place, 0131 225 9801, tingthai-caravan.com

There’s pretty much always a queue outside the Ting Thai Carvan, but don’t let that put you off as things seem to move quickly (though if you’re in a bona fide can't-stop rush, then nearby sister restaurant Saboteur is usually a little bit quieter). Inside it is pared-back, and industrial-looking cool, with your dishes arriving in brown cardboard boxes. Side dishes like crunchy tofu with toasted peanuts, sweet chilli nut jam and coriander or buttery roti accompany the impressive main players. The pan-fried seabass fillet, paired with rice or noodles, is a total riot of flavour thanks to the ginger, shallot, lemongrass, coconut and cashew nut combo and the pad Thai is equally yummy.

Union of Genius Tanjore

Taxidi

6–8 Clerk Street, 0131 478 6518, tanjore.co.uk

6 Brougham Street, 0131 228 1030

Light, crispy and pancake-like, the dosa is simple but highly versatile. Tanjore serve everything from the traditional masala dosa – stuffed with seasoned potatoes, onions, spices and more – to the mixed vegetable curry Tanjore special and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. They also excel in a range of curries, like the Hyderabadi biryani or the spinach and lentil-infused keera. There’s no corkage if you BYOB and they make their own lassis, milkshakes and specials like jiharthanda.

To finish, desserts such as the traditional warming payasam or decadent banana dosai go down a real treat.

A relative newcomer, Taxidi’s grey-blue walls are bedecked with a flock of birds but the space is fairly plain – here, it's all about the food. Share a mezze; talagani cheese (distinctively different to the better-known halloumi) is milky, nutty and squeaky, complemented perfectly with sweet marmalade. Pita is imported from Greece, toasted and liberally doused in oregano – the perfect carrier for a triumphantly tangy tzatziki, heavy on garlic and refreshing chunks of cucumber. Courgette fritters boast delectably charred outsides and a tangled mess of mint, dill and feta inside, while pork and beef meatballs are gorgeously seasoned and light.

8 Forrest Road, 0131 226 4436, unionofgenius.com

Union of Genius on Forrest Road has established itself as the absolute go-to place for a hearty bowl of fine soup, supplying many of Edinburgh’s best cafés with their special creations.

This bustling café operates mainly as a takeaway, with just a few bar stools alongside a cosy sharing table. Their daily-changing menu features six soups, ranging from meat to vegan, with seriously enticing flavours such as caldo verde (kale, chorizo and potato), or sweet potato, coconut and tamarind.

Three salads, Stromboli (stuffed bread), vegan chilli and cakes, are also offered; main allergens are highlighted, and gluten and dairy-free options are available too.

MY PICKS

KAT SHEARER CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER AT EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL

We can be quite a sociable bunch at the Book Festival and I’m constantly out the office meeting up with sponsors. The newly refurbished Principal is my current favourite spot for a coffee while dinner at Baba is an indulgent delight. Plus, Head & Tales for my favourite tipple of Edinburgh Gin, Gusto for a pizza, and our friends at the Ivy know how to look after us from start to finish.

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CITY GUIDE SOUTHSIDE

MY PICKS

MARINA DIXON

In association with

popping-up with a secret summer garden dedicated to all things gin. Perfect for sitting, sipping, chilling and chatting, there’s a tightly focused, beautifully presented cocktail menu pairing Caorunn with fresh summer flavours and unexpected ingredients – perfect for kicking back with friends and taking a breather before plunging back into the heart of the action at Bristo Square.

No bookings are necessary, it’s a great spot to start or end your evening, or for dropping by when you need to escape the crowds or plan your next foray.

The Fat Pony

HEAD OF PROGRAMMING AT UNDERBELLY

47/49 Bread Street, 0131 229 5770, thefatpony.com

Blue Blazer is my favourite pub. They have a great range of whiskies and often live music. It’s a great place to while away a Sunday afternoon. My favourite restaurant is El Cartel on Thistle Street. There is always a queue to get in as it’s tiny, but if you like Mexican food it’s well worth it: the margaritas are dirty and delightful! Wash it all down with a shot of mezcal and then head out into the night.

A welcome addition to largely loveless Bread Street, the Fat Pony is a relaxed setting for exploring innovative wines and cocktails. Modern décor is saved from austerity by colourful bar stools and little kitsch ponies, subtly mounted.

Service is helpful and efficient and reasonable prices (often from under £3 a glass) means you can roam freely throughout the quirky and lovingly curated wine list. Try an orange wine (closer to sherry), sample biodynamic production, or take a chance on a grape you’ve never heard of while grazing on decent charcuterie, cheese or tasty small plates.

Paradise Palms

DRINK Bennets Bar 8 Leven Street, 0131 229 5143 bennetsbaredinburgh.co.uk

Bennets is a busy, traditional and cheerful pub with a wide range of cask ales, whiskies, wine and cocktails. It’s popular with students and the rugby crowd and does a roaring trade in theatre-goers on their way to the King's, as well as those who want to settle in for the night. But while the pub looks traditional, the food tells a very different story – they share a kitchen with excellent bistro La Petite Mort, so customers can choose where to eat and choices like smoked pork collar croquettes or perfectly pink neck of lamb served with dauphinoise potatoes elevate the entire experience.

41 Lothian Street, 0131 225 4186, theparadisepalms.com

The décor of this cocktail bar, record shop and music venue is kitschy, 80s and tiki – sort of like a cocktail decoration itself. There are (slightly disturbing) teddy bears strung up over the bar and lots of fairy lights and fake plants. It’s fun just reading the cocktail menu, and sharing a teapot of cocktails (‘No drinking from the spout, please’) is recommended. A fully veggie and vegan menu is stomach-lining, and seitan dominates, like in the Philly cheese steak – seitan strips and fried onion on sourdough with smoked applewood

and chipotle cheese sauce. Delicious and filling, especially with lucky spice (paprika) fries.

The Pear Tree House 38 West Nicolson Street, 0131 667 7533, peartreeedinburgh.co.uk

The Pear Tree is long famed for having arguably the best beer garden in Edinburgh and it still does – a cobbled courtyard filled with picnic tables with sports on a huge outdoor screen and frequent live bands during the Festival. But the bar’s scruffy student ambience put off as many drinkers as it attracted on rainy days. Prepare to be astonished though, because a significant refurbishment means the bar is now equally lovely, all pretty lights and stripped-back walls. The reasonably priced menu looks good too, featuring choices like burgers, fish and chips, and charcuterie boards, with a daily bowl special.

The Royal Dick Bar & Bistro 1 Summerhall, 0131 560 1572, summerhall.co.uk/the-royal-dick

A cosy space made up of interjoining rooms, the Royal Dick is a haven for those attending Summerhall's eclectic programme of music, exhibitions and events, especially on a sunny day when the generous, enclosed and rather lovely courtyard terrace comes into its own.

Food tends towards the casual, the décor harks back to the building's origins as the city's former vet school and the complex is home to both Barney's Beers and Pickering's Gin, both of which are represented behind the bar – when it comes to drinking local, you can't get more local than that.

St Andrews Brewing Co 32 Potterrow, 0131 662 9788, standrewsbrewingcompany.com

Craft brewers St Andrews Brewing Co have expanded into pubs, recently acquiring the bar formerly known as the Potting Shed. They've freshened things up a little, introducing a list of 15 or so

mainly Scottish craft beers on tap and lots of bar staff with beards and tattoos. You can choose between an ambitious dinner menu, with mains like braised beef shin or salt-baked beetroot, or a varied bar menu including pizza, fish pie and mac and cheese. The wines are tempting and the cocktails even more so – Fiery Irn Bru Sour, anyone? Throw in the lively atmosphere and this bar has it all.

The Whistle Stop Barber Shop 66 South Bridge, 0131 556 0954, whistlestopedinburgh.co.uk

Traditionally a bit of a dead zone for bars, the Whistle Stop Barber Shop has confidently set its mark on South Bridge since opening in 2015. There’s a modest amount of booth and table seating, a decent standing space near the bar and a mock barber’s shop in the basement (which is sometimes manned by actual barbers – check their social media for details). You’ll find a good range of craft beers, an excellent cocktail list and American-diner style food, with flagship burgers, steaks, hot dogs and the likes. In a city awash with burger joints, this one is recommended.

CAFÉS Brochan 24 Marchmont Crescent, 0131 629 2622, brochan.co.uk

Named Brochan after the Gaelic word for porridge, this wee Marchmont café is all about oats and grains. Organic oat groats are hand-rolled to provide the creamiest results and toppings are inventive and delicious. Almond butter, strawberry chia jam and sliced banana porridge bowl is satisfying, while the lemon pistachio granola (made from gluten-free oats) with blueberry compote and coconut yoghurt is sweet yet sharp, creamy yet crunchy.

Who said porridge and granola are just for breakfast? The menu also features toast, smoothies, soup and home-baking, which can all be enjoyed in this cosy spot or savoured as takeaway.

Caorunn Gin Garden

The Blackbird 37–39 Leven Street, 0131 228 2280, theblackbirdedinburgh.co.uk

Laid-back and contemporary, the Blackbird’s cocktail list is extensive with lots of fruit flavours and high-end spirits.

There’s a great burger, with lots of hot, salty shoestring fries while small plates and desserts show flair. Sticky chicken wings with pomegranate molasses (complete with finger bowl) will satisfy hungry diners, while orange crème brûlée and polenta cake are both worth saving space for. With an interesting breakfast menu, the Blackbird is a great bet for most occasions especially in the summer when its beer garden really gets its time to shine. Handy for the King’s theatre as well as Bruntsfield Links.

Caorunn Gin Garden Hosted by Hotel du Vin Edinburgh, 11 Bristo Place, hotelduvin.com

Caorunn Gin return to Hotel du Vin’s pretty hidden courtyard this August,

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edinburgh’s favourite food & Drink festival

with top chefs inverleith park 3, 4, 5 august

foodiesfestival.com

VISIT THE HELIX

HOME OF THE KELPIES Visit the world’s largest equine sculptures in the heart of Scotland

www.thehelix.co.uk

@Helixfalkirk

@TheHelix

@HelixFalkirk

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CITY GUIDE SOUTHSIDE

In association with

Café 1505 @ Surgeonshall Honeycomb & Co

18 Nicolson Street, 0131 527 1686, heritageportfolio.co.uk

You wouldn’t immediately associate a museum famous for aspic-stored exhibits of historical medical oddities with an excellent place to eat, but Café 1505 (named after the year in which the Royal College of Surgeons was founded) is definitely worth recommending. With a bright and airy interior and plenty of pavement seating (albeit on a main road), most of the food is prepared fresh on-site.

The macaroni cheese with wild mushrooms and truffle oil is rich and cheesy, and salads include choices like spiced cauliflower, couscous and mango chutney, while the heaps of Viennese fingers, Florentines and Bakewells are alone enough to inspire a visit.

Honeycomb & Co 1 Merchiston Place, 0131 228 4641, honeycombandco.com

In an enviably sun-soaked spot set back from busy Bruntsfield place, bright and cheery Honeycomb & Co blurs the distinction between café and bistro. Mornings see a concise breakfast menu, including choices like shakshuka, granola and avo toast.

Lunch sees a handful of seasonally changing plates like macaroni, pho and lamb salad (if you’re lucky, the shakshuka may still be on for lunch).

Almost everything is made in-house.

A lot of thought and care has gone into this venture and it shows – not least in the pricing. That said, the confident, well-sourced food and sunny welcome means locals are positively buzzing about it.

MY PICKS

Machina Espresso 80 Nicolson Street, 0131 629 9825, machina-espresso.co.uk

Whether you are a die-hard coffee fanatic or simply passing by, this Nicholson Street café is a cool but casual spot for catching up and enjoying a caffeine fix made with real attention to detail. As well as cakes, pastries and bagels, menu options include smoothie bowls, sandwiches and generous salads, like roasted butternut squash with prosciutto and feta, piled high with colourful crispy leaves, sugar snap peas and pumpkin seeds. For summer there’s a simple but enticing early evening menu of meat and cheese platters, along with a selection of wines by the glass and craft beers.

Magma Café 67 Home Street, magmacafe.business. site

AGNESE DAVERIO PRODUCTION MANAGER AT EDINBURGH JAZZ & BLUES FESTIVAL

As clichéd as it sounds, my favourite Edinburgh bar is undoubtedly The Jazz Bar. I like it because they have the best home-made ginger beer in town and always good live music. A great atmosphere!

