Inappropriate erotic encounter (spirit of the Fest!)

There always seems to be one.

This time it was in front of 500 people.

Yes, I got a cuddle from Camille O'Sullivan.

The raunchy chanteuse loves up several men (and quite a few women) in every show, so I shouldn't feel 'special'. But I do.

She kissed my bald spot.

Chill Penury (and Dirty Tricks)

No, not entries for the Band Name Competition (though I suppose they might be...), but my sad reflections on my prospects for entertainment during the festival season here in Edinburgh.

I'm sure it's less than a decade ago that most shows in the Fringe were only £2 or £3; and even within the last five years or so, surely most shows were still only about a fiver? This year I am shocked to discover that even the cheapest shows are mostly £11 or £12. The 'good old days' when I could see 20 or 30 shows in a week and still come out of it with change from £100 are no more. £10, for me, is a daunting psychological threshold. I'm sure on my last few trips up here, I must have paid £10 for a show now and again, and £7, £8, or £9 on quite a few occasions; but a price of more than £10 per ticket strikes fear and resentment into my soul, provokes a profound resistance to pay. I fear I may have to ration myself to a single show per day. Oh, woe, woe.

Now, friends up here in Edinburgh have been encouraging me to believe that I can score lots of freebie tickets. This is quite common sport amongst the local people at this time of year, I gather. They suggest such sneaky tactics as wheedling the poor students desperately touting their shows on the Royal Mile to give you free tickets instead of just flyers; or "befriending" the most disconsolate-looking group of young people in a bar and offering to be a rent-a-crowd for their audienceless show (the ideal outcome being that you will get some free drinks out of them as well as free tickets; and maybe even a chance to sleep with the lead actress); or just hanging around outside shows that have very short (or no) queues, and trying to blag your way in at the last minute. Another variation on these approaches is to scour the comedy blurbs to identify the most painfully unfunny novice comedians (you can usually tell) and then seek them out and offer them your services as a laughter-catalyst ("Oh yes, my guffaw is utterly infectious. Even my smirks and chortles spread like wildfire, but the full laugh will reduce your punters to hysterics in an instant."). Then, of course, the really unscrupulous just try to pass themselves off as reviewers. My host has suggested, as a grander version of this, that I set up a website for a phoney Chinese theatre festival and introduce myself at the Fringe Office as the 'director' - looking for some shows to take back there next spring. Hmm, it's crazy - but it might just work....

The problem with all of these ruses (aside from the ethical considerations, that is) is that they're all tending to make you an uncritical bottom-feeder. Any shows for which you can get free tickets in this way (well, other than by impersonating a journalist or a theatre director, anyway) are likely to be pretty piss-poor; nearly all the good stuff - even the more low-key, 'unregarded' gems - gets the word-of-mouth going for it and is soon pretty near to sold-out.

Also, I do feel rather bad about exploiting people's vulnerability in the ways suggested above. I like to support and encourage performers, and I feel I ought to pay them something for their efforts (I just can't afford to pay £10+ !!). I don't think I'll be trying out any of these subterfuges for myself over the next few days.

However, I am not above accepting free tickets if offered to me..... And my buddy The Arts Entrepreneur (arriving tonight), in addition to usually having at least one or two shows of his own on in The Fringe (mostly as a producer, occasionally as writer/director), is pretty well-connected in the scene here and often manages to score us some invitations to various friends-of-friends' shows.

There also seems to be more and more completely free stuff going on in recent years - not just the street performances on the Mile and in Princes Gardens, but numerous bars and restaurants providing comedy and live music offerings. In the past I've always been a bit suspicious of any show that was FREE (apart from the rollicking jazz and folk mini-festivals staged at The Guildford Arms every year: a regular stop-off of mine for the past decade or more): if it's not worth paying for, it's not worth seeing, I used to think. And that perverse prejudice had been rather confirmed by a number of truly dire shows I'd caught under the umbrella of 'Fringe For Free', a promotion of the past few years. This year, though, I think I shall be forced to set these misgivings aside. I have barely enough money left to pay for beer, so - it's FREE or NOTHING for my theatre-going this week.

Lear

I'm heading off to Edinburgh in a few days for my biennial fix of the Fringe.

