Jul 10
6
race for life 2005 edinburgh
The world’s mightiest arts festival is imminent. Our critics pick the must-see Edinburgh shows
Comedy
Doc Brown
Zadie Smith’s little brother was a big noise in UK hip-hop until comedy came calling. Now the artist formerly known as Ben Smith twins rap and standup to highly likable effect. Pleasance Courtyard (0131-556 6550), 4-29 August.
Jeremy Lion
Justin Edwards returns with a new show for his hilariously inappropriate children’s entertainer, for which he won a Perrier nomination in 2005. The environment is the theme. Pleasance Dome (0131-556 6550), 4-30 August.
Arj Barker
Last year, Kiwi standup Rhys Darby came to cash in on his Flight of the Conchords fame. Now, another star of the sitcom, the American Arj Barker (aka Bret and Jemaine’s pawn shop pal Dave Mohumbhai) hits town. Assembly Rooms (0131 -623 3030), 5 to 29 August.
Sara Pascoe
The sassy actress turned comic, recently seen in The Thick of It, has been making a name for herself with her whimsical, faux-naive standup and batty Lady Gaga skits. Pleasance Courtyard (0131-556 6550), 4-30 August.
Kevin Eldon
Kevin Eldon has been popping up wherever the laughs are for 20 years: Fist of Fun, I’m Alan Partridge, Brass Eye, Nighty Night. Amazingly, he has never had his own Edinburgh show. Promising, despite the title Titting About. The Stand Comedy Club (0131-558 7272), 6-30 August (not 16 or 23).
Greg Davies
A member of anarcho sketch troupe We Are Klang and the star of Channel 4’s The Inbetweeners, this not-so-gentle giant (his Klang co-stars call him “a very, very fat Rik Mayall”) brings what’s likely to be a nonsensical debut solo show, Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog. Pleasance Upstairs (0131-556 6550), 4-29 August.
Bo Burnham
His YouTube clips of comic songs have been downloaded 60m times and he’s writing a film with Judd Apatow. Not bad for a 19-year-old playing keyboards and guitar in his bedroom. Pleasance Dome (0131-556 6550), 4-29 August.
Theatre
Beautiful Burnout
Frantic Assembly are hoping for a hit in this new show written by Bryony Lavery, exploring the world of boxing, masculinity and the knockout punch. Pleasance Courtyard (0131-556 6550), 4-29 August.
Belt Up
This York-based company burst on to the Edinburgh scene in 2008 with The Tartuffe. This year, they’re bringing eight shows including Antigone, The Odyssey and Metamorphosis. C Soco (0845 260 1234), 4-30 August.
David Leddy’s Sub Rosa
Gothic promenade show about a chorus girl burning to death, and a hit in 2009 at the Citizens in Glasgow. Here, the interlocking monologues are performed in a masonic lodge. Hill Street Theatre (0131-226 6522), 5-30 August.
Forest Fringe
Return of the award-winning “fringe of the fringe” venue. Expect quirky, experimental turns from rising stars. forestfringe.co.uk, 9-21 August.
Teenage Riot
Ghent-based company Ontroerend Goed – who had a 2008 hit with Once and for All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen – return with an even darker view of the teenage experience. Traverse (0131-228 1404), 17-29 August.
Vieux Carré
Tennessee Williams’s highly autobiographical tale of a young writer living in a squalid New Orleans rooming house is staged by legendary New York company The Wooster Group. Royal Lyceum (0131-473 2000), 21-24 August.
Dance
Mau
Slow, mysterious and physically extreme, the extraordinary works of Lemi Ponifasio’s Mau company draw on the themes of culture, race and environment, mixing Polynesian ritual with modern dance. Edinburgh Playhouse (0131-473 2000), 14-18 August (not 16).
Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet
The San Francisco company make their UK debut in a double bill choreographed by artistic director King, whose style is delicately inward and physically powerful. Dust and Light is a study of cosmic longing set to Poulenc and Corelli, while Rasa is a dialogue between footfalls and a tabla beat. Festival Theatre (0131-473 2000), 26-29 August.
Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal
Bausch’s death last summer shocked the world of modern dance, but there is consolation in her company’s commitment to keeping her work alive. Here they perform Agua, one of her most fantastical pieces. Created after Bausch visited Brazil, it was inspired by the country’s colours, exotic wildlife and sexy exuberant heat. Edinburgh Playhouse (0131-473 2000), 27-29 August.
Jazz
Emile Parisien Quartet
Soprano saxophonist Parisien is one of the quirkier stars of a strong French jazz contingent at Edinburgh. Expect improv, old-school bop and the odd manipulation of Tristan and Isolde. Voodoo Rooms (0131-556 7060), 3 August.
Band of Eden
Scottish drummer and composer Tom Bancroft leads an ambitious orchestra with all-male and all-female subgroups, including saxophonists Joachim Milder and Laura Macdonald, and Courtney Pine pianist Zoe Rahman. The Hub, (0131-473 2000), 5 August.
Brown/Hollenbeck Group
A one-off allegedly inspired by the local fauna and flora: this transatlantic band includes Scotland’s Stuart Brown and saxophonist Julian Arguelles. The Hub, (0131-473 2000), 8 August.
Pop
Plan B
Former foul-mouthed hoodie-hop rapper continues his transformation into geezerish sharp-suited soulboy. He can sing, too, and does a perfect Smokey Robinson pastiche to boot. HMV Picture House (0844 847 1740), 20 August.
Beirut
Criticially acclaimed and blogged about to within an inch of their lives for a reason, Beirut’s sprawling, eclectic take on Balkan/east European-inspired alt-folk is genuinely astonishing. HMV Picture House (0844 847 1740), 22 August.
Phoenix
These arch French pop experimentalists can sometimes seem a bit po-faced, arid and, well, French, but sometimes they forget themselves and produce breathtakingly brilliant pop music. HMV Picture House (0844 847 1740), 28 August.
The Low Anthem
Two Ivy League university graduates and a former Nasa technician playing rootsy American folk – sounds weird but works remarkably well. Queen’s Hall (0131-668 2019), 30 August.
Classical
Montezuma
This rarity is the international festival’s opening opera. Carl Heinrich Graun’s Montezuma was first performed in Berlin in 1755, with a libretto by Frederick the Great. Flavio Oliver is the Aztec king. King’s (0131-473 2000), 14, 15, 17 August.
Greyfriars Choral Series
This early-evening choral series has become one of the most rewarding strands of festival director Jonathan Mills’s programming. This year’s concerts include the Tallis Scholars, Florilegium and the Sixteen. Greyfriars Kirk (0131-473 2000), 16–24 August.
Idomeneo
Charles Mackerras is one of the world’s greatest Mozart conductors, and his partnership with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra is remarkable. Their latest project is a concert performance of Mozart’s great opera seria, with Kurt Streit singing the title role. Usher Hall (0131-473 2000), 20 August.
Bliss
The European premiere of Bliss, Brett Dean’s first opera. With a libretto by Amanda Holden (not that one) and first performed in Sydney in March, it’s based upon Peter Carey’s debut novel of the same name. Festival theatre (0131-473 2000), 2 and 4 September.
Visual art
Christen Købke: Danish Master of Light
Born in 1810, Købke was dead at 38. Recently seen at London’s National Gallery, this touring exhibition is the first UK show of this enigmatic Danish painter. Paintings – of buildings, skies, lakes and light, of closely observed detail and arrested time – that the imagination can get lost in. Royal Scottish Academy (0131-225 6671), 4 July to 3 October.
Iran do Espírito Santo
The Brazilian artist’s first UK show features wall drawings that took weeks to complete, and minimal sculptures that are less about pure form than real things: pencils made of silver, oil drums made from granite. The variety and pleasure of his work is as astonishing as its exacting rigour. Ingleby Gallery (0131-556 4441), 29 July to 25 September.