Chez Jules is one of my favourite restaurants: fair price, in the city centre, and with late-night service. For sushi there’s Kanpai, for Turkish there’s Ada, and for Ramen, it has to be Maki & Ramen. Best pizza? Pizzeria 1926. Unbeatable.

Susang Bomzan used to work at Punjabi Junction, a community cafe devoted to improving the lives of minority ethnic women in Edinburgh. She’s now branched out with her own venture – a small, down to earth coffee shop just a few doors down from the King’s Theatre in busy Tollcross. She brings her traditional homemade Punjabi and Nepali recipes with her, adding curries, momo dumplings and stir fries to a menu of French toast breakfasts, green lentil wraps and hearty soups, with plenty vegetarian and vegan options.

There is an impressive selection of delicious homemade gluten and lactosefree cakes too.

The Pie Not? Bistro 135 Comiston Road, 0131 629 1200, pienot.co.uk

Nothing says comfort food like a decent pie – and as with many things, the basics done properly make a huge difference. Stephen Lindsay’s award-winning pies don’t fail to deliver and this wee bistro is the next step in his plan to bring handcrafted pies to

Machina Espresso

Edinburgh. Refreshingly, there isn’t a huge selection of out-there fillings, instead the emphasis is on using quality, local ingredients. The steak and ale pie is generously filled with tender, slowcooked beef and has the right proportion of pastry to soak up the juices. There’s a small range of starters, with desserts and home-baking if it’s not quite a pie time of day.

Söderberg The Meadows 27 Simpson Loan (Quartermile), 0131 228 5876, soderberg.uk

The café formerly known as Peter’s Yard is a great spot for people-watching, with an enviable location right in the middle of the Meadows. There’s a reliably delicious, if slightly expensive, selection of Swedish cakes, quality bread, continental breakfast trays and open sandwiches – try a heap of crayfish, dill and lime on a slice of their in-house brown bread for a very satisfying taste of Scandinavia. The

glass-walled space has a bright, airy, Scandi feel, and the wooden counters along the windows come in handy if you need to do a bit of laptopping while uploading lovely pieces of pastry to your face.

Summerhall Café 1 Summerhall, 0131 560 1580, summerhall.co.uk/summerhall-café

Airy and light and part of the Summerhall arts complex, this café has a cool backstage vibe, reflecting its clientele of visiting performers, resident artists, locals, and students seeking a sunny spot to plug into the WiFi. Chunky furniture from the Tim Stead workshop gives the place a comfortable solidity. A useful daytime menu of wraps, soups, pies, burgers and fish is supplemented by daily specials and food is cooked to order, so allow time for the magic to happen. Cakes are delicious if you’re in more of a rush, and there's a wide selection of gluten-free treats.

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EAT BABA 130 George Street, 0131 527 4999, baba.restaurant

BABA is a stylish proposition; from the teal walls to the distressed woodwork, via the Turkish funk on the stereo, open kitchen and heady, spice-heavy scent.

The menu is based around small plates, loaded with finely balanced, intriguing flavour combinations and exquisite textures, and the cocktails are pretty fine too. A sweet red pepper dip with darts of crunchy walnut is ideal for dipping thick, fluffy pita, while burrata is doused in grassy green olive oil, spiked with citrus, dill, chilli and mint. Superb Goosnargh chicken leg is a shout of lively flavours but be sure to squeeze in pudding too – flavours are equally complex and intriguing.

Café St Honoré 34 North West Thistle Street Lane, 0131 226 2211, cafesthonore.com

Tucked down a dark cobbled lane, Parisian charm oozes from the bentwood chairs, aged mirrors and chessboardtiled floor of this New Town stalwart.

But don’t judge Café Saint Honoré on appearances alone – the menu reads like a Scottish food directory and their dedication to sustainable, carefully sourced ingredients is second to none. A hefty portion of North Sea hake bobs atop an intense fennel and seafood bisque with Shetland mussels and squid, while venison is meltingly tender and skilfully seasoned. The wine list is similarly accomplished, with a particularly generous selection by the glass.

Contini George Street 103 George Street, 0131 225 1550, contini.com/contini-george-street

Contini’s modern Italian menu centres simple cooking and fresh ingredients,

creating strong, clean flavours – pizza and stodgy pasta are banished here.

Start with a selection of primi to share, or a small pasta dish like veal tortellini or the ever-popular contadino (fresh orecchiette with piccante sausage).

Pasta is made in-house with local freerange eggs and flour imported from Italy. In the secondi, locally sourced organic meat features strongly, like spicy sausage with slow-cooked fagioli, or beautifully pink Borders lamb. Open all day, there’s a great breakfast as well as afternoon aperitivo if you’re after a quick drink and a snack.

Dishoom 3a St Andrew Square, 0131 202 6406, dishoom.com

Dishoom's first foray beyond London has proven to be incredibly popular, with regular queues snaking around St Andrew Square. Inspired by the Irani-style cafes of Bombay, there are quirky yet familiar dishes, ranging from breakfast bacon naan to full-flavoured biryani and mixed grills.

Signature dishes like the house black dhal and mashed vegetable extravaganza that is the pau bhaji are well worth sampling alongside tikka, kebab plates and good old-fashioned chana chaat salad. There’s a no reservation policy for small groups, but the downstairs Permit Room bar is an ideal waiting room and tables turn quickly.

Dough 172 Rose Street, 0131 225 1588, dough-pizza.co.uk

Among the finest pizza in town, Dough’s stylish Rose Street takeaway is the perfect pit-stop on your way to a show, whether you want to grab and go or linger at a handful of outside tables and a sit-up bar.

Choose from nearly two dozen expertlycrafted pizzas, from familiar favourites to gourmet creations. Tuscan fennel sausage and wild broccoli toppings feature alongside cured pig’s cheek and smoked mozzarella, all ably supported by popular

flatbreads and a sprinkling of sides and salads. There’s a second branch in South Clerk Street too.

The Magnum Restaurant & Bar 1 Albany Street, 0131 557 4366, themagnumrestaurant.co.uk

The Magnum is a real people-pleaser – a relaxed and unpretentious, yet decidedly pretty, oasis for a drink or bite to eat. With generous space between the dark wooden tables, and plenty of inviting nooks and crannies, this is the kind of place where diners can comfortably come for an intimate meal for two, a big celebration, or a relaxed solo meal. A terrific starter of pickled, roasted and dehydrated beetroot with whipped goat’s cheese shows flair while mains will keep the most diverse of groups happy, with options ranging from lightly battered haddock to venison tortellini with cauliflower purée.

Mussel Inn 61–65 Rose Street, 0131 225 5979, www.mussel-inn.com

It takes skill to survive in Edinburgh's Rose Street for 20 years, outliving countless other restaurants and staving off competition from the increasingly dominating chains. The Mussel Inn’s lasting popularity is down to its policy of serving affordable, carefully sourced seafood in a relaxed and homely atmosphere. No gimmicks, nothing too fancy, just honest cooking in a light and friendly space. Somewhat obviously, mussels are the main event, all sourced from Scottish waters. In kilo, half-kilo pots and platters they come in variety of sauces, from simple white wine, garlic and cream, to Moroccan spices or even blue cheese with bacon and cream.

The Pakora Bar 96 Hanover Street, 0131 225 1115

The Singh family started off taking their Punjabi street food around festivals in a van, where long queues of enthusiastic punters made them realise they were on to something.

Day jobs now dumped, they've set up on Hanover Street full-time. Haggis pakora, served with mango and hintof-chilli chutney is a speciality, but there's a huge variety on offer, with lots of vegan choices like the brilliant cauliflower pakora. There's chicken tikka, paneer and even bread stuffing as well as curry, wraps, spicy and warming soups and full Scottish or Indian (paratha and purgi) breakfasts.

Open late throughout the Festival.

STEPHEN ALLEN HEAD OF LEARNING AND PROGRAMMES AT NATIONAL MUSEUMS SCOTLAND

My favourite bar is Paradise Palms on Lothian Street.

Well, I say my favourite, but it’s the one I’m in most as it’s the museum’s unofficial local, and makes for a handy after-work drink and food venue in the heart of the city, with exotic cocktails, fancy lagers and spicy chips!

Favourite restaurant is Papilio on Brunstfield Place; it’s a lovely local Italian.

I’ve been going there with my family since it opened.

It’s not flashy but always dependable and very friendly.

Six by Nico 97 Hanover Street, 0131 225 5050, sixbynico.co.uk/edinburgh

Glasgow restaurateur Nico Simeone has crossed the divide of the M8 to bring his signature ‘six’ concept to the nation's capital: a set menu of six courses, which completely changes every six weeks.

Previous themes included The Chippy, a re-imagination of some traditional chip shop fare including dishes like Parmesan espuma featuring tiny droplets of curry oil; scampi with crispy, succulent Scrabster monkfish cheeks; and a decidedly far from ubiquitous deep-fried Mars Bar with chocolate sorbets and orange gel. A polished team keeps everything moving at a brisk, yet comfortable pace (though you will need a couple of hours to do the whole thing complete justice) and it’s all brought in at nothing less than an incredibly reasonable price.

Spitaki 133–135 East Claremont Street, 0131 556 9423, spitaki.co.uk

Rollo 108 Raeburn Place, 0131 332 1232

Contini George Street

MY PICKS

Intimate and inviting décor, cosy candlelit tables, exceptionally friendly staff and a total lack of pretension make Rollo a winner. Munch your way through an eclectic menu of bites, bowls, plates and sides, carefully balanced between elegance and fun – but don’t forget the chips with aioli, which are among the best in town. Four or five dishes to share between two should leave you some room for dessert – the banana bread and butter pudding with peanut ice cream is an absolute winner. There’s a cracking wine list and look out for their equally successful branch at the top of Broughton Street.

Transport yourself to sunny Santorini – the bright blue paintwork, whitewashed walls and traditional taverna-style aluminium wine carafes in this familyrun venture will have you reminiscing about your holiday. That's before you've even looked at the menu which is based around mezze sharing dishes, with tzatziki, htipiti and other dips to scoop up with warm pita, as well as heftier dishes keftedes and souvlaki. Dishes comes out as and when they’re ready, so if food envy strikes you can quickly order more. With outdoor seating, litre carafes of wine and a pet-friendly policy, it's worth swinging by for a proper Greek family affair.

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MY PICKS

RORY STEEL CO-DIRECTOR OF FRINGE BY THE SEA

My favourite bar is Thistle Street Bar which has all the core ingredients for festival time: quality, affordable drinks, great location (opposite our office!), superfriendly, efficient, welltrained staff, and regulars that will always outnumber tourists. For food, El Cartel smashes out the best tacos this side of the Gulf of Mexico. If you have to wait for a table (no reservations) you can nip round to Lucky Liquor for a quick cocktail while waiting for them to call you.

In association with

Bramble 16a Queen Street, 0131 226 6343, bramblebar.co.uk

Blink and you’ll miss Bramble’s doorway, hidden at basement level with nothing but a little brass plaque to hint at what lies within. This popular spot is a regular top tip for cocktail enthusiasts.

Inside, the cosy nooks nod to retro cool (look out for Ice-T in his heyday) and the friendly team offer smooth service and helpful recommendations. The evolving menu is bursting with booze with several pages dedicated to gins and whiskies, but the cocktails are the real highlight. Interesting ingredients, like bacon-washed Courvoisier, are developed with imaginative methods, combined creatively and presented beautifully, some even featuring their very own house spirits.

Bryant and Mack 87–89 Rose Street North Lane, 0131 225 8225

Taisteal

It takes great skill to combine mustard agave, Espolòn tequila, banana liqueur and burnt orange cordial to create exceptional elixir that you're reluctant to put down. Ross Bryant and Jason Cormack's compact list of audacious cocktails is presented in a brown envelope marked ‘confidential’ and the private detective theme doesn't stop there. If you're not in the know, sussing out the camouflaged entrance may be a little challenging, but once found their dimly lit 35-seater speakeasy is hard to leave. Loosen up to the jazz playlist and discover unusual flavours that just work.