But this year I have already treated myself to some theatre on my travels: I went to see King Lear at the Washington Shakespeare Theatre a couple of weeks ago - the day before my return to the UK. I'd only heard that it was on at a dinner party a day or two before. And the run was supposed to have ended, but had just been extended for another week or two. And I found myself able to buy what was supposedly the last unsold ticket for any of the performances that weekend (they were doing matinees and evening performances on both days - pretty exhausting!). So, I felt my luck was in, that Fate was goading me into attending - although, at $85, this was much the most I've ever spent on a trip to the theatre (most of my theatre-going, I reflect, has either been fairly inexpensive [student productions, festivals], or heavily discounted [e.g. via the half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square], or FREE [comped by friends involved in the production, or paid for by my employer when I was a teacher accompanying school trips to Stratford & co.]; having to pay more than £10 or so for a show is an uncomfortable shock to the system; having to pay nearly £60 brought on palpitations!).

How was it?

Well, I liked Stacy Keach in the title role. He has the physical presence you need for such a grand role, and also an air of danger about him that reminds you what a scary mother****er Lear had been in his heyday (and still can be, on occasion); yet this image of an irascible old tyrant is mostly masked, softened by a great affability, charm, and humour. This Lear, despite his excesses, is very human, very likable. I found the earlier scenes, though, more compelling; the later descent into senility (and partial recovery at the end of the play?) is always difficult to bring off convincingly - and in this production there seemed to be greater emphasis on the power struggles of the daughters and their husbands than on Lear's degeneration.

Although I am in general rather wary of transposing Shakespeare to contemporary settings, the conceit of locating the action in a fragmenting early-90s Yugoslavia worked well here (except for the inevitable jarring incongruity of the repeated references to France, Cornwall, and Dover where we might have been expecting Greece, Serbia, and Dubrovnik); the casual cruelty and the naked greed for power of the Dark Ages is all too appropriately embodied in the petty warlords of the Balkans, a bunch of swaggering, uncouth, leather-jacketed gangsters.

The supporting parts were very well played too, but..... I found Robert Falls' direction just too loud and boisterous and gimmicky. There was too much humorous business going on (this is not a play where we want the mood to be lightened every few minutes). And whilst the frequent bursts of raucous Eastern European pop music underlined the setting and boosted the energy levels, this may have been a bit overdone. We certainly didn't need The Stones' Gimme Shelter at the beginning of the tempest scene - that was a cheap gag that achieved only bathos rather than pathos. Many details of the production became, for me, irksomely distracting - or, at least, shifted the emphasis away from Lear rather. It's a strange presentation of this play in which the figure of the King doesn't quite seem to be the main event. This seemed to be a rather trimmed down version as well: barely 3 hours' running time, even with all the additional bits of business. It's a long time since I've seen the play, but I think a full text production should run a lot longer than that. The 'mad scenes' (and the scenes with The Fool - though I'm less bothered about that), in particular, seemed much attenuated.

It was an imaginative and thought-provoking re-imagining of the great play, though; and Keach's Lear was very memorable. I'm glad I went. Even though it cost me an arm and a leg. And even though I had to forego the rival attraction of watching the denouement of Tom Watson's bid for the Open title at Turnberry - equally awe-inspiring, equally tragic!

This production of Lear was first staged by Chicago's Goodman Theatre a few years ago, and there are some good photographs of it on their website.

A night out at the theatre

The Beijing Actors' (and Directors' and Writers') Workshop put on a show last night at the PengHao Theatre - Short Attention Span Theatre, a collection of mini-plays they've been developing in the various workshops over the past few months.

I know quite a few of the people involved in this (primarily laowai) group (and have often been tempted to take part myself, but have somehow never quite made the time), and one of them was kind enough to lay on a complimentary ticket for me. Even he had warned me (two or three times!) not to expect too much from the writing, and indeed it was...... Well, I think the first piece was probably the strongest, and that's something of a tactical error in the programming. However, I'm very forgiving with am-dram: it's the effort and enthusiasm that win you over, it's the electricity of live performance that you go to experience - not the quality of the writing or acting per se. And it's such a rare treat to be able to see some drama in English in Beijing (in fact, there isn't a whole hell of a lot in Chinese, either); it's got me looking forward to a possible break in Edinburgh again this summer.

