Edinburgh Pregame, Sundries and Miscellania

This intrepid blogger lately decamped himself of all of his various earthly concerns, those yet remaining and more still than are yet plausibly immune to his nihilistic relativism, and floated off in a big aeroplane to Edinburgh. Only there to find after much citizen journo-alizing, ponce-ings about and pretendings to be people he isn't, his unrealised, no self-unknown, lifetime desired dream to be failed arts reporter.

So shirking apathetically any great democratic responsibilities of citizen journo hackery for once and debasing his self with that half insane drunken commentary of the theatre fan, here then presents(bugle) his series of Art/Culture columns, the last you'll ever have wanted to read, descending much as they do into the mayhem run throughout those unlucky depths and circumstances of this year's Edinburgh Festivals.

Regretfully, none of this concerns much anything of substance, failing as he did, yet as always, to see the properly cerebral award candidate shows and vaguely potential fringe successes. But no fear, he's faked some LOMO pics, and retains his careful hipster credibility. Real fake LOMO camera on the way though, yeay. [End third person because it's too confusion oriented.]

We begin as usual in Hades, like we must, only this is Shannon and not anywhere even Orpheus might go for love. Ignoring for now the disgraceful aeroplane in the foreground and focusing all proper attention on the airport behind, that which needs to be levelled. How is it that anything so giggle worthy as the "Shannon Free Zone" should make it onto a road sign? And one in which so much pride seems invested. It cries for a hyphen. And I cry with it.

But still the fight reigns on to retain this mess, a place without divine salvation on this earth, where the descent of desolation and abandonment strikes at 7pm and even the merest bites of food are locked in unseen prisons. And where still, I am considered by myself blessedly so mercifully lucky to have found me a dinner feast-style on pains aux chocolat and croissants. Is it there is somewhere better to be around Shannon after 7pm? But don't lie, I've seen the countryside...

A best effort to delete reality and all its airborne woes was rewarded in the bar preflight. So much so I saw Roman legionaries on the telephones home and scared young American boys in Army uniforms. First thoughts of disgust, the missed moral moments of a degenerate government, our degenerate government, replaced with properly correct emotions, the sort everyone professes to, of intense pity and the rush of tragedy. There is hardly any sort of honour in fighting for that so very little left to win there. And little else in understanding the unreal existence of a foreign policy formed of utterly no presence in reality. The absurdism and farce of silly theatre made very real and terrifying.

Watching the American tourists grapple to shake hands and subserve to their war men, it's hard to blame the soldiers and harder yet not to be unbelievably angry. So there, the first drama of the tour makes out in the Shannon departure lounge. Fade to black now because we're comatose drunk until Prestwich.

Prestwich is coloured with headaches from the alcohol cure for flying. Causing perhaps the blunder about the car park looking for a bus. And yet none there no matter how far from the terminal you'd care to walk, or from its concrete anti-theft devices. Yeah, try to steal those blocks.

Instead, it must be retirement to couches in the not quite terminal bar to await midnight bus efforts. So much of the hour spent gazing at the front airport entrance over my beer and pondering what Al-Qaida was at that night---slapstick comedy in the set down area might have lifted my gloom.

"Glasgow doesn't accept that."

But instead it's lamentations for shows already played out and lost to the nether tours of other stages. Like Arcadia by the Oxford University Dramatic Society(Boo, hiss...) and although I'm later to develop deep aversions to Stoppard at the Fringe, still ThreeWeeks loved it or had a cast friend review it.

Or a piece about the book I despise most in this world, The Elements of Style. Put on by HWS Rembiko who are also responsible for the interesting but not my thing AINE...(tigone). A risky effort being as you never know when you'll meet the uneducated class who adore, in their simplicity, that text.

Beckett is referenced too much these days but I did want to see the by now departed Happy Days done by the Loft Theatre Company, and also quite liked by ThreeWeeks. Not to mention the curious This is an Insult to Beckett and Fo by a school group from Gordonstoun. Possibly the best show title this year. But no matter, I got my Beckett nonsense in anyhow. It's so popular.

Except if Beckett and Fo get Fringy references, so too must Thomas and Lorca. I propose it a Fringe By-Law. Dylan Thomas gets a biopic type thing in Dylan Thomas in London by the Fluellen Theatre Company together with The Dylan Thomas Centre. And Lorca gets his notice in Lorca's Shadow by the Moving Parts Theatre Company. Both sadly done out earlier in August.

Oleanna by Muckle Roe Productions was the other Fringy piece I'd have gambled on if I had the chance. It's tricky to like except that academics in trouble make me smirk right now.

I baulked at a Romanian language version of The Government Inspector by the Comedy Theatre of Bucharest, although judging by the reviews I ought probably have seen it. It's hard to justify subtitled theatre though. Film, yes, but it damages the theatrical immediacy.

But alas, all missed.

Busing into the middle of the night and dear Dan Brown saves literature. Romans in the airport on the way were followed by Romans on the iPod later that night. And the first person we meet in Scotland is a cabbie with a blatantly and excessively incomprehensible accent. It was only sheer fluke to understand him on his third time saying anything.

"The thin night darkens."

More to follow... on to the shows I did see.