So with 24 hours in Edinburgh, during Festival, but actually hanging out with old college mates, I got a sense of the UK’s premier festival. Busy, buzzy, camp, camped out, fun.
On the Royal Mile, magicians entertained kids of all sizes, we happily missed posing with the woman who boasts 10,000 body piercings. And promo fliers fluttered like hopeful insects, beckoning you to Jane Austen, or a version with the most swoonworthy cast. Or comedy or theatre or over 3,000 shows.
Talking of which, I did get a ticket to The Outrun, Amy Liptrot's memoir of recovering from alcoholism via Orkney and birds, which is not just a play but a film also showing at the Edinburgh Festival with Soairse Ronan as our heroine who makes it through the Smirnoff bottles. Isis Hainsworth here was incandescent when required by her interaction with the natural world, but couldn’t always escape the script.
Sadly, the theatrical version wasn’t that dramatic. In fact, the powerful story, including a bipolar father, understanding then perplexed London boyfriend, and a chorus of friends, groovers, saviours, suffered from longueurs. The exchange when the relationship soured as the girl downed further booze hits to calm the jitters was clunky, undramatic. Think of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the savagery. This wasn’t that. In fact, the young man utters the banal line ‘I can’t take it any more.’ at one point.
There were opportunities for drama but the internal journey didn’t expand that way. While the wild landscape was well conveyed in the set, the ecstasy of being on the margins too (more or less), our heroine’s journey remained personal and a little too obviously autobiographical, vide the last from my journal style speech about taking up swimming.
But Edinburgh was alive, there’s always another show and a few in the audience did the mini standing ovation. Some performances shone, just not the material.
Jane Hardy