And this was my first time at the PengHao, a little theatre club down an alleyway behind the Central Academy of Drama (I don't know if it has any connection with CAD), halfway down Dongmianhua Hutong. It's been open a little less than a year, I think, and I've been hearing for a while that it is rather a decent little bar - open all the time, even when there's no show on, I gather.

I think it may merit further investigation: the prices are reasonable, and the food smelled pretty good. I have some gripes about the layout of the space: the bar is rather too broad, and cluttered; a laager of sofas in the middle of the room blocks access to the bar (there's only a foot or so of space between the back of one of them and the main serving area) and to the theatre itself (ugly congestion as we waited to be allowed in). And I suspect the clientele may be dominated by an artsy-fartsy crowd, and rather too predominantly or exclusively laowai for my taste. Nevertheless, it's in a good location, and has a cosy, friendly ambience about it. If the food and drinks are actually any good (I only had a Tsingtao last night - rather more vile than usual, and not especially well chilled), the place might make it on to my second string.

However, since it's just down the road from Jianghu, and only 5 minutes' walk from 12 Sq M, it's unlikely ever to become a very regular haunt of mine. The local competition is just too tough.

I look forward to seeing further shows there, though.

Rain stops play (again)

This weekend, a British theatre company, TNT, was in town performing Hamlet in Peking University (yes, it's one of the few institutions to retain the old Wade-Giles romanization - probably only because they can't be bothered to replace the dozens of signs and crests dotted all over the campus, all over the city).

As I moped a few weeks ago, there's very little worthwhile theatre here (in English or any other language). I don't think there's been any Shakespeare in all the time I've been here (apart from a couple of am-dram productions). So, I was mad keen to go (the more so as I had unaccountably overlooked their first run here a month ago). I had even prevailed upon The Choirboy to go with me (he's a very cultured fellow, under the louche exterior; certain other people I canvassed proved disappointingly uncultured).

Yesterday it rained. All day, without let-up. PKU is a long way away to the north-west. Trying to get there in such weather conditions was an unappealing prospect. The thought of trying to get back again afterwards was horrendous. Our good intentions wilted as the relentless downpour continued through the afternoon.

As I think I have probably mentioned before, Beijing tends to grind to a halt in the rain. The storm drains are completely inadequate (checking on my street as I came home last night, I discovered that there's only an outlet about once every 150 yards!), and instantly become clogged with litter, bits of tree, and builder's sand (ubiquitous at the moment) - so, the city floods after even a mild shower. Yesterday was not mild: we probably exceeded the average monthly rainfall in 24 hours (and April is usually one of the rainiest months). It was hard to go anywhere, even on foot, as there were mini-lakes - 3 or 4 inches of standing water - on every street and alley.

Moreover, it can be next to impossible to get a cab in such conditions. People who'd normally walk or bicycle all try to take public transport instead, so the buses and subway trains become impossibly crowded. Thus, all the people who'd normally take public transport try to take taxis instead. And most of the taxis retire from service. Really. I know this is a common problem in any city in the world, but it is 10 times worse in Beijing. This may be partly due to swingeing new regulations on taxi cleanliness the city has introduced in recent years: drivers can be heavily fined for having a dirty car, and so often prefer not to drive when conditions are too wet or muddy (it seems these rules may only apply - or only be enforced - in the city centre; a couple of times, when taking a cab back from the University district, I have had drivers pull over to a roadside maintenance shop for a couple of minutes to sponge down their hubcaps before they will dare to venture inside the 3rd Ringroad). I suspect that the abysmal driving standards here are even more to blame: the likelihood of traffic accidents becomes intolerably high when the roads are slippery, and many drivers choose not to run the risk (although what in fact tends to happen is that everyone drives so over-cautiously that the traffic moves at a crawl: on a rainy day a couple of weeks ago, it took me 50 minutes to cover a journey that usually takes 20, and the traffic was very light!).

I suppose we are spoiled rather: there is such an abundance of of cabs in this city that you rarely have to wait more than a few seconds to catch one - anywhere, at any time of the day or night. But when it's raining (or snowing), your confidence dwindles that you will ever catch one at all. The Choirboy was eventually persuaded to come out for dinner and a few drinks with me; it took him over 30 minutes to get a cab; in the circumstances, he was quite lucky.