1 Raeburn Place, 0131 332 9977, taisteal.co.uk

The Cumberland Bar

‘Taisteal' means to journey or travel and the walls of this Stockbridge restaurant are full of lush photographs of exotic spices and colourful ingredients. The food reflects this restless energy and takes the Scottish larder for a whirl around the globe, creating refined yet gutsy food, studded with contrasting textures and tastes. Charred and cured mackerel comes with guacamole, pickled grapes and ponzu gel; while venison is flanked by gnocchi, wild mushrooms and cassis jus. If this leaves you feeling dizzy, comfort yourself with a side order of triple cooked chips.

A similarly far-flung (if pricey) wine list, all available by the glass, complements.

1–3 Cumberland Street, 0131 558 3134, cumberlandbar.co.uk

A varied and loyal crowd fill the snugs of the Cumberland, enjoying comfort food

and fine ales. Sunny weather brings the buzz of chatter outside, under the huge weeping willow in what has to be one of the best beer gardens in Edinburgh.

Seasonal menus focus on classics, from chunky beer-battered haddock and chips to pies, bangers and burgers with Scottish accents – the likes of haggis and whisky jam are dotted throughout. A nice selection from cask and keg, both regular and guest, further verify the traditional pub credentials.

Good Brothers Wine Bar 4–6 Dean Street, 0131 315 3311, goodbrothers.co.uk

Feeling adventurous? Try a most excellent wine quest at Good Brothers.

Journey through the latest natural wine producers and vineyards, taking in orange wines (made from extra skin contact with unusual grapes like procanico and malvino) through to reds with attentiongrabbing names like Unravelled Pinot Noir. Let enthusiastic barman Oli guide you with a splash of this or that, or pick at random – it will all be delicious, intriguing or both. Accompany your wine with small plates such as mussels in squid ink chowder, oyster mushroom risotto or Mellis’s cheese from a frequently changing menu. A great destination for the curious oenophile.

Kaleidoscope Whisky Bar & Shop 28 Queen Street, 0131 220 2044, smws.com/about/venues/kaleidoscopeedinburgh

The public face of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s Queen Street headquarters, Kaleidoscope is a bar with more than two hundred unique selling points – its range of whiskies. With many exclusive SMWS single casks as well as rare expressions, proprietary bottles and flights, plus specially developed whisky

cocktails, it's a whisky-lover's dream.

Primarily a refined, relaxed bar – there is a good range of beer, wine and nonwhisky based cocktails – there is also an impressive selection of upmarket bar food choices. It’s fairly formal, but its good reputation is well-deserved.

The Lucky Liquor Co 39a Queen Street, 0131 226 3976, luckyliquorco.com

Who said 13 is an unlucky number?

Lucky Liquor select 13 bottles, create 13 cocktails and serve each menu for – you guessed it – 13 weeks. Forget superstition and let the glowing red 'Liquor' sign lure you; you're in for a good time.

Impressively, most concoctions feature a Lucky homemade liqueur, the likes of tonka bean, sassafras or more familiarly, banana and coconut (also available to take home). With a short but carefully selected wine list, a pulsating vinyl playlist and a pool table, this really is a paradise for cocktail lovers.

The Permit Room 3a St Andrew Square, 0131 202 6406, dishoom.com/permitroom

For all that Edinburgh’s first branch of classy Indian restaurant Dishoom has created something of a buzz in the city, its basement bar has gone somewhat unnoticed. Yet this enclosed room, decked out in wood panelling and frosted glass dividers, is more than just a holding area for the restaurant upstairs (although it is that too). There’s a great range of wine and beer (including their own Dishoom IPA), lassis and particularly cocktails; like the Debonair, featuring marmalade vodka, star anise and orange cream soda, or the Chai Paanch, a blend of Johnnie Walker, rum, liqueurs and house chai. six°north 24 Howe Street, 0131 225 6490, sixdnorth.co.uk

DRINK

With group-friendly leather booths, tapasstyle bar bites and extensive drinks range, the onus here is on Belgian beer; although house brews are made in Stonehaven Aberdeenshire, located six degrees of latitude north of Belgium (get it?). Each table has a tome containing information on hundreds of beers, including their percentage, origin and what is available on draught. Beer fearers, needn't worry, however: there's also an impressive wine and spirits list, including over 20 varieties of gin. And in a break with tradition, there's now no need to hit up the kebab shop after a few pints as there is decent food available too.

The Bon Vivant

Smith & Gertrude

55 Thistle Street, 0131 225 3275, bonvivantedinburgh.co.uk

26 Hamilton Place, 0131 629 6280, smithandgertrude.com

Dark blue walls, candle light and vintage touches in gold create a cosy yet stylish intimacy and service is spot-on at the Bon Vivant, from being brought a jug of water even as you stand at the bar, to laid-back and knowledgeable waiters. You can spend a happy evening in the bar area sipping on a cocktail, sharing a bottle of wine and a series of ‘bites’ – mini tapas for one – or sit down for a full meal. Larger mains change often and could include options like skate wing or bavette steak, accompanied by truffle and parmesan chips.

Whether you pop in for a quick glass of bubbles and some black truffle crisps on the way home or settle in for a few hours with a carefully themed wine and cheese flight, the sophisticated and welcoming Smith & Gertrude will see you right. The thoughtfully curated wine list features well-known and less-familiar varieties from around the world, with more than just lip service paid to English producers.

Edinburgh-sourced charcuterie and cheese boards (and even some locally made chocolates) make trusty accompaniments to your chosen tipple. A pared-back and classy re-invention of the wine bar.

Kaleidoscope Whisky Bar & Shop

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Located in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town, The Magnum Restaurant & Bar is one of Edinburgh’s leading independent restaurants and prides itself on combining Scotland’s best local ingredients with a mixture of classic and contemporary flavours.

Providing warm and welcoming surroundings, an appetising menu offering Scottish dishes, fresh seasonal game and seafood, you can also choose from a large selection of Scottish Gins.

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CITY GUIDE NEW TOWN

CAFÉS

In association with

Eteaket

Archipelago Bakery 39 Dundas Street, archipelagobakery. co.uk

Heavenly wafts of fresh bread coming from a bright, welcoming space lure you into Archipelago Bakery. Baking starts at 4am to produce exceptionally flavoured and textured breads, including sourdoughs and yeasted loaves like the popular combine harvester, made with wholemeal spelt, oats, flax and sunflower seeds. Also a small veggie café and takeaway, there are continental breakfasts, and lunches of vibrant salads, stuffed baguettes, individual tarts, frittata and homemade soup while the cake counter brims with enticing offerings, many free-from and vegan.

Cairngorm Coffee Co 41a Frederick Street, cairngormcoffee. com

Cairngorm’s Highland bothy-inspired interior is cosy and quaint, with rustic touches like hessian coffee sacks draped above the seating area. Grilled cheese toasties feature alongside seasonal specials and chocolate brownies sit proudly amongst creations like gluten-free and vegan raw bars – sweet dense chocolate, orange and date slabs, studded with seeds and cacao nibs for crunch. It’s one of a just a few UK establishments to prepare espresso from frozen coffee shots. Carefully weighed beans are stored frozen in individual containers and ground to order; a laborious process which apparently results in a cleaner shot.

Cowan & Sons 33 Raeburn Place, 0131 343 3007

The tradition in the impressive stained-

MY PICKS

glass windows reflects the heritage behind this long-running family café: Cowan & Sons (previously Maxi’s) has served breakfast, lunch and cake to Stockbridge locals for twenty years now.

Recently rebranded and refurbished, the shabby-chic interior is all reclaimed wood, exposed original tiles and mixy-matchy furniture while the menu reads like a veritable who’s who of local producers. Late risers will rejoice at a generous 3pm breakfast cut-off before diving into smashed avocado on sourdough or the butcher’s breakfast.

The lunch menu is compact but varied and includes daily soup and frittata specials.

Eteaket 41 Frederick Street, 0131 226 2982, eteaket.co.uk

SAM GOUGH GENERAL MANAGER AT SUMMERHALL

I may be biased but one of my fave places for drinks is The Royal Dick at Summerhall. I love a good margarita and if you can come by, ask Paul for a ‘Tommy’s’: you will be in for a treat! Fresh lime, great quality tequila and great ice.

Café Andamiro on Buccleuch Street is seriously good for low-key excellent Korean and Japanese food. If you can get a table! No pretence, just amazing fresh and authentic food.

With one of the largest ranges of looseleaf teas in Edinburgh, Eteaket brews everything from Darjeeling to Isle of Harris gin botanicals. Each cuppa is served in an individual pot, with its own timer to ensure the perfect brew.

Afternoon tea is a particular treat, but breakfast, lunch and freshly made scones and bakes are available too, while savouries include sandwiches like roast chicken and pesto mayo, or smoked salmon and cream cheese. All the teas are available to buy and take home, as well as teapots and tea ephemera, so it’s a handy stop for visitors looking for a sophisticated memento of Edinburgh.

Fortitude Coffee 3c York Place, 0131 557 3063, fortitudecoffee.com

Wooden shelves stacked with brewing paraphernalia and beans show that coffee is the focus of this wee place.

There is a selection of single origin, seasonal coffee with a monthly guest espresso – the quarterly changing house

espresso is an example of Fortitude's recent ventures into roasting their own.

Simple tasting notes on the wall guide your choice: try a pour-over for a more subtle taste, or stick to the milky classics.

Whatever your choice, the beans are ground and measured for each shot, displaying an admirable attention to detail: the pay-off is a consistently beautiful crema.

Hyde & Son 127 George Street, 0131 285 2050, hydeandson.com

Part of the Eden Locke Aparthotel, Hyde and Sons serves as a café by day and a buzzy bar by night. With large Georgian windows filled with luscious pot plants looking out to busy George Street it's an oasis of serene calm, with cleverly spaced tables, high ceilings and pale green walls only enhancing the vibe.

Whether resting sore feet or catching up with the office, attentive staff encourage you to relax over a limited menu of tea, coffee and smoothies. Pastries and baking adorn the counter, including a vegan option – highlights include a flaky, giant almond croissant or moist plum and almond tart.

The Pantry 1–2 North West Circus Place, 0131 6290 206, thepantryedinburgh.co.uk

Expect wholesome food with a modern and fun twist in this bright and spacious café. Mismatched furniture and wall hangings add to a chilled atmosphere where kids and pooches are welcome too. Eggs take centre stage across the breakfast, brunch and lunch menus, alongside homemade Belgian waffles and appetising porridge bowls. The deservedly popular sunshine on Stockbridge bursts with colour and will brighten any dreich day with its toasted sourdough topped with thyme-

smoked tomatoes, roasted veg, smashed avocado, chilli and beautifully poached free-range eggs, optional chorizo, and hot sauce. This well-established brunch spot sets itself apart from the best competition around.

The Pastry Section 86 Raeburn Place

Savoury-seekers keep on walking, for the Pastry Section is all about the cake. The contemporary-style café is consciously minimal allowing the patisserie-laden counter to steal all the glory. Everything is baked from scratch with recurring favourites such as cinnamon buns, lemon meringue pies and snickerdoodles. The ultimate brownie is the clear crowd-pleaser but, be warned, for the dense, gooey ganache and chewy base might send an inexperienced chocoholic into a spin. There's a good selection of locally sourced coffees and teas – just don’t ask for a bacon sarnie.

Urban Angel 121 Hanover Street, 0131 225 6215, urban-angel.co.uk

This independent café serves all-day brunch, lunch, coffee and cake. The deceptively large space holds a deli area, with two dining rooms – one bright and fresh, the other more cosy and intimate. For lunch, expect deli dishes like sandwiches and salads, as well as heartier options such as fishcakes and haggis. Spiced organic lamb meatballs, moist and flavoursome, complemented by gremolata and a roast vegetable medley, are satisfying and colourful.

For something sweet, quality in-house baking offers plenty of tempting choices.

Chocolate brownie is sweet, dense and nut-laden, while the chocolate and beetroot cake with silky ganache is earthy and light.

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A few minutes’ walk away, you’ll get to the hectic hub of Tollcross and the King’s Theatre, another location for some fine International Festival fare. Closer to Haymarket is the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) where some big comedy names will jostle for space alongside the Turing Festival at the beginning of August and the Television Festival at the end. And it might feel a million miles away from the chaos, but the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art fully plays its part in the festival experience by containing a fabulous collection of modern and contemporary art. And on a lovely day, it’s a treat to take a moment and relax in their green surroundings.

