EdFringe day 2

#smashgenrebinaries

also special shout-out to the creme brulee van

Me, delightedly holding out a tiny takeaway raspberry-meringue creme brulee in my cupped hands.

Not Disabled... Enough! Accessible venues are a lie. Charming in parts & the performer was a sweetie; my main take-home, though, was that I really should get my act together to write a comedy show to take to Edinburgh next year.

Women's Hour, by Shit Theatre. YES YES YES. Content notes galore, but handled excellently and respectfully and it made me laugh a lot; the venue gets a solid 3.5/5 for accessibility, and the performers get a 5 as far as I'm concerned. Music-singing-physical theatre; we are contemplating designating Friday afternoon For Repeats and doing this again then along with Black.

Hearts of Folk. I was self-flyering for this one -- I was amused by the image and assumed it would be a bunch of folk music that the useless ex and I would quite enjoy and sebastienne would tolerate for the sake of watching our faces. ... IT WAS NOT FOLK MUSIC. It was, however, an excellent and loving pastiche of vicious music-scene gossip and folk in general. Absolutely delightful. Adored it. A+ self-flyering, would self-flyer again.

Rent (from New York). Holy SHIT I had never seen Rent before and was familiar with only one of the songs (and a filk of it at that). I. I. I started fucking bawling my eyes out (in the best possible way) partway through the first half, and continued bawling my eyes out all the way through the second, to the extent that enough of the actors noticed it that I was deemed In Need Of Hugs when they were going off after final bows. I. It was amazing. Beautiful singing, beautiful physical work, band in the pit jamming misc other shite during intros and breaks, beautiful set design given the constraints of the Fringe, yes yes yes fucking yes, maybe I will be more coherent about it on another occasion but basically yeS YES Y E S.

Saucy Jack & the Space Vixens. Right around the corner from where we're staying, and it had loud bass and brightly coloured lights and lots of glitter and was pleasantly mindless and pleasantly unabashedly cheerful and was a good way to wind down (provided not paying too much attention, ha) after the above, which, yeah, BAWLING. (I have decided I can only manage one show that makes me cry that much per day.)

ADDITIONAL SPECIAL BONUS MENTION TO Chapter 1 of Ancillary Mercy, which arrived in my e-mail today and which I read in the foyer while waiting to be let in to Rent, and promptly flailed about to anyone who would listen (vass, reply to come when it's not way past my bedtime and I am actually situated so as to have internet xx)

EdFringe day 3

Today's bonus shout-out goes emphatically and unequivocally to Over Langshaw Ice Cream and in particular their stand at the top of Grassmarket. They insisted I try a spoonful of the pink peppercorn & heather honey-flavoured ice cream before they'd serve me a scoop, and it was phenomenal and merely served to confirm that I absolutely wanted it. I don't know what their raspberry sorbet was like, because there were enough other flavours I desperately wanted in my face that I didn't get THE THING I ALWAYS GET if it is available, but I have no doubt it would have been fantastic; as it was I got a scoop of the thing mentioned above (and you could taste the heather, and there were occasional bursts of pepper, and it was glorious), and a scoop of the Cranachan (whisky, honey, rasperries, toasted oats), and this was absolutely the correct decision. And it turns out that Over Langshaw farm are the suppliers of eggs to yesterday's creme brulee van...! (Azz, the website has photos of their hens.)

Endings. I was in the middle of a really bad pain flare for this on so was mostly staring blankly into space while waiting for the painkillers to kick in. Two-person sketch show.

MC Escher exhibition. This was the thing I really wanted to get to; it's a collection of almost 100 works (including very early pieces) plus bits and bobs of correspondence, and in addition to better understanding how his most famous works fit together (many of the early sketches played with perspective and perception in Italian landscapes, and clearly informed the very-very-different-to-the-foreground backgrounds of Waterfall and Belvedere) I've acquired some new favourites: Phosphorescent Sea (1933), Porthole (1937) (entirely made up of diagonal lines!), Still Life and Street (1937), Puddle (1952). Additional mentions to Magic Mirror (1946), Other World (1947) Dewdrop (1948), Three Worlds (1955), Snakes (1969). Beautifully curated; I absolutely recommend this if you get any chance at all to go.

An Hour Long Sinister Wink. Two-man cabaret; largely competent though tuning on the cello was a little shaky. Ended up triggering me really very badly, which is to say that I don't particularly feel like talking about it in more detail.