Of course, we had long since had to give up on Hamlet. I cannot reproach myself too much for this decision: the long trek to the north was really not viable in these conditions. I do blame myself for leaving it until the last night of the run to try to see the play. I do blame myself for missing the first run. I do lament that we probably shan't see another professional production of the Bard here for another 5 or 10 years. Bugger! Bloody rain!

A couple of weeks ago, my cultural ambitions were defeated by the good weather; yesterday, by the bad weather. I just can't win.

Booze 1, Culture 0

I happened to discover on Saturday that Ireland's PanPan theatre company was in town this weekend with its touring production of Oedipus Loves You, "a 21st Century take on Sophocles's famous drama".

There's very little decent theatre in this town (hardly any in English), so I was keen to try and check it out - and dismayed that I'd very nearly failed even to be aware that the play was on. The beginning of the month is a very bad time for visiting artists to put something on, because we laowai generally only find out about such events from the expat listings magazines..... and they only come out at the beginning of the month (well, usually a day or two from the end of the preceding month)..... and it usually takes us a few days to get around to picking up a copy. Thus, there's a 'black hole' at the beginning of each month where we're woefully unaware of anything that's going on. Heck, some of us even missed Norah Jones when she played here a couple of years ago, for precisely this reason.

And at least Norah had some advance publicity (billboards the size of a house; but the actual date of the concert wasn't very prominent on them), whereas this theatre troupe seems to have arrived in town entirely unheralded. Putting out handbills in a few expat-friendly restaurants on the weekend of the show is not going to draw in many punters.

I'd already missed Saturday's performance when I picked up the handbill. Sunday was the last show. I had no idea where the theatre was. It was a bothersomely early start (Sunday tends to be my main day for going out for dinner, late and leisurely). I didn't have much time to enlist any friends into accompanying me. The omens were not good.

But I set out on Sunday afternoon with the handbill in my pocket, and about a 60% expectation of making it to the show (and maybe even dragging along one or two other people). However, a lazy afternoon of rooftop drinking was passing so pleasantly that we didn't really want to quit until the sun went down; by which point it was too late to make it to the play. And we were all ravenously hungry, so we retired instead to The Muslim for an enormous nang bao rou and several more beers.

So much for good intentions.

It's months since I last got a decent fix of culture.

Rose Street

Rose Street is a central part of the Edinburgh summer experience, quite possibly the best 'bar street' in the world. It's a pedestrianized lane a mile or so long, running parallel to and midway between Princes Street and George Street. So, it runs right past the back of the Assembly Rooms, one of the main Fringe venues. There are a number of other smaller venues within a stone's throw. And The Traverse, the best proper theatre participating in the Festival, is not too far away either. Thus it is an ideal place for whiling away the intervals between shows; and it is, accordingly, stuffed to the gills with Skulking Theatregoer pubs.

I dream of having a 'stag' pub crawl along there one day - should I ever get married (which is, I admit, looking an extremely unlikely event; but what is life without a few daydreams?). I'd probably include two of my very favourite Edinburgh bars, The Guildford Arms and The Café Royal, even though they aren't actually on Rose Street: they are on the same latitude, only a few hundred yards further east, and spiritually they seem to be on the same continuum.

I've never actually managed to count up the total number of bars on Rose St. It changes from time to time (for instance, The Saltire, one of oldest and most characterfully, most scarily grotty of them, was closed this summer - though perhaps only temporarily). And there are issues of definition. There are quite a few cheap-ish restaurants that are quite happy for you to just hang out and drink in them (these I would be tempted to include). And there are a few more modern, glitzy, wine-bar-y ones (these don't count!). Anyway, it's a big number - probably 20 or so, at least. Barely survivable. But I will do it one day, oh yes - a drink in every bar along there in the space of a single day. Anyone care to join me?

It's good to have goals and objectives to give your life meaning....

Edinburgh leftovers

A few people have asked me, in regard to my 'Best of the Fest' post of a couple of weeks ago, if that's all I saw.

Good heavens, NO! Don't be silly!

I had a fairly light show-going schedule this year, because I could only manage 5 or 6 days there, rather than my usual 10 or 12. And because the tickets are getting so bloody expensive.