Martin Creed: Down Over Up
Mid-career survey show of the Turner prize-winning artist who made the lights go on and off, filled galleries with balloons, made films of bodily functions and had runners sprinting through Tate Britain. Creed can be funny, touching and outrageous, with a gratifying lack of pretension. Fruitmarket Gallery (0131-225 2383), 30 July- 31 October.
Joan Mitchell
Mitchell was the youngest of the first generation of abstract expressionists. Devoted to poetry and nature, she was an outspoken painter of tough and lyrical paintings with controlled yet explosive brushwork. A perfect show for this beautiful gallery in the Botanic Gardens. Inverleith House (0131-248 2971), 27 July to 3 October.
World Music
Salsa Celtica Big Band
Brass and percussion meets fiddles, banjo and accordion as Salsa Celtica mix Scottish and Irish music with Latin American salsa. Queen’s Hall (0131-668 2019), 30 July.
Soweto Gospel Choir
These singers provide a stirring reminder of their country’s tradition of harmony singing. They are joined by the Bala Brothers, Zwai, Loyiso and Phelo, who bring an operatic air to South African influences. Assembly Hall (0131-668 2019), 5-17 August.
Books
Emma Donoghue and Fiona Shaw
Donoghue, whose novel Room is about an imprisoned five-year-old boy, will discuss “love and trauma through a child’s eyes” with Shaw, author of Tell It to the Bees, about a boy whose mother falls for a female GP. Peppers, 2.30pm, 14 August.
Candia McWilliam
The writer began to lose her sight in 2006. She’ll be presenting What to Look for in Winter, her attempt to “write her life back into human shape” as she searched for, and eventually found, a cure. Charlotte Square Gardens, 8.30pm, 19 August.
DBC Pierre
The 2003 Booker prize winner talks about Lights Out in Wonderland, his third novel, in which disaffected pleasure-seeker Gabriel Brockwell searches for the ultimate party. Charlotte Square Gardens, 8pm, 22 August.
Seamus Heaney
A sneak preview of Heaney’s new collection Human Chain, which includes a sequence charting the descent into the underworld in the Aeneid that also takes in the birth of the poet’s first grandchild and his own adolescence. Charlotte Square Gardens, 6.30pm, 24 August.
David Almond
The author of the award-winning Skellig, about a boy who discovers an angel in a garage, talks about his prequel, My Name is Mina. RBS Corner theatre, 3pm, 29 August.
• Book festival box office: 0845 373 5888.
EasterToad you bring up a very good point.
While race based hypocracy may be the reason, there is also the possiblity that it would be assumed that any action against, all be it fairly racist/fascist in your example muslim groups, would be viewed as the product of racism itself, and the police and media would react and report it as such.
I feel that leftwing/antifascist attention should be directed towards any and all forms of fascism no matter what creed or colour their supports are, but it seems at least down south that this fear of being called racist, or possibly simply a lack of caring or knowledge about these groups has prevented that.
Scotland however is rather different. For starters we have no unified anti-fascist movement along the lines of Anti-Fa, and we are probably the only country in Europe who doesn't.
I don't think that is a bad thing though as it is partly as a result of there being very little in the way of organised militant fascism in this country, and also the supporters of the left, center, and anti-politics movements here are very capable of banding together should such a group rear its ugly head.
For example the actions taken to stop the National Front from marching in Aberdeen in 2004 was led mostly by Aberdeen Trades Council, though people from all different areas of life and poltics were there to support the anti-fascist cause.
As long as the public know where something like this SDL protest is taking place then there is not so much of a need for militant anti-fascism as people simply opposed to fascism for whatever reason will go there to counter protest.
That said I hope the anti-fascist groups around the world know about Scotland and its instinctive habbit for opposing fascism at every turn and don't simply dismiss us because we have no banner waving anti-fa movement.
Niel,
that upon being asked not to use your "normal one" you have decide to choose one that is filled with so may links to racism, anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and white power movements only makes me dread to think what your normal one was.
