Edinburgh day 2

We spend the morning going through the Fringe Brochure and the Book Festival brochure which M had thoughtfully picked up yesterday.  K organises us and we decide on a full programme ranging from two to four items a day.  It’s harder to decide on what to wear.  By the time we set out for the fringe office it is muggy and overcast, and there is the promise of rain.

As our flat is in the New Town, which is north of the city centre, it is on the long slope downwards from Castle Rock to the Firth of Forth.  Everywhere we want to go (except perhaps for the Botanic Gardens) is Up.  We toil up Scotland Street and Dublin Street towards the Royal Mile.  Karen has thoughtfully become a Friend of the Fringe, which entitles her to 10% off in the Fringe shop, two for one on some shows, and seats with cushions to sit on while booking our tickets.  We get tickets for almost everything on our list, except Reginald D Hunter and Fascinating Aida.  Oh well.  We were long on musical comedy anyway.

Then it’s a quick pub lunch in Tiles (Victorian tiled bar, which I don’t think I’d ever been in) and off to our first Fringe show, Mitch Benn.  He is in good form and finishes off with the BBC song, which makes me happy.  He also has a new song inspired by the inflatable Olympic Stonehenge, called the Bouncy Druid song.  I hope Liz and Trevor have heard this.  In case not, here is a link.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVs7mPy4aRk&noredirect=1

At Mitch Benn we also bump into L.   After the show M of course wants to get the new CD and while he is doing this (with added fanboy chit chat) we arrange with L to go off to the Aperol stand on George Street to drink cocktails .  Of course it comes on to pour at this point so we stand under a very crowded canopy sipping fizzy drinks that taste a bit better than alcoholic cough medicine.

Off to the Pleasance to see the Beta Males in The Space Race, set in the quaint country village of Lower Birchly in 1969, which happens also to be the location of Britain’s top-secret space programme run by the utterly barmy Professor Brian Brilliance.  Much hilarity ensues.

After that we walk in the rain to our next show, which turns out to be the most thought provoking one of the day.  More Light is set in the first Emperor’s tomb as his concubines are walled in and left to die.  More Light is the name of the lead concubine, who decides that they need to consume the corpse of the emperor to survive, and then that they need to go in search of more meat.  It is only on the threshold of death that the concubines find a sort of freedom from the stifling restrictions of their lives.   It’s compellingly staged, with interesting visual images, and a couple of moments when I literally felt the hair stand up on my head. 

Dinner at Bonsai, a favourite Japanese restaurant.  We order lots of things we like, including salmon skin sushi, okonomiyaki, scallop sashimi.  M has tempura bananas for pudding.

Then back to the Pleasance for the final show, The Three Musketeers presented by Barbershopera, an a capella troupe of three men and one woman.  It is musical comedy (did I mention that we had lots of those?).  In this version Nicole d’Artagnan is forced to don men’s clothing and join the musketeers in order to foil the dastardly plots of Cardinal Richtea who wants to build a holiday home on her home village of Pissypooville.  But before the musketeers can do this they have to go to England to retrieve the golden plums of Charlemagne that the King has inexplicably (oh all right, not very inexplicably) given to his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham.  It ends with a hymn to gay marriage and democracy.

As it has finally stopped raining, we walk home.  Downhill all the way!