But heck, no, I probably saw at least twice as much as I wrote about there. On occasion, I'll go and see 6 or 7 different things in one day.

Along with my obligatory token comedy show at The Stand (I go to one just about every year; usually only one, but....) and a couple of jazz nights at The Guildford (one of my favourite pubs in the city; and scene of last year's 'inappropriate erotic encounter' - there's always one at Edinburgh, it seems!), I also happened to catch one of the last gigs in the Jazz & Blues Festival (it always catches me out by starting a week or so earlier than everything else) at The Jam House on a drizzly Sunday afternoon; the highlight there was a young electric blues trio called Tantrum (undergraduates not yet out of their teens - god, it makes me feel old! I liked them so much I bought one of their CDs!).

The other dramatic offerings I caught, but didn't feel inclined to recommend were:

Forgotten Voices - a piece about WWI, recalled through the oral histories of survivors many years later. Now, this was all very worthy, quite moving in parts, very decently performed - just not very enlightening (well, not for me - I've read extensively on the First War, and there wasn't one of these anecdotes that told me anything new) and not very theatrically compelling (it could have been done on the radio; and, indeed, would probably have been more effective in that medium). Five septuagenarians meeting in the early '70s at the Imperial War Museum, after recording their testimonies for the archive, repeating some of the memories as small talk - there's not really anything dramatic about it. Interesting human stories, but rather lazily cobbled together. I confess I went largely to see Belinda Lang, the only female cast member, a rather lovely British actress who I've had a crush on for 20-odd years. My ardour was slightly dampened by the discovery that she is now over 50 (and, in this show, was playing 75!).

Adolf - a long-running, mildly notorious one-man show by Pip Utton. I'd been hearing good things about it for a few years, so thought I'd better check it out before he finally gets bored of doing it. The imagined final self-justification of Hitler during his last hours in the bunker has its moments of interest, but I found the impersonation a little weak; and the monologue was at times somewhat repetitive, could have been more tightly written. The 'trick' of the piece is that barely half-way through, Utton takes off the Hitler costume and becomes 'himself' again, bantering amiably with the audience about the show. Amiably, at least, at first; gradually a few commonplace racist jokes ("The Romans had the right idea: build your roads long and straight, and your immigrants can't open corner shops all over the place.") develop into a more thoroughgoing xenophobic agenda - illustrating how easily the Fuhrer can achieve his final wish, that he should attain immortality through his ideas, the poisonous ideas that can so easily find a place in anyone's heart. It's a neat idea, but, having heard quite a bit about the show beforehand, there was no element of shock or surprise in it for me - and no element of discomfort as to how far these might be Utton's real views. I suspect the effectiveness of this closing section depends very largely on audience reaction too. I have been told that it can get quite lively, with people jeering or walking out. On the day I went, nobody rose to the bait.

American Poodle - a pair of one-man pieces "on the Anglo-American relationship" by Guy Masterson and David Calvitto. I was drawn to this partly by the title, partly by the hope of seeing some decent satire (something of a dying - or dead - art, I fear), and by a curiosity to see Masterson performing (he's a prolific director, usually has 5 or 10 shows on at The Fringe every year; but I've never seen him act before). And yes, I may have been a little suckered by the blurb that read "caustic, clever, hyper-articulate, and inspired". That sounds like my buddy, The Arts Entrepreneur - on one of his good days, anyway. In regard to this piece, it was unwarranted hyperbole. Masterson's monologue was a re-telling of early American history from a British perspective, asserting that the Crown's attempt to put a tax on tea wasn't so unreasonable and that revered revolutionary heroes like John Hancock were actually pretty nasty pieces of work. There's a lot to that. And it was done with great gusto, and was often very funny. The trouble was that he burned himself out on the Revolution - which had little point of contact with contemporary events - and left himself just a scant few sentences to sum up the relations between the two countries over the 200 years since. Calvitto was a contemporary American businessman, visiting London for the first time on a mysterious errand. Most of the jokes seemed to be at the expense of American ignorance and naivety (this was very much Homer Simpson, the amiable idiot abroad, continually surprised that things weren't quite as they'd been depicted in Mary Poppins) rather than revealing any major faults in London or Londoners. It was delivered at breakneck pace, and had a few decent jokes in it, but - as with Masterson's history lesson - it really lacked any satirical teeth. I'm always fascinated by - and always disposed to admire and enjoy - one-man performances because it takes such a tremendous amount of energy and focus and sheer balls to hold a stage alone for any length of time. On this occasion, as so often, I left admiring the performances alone, rather than the content.

