Latest news with #Windblown
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Scotsman
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Fringe theatre reviews Karine Polwart Windblown Lost LearThe Black Hole
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Karine Polwart: Windblown ★★★★★ Queen's Hall (Venue 72) until 13 August There's a touch of pure magic in the way singer, songwriter and theatre-maker Karine Polwart approaches the multiple crises that face us in this 21st century. Gentle, accepting, and full of wonder at the glory that still remains on our home planet, Polwart is also a wise and witty observer of the human folly that has destroyed so much, and of the tragedy of that loss. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Karine Polwart: Windblown | Mihaela Bodlovic In her latest show Windblown - produced by Raw Material, and briefly at the Queen's Hall this week - her subject is the mighty Sabal palm tree that once stood at the centre of the tropical glass house in Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden, but that finally had to be taken down in 2021, too old and unstable to survive the temporary removal of all the plants from the 19th century building, to allow for a major refurbishment. Polwart was artist in residence at the Botanics at the time, inspired to honour and celebrate the old tree, as it faced its inevitable end; and the result is an exquisite 60-minute song cycle, with linking narrative, in which Polwart reflects on the history of a tree that was brought to Scotland from Bermuda as a seed or sapling around 1800, and taken up from Leith docks to the old botanic garden in Leith Walk, then in the 1820's transferred with the rest of the plants - travelling through the streets in carts - to the garden's present home at Inverleith, and to a steel and glass plant house that soon had to be rebuilt to accommodate its growing height. Polwart's songs, in the voice of the palm itself, are wistful yet powerful, touching as they go on themes of colonialism and dislocation, and of the brutal shifting of living things from their natural habitat; yet also beautifully evoking the tender care with which generations of Edinburgh gardeners tended the tree to the moment of its death, and still tend the garden's millions of plants now. The songs unfold as part of a simmering, beautifully textured score co-created by composer and sound designer Pippa Murphy, with live piano accompaniment by Dave Milligan, against the backdrop of a gorgeous, turbulent palm tree sculpture by designer Neil Haynes, lit by Lizzie Powell. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad And when, in the end, Polwart quotes the essayist Maria Popova's concept of every living organism as a 'cathedral of complexity', it seems as though she has been using the magic of her voice, and of the artists with whom she works, to bring that great cathedral of nature gently back into the light; after centuries of neglect by everyone except the quiet fellowship of gardeners, who keep it alive, for us all. Joyce McMillan Lost Lear ★★★★ Traverse Theatre (Venue 15) until 24 August A key plot element of Shakespeare's King Lear is based on the relationship between the King, who wishes to divide up his domain and riches between his three daughters, and his youngest child Cordelia. Where her siblings Goneril and Regan try to flatter their father into excessive generosity, Cordelia refuses to dismiss his faults, even if it costs her material wealth. All of this is recounted here by a man (Manus Halligan) who addresses the audience with a hasty summary of the play before the curtain rises. Yet we discover he isn't talking to us; a rehearsal for a new production of Lear is about to take place, and he's bringing understudy Conor (Peter Daly in the performance I saw, although Gus McDonagh also takes the role on some days) up to speed. In this gender-swapped play-within-a-play, Lear is performed by Joy (Venetia Bowe), a grand dame actress of the stage whose demeanour is haughty and regal – in and out of character – as she sits upon Lear's armchair throne. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad When Conor reveals himself as singularly ill-equipped to be an actor, she scoffs and attempts to coach him on how to do it properly. 'Play the intention!' she jabbingly commands, as he struggles to communicate. It's difficult to take a description of writer-director Dan Colley's Shakespeare-adaptation-which-isn't much further, because the play opens up in a way which presents a wonderfully unexpected experience for the viewer. Suffice it to say that Shakespeare's theme of a feted, arrogant parent in conflict with a child who must tell them who they are and what they've done is brought hauntingly up to date. Although the audio-visual elements are perhaps over-used, this amusing and poignant play brings themes of aging and regret powerfully home through the intelligence of its script and the sheer quality of its performances. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad When Lear inevitably begs forgetting and forgiveness for being 'old and foolish,' all that's gone before lends those words striking new power. David Pollock The Black Hole ★★★ theSpace @ Venue 45 (Venue 45) until 16 August Initially deceptively formless and pleasingly abstract this new psychological drama from actor-writer-director-producer Vkinn Vats repays attention. Alone in a shared space — an ethereal new age music score suggests limbo but it could be anywhere — a couple dance, kiss, share intimate moments and eventually some hard emotional truths. The setting may be elliptical but Vats and his similarly convincing fellow actor-collaborator, Rosalind Jackson Roe have real chemistry, and manage to keep this mostly grounded and relatable. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Gradually, as the couple's conversations begin to take the shape of a developing relationship; from flirting to physicality. From the perhaps ill-advised 'did you ever..?' sex chat — which proves a surefire way to ruin the moment — to buried resentments and affections. The couple's conversations are admirably straightforward — mostly; Vaks' statement that he doesn't like birds because they fly and his mother left him and his father on a plane is rather inelegant. Also, while the new age soundtrack is effectively atmospheric, the moments where it's used to underscore dialogue feel unnecessarily heavy-handed. The ambiguity of the ending feels inevitable, deliberately left for individual interpretation, but the significance of the title may remain a puzzle. Rory Ford Crocodile Tears ★★★ theSpace at Venue 45 (Venue 45) until 17 August It's tempting to describe this new play by Jessica Ferrier as a satire on the ethics of reality TV or something similarly high-minded. While that wouldn't be entirely inaccurate, it's also informed by — you suspect — a sneaking fondness for the genre as it fees all-too-plausible and has a firm grasp on the dynamics of a group under manufactured duress. As ratings plummet for the current season of reality TV show, Castaway Island, the producers manipulate events behind the scenes to create further tensions between the remaining contestants. Ferrier is strong on introducing characters — here helped by the 'diary room' entries — and has fun with the TV format; one of the best gags comes when the show cuts to a commercial. The cast are at their best when insulting each other — Ferrier gives good invective — and it's always fun to watch the magnificently unbothered Lex Joyce as Jake, a character who sometimes seems as if he's wandered onstage by mistake but it is frequently the funniest presence there. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The constantly accelerating pace stumbles over the climax somewhat and you suspect the show hasn't found its perfect ending yet but this is good fun. Rory Ford The Pornstar Martini Effect: A Bartender's Guide to not K*lling Yourself at Christmas ★★★ theSpace @ Niddry Street (Venue 9) until 16 August There's more than a hint of John Godber's Bouncers to the early scenes of this solid two-hander written and directed by Ella Kendrick. Convincingly set in a busy pub on Christmas Eve — the very effective sound design blares Slade and The Pogues — we're privy to the interior monologues of Kat (Zane Marsland) and Tom (Finnen McNiffe) two harried bartenders just counting out the clock until closing. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Both are sexually objectified by older, drunken patrons and both deal with it with fixed grins and desperate eyes. Marsland and McNiffe are both convincingly harried, you feel lived experience through them and Kendrick's script, but as the shift ends and the pair decide to share a couple of drinks ('tis the season and all that) that the mood changes. It's (perhaps deliberately) unclear how long Kat and Tom have known each other but their dialogue with each other is not entirely convincing as they slip rather too easily into laying all their emotions on the table. The gear-change from raucous bar chat to near therapy-speak is a little jarring but Kendrick keeps the production moving even with the deliberate change in pace. Rory Ford
The Herald Scotland
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
I've seen dozens of shows at the Fringe... these are the best
On the Fringe, Karine Polwart's Windblown, an exquisite meditation on a dying palm tree in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, has also finished its run at the Queen's Hall, With any luck, Raw Material's meticulously put-together evocation of Polwart's song cycle will return. In the meantime, there is still plenty of life on the Fringe, with the following some of the best on show. She's Behind You Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24 Johnny McKnight has been a pantomime legend over two decades now, both as a writer and the grandest of dames. This solo show by McKnight began as a lecture at the University of Glasgow, and is both a history of the original people's theatre and a deeply personal memoir of McKnight's life-long love affair with panto and the changing mores within it. This fleshed-out production is overseen by director John Tiffany, and makes for an essential primer into what McKnight highlights as a subversive art form that