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146 THE LIST | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | list.co.uk/festival

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WEST END CITY GUIDE

EAT

First Coast

@pizza

This local venue often features Asian flavours on the regularly updated menu, like spicy Malaysian salad with green beans, peanuts and poached egg. For mains, steamed hake is complemented by crispy aubergine with a punch of ginger in the sauce, while venison haunch with pine nuts is set off by an excellent onion purée and a dessert of baked apple is sensational. Prices are uniformly reasonable for food and drink (the short wine list offers every option by the glass) and service is friendly and unobtrusive, exactly as you'd want it to be in your own favourite local restaurant.

4 Charlotte Lane, 0131 285 5940, atpizza.com

They can cook a pizza in just 90 seconds in this stylish monochrome pizzeria, so it’s perfect for when time is tight between shows (or if the weather co-operates, take away and eat in nearby Princes Street Gardens). They use good-quality local ingredients and have a demonstrable commitment to the environment: almost everything used can be recycled.

Construct your own pizza, choosing dough, sauce, toppings and finishing touches, before the server gives it the short, sharp cooking treatment. A selfservice soda machine adds to the fun as an alternative to local beers or a limited selection of single-serve Italian wines.

L'Escargot Blanc Restaurant & Wine Bar 17 Queensferry Street, 0131 226 1890, lescargotblanc.co.uk

L'Escargot Blanc's West End bistro blends classic French cuisine with the best of Scotland's larder. A charming street-level bar leads up to a pair of politely dressed dining rooms lined with colourful cooking pots and old-school cookbooks. Passionate chef-owner Fred Berkmiller draws on impeccable product provenance to influence an appealing à la carte menu of well-prepared and simply presented traditional dishes: plump Orkney scallops on homemade boudin noir; snails in pastis and ham butter; confit duck leg and a splendid vanilla crème brûlée. Comforting casserole and long marinades shine, and there are good value lunch and pre-theatre deals to be had.

97–101 Dalry Road, 0131 313 4404, first-coast.co.uk

Forage & Chatter 1A Alva Street, 0131 225 4599, forageandchatter.com

Expectations at Forage & Chatter are high even before the piping hot dough balls with yogurt butter coated in fermented mushroom powder hit the table. Fortunately, any leanings towards pretension are muted by earthy décor, chunky wooden tables and exposed stone walls. Langoustine bisque tastes like it's been gently simmering for days, while tender pig's cheeks on a dollop of creamy celeriac purée is a meal in itself. Pink slabs of deer loin arrive with an unexpected treat of offal sausage, while a subtly seasoned bed of Puy lentils make a pleasant monkfish mattress. Leaving room for dessert is recommended.

Kanpai 8–10 Grindlay Street, 0131 228 1602, kanpaisushiedinburgh.co.uk

Focusing on the simple art of traditional Japanese dining, the calming, minimal

décor sets the tone here. Octopus fish cake and grilled aubergine in sweet miso sauce remain some of their most popular dishes, while the teppanyaki is used to glorious effect. There are also light tempura, gyoza and sesame seaweed salads that work well as starters or sharing items. Fresh seafood sits at the centre of the menu, with no corners cut on sourcing quality produce and preparing it with meticulous attention to detail. The soft shell crab roll is a crunchy-soft delight and the sashimi set makes a slippery, fresh treat.

Kyloe Restaurant & Grill The Rutland Hotel, 1–3 Rutland Street, 0131 229 3402, kyloerestaurant.com

Kyloe is all about the beef – aged on the bone and full of flavour, this is steak reimaged. All their meat is Scottish and as well as variety of sharing and individual steaks there are regularly changing guest breeds, like Belted Galloway. Starters range from lamb shoulder to lighter seafood options, such as delicate squid tempura or briny oysters. Bread is homemade and flecked with herbs, puddings include options like chocolate mousse with dense chunks of brownie, and the chips are amongst the best in town. Despite taking the steak seriously it’s an unpretentious place; staff are friendly and the décor playful.

Locanda de Gusti

JAMES MACKENZIE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR AT ZOO

My favourite bar has got to be The Jazz Bar, a great basement spot with stunning live music. My very favourite place to switch off from the festival for a bit and just enjoy hanging out with the artists and crew from ZOO. Plus, it’s open til 5, which is handy when you don’t finish work till 2! My favourite restaurant is Kalpna, a cosy vegetarian Indian restaurant with great food and ace service. Great place for dinner before you catch a show at the end of a long day.

102 Dalry Road, 0131 346 8800, locandadegusti.com

Everything here brims with passion and the exuberant staff seem honoured to introduce diners to real Italian food, perfect pasta al dente and the freshest produce. Fish and seafood come in all guises; a tasty pasta of linguine with Scottish lobster and Vesuvian tomatoes, or maybe monkfish tails with mussels and cockles. There's fab traditional pasta paccheri with diced potatoes and cured pork jowl, or veggie pasta caputi with crushed cauliflower. Feel the warmth of Italy emanate from the joyful staff, the fantastic dishes and matching wine list, and be transported to Napoli for just a little while.

edge of Haymarket Terrace, it could easily be missed by the casual diner, which would be a real shame – from the presentation to the wonderfully full and aromatic flavours, everything is carefully considered and delivered with fine service and outstanding results.

Lobster tail tossed with shallots is spiced beautifully, as is tender Hyderabadi lamb shank and flaky sea bass. There are plenty of veggie options and desserts are made in-house so it's well worth leaving room.

Miya

All hail Otro, an airy bistro that brings a sense of home to the slightly awkward area between Haymarket and the West End. There’s a real focus on getting things right for groups, with lots of different menu room options, but a casual tea for two is nothing like an afterthought. Dishes like roast salmon with colcannon cake scream ‘kick off your shoes and relax’ and desserts are picture-perfect. This is clearly food from people who like to look after people – warm-hearted and generous, there’s a real risk you'll relax so much you'll miss your next show. Thing is, you won't actually care.

159–161 Morrison Street, 0131 629 1747, miyarestaurant.com

There’s a comfy, modern feel to this impressive newcomer to the city's Japanese joints, with exposed brick walls, soft lighting and well-spaced tables. Dishes are beautifully presented, whether it is the extremely tasty salmon karubatyou on a crunchy bed of fresh seaweed or tenraku – deep-fried aubergine in a sumptuous sweet miso sauce. For mains there is a good list of sushi, including the excellent king prawn, asparagus and avocado dragon roll. If you feel the need for some inner warmth, try one of the hot sizzling plates – the ribeye beef is as savoury and tender as it gets.

Navadhanya 88 Haymarket Terrace, 0131 281 7187, navadhanya-scotland.co.uk

Miya

MY PICKS

Navadhanya is anything but average, with dishes like pan-fried scallops and minced venison pushing the traditional aspects of Indian dining to new heights. Tucked away at the very

Otro 22 Coates Crescent, 0131 556 0004, otrorestaurant.co.uk

Pizzeria 1926 85 Dalry Road, 0131 337 5757, pizzeria1926.com

Football shirts pegged to washing lines hang above tables which have paper tablecloths, tumblers and cutlery that will be re-used for starters and mains.

Water comes in a recycled passata jar and the wine choice is simple – red or white, in various carafe sizes. Starters, made for sharing, include pizza fritta

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MY PICKS

In association with

lauded charcuterie platters. This isn't the place to go for a meal but if you're after interesting nibbles like cured Pyrénées sausage, Basque chorizo or pimandes (chocolate-coated almonds with Espelette chili), then dig in. The real star is the wine, though. There's an ever-evolving list of over 40 handpicked varietals, served by the glass and the bottle, along with Scottish craft beers, gins and juices.

BrewDog Lothian Road

ORLA O’LOUGHLIN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR AT TRAVERSE

My favourite place to eat is Ciao Roma, a family-run restaurant serving fresh and authentic Italian food on South Bridge. There’s always a warm welcome, they are great with children, and I have a deep sentimental attachment to the place.

The back room has a serious pirate aesthetic, incorporating a high skeleton content. My favourite bar is Monty’s on Morrison Street.

It’s an intimate, beautifully-lit escape, and the perfect place to take a breath during the festival madness over a glass or two.

50 Lothian Road, 0131 228 2305, brewdog.com/bars

The latest in the BrewDog team's quest to bring decent beer to the masses, their trademark focus on quality and attention to the little details is evident. 20 taps mean an interesting, ever-changing variety of beer to sample, featuring wellchosen guests from around the world as well as their own brews – enthusiastic staff are on hand to help make your selection. The food aims to complement the brews, focusing on wings, buffalo cauliflower and (of course) burgers which are well-filled and well-cooked, be they beef brisket, juicy fried chicken or seitan for veggies and vegans.

Le Di-Vin Wine Bar 9 Randolph Place, 0131 538 1815, ledivin.co.uk

with a pork and cheese filling or a selection of fried fish including calamari and whitebait. The pizzas are brilliant: light and puffy with toppings made with produce imported from Italy. Expect a fast turnaround and a great feed – after all, that’s how they do it in Naples.

Le Di-Vin’s door opens into a vast, high space, lined floor to ceiling with wine (it used to be a church). The décor is exactly as it should be for a French wine bar; dark red walls, wooden panelling and rustic pine dressers and the menu is dominated by les planchettes (fine charcuterie, cheese and smoked fish platters) plus a few classics like croque monsieur at lunchtime. But this is unashamedly a wine bar, and you can easily spend a very happy evening sipping it by the glass or sharing a bottle from compact, but perfectly satisfying, selection.

Tuk Tuk

The Hanging Bat

1 Leven Street, 0131 228 3322, tuktukonline.com

133 Lothian Road, 0131 229 0759, thehangingbat.com

Tuk Tuk's industrial-style dining room pops with colour and vibrancy, as does its Bombay street food. The tapas-style menu means it’s easy to experiment and try lots of different flavours. Bengali fishcakes give a fresh and welcome twist to a classic, while tandoori lamb chops are a heady mix of spices and deliciousness. Dhal makhani is richly comforting and chicken cooked on the bone adds depth to the 'staff curry'. Handy recommendations and allergy advice help you negotiate the expansive spoilt-for-choice menu, all of which can be washed down with BYOB, traditional lassis or maybe a Bombay coke float. Busy and loud, it's a perfect venue for large groups.

Lothian Road has established itself as a bit of a beer destination, but the Hanging Bat was there first. With 6 cask and 14 keg lines on draught at any one time, it’s sensible that the biggest glass size is two-thirds of a pint so you can try most of them. Some varieties, like the Chocolate Chaos (brewed with an entire chocolate cake, apparently) are dark and thick, while others are eminently quaffable. In total, you can choose from around 150 mainly British beers (and lots of gins), so take advice from the clued-up staff.

DRINK Bar à Vin 17A Queensferry Street, 0131 226 1890, lescargotblanc.co.uk

This sophisticated wine bar has soft jazz in the background and staff are fully clued up on the origin, texture and strength of every piece of cheese, meat or otherwise to grace the much-

Harry's 7B Randolph Place, 0131 539 8100, harrysedinburgh.co.uk

Harry’s is a classic Edinburgh bar undergoing a bit of a transformation.

The surprisingly big, industrial-style basement space is somewhere you could happily have a pint or two midweek while sharing tapas and listening to hip hop on the stereo. Tempura fish bites, chilli and garlic king prawns and haggis bonbons aren’t pushing back any culinary boundaries but make a satisfactory accompaniment to a few pints of Heverlee or Joker IPA, or a

Go! Ninja

glass of Picpoul or Malbec. Part of the BeerForGood social enterprise, Harry’s focuses on employing the hard-to-hire and training them up, so your beer tastes extra good.

Heads & Tales

glass panel, and even book a tour, tasting session or masterclass. So naturally then, gin is the thing here. Choose from around 80 varieties and select your tonic, glass and ‘descriptor’ (herbal, zesty etc), or just ask the knowledgeable bar staff for help.

