Skip to main content

Perambulations of a Justified Sinner

Edinburgh International Book Festival 

Four stars

 

Sinners of one form or another may be partying hard all over Edinburgh just now, but it is the more diabolically inclined breed hiding in plain sight down back alleys and other dark places you have to watch. So it goes in this very twenty-first century take on James Hogg’s 1824 gothic yarn, Confessions of a Justified Sinner. 

 

Put together for Edinburgh International Book Festival by Grid Iron Theatre Company director Ben Harrison and novelist Louise Welsh, the result is part walking tour, part podcast, as those taking part tune in to a download on their smartphone. Through headphones, our guide, aka The Editor, leads us over an hour or so from kirk to kirk and down Old Town closes. Horrible histories of local landmarks are interspersed with filmed scenes that condense Hogg’s tale into YouTube friendly bite size chunks. 

 

This set up stays true to Hogg’s original, with Welsh herself relishing every word as the Editor. Harrison’s filmed sequences are full of conspiratorial duologues and straight-to-camera solos from a cast led by Dylan Wood as Robert Wringham, Sandy Batchelor as George Coleman, and Catriona Faint as a devilish Gil-Martin. A twanging guitar underscore from Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite sounds full of menace and foreboding, 

 

If the ghosts in the machine can’t always get a signal, Edinburgh’s festival throng are oblivious to such goings on around them in a pocket sized electronic box. Like its source, however, the perambulations proffered here are probably best absorbed late night after dark once everyone’s gone home.

 

Edinburgh International Book Festival until 25 August.


The List, August 2024 

 

ends

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Billy Elliot The Musical

Edinburgh Playhouse Five stars A big National Coal Board sign looms large at the opening of Lee Hall and Elton John's decade-old musical stage version of Hall and director Stephen Daldry's hit turn of the century film. In a tale of one little boy's liberation as a dancer against the backdrop of the 1980s miners strike, however, the Durham Miners banner and the 'Save Our Community' sash held aloft matter more. It is this call to arms that forms the heart of Daldry's production, as Billy becomes a potty-mouthed beacon of hope in a situation where picket line, thin blue line and chorus line rub uneasily up against each other. Given such a context, there is bound to be some pretty grown-up stuff going on here, be it the institutionalised homophobia in Billy's village, the class war going on within it, or Billy's grieving for his dead mother that drives his every move. And, as so magnificently choreographed by Peter Darling, what moves they are. Watch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more