Exits and Entrances - a new play ("World Premiere", apparently) from Athol Fugard, based on his meetings with Andre Huguenet, a giant of the South African stage whom he had known briefly at the outset of his writing career in the '50s. Ah, how many plays have been set backstage, chronicling the artistic agony of the performer? How many of them have actually been any good? It's a sign of how lazy the writing of this one is that it relies so heavily on extended extracts from Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and from another play I wasn't familiar with called The Prisoner (and, more briefly but still rather lamely, from Hamlet). The actor playing the grand old thespian was very impressive. The actor (I didn't catch either of the names, unfortunately) playing Fugard himself was whiny and irritating. Perhaps this was also a good performance (the writing throughout seemed to betray its author as insufferably pompous and unself-aware), but it was rather alienating of audience interest. And perhaps the milieu was just too obscure: apart from never having achieved any financial success, it was impossible for me to discern what Andre's great - unfulfilled - artistic goal in life had been, or why he felt so disillusioned and defeated upon the founding of the Republic of South Africa. This struck me as an extremely dull, clumsy, under-written play. I was concerned that I might perhaps be over-reacting, since in general Fugard has a pretty high reputation. Luckily, The Arts Entrepreneur reassured me: "Oh, god, no - Fugard's a terrible writer. Nobody would read him if he weren't South African."

So, there you have it. A few more reviews.

That'll probably be it until Fringe time next year. I get to see precious little theatre here in Beijing.

How I wish I could find a way to bring some of those Edinburgh shows out here....

Edinburgh Fringe reviews

I'm just back from a week up in Edinburgh enjoying the Festivals there, so I thought I would offer a thumbnail guide to the best of what I've seen.

Pick of the crop was definitely Is This About Sex?, a new comedy from the Irish group Rough Magic (who also did one of the best shows at last year's Fringe, an exuberantly silly musical called Improbable Frequency - which featured one of my literary and boozing heroes, Brian O'Nolan, as a leading character): nicely played, and very, very funny, it avoids cheap jokes (yes, it does feature a short, middle-aged man in drag, but in context it's actually quite touching) or mere bawdiness, but instead provides a rather moving examination of the meaning of sex, and of questions of gender, identity, and sexual orientation.

A very close second, also on the Traverse Theatre roster, is Pit from Glasgow's Arches theatre company - a very dark, surreal comedy in which three actresses chart one woman's struggle to keep her family fed while existing on the poverty line in contemporary America - unusual, disturbing and thought-provoking.... and quite likely to put you off your supper. In many ways, perhaps, it's a more serious, more 'worthy' show than Is This About Sex?, but it's somehow lacking the charm of that production. Well worth a look, though.

Also quite excellent was Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles, probably the best of these biographical shows that I've ever seen (there have been rather too many of them in recent years). As a long-time Welles fan, I was already familiar with most of the anecdotes; and I would have liked a stronger ending (instead of a couple of easy gags); but even so, the time flew by. And Christian McKay's solo performance is remarkable, rendering a commanding figure of Welles that is both believable and likeable: the arrogance almost always a little undercut by a wry self-mockery, the bombast giving way to vulnerability.

Another fine one-man show is Northern Stage's I Am My Own Wife, an account of the wondrously eccentric East German transvestite 'Charlotte' von Mahlsdorf, who somehow survived both the Nazis and the Stasi (while amassing a huge collection of late 19th Century furniture and running a secret cabaret club in his basement!). Apparently it's been done on Broadway already, and author Doug Wright won a Pulitzer for it; but this new production by a small Vermont theatre company has been streamlined to 70 mins to fit frenetic Edinburgh scheduling (a very effective edit: you're not aware of any 'gaps', and you tend to feel that a much longer version might have begun to overtax the audience's patience) and boasts a fantastic performance by Kevin Loreque (who not only brings the exotic Charlotte to life but also provides distinct voices for several supporting characters, including the author himself). OK, I have to declare an interest here: I am an old friend of one of the producers, so I got to hang out with Kevin and his crew and the theatre patrons after the first show; this personal connection naturally makes me a little biased in their favour - but it really is an outstandingly good show.