1a Rutland Place, 0131 656 2811, headsandtalesbar.com

Innis & Gunn Beer Kitchen

Hidden under the Rutland Hotel, this gin bar has a heavy, prohibition-style door – it’s a wee bit disappointing to not have to ring the bell to gain entry. Passing some vaulted booths, drinkers enter an industrial-chic style bar with adjoining lounge. As one of Edinburgh Gin’s distilleries (the other is in Leith), you can view the working stills through a

81–83 Lothian Road, 0131 228 6392, innisandgunn.com

Even if you don’t like beer, the Beer Kitchen is still worth seeking out. Appealingly furnished, there’s a large airy bar, cosy booths and a romantic nook in front of the fire. A glass room at the back houses a huge keg of unpasteurised lager waiting

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The Fishmarket

NEW FOR 2018

We round up the best and brightest new openings since last summer

BrewDog Lothian Road

to be served and mini kegs filled by the Brew School’s apprentices. The knowledgeable bar staff will let you try a varied host of craft beers from near and far (though mainly from the UK). That all said, have a wine if that’s what you prefer; these brewers are passionate but far from precious.

The Voyage of Buck 29–31 William Street, 0131 225 5748, thevoyageofbuckedinburgh.co.uk

The fictitious William ‘Buck’ Clarence relives his travels across this bar’s extensive and entertaining cocktail list. Spreading itself across the cities of Buck’s expeditions, it’s a mini testament to many of the characters he met, while the food also reflects Buck’s appreciation of the finer things in life.

Curious ingredients are combined in interesting dishes like guinea fowl, purple potato skordalia, hazelnuts and pomegranate jus. A varied band of locals follow in Buck’s footsteps through lively weekend nights into relaxed brunches, guided by the enthusiastic and efficient team, in surroundings that echo the early 1900s beautifully.

of fish and meat mains such as ox cheek pie and mash. The drinks are appealing, with plenty of wines by the glass and an appetising list of cocktails.

CAFÉS The Early Bird Coffee & Tea House 39 Home Street, 07455 988833

From the grey walls and bird wallpaper in the front room to the green shaggy carpet and yellow beanbags in the back, the Early Bird is pretty, modern and relaxed. Attention is paid to the details, right down to the water temperature of the tea (70 degrees for green tea) while coffee is just as lovingly made. Their speciality is Hungarian chimney cake – a deliciously soft, cylinder-shaped Danish pastry dusted with cinnamon, iced, or even savoury. Food is mainly sandwiches, soups and savoury croissants with vegetarian and glutenfree choices and once you’ve sunk into a beanbag, it’s almost impossible to ever leave.

BRASSERIE PRINCE

BY ALAIN ROUX The Balmoral, 1 Princes Street, 0131 557 5000, brasserieprince.com Slap-bang in the centre of town, this new venture aims to revive the tradition of the hotel brasserie with a classic French menu centring Scottish ingredients.

BISTRO DELUXE BY PAUL TAMBURRINI 81 Holyrood Road, 0344 879 9028, macdonaldhotels.co.uk Expect accomplished cooking, Scottish ingredients and pictureperfect plates from a chef approaching the height of his powers.

FHIOR 36 Broughton Street, 0131 477 5000 The power couple behind the late lamented Norn have moved up to the top of Broughton Street to open this new venture. Beautiful food, interesting wines and a focused fixed menu.

THE FISHMARKET 23A Pier Place, Newhaven, thefishmarketnewhaven.co.uk Escape the madness of the festival for a while and enjoy traditional fish and chips on Newhaven Pier, in this new venture from Ondine's Roy Brett and Welch's Fishmongers.

KIN 1 Barony Street This tiny New Town bar serves perfectly made adventurous cocktails with a seriously warm welcome. Perfect for whiling away a quiet evening.

THE LITTLE CHARTROOM 30–31 Albert Place, thelittlechartroom.com The paint is barely dry on this wee neighbourhood bistro, where the chef has form gained at the much-lauded Castle Terrace.

MONO 85 South Bridge, 0131 466 4726, monorestaurant.co.uk A glossy newcomer, aiming to provide progressive Italian fine dining to the capital.

SIX BY NICO 97 Hanover Street, 0131 225 5050, sixbynico.co.uk/ edinburgh The tasting menu re-imagined: Six by Nico is fun, fast-paced and incredibly wallet friendly, with a fixed six course themed tasting menu which changes completely every six weeks.

WHITE HORSE OYSTER BAR 266 Canongate, 0131 629 5300, whitehorseoysterbar.co.uk Immaculately sourced seafood in a casual environment in the heart of the Old Town. Highly recommended for oysters and fizz.

Go! Ninja The WestRoom 3 Melville Place, 0131 629 9868, thewestroom.co.uk

The WestRoom is a winning combination of stylish and cosy, with an art deco feel to the bar itself and covetable featured items like gigantic patterned lightshades. It’s many things to many people: office workers stop by for morning coffee or prosecco after work; families brunch at weekends; and pals catch up watching the rugby or relaxing over wine and food. The menu covers all bases too, with small plates and a petite but well-executed selection

14–15 Clifton Terrace, 0131 337 7704, goninjasushi.com

Part of the team behind this stylish newcomer are graphic designers, which explains the slick branding and kawaii characters. All of their sushi is prepared in-store, fresh every day.

There's a deliciously crunchy yellowfin tuna deluxe roll, yin and yang box with buffalo nigiri from Kirkcaldy and spicy vegan sushirritos. Spicy seafood pot is like a posh pot noodle loaded with salmon, kimchee and lime leaves; top it up with hot water at the counter, or back at your Airbnb later. There's green tea

or miso soup as well as smoothies and a wonderfully impressive selection of imported Japanese soft drinks, snacks and sweets.

Grams 16 Haymarket Terrace, 0131 337 3599, gramsedinburgh.com

Featuring simple white-tiled walls and green plants, this pared-back venue reflects the clean and healthy food made from whole ingredients on its menu. The all-day breakfast/brunch menu features

protein pancakes and smoothie bowls, while lunch offers baked sweet potatoes or boxes with meat/veggie/fish options, and daily soups. A warming soup of shredded chicken and sweet potato is satisfyingly, thanks to a touch of chilli and homemade stock. The hard-toresist cakes (mostly raw) take pride of place at the counter and vanilla fudge and hazelnut 'cheesecake', featuring a cashew-based filling on a nutty base, sweetened with pure maple syrup, tastes as good as it looks.

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In association with

MY PICKS

MATT LORD PARTICIPANT SUPPORT OFFICER AT EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE SOCIETY

The bar in Edinburgh I go to most often is probably Paradise Palms. I like the eclectic mix of music they play, and that its character changes depending on the time of night. The staff are friendly, the food is nice and, most importantly, the beer is good.

Loudons Café & Bakery Lochrin Square, 94b Fountainbridge, 0131 228 9774, loudons-cafe.co.uk

Family-run Loudons serves breakfast, lunch and all-day weekend brunches.

The laid-back space is perfect for lingering and welcomes everyone – friends catching up, parents with wee ones and business people – with complimentary reads and comfy sofas up for grabs. Staff are attentive and smiley, the menus varied and interesting. Superfood pancakes (gluten and dairy-free) are well-risen and aromatic with garlic, ginger and chilli. They come stacked high with haricot bean hummus and topped black bean salsa, a strikingly green dish. All cakes are baked in-house and you can peek at the bakers at work through the large window downstairs.

Milk Juicery 19 Queensferry Street, milkjuicery. com

This small cold-pressed juicery and health kitchen is on a mission to bring great tasting nutritious grub to the West End. Inside the narrow space the simple décor features white tiling and greenery, with a playful turquoise logo and neon lighting adding a splash of colour and a retro vibe. With limited seating, by way of a few two-seater drop-down tables and stools, it is more of a take-out spot for healthy salads, wraps, juices, smoothies, dairy-free shakes and smoothie bowls.

Milk 232 Morrison Street, 0131 629 6022, cafemilk.co.uk

Milk’s minimalist space, mostly white with splashes of green, is understated with contemporary stools, benches and tables. A seasonal sit-in and takeaway menu of homemade food offers breakfast, sandwiches, salads, hot food, and daily soup (always vegan), with plenty of gluten-free and vegan options. The daily hot special is an abundance of goodness in a bowl; purple beetroot and carrots stewed with Puy lentils, buckwheat and curly kale, served alongside generous hunks of bread and green salad. Welcoming staff dish up an all-round memorable café experience, and it’s particularly handy for Haymarket Station too.

Roots Deli & Salad Bar 18 William Street, 0131 225 6376, rootsedinburgh.co.uk

A new addition to the West End’s charming William Street, Roots’ owners are passionate about sustainability and aim to grow as much of their own produce as possible as well as reducing, recycling and composting.

Their healthy, balanced dishes are mainly vegetarian and vegan, with some responsibly sourced cured meat and fish options. Breakfast features granola, porridge, smoothies and toast, while the daily changing lunch menu offers filled rolls, soup, stew, pasta and fresh salads. Little ones and pooches are most welcome, and additional services include dinner kits, veg boxes, hampers and outside catering.

Milk

Social Bite 89 Shandwick Place, 0131 220 8206, social-bite.co.uk

Social enterprise Social Bite has been working to help tackle homelessness and social problems since 2011. With five branches across Scotland, many team members have experienced life on the streets. This branch is particularly handy for Haymarket

Station and the West End (there’s another on Rose Street), and offers a range of sandwiches, salads, soup and hot lunches as well as breakfast rolls and cakes. Customers can also buy ‘suspended’ items which homeless people can claim throughout the day, so although the food here is fairly simple and ideal for a grab and go lunch it is definitely worthy of your attention.

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The honourable campaign to get Pa Leith playing its part in the festival once again has truly borne fruit in the last couple of years, and with Leith Theatre becoming a vital part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s contemporary music strand, a major goal of festival planners has been achieved.

No longer just seen as somewhere to head to escape the festival madness and to sample the ‘real Edinburgh’, Leith is We now a fully paid-up member of the August experience. EIF’s st A nn an d ale Light on the Shore, with its array of Scottish legends such as Str eet The Pastels, Mogwai and The Jesus and Mary Chain as well as newer acts like Honeyblood and Spinning Coin, will have locals and visitors alike flocking to the far end of Ferry Road.

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LEITH & BROUGHTON STREET CITY GUIDE

EAT Bodega 62 Elm Row, Leith Walk, 0131 556 7930, ilovebodega.com

Dining at Bodega's original Leith Walk taqueria (there’s now a sister branch in Tollcross) begins with a sincere welcome from passionate foodie and host John Howard. His corn tortillas are hand-prepared and perfectly accompany rich and sometimes unexpected flavours, like smoky chorizo with pan-fried squid or tandoori chicken with garam masala aioli. Avocado three ways sounds like a challenge but with fresh guacamole to start, avocado tempura tacos to follow and refreshing avocado key lime pie to finish, there's no weak link. Wash it all down with a jarrito or BYOB for a night out that won't cost the price of a transAtlantic flight.

Educated Flea 32b Broughton Street, 0131 556 8092, educatedflea.co.uk

This tiny bistro punches above its weight in a street well-served for bars and restaurants. It’s a bright, simple space where bare tables and chairs hug the edge of a room broken up by a small bar. The menu offers a spread of bistro dishes with modern and, at times, exotic twists, like paprika-roasted baby octopus with sweet and sour carrot, lotus biscuit crumb and ginger dressing or tamarind duck breast with charred cauliflower, confit squash, broad beans and rhubarb compote. The wine list is brief but does the job perfectly well and there is a well-stocked bar if you fancy something stronger.

L'Escargot Bleu 56 Broughton Street, 0131 557 1600, lescargotbleu.co.uk

Fred Berkmiller marshals an accomplished kitchen, tweaking and

fine-tuning familiar French classics with carefully sourced Scottish produce to the fore. Petit gris snails from the Isle of Barra get a bone marrow and persillade twist, alongside pigeon breast with sweet potato purée and crispy pancetta.

Good value plat du jour lunch and early dining deals reveal delicately flavoured plaice and smoked haddock paupiette and a punchier baked brill with caper beurre noisette. Warm timber tones and super-sized antique artwork dress a delightful, comfortable candlelit room, in a convivial restaurant that's still hitting all the right notes.

Fishers in Leith 1 The Shore, 0131 554 5666, fishersrestaurants.co.uk/fishers-leith

Fishers in Leith is one of Edinburgh's most dependable sources of Scottish fish and seafood. Quietly sitting in its 17th-century watchtower on a peaceful corner of the Shore, there’s a real confidence that shines through in the quality of the food. There are dishes at the more sophisticated end of the spectrum (seabass with Szechuan aubergines, or halibut with lobster bisque) as well as a Fishers favourites menu featuring reassuring classics like mussels, fishcakes and fish soup. Or for a blowout, plump for a whole lobster and chips, or a seafood platter. There’s a separate bar plus a few pavement tables too.