speaks to mass audiences in a way that more highbrow forms rarely take on. Consumed Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24 The Irish Troubles hangs heavy over this remarkable new play by Karis Kelly, which sees four generations of women convene in Northern Ireland for the ninetieth birthday of family matriarch, Eileen. What initially resembles an episode of Mrs Brown's Boys – or girls – takes a more fantastical turn in a staggering study of how violence and division can linger. Lost Lear Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24 Shakespeare's King Lear is the starting point for Dan Colley's play, set in a care home in which a woman holds court, acting out scenes of the play with the help of those who work there. Even her son is co-opted into the everyday drama in a moving look at how the debilitating effects of dementia can be offset by tapping into memories that create alternative realities in a show that uses puppetry and video to moving effect. Red Like Fruit Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24 A journalist working on a large-scale domestic abuse story finds herself confronting her own past in Hannah Moscovitch's play for Canada's 2B company. Out of this she asks a man to read out her written account of her experience in an attempt to understand them better. This is told quietly in this fascinating and troubling dissection of the long-term effects of sexual abuse in which the woman listens as rapt as the audience. The Beautiful Future is Coming Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24 Flora Wilson Brown's plays moves across time in its meditation on the climate crisis that humanises things through the experiences of three couples, with the women in particular at the helm. From nineteenth century scientific research to biblical floods to the uncertainties of fifty years from now, Wilson Brown's play is shot through with hope. Eat the Rich (but maybe not me mates x) Pleasance Courtyard, 2.15pm until August 24 Jade Franks is a wonder in her new semi autobiographical solo play, in which she charts the journey of a Liverpool call centre worker who ends up going to Cambridge University. The class-based prejudice Jade overcomes there while working as a cleaner makes Franks' play the natural successor to Willy Russell's 1980s tales of working class women, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine. The entire Edinburgh run of may be sold out, but if there's any justice Franks' funny and incisive performance should tour the nation. Tom at the Farm Pleasance at EICC, 3.3pm until August 24 Given the scale of Armando Babaioff's Brazilian version of Quebecois writer Michel Marc Bouchard's psychosexual thriller, it should probably be on at Edinburgh International Festival rather than the Fringe. The play sees a man visit his dead boyfriend's family farm, where he becomes embroiled in a mud spattered tug of love and hate with his boyfriend's bullying brother, their mother and a woman who claims to have been his girlfriend. Don't sit too close to the front, or you might get wet. Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak Pleasance Courtyard, 2.15pm until August 24 There is something deeply moving about Victoria Melody's latest work, which sees her relate how she joined a historical re-enactment society after becoming fascinated with the English Civil War. With seventeenth century agricultural activists the Digger becoming a particular focus, Melody ends up leading the charge against developers in her local community. Directed by Mark Thomas, Melody's work is a grassroots drama full of heart. When Billy Met Alasdair Scottish Storytelling Centre, 8.30pm until August 23 Novelist Alan Bissett's new solo play sees Bissett pay homage to Billy Connolly and novelist Alasdair Gray by imagining what might have been said by the two pop cultural giants when they met at the 1981 launch of Gray's mighty novel, Lanark. Bissett's impressions of his subjects as he recounts potted histories of their brilliant careers are well enough, but it's when he steps out of character that things move beyond a fine tuned piece of fan fiction to become a meditation on the perils of the working class artist. Pussy Riot: Riot Days Summerhall, Dissection Room, 10pm until August 23 The Russian art provocateurs returned this week with a new version of their incendiary stage show that draws from key member Maria Alyokhini's memoir of the group's assorted actions and her subsequent imprisonment in a show that has lost none of its sound and fury in a ferocious call to arms. Read more: Philosophy of the World Summerhall, Red Lecture Theatre, 10.45pm until August 25 The starting point for this wild new show by the In Bed with My Brother company is The Shaggs, the 1960s band made up of three sisters who were once described as the best worst band ever, and who became something of a cult. The three women performers take the band's brief lifespan as their cue for a ferocious meditation on power and control in a man's world which, in Summerhall's tiny Red Lecture Theatre, you fear might explode in a show that looks like something Pussy Riot's kid sisters might have dreamt up.