My buddy is also involved in bringing over one or more Mexican shows to the Fringe every year, and this year it was Cállate! - a delightfully silly physical comedy piece (directed by Cal McCrystal, who has acquired quite a reputation working on the clown performances for the Cirque du Soleil, and creating utterly daft Hammer Horror spoof Cooped for the Spymonkey troupe - probably one of the biggest Fringe successes of recent years, subsequently touring all over the world). It's a farce, pastiching the melodramatic commonplaces of early Mexican cinema. The large number of Mexicans in the audience when I happened to see it were in fits throughout and clearly saw layers in it which were impenetrable to me; but you really don't have to appreciate all the references in order to enjoy the knockabout fun of it. It's a very slight piece of work, but it's an hour in the middle of the afternoon that will leave a smile on your face.

Another piece of pure silliness I allowed myself to indulge in was EUROBEAT - Almost Eurovision!, a spirited send-up of the Eurovision song contest. It was much better than I'd expected. It was very, very good indeed. It was much bigger than I'd expected - clearly they have plans to take this on tour, and perhaps find it a long-term niche in the West End. It seems to be drawing huge audiences (albeit with the help of a lot of half-price ticket sales) who are absolutely loving it. 10 songs from 10 countries, representing the predictable range of naff Eurovision clichés, including parodies of Bjork and Nana Mouskouri. Much of the music is actually quite good (catchy boy band numbers from Russia and Estonia are predictably the audience favourites when it comes to the SMS voting at the end), and lustily performed even when it is not (although the UK are about the worst of all the entries, second only to the wordless, tuneless 'performance art' electropop noodling of the Germans). And the whole thing is held together by a pair of great comic performances from the inept Sarajevan comperes. The voting phase at the end threatens to drag just a little, but the pumped-up audience seem willing to tolerate it in order to see their favourite song performed again. It's a hoot - a funny, sexy, exhilarating good time. (And I'm not usually susceptible to the popular favourites!)

And finally..... Belly Of A Drunken Piano is a late-night cabaret tribute to the music of Tom Waits, performed by Aussie Waits-idolater Stewart D'Arrietta and a local rhythm section. Of course, I have quibbles. Like any Tom Waits fan, I was irked that so many of my particular favourites were omitted: the set was divided between the early middle period (Small Change, Blue Valentines, Heartattack and Vine, One From The Heart) and the more recent stuff: nothing from the early days or - to my chagrin - from the wonderfully rich middle period (Rain Dogs, Frank's Wild Years, Night On Earth, Bone Machine). And I wasn't that impressed with the piano playing. However, D'Arrietta is an impassioned fan and a decent impersonator, and his show provided a fine end to a very busy day of theatre-going. I just found myself getting slightly melancholic at the realisation that I am almost certainly never going to see Tom perform in person....

You don't get rid of me that easily

Ta-daaaa! I'm back!! It is as though I never went away.

Either those pesky bureaucrats at Kafka Central rethought their policy on blocking posts to Blogspot over the weekend…. or their blocking apparatus has failed (or been thwarted by Blogger? Go, Blogger!!!)…. or my problems with that were just a temporary glitch after all.

Whatever the cause of the maddening interruption (and probably we shall never know), I am now re-connected, and thus able to share my brain-scrapings with you whenever the mood so takes me. (Unless you happen to be living in the same country as me, or in one with a similarly f***ed-up censorship regime; in which case, you need to learn how to use Anonymouse, my friend.)

I am half-tempted to make more of an effort to deserve the interference of the government by including more social and political commentary (the powers-that-be would certainly not like Froogville's 'Where in the world am I?' series, if they knew). This is the common error of tyrants down the ages: random, unnecessary oppression creates rebels out of complacent gripers.

I wonder if 'someone' is 'looking over my shoulder' at this….?