Harmonium 60 Henderson Street, Leith, 0131 555 3160, harmoniumbar.co.uk

The first Edinburgh-based venue from the Glasgow-based chain that did much to introduce high-end vegan food to Scotland, there’s a distinctive fusion of quality and lack of pretension in this high-ceilinged, 100% vegan, bar/ restaurant. Starters of scallop and chorizo (a brilliant scallop-like mushroom stalk) and excitingly seasoned harissa-baked

cauliflower sit alongside a seitan quarterpounder and a rich macaroni cheese. Noone will feel short-changed on flavour and enjoyment here, particularly at the weekends when there’s a more ‘pub’ feel with sets from some of Edinburgh’s best local DJs to help things go with a swing.

MY PICKS

Pera: Turkish Mangal & Meze Bar 57 Elm Row, turkishrestaurantedinburgh.co.uk

Small but perfectly formed, with a budget-friendly BYOB policy, Pera punches well above its weight in both flavour and value for money. Choose from a colourful selection of mezze or for serious grazing opt for the epic sultan's banquet – a generous selection of hot and cold mezze with a meat platter from the traditional mangal grill. Main dishes might include steamed sea bass, lamb and pistachio kofte or chickpea, fig and walnut tagine. The emphasis is on fresh food with traditional herbs and spices and there’s a strong vegetarian selection including deliciously light courgette and dill fritters, boregi and yummy vegetable stews.

Punjabi Junction 122–124 Leith Walk, 0131 281 0159, punjabijunction.org

This unassuming, simply decorated social enterprise café right at the bottom of Leith Walk supports minority ethnic women with training and employment opportunities. There’s a real homemade feel to everything produced. The pakora platter has a selection of fillings from aubergine to fish to haggis, with their outstanding carrot chutney to dip. Fish curry is flavoured with thyme, while the legendary Madhur Jaffrey included their lamb kofta recipe in one of her books; succulent balls of lamb mince served in a deeply savoury sauce, great for soaking up with a homemade chapati. This is low-cost, high-quality cooking with real heart and soul.

IAIN MORRISON ENTERPRISE MANAGER AT FRUITMARKET GALLERY

Sometimes you need to retreat from full-on festival shenanigans and the Southside offers an easy route out of packed central streets. A staple for Edinburgh locals in these parts is the City Restaurant on Nicolson Street, grown from a much-loved chippy into a well-maintained and reasonably-priced diner-style eaterie. Once you’ve had your chips, head to the Dagda on unpronounceable Buccleuch Street, for a warm traditional bar with great ales and chat.

Le Roi Fou 1 Forth Street, 0131 557 9346, leroifou.com

Modern French/Swiss cuisine and Scottish produce combine in this elegant yet understated venue where the atmosphere is relaxed and unpretentious and the service charming and proficient.

Chef patron Jérôme Henry has a skilled hand with seafood, while options like seared foie gras and hand-cut steak tartare up the luxury factor. A shared dessert of chocolate fondant has a pleasingly melting middle, served with a moreish mango sorbet. Execution is exemplary, ingredients are sourced with considerable care, the predominantly French wine list is nicely curated, and they’re taking admirable steps towards being as waste-free and low carbon as possible. All in, fine French dining with a friendly face.

The Shore Bar & Restaurant 3 The Shore, 0131 553 5080, fishersbistros.co.uk

Harmonium

The Shore’s cosy dining room is traditionally styled, with dark wood panelling and a fire centre stage.

The menu has seafood leanings, exemplified by splendid king scallops with Stornoway black pudding and silky-smooth onion velouté, but there are plenty of alternatives including ham hash cake with poached egg and hollandaise. Venison with celeriac purée and smoked bacon is a captivating mix of dark, rich flavours while hake with garlicky crushed potatoes and langoustine sauce is also excellent.

There's a bias towards the old world on the comprehensive wine list, while the adjoining bar is perfect for a post-meal coffee and a spot of people-watching.

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In association with

Smoke Stack 53–55 Broughton Street, 0131 556 6032, smokestack.org.uk

Smoke Stack’s formula of bistrostyle food at competitive prices has been feeding families, shoppers and theatre-goers for over two decades.

The all-day menu ranges from freshly made waffles in the morning alongside the usual breakfast items, to salads and sandwiches at lunch. Dinner centres on steaks, made from 21-day aged Scotch Beef Club beef, and burgers – huge chargrilled beasts accompanied by crisp hand-cut chips. Retro dishes such as prawn cocktail and scampi sit alongside superfood salads and green smoothies, so there's something for everyone, all served up in a stripped-back room with friendly service.

The Walnut 9 Croall Place, Leith Walk, 0131 281 1236

With its mismatched seats and charming illustrations of farm animal cuts, this homely British bistro truly shows that good things come in small packages. But the proverb only extends to the restaurant's capacity; a substantial braised beef short rib falls readily off the bone and is laden with tasty extras – al dente carrots, a caramelised half onion and buttery potato fondant, all enhanced by the fresh, natural saltiness of a tangy salsa verde. Desserts could include a ginormous chewy meringue, balancing on stewed rhubarb and doused in salted caramel. The value is stupendous and there’s a generous BYOB policy: booking really is essential.

DRINK Boda Bar 229 Leith Walk, 0131 553 5900, bodabar.com

Homely, quirky, and communityspirited – join a band of loyal locals at Boda, where there is a well-stocked bar, a good range of beers and a cracking cocktail menu. The cocktail of the moment may be a Marmalade Martini or something seasonal invented by the bar staff. Posters flag up events like DJ nights, film screenings and quizzes, both here and in Boda’s sister bars.

There’s no kitchen, so no food is served beyond the odd cup of nuts, but if you plan to hang out for a while you can bring something in with you – maybe a pizza from nearby Origano.

Brandon's of Canonmills 1 Canonmills, 0131 558 7080, brandonsofcanonmills.tumblr.com

This slightly out-of-the-way local bar is one of the most impressively allpurpose pubs in Edinburgh. Weekend brunch is particularly recommended, taking in everything from poached eggs with sobrassada to salt beef hash with potato, poached egg and sriracha sauce. To lunch – short rib burger and fries; or fluffy bao buns with a range of fillings, including Puddledub pork belly or seasoned halloumi cheese.

Finally, the dinner menu swaggers through distinctive meat and fish plates with confidence, from Galician beef carpaccio to a Goan fish curry.

Treacle Bar and Kitchen

Excellent teas, coffees, wines, cocktails and rotating beer casks tick the remaining boxes with style.

Street 25 Broughton Street, 0131 556 6754

At the very top of busy Broughton Street, this bar has all you might want from a modern city centre boozer.

Choose from a well-chosen range of six rotating craft beers, pale ales and dark beers and around 30 beers in bottles and cans. There are bespoke and classic cocktails, made with an impressively diverse collection of rare malt whiskies procured from auction sites, small batch Scottish gins and other assorted spirits.

Alongside a couple of standard pub food items like fish and chips or macaroni and cheese, the emphasis is on filled flatbreads and burgers.

Finn & Bear 58 The Shore, Leith, 0131 555 4636, finnandbear.co.uk

One of the newest additions to Leith’s bright and bustling Shore, double doors open onto an attractive outdoor terrace overlooking the waterfront, ideal for sampling brekkie through to dinner, and drinks from classic cocktails to turmeric lattes. The rustic interior feels fresh, with wooden flooring, reclaimed furniture and splashes of greenery here and there. Brunch is served every day and might include a flavoursome combo of hand-picked Uist crab, avocado, corn and yellow pepper pico de gallo with runny poached egg on toasted sourdough. Evenings see more of a pub feel as the crowd settle in with sharing plates and snacks.

Kin 1 Barony Street

This tiny Broughton Street newcomer manages to achieve that rare balance between welcoming, chatty and professional almost effortlessly. With plenty of experience to hand (try

naming an Edinburgh haunt proprietors Sam and Jody haven’t graced) they’ve crafted a list of a dozen accomplished cocktails. They change regularly, and are always surprising. For example, Gjallarhorn, a peaty marriage of pineapple juice, banana liqueur, Tapatio Blanco tequila, Abuelo Anejo and Red Leg rum – dubbed a strong but tasty banana milkshake – is served in an ox horn. Pull up a bar stool, or gather round a table in the cosy room behind and simply relax – you’re in safe, hospitable hands here.

Leith Depot 138–140 Leith Walk, 0131 555 4738, leithdepot.com

There's a real soul to this independent venue, currently under the threat of redevelopment. Upstairs plays host to several gigs a week (it’s a venue in its own right), while the main bar’s high ceilings and relaxed, recycled feel, make for a welcoming space to enjoy a reasonably priced cocktail or local brew. The main focus of the menu is on veg and fish, with the odd meaty dish popped in so no one's forgotten.

There are plenty of small plates to share and main meals run from comforting classics like macaroni cheese to specials like smoked haddock and king prawn risotto.

The Lioness of Leith 21–25 Duke Street, 0131 629 0580, thelionessofleith.co.uk

A popular and versatile outpost in easy reach of Leith Walk, the Shore and Leith Links. The good range of craft beers and spirits, decent wine and impressive cocktail list draws customers with a wide range of tastes, while the beautiful interior – a bright space mixing original features with quirky decorations – is enough to inspire a visit on its own.

The recently upgraded food menu also places the Lioness among the best: yes, it’s yet another burger bar, but what

burgers they are! Fish and chips, nachos and breakfasts also feature in the firstrate contemporary pub food.

Papillon 84 Commercial Street, Leith, 0131 554 3099, papillonedinburgh.co.uk

This row of bonded warehouse between the Shore and Ocean Terminal has had mixed fortunes over the last few years, but things are looking bright for Papillon. It helps that this new bar is owned by the people behind Café Tartine a few doors down (also recommended).

It’s hard to fault anything they’ve done here: a huge spirit collection means they can make pretty much anything you can think of, while the food is a solid, diverse selection of upmarket bar food.

It’s a big space too which boasts that rarest of Edinburgh wonders – a trafficfree outside terrace.

Pickles 56a Broughton Street, 0131 557 5005, getpickled.co.uk

A tiny enclave hidden away in a Broughton Street basement, Pickles just . . . works. With seating for under 30 people, the informal, friendly vibe is hugely welcoming and genuinely lovely staff work hard to find a cosy corner for everyone. Generous platters of Scottish cheese and charcuterie do more than take the edge off your hunger, so if you’re only stopping in for pre-dinner drinks opt for a bowl of nuts or plump olives to accompany your tipple of choice. The wine list has offerings from all over the world, including a good number by the glass, and there is also a wide selection of Scottish and international beers.

Port O’ Leith 58 Constitution Street, 0131 555 5503

An iconic Leith pub, any attempt to mess with the Port O’Leith was always going to be scrutinised closely by locals.

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Yet the inevitable – and much talkedabout – 2017 modernisation has kept the bar’s core essence intact. Behind the artfully distressed signage and strippedback brick walls, this remains the kind of place you want to go drinking with friends. Artfully lit glass shelves heave with interesting and imported spirits – 50 each of rum and gin, 40 whiskies and 20 tequilas – with more than 30 craft beers on tap and in the fridges. Food is limited: nachos are enough for two and pies are also available.

food is good enough to make anyone go out of their way to try it. Focusing on seasonal, local ingredients combined to create surprising flavour combinations, the menu changes every couple of weeks, but lunch selections like pork cheek and barley ravioli bathed in a chicken consommé, or peppercorn crusted tuna with avocado nori show true ambition. Eggs feature heavily on the breakfast list, including an eggs benedict dressed with truffle hollandaise shakshuka. Evening opening is limited so plan ahead.

S Luca of Musselburgh

The Roseleaf 23–24 Sandport Place, 0131 476 5268, www.roseleaf.co.uk

The Roseleaf was an early adopter of the restaurant-quality food/craft beers and cocktails/revitalised-yet-classic pub interior formula now ubiquitous across the city. Menus – including brunch, Sunday roast, afternoon tea, kid’s options and an attractive vegan selection – take on comfort-food classics, like pork and beef belly burger on brioche with Scottish cheddar, rich mature cheddar macaroni cheese and a fillet of hake braised in serrano ham served with lentils. Lingering over a pot-tail (a cocktail in a teapot) is a fine way to gently waste an afternoon.

