eilidhsd | Entries tagged with scottish cultyur

In Embra this morning for the Mary Queen of Scots exhibition, and it was excellent.

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Current Mood: content

Back in Embra yesterday for the Tattoo, up on the esplanade of the castle, on top of the rock.
tattoo

It has stopped raining and yesterday was beautiful, warm and sunny, and with temperatures getting up to 20 deg, which is in the low 70s.
But I'm not stupid. I grabbed the blanket off my bed as I left, stuffing it into a shopping bag along with a kitchen cushion.

Embra was lovely - crammed with Fringe performers doing street acts and people watching them. We wandered, went for dinner down in the Grassmarket, and then went up to the castle for the Tattoo, which started at 9pm.

It was stunning. The castle was silhouetted against a clear sky which started a pale, pale pink, darkened to navy, and then went to black as the night went on.

The bands are always good, and there is now a light show, with colours and images beamed on to the castle backdrop, and they use the darkness in the show.
You are watching massed military silver bands, floodlit and spotlit, but, from the opposite entrance under cover of the unlit darkness, the massed pipe bands are creeping in to fill the other half of the arena. (Yes, of course, massed pipe bands can creep.)
That was for the finale, a glorious massed Highland Cathedral. But my favourites were a drum corps from Basle, who marched and played in an amazing variety of formations.

And did I need my blanket? Too bloody right I did. I was wishing I had brought the duvet too. And kicking myself for not buying the cashmere socks in the tatty souvenir shops on the Royal Mile. By 10pm my feet were like ice.
But it stayed dry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're back for a couple of Fringe shows this coming week too.

PS - just found the drummers on Youtube - Top Secret Drum Corps; worth a look.

Current Mood: cheerful

I used to know Catherine the Great quite well, back in my Enlightenment days. But that was a long time ago. All I could remember was that she was a good friend of Diderot, liked Voltaire, was vaccinated against chickenpox to set an example, and had a happy sex life.

The museum is currently running an exhibition on her life, with a lot of bits and bobs from the Hermitage, so I went through today.

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Current Mood: cheerful

There are some concepts so staggeringly stupid that you actually have to admire the people who thought them up. Somehow, there is a grace and nobility of purpose which transcends common sense. Their dreams and inspiration lead them on far beyond where sensible people would go.
One concept which takes foolhardiness into cosmic dimensions is Bard in the Botanics.

The concept itself is, naturally, simple. Take one Bard:

and perform his works in the Botanics:

That's Botanic Gardens. In Glasgow. Scotland.
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Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: home and dry

Just in from the most phenomenal performance I have ever seen of Macbeth.

Essentially it is a one-man show by Alan Cumming and it is incredible. He never stops; there is no interval; and there was complete and utter silence in the theatre - it felt as if the whole audience was holding its breath right through.

My eyes tell me this is a stark naked wet man, but my mind knows it is Lady Macbeth. That's how strong that performance was.
(Yeah, OK, I'm not too old that I don't notice these details and, besides, I was in the second front row on the side where the bath was. The Bath. Of course there is a bath. How else can a stark naked wet man carry off a performance of Lady Macbeth's strongest speech?)

If you need the facts, it is set in an old-fashioned psychiatric ward with echoing green-tiled walls, and that makes it sound gimmicky but it is not.

There is the minimum of furniture and nothing to distract you from those powerful words and that equally powerful body.

He can look frail in the cream hospital tee and pants, and slight enough that he can be lifted and carried, but his body moves non-stop, pacing, wiping his hands down his tee, his foot tapping as he reasons why Banquo must die, the veins standing out on his neck as he talks to the assassin, Macbeth's raw emotion shaking his deranged frame, and his dying legs pushing against the wall at the end. His encounter with Banquo's ghost, which left him curled in a tiny, trembling, sobbing ball, was terrifying.

He got a stupendous standing ovation at the end.

It is a play I have seen often, but never as powerfully as this. The nieces were spellbound.

And I'm posting this for my American cousins because once it closes in Glasgow, it's opening in New York. And I wish I could kick over the traces and follow him over.