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
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