Café Nom de Plume 60 Broughton Street, 0131 478 1372

Treacle Bar and Kitchen

Some cafés feel like someone has spent a lot of time and money trying to manufacture the authenticity this spot has in spades. Red walls and an eccentric clutter of paraphernalia make for a warm welcome and the menu takes a globetrotting approach: hearty pumpkin and red onion tagine alongside spicy Singapore noodles, French onion soup or vegetarian haggis, neeps and tatties. It’s all served by relaxed, friendly staff who don’t mind if you bring your canine friends with you, or take a window seat through the back to catch up on your laptop.

39–41 Broughton Street, 0131 557 0627, treacleedinburgh.co.uk

Café Renroc

Recently refurbed and refreshed Treacle continues to hold its own as one of the most popular bars in Broughton Street. Cocktails with tongue-in-cheek monikers pack a punch, with the likes of fresh tarragon, curry leaf and celery bitters cropping up in the mix. Farflung influences dominate the menu, from banh mi and nasi goreng to pho and poke. Ingredients like grapefruit dust and massaged kale are amusing if nothing else, but the combinations – like hot-smoked salmon, watermelon, red chilli and lime – really work, while veggies and vegans are catered for with tasty offerings like squash rojak.

91 Montgomery Street, 0131 629 3727, caferenroc.co.uk

CAFÉS

Ostara

Artisan Roast

This neighbourhood brunch spot does a sterling job of serving up simple, wholesome food with a genuine commitment to local suppliers in a cosy atmosphere. Leith and Newhaven locals in the know reap the rewards – Ostara’s breakfasts and cakes make for a good pit stop at the end of a scenic walk along the Water of Leith.

The focus is on brunch plates (like grilled kipper with poached eggs and sourdough toast; root vegetable rösti with mushrooms and fried egg, or banana bread French toast with Puddledub smoked bacon), with plans for some lighter lunch items and salads come summer.

57 Broughton Street, artisanroast. co.uk

Artisan Roast spearheaded the coffee revolution in Edinburgh, and their beans can be found in many independent cafés, bars and restaurants around town. Their smallest café feels a world away from the commercial mayhem of the city centre. The main attraction is, of course, the coffee: single origin and sourced directly from farms around the world. Coffee aside, there are tasty cakes like fluffy Victoria sponge and generously filled good-value sandwiches made in-house.

If there’s space, curl up in the cosy back room, or else perch on a stool and watch the constant stream of thirsty customers come and go.

Aurora 187 Great Junction Street, Leith, 0131 554 5537, auroraedinburgh. co.uk

On an unfashionable street, Aurora is away from the main drag – but the

On a quiet street corner off Leith Walk, Renroc’s street level space is small and bright with just a few tables, while a spiral staircase leads down to what was once an old bakery – the original baker’s oven is still in place alongside chunky tables and sofas. There’s an all-day breakfast menu with larger dishes served from noon. Homemade cakes provide an indulgent treat, like chocolate and Guinness cake, rich and moist with a sweet buttercream topping. A real neighbourhood café that’s certainly worth seeking out.

52 Coburg Street, 0131 261 5441, www.ostaracafe.co.uk

305 Coffee/Kitchen 305 Leith Walk, 0131 629 5947, 305.cafe

Leith Walk is increasingly well-known for a variety of exotic cafés, bars and restaurants, but it's a wee bit short on good old-fashioned sandwich shops.

That’s what the recently opened 305 Coffee/Kitchen brings to the party. It’s

TAKING THE KIDS?

Edinburgh’s festivals are bags of fun for kids, so here’s our selection of chilled-out family-friendly places to refresh and refuel them

CORO THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY 13 Frederick Street, 0131 225 4477, corochocolate.co.uk Pancakes, crepes, waffles and shakes. Coro is the home of all things chocolatey – great fun and beautiful presentation.

LA FAVORITA 325–331 Leith Walk, 0131 554 2430, vittoriagroup.co.uk The ‘best pizza in town’ debate rages on, but La Favorita is definitely up there. There’s also a slick, city-wide takeaway service if you’re having a quiet one.

HANAM’S 3 Johnston Terrace, 0131 225 1329, www.hanams.com A Kurdish mezze menu that’s heavy on the chargrill and ideal for sharing with the kids. There’s a generous outdoor terrace too.

HEMMA 75 Holyrood Road, 0131 629 3327, bodabar.com/hemma Handily located for Holyrood Park, Hemma has a generous daytime play area with healthy, hearty kidfriendly food.

S LUCA OF MUSSELBURGH 16 Morningside Road, 0131 446 0233, s-luca.co.uk There’s more to this colourful

all bright and contemporary, with a simple selection of sandwiches, soups and the like. Alongside a coronation chicken or cheese and ham salad sandwich, a slice of daily changing quiche or a bowl of nachos, diners can be a bit more adventurous with a plate of pulled jackfruit (which works surprisingly well as a macaroni cheese topping), a Turkish falafel flatbread or 305’s own cured salt beef.

Williams & Johnson 67 Commercial Street, Customs Wharf, williamsandjohnson.com

Artisan coffee roasters supplying over

café than ice-cream, but the icecream’s pretty darn good. Fun and lively place for all ages.

THE SCRAN & SCALLIE 1 Comely Bank Road, 0131 332 6281, scranandscallie.com An accessible way to experience Tom Kitchin’s classy cooking, with a dedicated playroom, simple menu for kids and a genuinely warm welcome for the wee ones.

SMOKE STACK 53–55 Broughton Street, 0131 556 6032, smokestack.org.uk Great for burgers and shakes, this casual bistro has been happily feeding locals for over two decades.

SUMMERHALL CAFÉ 1 Summerhall, 0131 560 1580, summerhall.co.uk/summerhallcafe There’s always something interesting going on at Summerhall, and their café is a bright, buzzy and welcoming space.

TEMPO PERSO 208 Bruntsfield Place, 0131 221 1777, osteriadeltempoperso. info/Edinburgh Local casual Italian joint with a great value children’s meal and a traditional warm welcome.

20 independent venues in Edinburgh alone, Williams and Johnson are now roasting in their own stylish café in Custom Lane. A fresh coffee aroma fills the minimalist, contemporary space, which is part of a creative, collaborative centre for design and making, with regular exhibitions and events. Behind the scenes they carefully select seasonal single origin coffees, with a limited range of food sitting alongside. Ingredients and suppliers are given as much attention as the coffee, with a strong emphasis on supporting and collaborating with local independents.

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ESCAPE THE Summer in Edinburgh is a lot of things, but it’s not exactly peaceful . . . So if you feel like escaping the GREAT AWAY DAYS 01738 840 804 greatawaydays.co.uk enquiries@greatawaydays.co.uk Great Away Days are Scotland’s best outdoor experience providers for fun adventure away days. Based within the Hopetoun Estate in Edinburgh, Great Away Days provide brilliant group activities like mini highland games, archery, and clay pigeon shooting. There’s a special 15% discount for selected activities in August too (T&C’s apply).

GOOD SPIRITS CO 23 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 1HW 0141 258 8427 thegoodspiritsco.com info@thegoodspiritsco.com Just five minutes from Queen St station, the Good Spirits Co. is a hidden gem.

Tucked away in a Bath Street basement you'll find a wonderful range of whiskies, gins, rums and more, all expertly explained by the friendly staff.

TAYMOUTH MARINA

FAMOUS GROUSE

Kenmore, Perthshire, PH15 2HW 01887 830216, taymouthmarina.com info@taymouthmarina.com

The Glenturret Distillery, The Hosh, Crieff, PH7 4HA, 01764 656565 experience.thefamousgrouse.com

Melt the stresses of the Festivals away in the Hot Box, our giant wood-fired sauna with views across Loch Tay, before cooling down with a dip in the Loch. With a bar, firepit and inflatable trampoline, it’s a great spot for a party.

SCOTTISH SEABIRD CENTRE The Harbour, North Berwick, EH39 4SS, 01620 890 202 seabird.org, info@seabird.org The incredible Scottish Seabird Centre is in the heart of beautiful North Berwick, just 30 minutes by train from Edinburgh.

Control live cameras to zoom in on amazing wildlife, enjoy a boat trip and discover wonderful local produce in the café and gift shop.

CREATIVE PEEBLES FESTIVAL

enquiries@thefamousgrouseexperience.com

See single malt whisky being made in the traditional way at the Famous Grouse Experience. Based in Scotland’s oldest working distillery, you’ll learn all about the craft of blending behind Scotland’s favourite whisky. With 11 specially crafted tours available, there’s something for everyone.

CARNEGIE LIBRARIES & GALLERIES East Port, Dunfermline KY12 7JA 01383 602302, onfife.com fife.museums@onfife.com Try a different kind of 5-star attraction.

Come and see Andrew Carnegie’s famous library, now re-invented for the 21st century.

Winner of five architectural awards (including ‘Building of the Year’), there's also a free family-friendly exhibition and vegan-friendly café.

BLENDWORKS by Eden Mill

24 August–2 September, Peebles, 01721 725777 eastgatearts.com/festivals mail@eastgatearts.com

Macdonald Rusacks Hotel, The Links, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JQ 01334 834038 edenmill.com/blendworks blendworks@edenmill.com

An hour down the road from Edinburgh, pretty Peebles is the most creative place of its size in Scotland. The Creative Peebles Festival has visual arts, comedy, music and lots more: so make the trip, enjoy the adventure and love the place.

If you’ve ever wanted to create your own gin, then Blendworks is for you! Personalise your very own gin and take home three 20cl bottles of your own recipe. Master the history of gin while enjoying three tastings in our classroom dedicated to all things gin.

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FESTIVALS

madness for a few hours we’ve put together a list of events and experiences, all within easy reach of the city.

SOFI'S 65 Henderson Street, Edinburgh, Eh6 6ED, 0131 555 7019 bodabar.com/sofis events@bodabar.com Sofi’s bar is the port in the storm, it's the little squeeze in a hug, it is home from home. So feel free to sink in and snuggle up, with a glass of wine, or a pint of beer.

We also have many delightfully tasty cocktails on offer.

BEYOND BORDERS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 25–26 August, 10am-7pm Traquair House, 0131 290 2686 beyondbordersscotland.com info@beyondbordersscotland.com The world in a weekend: explore the most pressing issues of our time through debate, literature, film, music and performing arts. Panels include world-renowned New York Times photojournalists, exposed CIA agent d Valerie Plame, UN Special Envoys, and the inimitable William Dalrymple.

STOWED OUT FESTIVAL

VICTORIA

10–11 August, Stow stowedoutfestival2018.eventbrite.co.uk

265 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8PD, 0131 555 1638 bodabar.com/victoria events@bodabar.com

Stowed Out Festival is one of the Borders bests music events. There's an eclectic music and spoken word line-up featuring up and coming acts, all in an intimate setting. And the whole thing's just two minutes walk from Stow train session, with regular trains from Edinburgh Waverley.

Victoria Bar is where the world meets Leith. Victoria is full of different nationalities mingling with the locals. An ever changing selection of beers, wines, gins and whiskies and most of all great chat!

FLOORS CASTLE

FREE WEST END WALKS

Roxburghe Estates Office, Kelso, TD5 7SF, 01573 223333 floorscastle.com enquiries@floorscastle.com

edinburgh-westend.co.uk

Spend the day immersed in history, artwork and stunning garden scenery at Floors Castle. Home to the 10th Duke and Duchess of Roxburghe, Floors Castle is the largest inhabited castle in Scotland and functions as a family home on a working estate to this day.

With its cobbled shopping lanes and landmark Georgian architecture, the West End is one of Edinburgh’s best-kept secrets. This August, free daily walking tours explore the daily life, history, hidden gems and characters of this unique quarter.

SCOTTISH FISHERIES MUSEUM

THE WEST END CHARACTER PROJECT

Harbourhead, Anstruther, Fife, KY10 3AB, 01333 310628 scotfishmuseum.org enquiries@scotfishmuseum.org

edinburgh-westend.co.uk

One of Scotland’s major industries and part of our most distinctive communities, The Scottish Fisheries Museum tells the story of fishing in Scotland. Open all year, seven days a week, the museum is based in Anstruther in the pretty East Neuk of Fife.