Scotsman
09-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Karine Polwart on her Fringe tribute to a beloved Edinburgh tree: ‘It had two centuries' worth of story to tell'
How did an acclaimed folk musician end up imagining the story of what was once the oldest tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens? Susan Mansfield hears from an artist getting back to her roots Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... 'FIZZLE' is how Karine Polwart describes it, the feeling she gets when she knows she's found a story she wants to tell. That's how she felt when she walked in to the Tropical Palm House in Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden and was introduced to its oldest, tallest occupant, the sabal palm. 'The Head of Living Collections, David Knott, just put his hand on the trunk of the tree and said: 'This is our old sabal, and it's for the axe',' she remembers. 'And I think I knew in that moment this might be the story.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Polwart and her collaborator, composer and sound designer Pippa Murphy, were invited in 2019 to make a work to mark the Garden's 350th anniversary. The Biome Project, which includes refurbishing and modernising the glasshouses, was already underway. Thousands of plants were being moved out but the 200-year-old sabal was too big and too unstable. 'There was this tremendous sadness among the garden staff about the loss of this heritage plant. One of the palm house horticulturalists, Simon Allen, talked about it as a quiet, sentient presence. He said it was like being in a room with an elephant. The palm mattered to the people there. That made me think it had two centuries' worth of story to tell.' That story became Windblown, which premieres this week at the Queen's Hall, part of the Made in Scotland showcase at the Fringe. Polwart describes it as 'half spoddy TED talk and memoir – that's me – and then the palm itself tells its own imagined story through music and spoken word'. She's thrilled to lead a creative team which includes designer Neil Haynes, Jamie Wardrop on video, Lizzie Powell on lighting and movement director Janice Parker. Karine Polwart with a sabal palm seedling at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh | Colin Hattersley Inspired by a 'living wake' which she and Murphy took part in in 2020 for a friend who was dying of cancer, they decided to stage one for the palm just before it was felled in September 2021, with songs, pipe tunes and a farewell address in the imagined voice of the tree. 'Both folk music and the piping tradition are bound up with lamentation and dignifying and grieving,' Polwart says. 'I've sung at countless funerals. Our music gets used to birth babies. I'm aware of the job that music does around those big life cycle events. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'By its nature this story is about dignity at the end of life, not necessarily human dignity, but I think it would be hard not to see the parallels. The loss of dignity during the pandemic was also part of it, the idea that people's lives ended and that couldn't be marked properly. I don't this piece could have been written before the Covid era.' The sabal palm began its life in the West Indies and was brought to Scotland as a botanical specimen. Until it was felled it was oldest plant in the garden. Having crossed the Atlantic in an era of colonialism, one which fetishised the collecting of exotic plants, it lived to see a very different time in which institutions like the Royal Botanic Gardens are contending with post-colonialism and climate change. 'It's an immigrant plant, and that has altered the course of its life and its journey,' Polwart says. 'The palms have evolved to withstand hurricanes, but if you're in a glass house in Edinburgh, you don't have to withstand anything, so you don't develop resilience. Although it was very tall, it was very weak.' As a self-confessed 'research geek', she relished the deep-dive into botany, ethno-botany and the history of the gardens. 'The thing that fuels everything that I do is curiosity. Learning stuff about how the world works is pivotal to everything. Understanding what that means emotionally is the work that I can bring to it as a musician and storyteller.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She has said that everything she does now as an artist 'happens through the lens of climate change', and adds that the voice of the palm gave her a new perspective through which to address this theme. 'There's a kind of magic provocation about adopting a non-human voice that I really enjoy. You can say things you can't say as a human, you don't have to deliver a lecture.' In her 25 years as a professional musician, Polwart has won multiple awards, and has racked up a long and diverse list of interesting projects and collaborations from working with writer James Robertson on a Scots version of Joni Mitchell's album Hejira, to writing a science documentary for Radio 4 and making an album with Julie Fowlis and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here. It was playwright David Greig who encouraged her to make her first piece of work for theatre, Wind Resistance, a meditation on motherhood, nature, healthcare and a specific peat bog near her Midlothian home. It premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2016 to widespread acclaim. She says it felt like a 'natural evolution' of her work. 'I had always thought that theatre was about writing plays, and this was a kind of poetic essay with songs, but once I was given permission to make a thing that wasn't a play, it was great! I love the way it enables me to collaborate with a bigger team.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Looking back from a distance of 25 years to the day she quit her job to 'take a punt' on music, she's profoundly glad she trusted the hunch, the fizzle. 'It was a massive leap of faith. I sold my house and used the money to underwrite my musical career for the first five years. There were several moments when I could have jacked it in, and it didn't make any financial sense for a long time, but I had this strong sense of intuition that something positive might come of it.' Having marked the anniversary with two special gigs, she's planning a year away from gigging, a decision which happily coincided with her being named as the inaugural recipient of the year-long Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship in association with Creative Scotland and the Fruitmarket Gallery. She will work on a project called Attached to Land, about place, land and ecology on a stretch of coastline from Grangemouth to Dunbar, which she hopes will become a book. 'I need to embrace my inner librarian and archivist, which is strong,' she says. 'This is the first time I've ever been recognised as a writer, which feels like a big deal. I'm aware that I'm a little bit greedy in terms of the number of art forms I work in. I mean, musician, composer, theatre-maker, storyteller, writer, come on, Karine, calm yourself! But, really, they feel like they're just expressions of the same thing.'
