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Back To The Barricades - Edinburgh International Festival 2008

There’s a whiff of old time radicalism in EIF’s theatre programming this year, and it’s not just about the stencilled lettering that headlines its eleven shows. In his second programme, Jonathan Mills has set an explicitly political agenda that crosses art-forms and generations as much as cultures.

Heiner Goebbels wowed Edinburgh with his previous multi-media spectacles, Hashirigaki and Eraritjaritjaka. I Went To The House But Did Not Enter sees the return of the maverick director and composer in a collaboration with The Hilliard Ensemble. Where Hashirigaki mixed and matched The Beach Boys with Gertrude Stein, this still being developed production for Theatre Vidy-Lausanne looks to T.S. Eliot, Maurice Blanchot and Samuel Beckett to explore the meaning of the very naked ‘I.’

East West Theatre serve up a Bosnian language adaptation of Nigel Williams’ community theatre favourite, Class Enemy. Set in an unruly classroom where order has seriously broken down, this new production shifts the action away from 1970s South London to 21st century post-war Sarajevo.

David Harrower’s concerns in 365 – One Night To Learn A Lifetime the 70,000 children in care in Britain. Another work still being developed, 365 charts the lives of a group of teenagers in the halfway house to adult-hood known as a Practice Flat. However this National Theatre Of Scotland production turns out, a very special rites of passage is promised.

Sarah Kane comes from the same generation of writers as Harrower. Her final work, 4:48 Psychosis, leaves no holds barred in its depiction of personal breakdown. TR Warszawa’s Polish language production promises much in the way of unfettered dynamism. Kane’s plays arrived at that awkward period in the 1990s when old certainties were swept aside. EIF’s drama programme, at least, is a pointer to how things have come full circle.

The Herald - Thu 3 April 2008

ends

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