"I saw him standing by the newspaper stand. There's something odd about his gloved left hand…"

Down to the 'Doctors'

The writer Keith Waterhouse used to say his favourite pubs were situated conveniently near a theatre, thus allowing a playwright such as himself to drown his anxieties while waiting for the response of the first-night crowd to his latest work; and hence he always thought of such places by the generic nickname, The Skulking Dramatist. To the best of my knowledge, no bar in the UK actually bears that name, but I feel that one should. Perhaps that could be a retirement project for me.

On my regular-ish jaunts up to Edinburgh in August to take in the summer arts festivals there, I am invariably faced with a quest to find The Skulking Theatre-Goer - a bar which will provide the best prospect of rest and refreshment in the fleeting intervals between the various Fringe Festival shows, sometimes five or six in one day, that I am attempting to see.

This year, it happened to be a place called 'Doctors'. One of those names that makes you fret as to whether there is an apostrophe missing somewhere. (It's a celebrated piece of trivia that 'Rovers Return', the name of the pub in Britain's longest-running TV soap, 'Coronation Street', is only a general statement because of a signwriter's mistake.) And I have my suspicions that this may be a recent renaming. I've certainly been there in years gone by, and don't recall it being 'Doctors' then, although I have no recollection either of what its former name might have been.

It has nothing particular to recommend it, except that it is unmodernised, still fairly traditional and 'old world' (something that can be said for depressingly few bars south of the border these days, as they are converting in droves to the airy wine bar model: Scotland, thank heavens, is still largely holding out against this unlovely trend): dark wood, comforting gloom, silvered mirrors, small windows, the distinctive smell of spilt beer and dog and furniture polish. Oh yes, and it sells Stella Artois 20p a pint cheaper than anywhere else in town - always a key consideration for the budget drinker.

Many a happy half-hour or hour was spent there last month digesting the work I'd just seen and planning out my next little cultural snack (while the main event of Edinburgh's frenetic August, the International Arts Festival, can be seen as a banquet of haute cuisine, the majority of the shows in the Fringe - mostly by tiny amateur or semi-pro companies, often by schools or University theatre groups - are more like Pot Noodle: welcome sustenance at the time, but unlikely to linger long in the memory).

Although I was mostly there on my own, from time to time, briefly, there was a Drinking Companion. The greatest of all the Drinking Companions I have known, as it happens: a lovely, sad, funny, wise man who is likely to appear often in these rambling anecdotes of mine. Like me, he is a long-time EdFest aficionado; unlike me, he has found a way to make a living out of his private passion, and is now promoting international theatre exchanges. If I make it to Edinburgh, I can always rely on him being there. I can't rely on him being available to meet up very much, because he's such a busy chap these days. But there will always be a few hastily convened alcoholic rendezvous (usually in The Skulking Tour Guide - whichever pub is nearest to the theatre where he has abandoned his American charges [cultural tourism for wealthy Americans is another of his bowstrings] at the half-time interval).

And yes, the shadow of the Lost Love passed through at one point as well. It was the darnedest thing. I had been on an extended holiday, away from the city, the country where we both live, and had been in a completely different mindset - revisiting the friends, reliving the life I had before I went overseas. I had scarcely thought about Her in a couple of months. But then, but then..... a song came on the jukebox by the band Garbage. From their second album, I think. A release from several years ago. This was an odd musical selection (randomly generated from the machine, I'm sure; I never saw anyone put any money into it while I was there - the Scots are quite properly too thrifty for such nonsense!): I never heard Garbage play on any of the many other occasions I hung out there in those two weeks; indeed, I don't think I ever heard another song that was more than 4 or 5 years old. A somewhat mysterious oddity, then. And a song with resonances. 'Our song', you might say. She played it on the one and only occasion she stayed at my apartment (usually we stayed at hers). Subsequently we both quoted lines from it at each other in our barrage of SMS flirting ("You look so fine. I want to break your heart, and give you mine."). After The Fall, for some weeks I would perversely torture myself with the memories by playing it over and over again.

But that was six months or more before. I thought I was over it. Until Dame Coincidence smacked me in the ear with that song, and unleashed a stampede of regrets to trample my heart anew.

I thought I was over it! Perhaps you never completely get over an affair like that. And there's something about bars, especially traditional, old-fashioned, dark bars that teases wistfulness out of you when you least expect it. I put myself in harm's way whenever I step through the door, I know I do.

But this is who I am - "I could no more change the colour of my eyes."