Celebrate the people who make Edinburgh’s West End unique this August, with a major outdoor photography exhibition. With over 50 fascinating images displayed on Coates Crescent (Shandwick Place), it’s the perfect way to experience this unique part of the city.

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ESCAPE THE FESTIVALS Midlothian and the Borders are both within easy reach of Edinburgh and there’s tons to do for all the family. Why not take the scenic Borders railway from Edinburgh Waverley and explore a little?

BORDERS DISTILLERY

TRAQUAIR HOUSE

Commercial Road, Hawick, TD9 7AQ, 01450 374330, thebordersdistillery.com

Traquair, Innerleithen, EH44 6PW 01896 830323, traquair.co.uk enquiries@traquair.co.uk

Open since 1837, the Borders Distillery was the first whisky distillery to open in the beautiful Borders. Open to visitors, tours run hourly from Monday - Saturday. Why not take the train and enjoy a dram or two when you visit? The Borders Railway leaves from Edinburgh Waverley and easily connects to local bus and taxi services.

Traquair is Scotland’s oldest inhabited house and has strong associations with Mary Queen of Scots and the Jacobites.

Have fun exploring, discover the 300 year old brewhouse and get lost in Scotland’s largest hedged maze. There are wonderful grounds, ancient woodlands and the delectable Garden Café is open for lunches and teas. Open daily 11am – 5pm.

LOCHCARRON OF SCOTLAND VISITOR CENTRE

NATIONAL MINING MUSEUM

Waverley Mill, Dunsdale Road, Selkirk, TD7 5DZ, 01750 726100 lochcarron.com, lvc@lochcarron.com

Lady Victoria Colliery, Newtongrange, Dalkeith, EH22 4QN, 0131 663 7519 nationalminingmuseum.com enquiries@nationalminingmuseum.com

Come and join us in the Scottish Borders! Breath in and out . . . and relax.

Lochcarron of Scotland is nestled in the heart of the beautiful Scottish Borders.

Take a tour of the tartan mill, have coffee or lunch and enjoy a little shopping in our visitor centre.

Minutes from the city bypass and a five minute walk from Newtongrange train station, the 5-star National Mining Museum Scotland is housed in the restored Lady Victoria Colliery. Tour the colliery with an ex-miner as your guide and experience the atmosphere and noise of a working pit – it’ll make you glad you’re not a miner!

ABBOTSFORD HOUSE – THE HOME OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

BEYOND EDINBURGH – MIDLOTHIAN AND SCOTTISH BORDERS SIGHTSEEING PASS

Abbotsford, Melrose, TD6 9BQ 01896 752043 scottsabbotsford.com enquiries@scottsabbotsford.co.uk Visit the home of one of Scotland’s most influential sons and discover his conundrum castle, a place where fact and fiction collide. See the Turner exhibition, explore the historic house and gardens, walk in the estate and take the kids to the play trails. A free minibus runs from Tweedbank station.

DALKEITH COUNTRY PARK & RESTORATION YARD Dalkeith, Edinburgh, EH221ST 0131 663 5684 dalkeithcountrypark.co.uk info@dalkeithcountrypark.co.uk Just five miles from Edinburgh’s city centre, Dalkeith Country Park is home to the awardwinning Restoration Yard Store, Café and Wellbeing Lab, plus Fort Douglas Adventure Playground. Make a day with 1,000 beautiful acres to exmpore, seasonal menus to enjoy and an inspiring store filled with fashion, homewares and more.

01786 464640, beyondedinburgh.co.uk hello@beyondedinburgh.co.uk The ‘Beyond Edinburgh’ pass is valid for one or two days and gives access to some of Scotland’s top attractions like Rosslyn Chapel, Edinburgh Butterfly & Insect World and the City Sightseeing Scottish Borders Tour Bus. With great discounts on food, drink and retail, explore stunning scenery in tranquil settings only minutes away from Edinburgh.

WINDLESTRAW Galashiels Road, Walkerburn, EH43 6AA, 01896 870636 windlestraw.co.uk, stay@windlestraw.co.uk Windlestraw is a beautiful Edwardian manor with an award-winning boutique restaurant with rooms. Voted best independent hotel in Scotland 2017, our six bedrooms are all unique. It’s the perfect place to stop for a peaceful night in tranquil surroundings on your way to or from the Festival.

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Festival

GET OUT OF EDINBURGH FOR THE

Few cities have an atmosphere quite like Edinburgh during Festival season. Scotland’s capital comes alive with packed streets, equally packed venues, impromptu entertainment and bustling bars.

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LINLITHGOW – famed for its palace and

Find adventure, history, relaxation, or something to keep the kids amused. Explore a little of the coast and country around Scotland’s capital. Enjoy a fresh slice of train history with a trip on the Borders Railway.

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connections with Mary, Queen of Scots

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BUY YOUR PASS ONLINE TODAY You can book your tickets online at the ScotRail website. Your pass lets you travel on all off-peak services leaving from Edinburgh Haymarket and Waverley stations. Travel is free for under 5s, and half price for 5-15s. You can hop on and hop off as much as you like.

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BUY YOUR TICKET AT scotrail.co.uk/explore list.co.uk/festival | Edinburgh Festival Guide 2018 | THE LIST 159

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FESTIVAL INDEX OUR 3-Z OF SHOWS, EVENTS AND ACTS 3 Years,1 Week and a Lemon Drizzle 14 5 Days of Falling 74 A Fortunate Man 11 Aaron Calvert 12 ADAAWE 123 Adam Kay 11 Adam Riches 12 Adam Rowe 12 After the Cuts 11 Alabaster Box 123 Alan Benzie 119 Alan Parks 50 Alex Edelman 99 Ali McGregor 84 Ali Smith 47, 55 Alice Broadway 53 Alyn Cosker Group, the 119 Amazing Bubble Man, the 78 Ambrose Parry 14, 50 Amythyst Kiah 118 Andrea Spisto 60 Andy Davidson & Ahmed Saadawi 24 Angry Alan 87 AniMalcolm 32 Anya Anastasia 12 Approach, the 99 Artist, the 74 Ashley Storrie 69 Autobiography 104 Baby Face 87 BADD 24 Badly Drawn Boy 122 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 114 Barry Ferns 12 Beggar’s Opera, the 108 Beth Vyse 14 Blue Peter 96 Bombskare 122 Brainiac Live!

78 Break Free 99 Brexit 99 Brian Conaghan 53 Broken Records 122 Bruce Dickinson 55 Bryony Twydle 60 Canaletto 40 Cathy Forde 53 Century Song 84 Charlie Higson 24 Charlotte & Adam Guillain 14 Chelsea Clinton 27 Chris Henry 69 Chris McCausland 64 Chris Turner 12 Christopher Macarthur-Boyd 69 Circus Abyssinia 14 Cirque Alfonse 72 Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin 21 Cold Blood 11, 114 Courtney Act 84 Dag Solstad 55 Darren Shan 24 Daughter 87 Dave Holland & Zakir Hussain & Chris Potter 119 David Baddiel 32 Denim Juniors, the 78 Denise Mina 50 Dick & Dom 76 Doctors of Philosophy 47 Douglas Walker 14 Dr Korczak’s Example 123 Dracula 24 Dragon and the Whales, the 99 Dust 99 Dylan Moran 70

Edinburgh Book Fringe 123 Edinburgh Festival Carnival 11 Edinburgh Food Festival 122 Edinburgh International TV Festival 123 Ehsan Abdollahi 11 Eleanor Morton 69 Eloise Greenfield 11 Elvis Dead, the 23 Elvis McGonagall & Murray Lachlan Young 55 Emma Sidi 60 End of Eddy, the 11, 114 Esther Rantzen & Rebecca Wilcox 14, 96 Fergus McCreadie Trio 119 Finding Nemo 122 Five Telegrams 114 Flo & Joan 14 Folding Echoes 74 Forward to Freedom 123 Frank Skinner 32 Fraser Urquhart 119 Fringe by the Sea 121 Furious Five, the 122 Gabriela Montero 113 Gareth Waugh 69 Geno Washington 122 George Rigden 12 Georgia Cécile 119 Girls of Slender Means, the 47 Gruff Rhys 82 Guy Masterson 14 Haftor Medbøe & Jacob Karlzon 119 Hamilton (Lewis) 99 Hansel & Gretel 24 Heaven Burns 24 Heroine 87 Hipsway 122 Holly Bourne 53 HOME 11 How to Write Horror 24 In Addition 11 In Conversation With 99 In Focus 45 Isabel & Imogen Greenberg 14 Island, the 123 It’s Not Over Yet . . .

And How to Survive the Future 74 Jacob’s Ladder 45 Jamali Maddix 99 Jamie Dalgleish 69 Jamie MacDonald 64 Janeane Garofalo 99 Jarred Christmas 14 Jason Donovan 96 Jay Lafferty 69 Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton 119 Jerry Sadowitz 122 Jim Campbell 12 John & Claire Lenahan 14 John Bellany 40 Julia Donaldson & Lydia Monks 55 Julie Fowlis 103 Julie Hesmondhalgh 96 Juno Dawson 53 Just Festival 123 Karl Ove Knausgaard 55 Kate Dimbleby 84 Katia Labèque 113 Kevin Rowland DJ Show, the 99 Keyon Harrold 117 Kill the Beast 24 Kinkens, the 74 Krystian Zimerman 113 La Cenerentola 114 La Maladie de la Mort 87 Ladder, the 14 Last Poets, the 55

Laura Davis Laurence Clark Lead Pencil Let it Art Liberty: Art Fabrics & Fashion Light on the Shore Lin Anderson Lin Man-Chiu Little Mermaid, the Lloyd Langford Lolly Adefope London Symphony Orchestra Lost Voice Guy Luca Manning Luke Wright Lynn Ruth Miller Maddie Rice Mandela’s Legacy Marc-André Hamelin Marcus Brigstocke Marcus Sedgwick Mark Hendry Octet Mark Steel Mark Thomas Mark Thompson’s Spectacular Science Show Marny Godden Martin Kershaw Octet Matt Carmichael Quartet Maureen Lipman Melvin Burgess Memento Mori Mica Paris Michael Griffiths Michelle McManus Midsummer Miss Behave Gameshow, the Muppet Treasure Island Muriel Spark Myra Dubois Nàdar / Prakriti s Natalie Palamides ttish Jazz New Wave of Scottish o Ngugi wa Thiong’o Nina Conti Nina’s Got News NOW Old Boy Olga Wojtas OSCiLLATE Owen Sheers pro Chums Paul Merton’s Impro Peter Ross Phil Kay Phil Nichol Pickle Jar mard Pierre-Laurent Aimard Platform 2018 Prisoner, the Pussy Riot Quarry Queer Words Rachel Newton Raqib Shaw Red Turtle, the Rembrandt Richard Brown Richard Dawkins Rip it Up Rob Kemp Robert Bathurst Robert Powell m Ronald Brautigam Rose McGowan & Afua Hirsch Rosie Jones vid Harding Ross Birrell & David Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Ruth Ewan Sally Gardner Samuel Beckett Sara Barron Scary Story Science Magic Seymour Mace

24 64 92 123 45 103 50 53 122 12 58 114 64 119 99 122 92 123 113 12 53 119 122 11 78 60 119 119 96 53 47 121 84 84 11 99 122 47 14 40, 45 57 119 55 99 32 45 87 50 99 11 14 50 122 122 92 113 45 114 16 45 87 122 40 122 40 69 55 48 23 96 40 113 55 64 45 123 45 24 110 99 24 78 122

Shilpa Gupta Siblings Spot the Difference Square Go St Vincent Steven Osborne Stuart Cosgrove Su Pollard Sugarhill Gang, the Susan Harrison Tacita Dean Take Refuge Under My Shade Tall Stories Tamara Stefanovich Terry Hall Tim Key Time Machine, the Tom Gibbs Quartet Tommy Smith Troth, the Turing Festival Ulster American Underground Railroad Game Vic Galloway Victoria Crowe Virgin Money Fireworks Concert Waiting for Godot Wayne McGregor What Girls Are Made Of Wheel of Shows Where it Hurts Wilde Creatures Will Seaward Withered Hand XENOS Zara McFarlane zazU Zindzi Mandela

37 14 14 87 114 113 50 96 122 60 38 123 24, 99 113 122 99 78 119 119 74 123 87 99 48 45 114 11, 110 104 99 23 11 99 24 122 114 119 92 14

What Girls Are Made Of

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