Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Reviews for 'The Property Known As Garland' are coming in, and they are so great. 5 stars, 4 stars, and they say wonderful things like "crystal clear performance," "tour de force", "ferocious energy and considerable presence." I'm so grateful, so blessed, and so not willing to spend the remaining hours in Edinburgh handing out flyers and trying to scrounge up more audience members. It's really really gratifying to have people (other than my friends and family) care about the work you're doing. It means so much to me that we've gotten excellent reviews. It definitely legitimizes what we're doing. But here's the thing. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the most amazing celebration of the human experience there is. It's a FEAST of theatre, music, art, whimsy and food. To ignore that, in order to peddle my show and fill a few more seats in the theatre just doesn't make sense.
So, instead of gluing stars to postcards (flyers), Glenn and I went to 2 excellent plays tonight, took a lovely walk up Calton Hill (Nelson's tower has the best view of Edinburgh), and stopped for a pint of Hobgoblin at the Auld Hoose. I am savoring every moment here, and it already seems like a lovely dream. Something I imagined during a cold dark February day in Minnesota.
Oh, the plays we saw today. "The Indescribable Phenomenon" at Greenside, venue 231. They incorporated magic into the true story of Anna Eva Fay, the leading stage spiritualist of her day. Harry Houdini was a fan of hers. It was really engaging and the venue was cool. It was in the basement of an historic church. Immediately after our show today, I stayed to see "Locked In" which is in Surgeon's Hall Theatre 3. Also a true story, the play chronicled the life of an extremely gifted and overlooked painter, named Keith Vaughn. Peter Scott-Presland carefully crafted the script from actual diary entries written by Keith Vaughn. It was a very moving piece of theatre. I had to leave on my Judy makeup and costume in order to attend the play, since it was only a few minutes after I took my curtain call. Since I had all that makeup on, and most of my costume. I put on the rest of my full Judy Garland regalia and headed to the BBC pink tent.
They have this really cool FREE booth, where you can take a photo with a pretend background. You can choose among Fawlty Towers, Little Britain, Have I got News For You, Absolutely Fabulous, etc. So....... Judy had her photo with FOUR of them. There was no one else around and the nice lady operating the booth didn't mind. She was having fun because I had a costume on and kept laughing because it was all so surreal. The weirdest part was the fact that David Hasselhof. (yes, the Baywatch guy) was in the tent right next to me, doing an interview for the BBC and an invited audience. The interview was being projected onto a big screen right next to the photo booth. Mr. Hasselhof is doing a show for the Fringe. I think it's entitled, an Evening with David Hasselhof? Or maybe The Hof? I don't know. If he didn't sing he'd be in that Zsa Zsa Gabor/Paris Hilton category. (Famous, because he's famous.) I digress. No need to get into the celebrity culture we're steeped in. I'm here for REAL culture.
So..... our final play of the day was a pip. "Grit" by Tortoise in A Nutshell and it was at Bedlam Theatre, venue 49. It was SO imaginative. There were puppets, shadow puppets, images from 'overhead projectors'. The subject was children in war zones, and the war journalist who chronicles the suffering and heroism. It was really worth seeing. It's well past Glenn's bed time, so I'll sign off for now. I sure hope someone turns up to see the show tomorrow. If not.... I've no one to blame buy myself.