#Ed Bartlam

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Life Is a Cabaret! The Shimmering Kander and Ebb Classic Heads Back to Broadway Starring Eddie Redmayne

BY ADRIENNE MILLER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JULIEN MARTINEZ LECLERC

STYLED BY HARRY LAMBERT

March 5, 2024

When I was 15 years old, I saw Cabaret for the first time, at a community theater in northeast Ohio. Though I considered myself sophisticated in important ways (I recall that I was wearing a wide-leg Donna Karan bodysuit that evening), my experience as a theatergoer was then limited to The Sound of Music and Ice Capades: Let’s Celebrate. I wonder if my parents, who had season tickets to the theater, knew that the show wasn’t exactly “family” entertainment. Set in 1931 Berlin as it careens toward the abyss, Cabaret depicts alternating stories. There’s the doomed romance between a fledgling novelist named Clifford Bradshaw and a young singer of supreme charisma (and mediocre talent) named Sally Bowles. And then there’s the seedy nightclub, the Kit Kat Club, which is populated with a highly sexualized cast of misfits and overseen by a ghoulish Master of Ceremonies. The show’s ethos—the glamour and terror, the irreverence, the campiness, the unreality—shaped my taste forever, and I knew that I had just experienced one of the greatest works of art ever created. I would never look at theater, or life, in the same way again.

Over three decades later, I’ve seen more stage productions of Cabaret than any other show, including a revival starring the original Emcee, Joel Grey; I’ve seen the Bob Fosse film version over 50 times. I’ve pretty much always got one of Fred Ebb’s sardonic lyrics jangling around in my head. Today, it’s “You’ll never turn the vinegar to jam, mein Herr,” and I couldn’t agree more.

Youthful exposure to Cabaret also turned out to be a life-changing event for the star of the new production opening this month on Broadway, Eddie Redmayne. “Weirdly, when I was 15, it was the first thing that made me believe in this whole process,” he says. Redmayne was a student at Eton when he first played the Emcee; he had never seen Cabaret when he was cast. On this late-autumn evening, Redmayne is speaking to me from Budapest, where he is shooting a TV series. “It reaffirmed my love for the theater,” he says of his first experience. “It made me believe that this profession, were I ever to have the opportunity to pursue it, was something that I wanted to do.”

Now, as he prepares for the transfer of the smash-hit 2021 London production of Cabaret (in which he also starred), Redmayne is reflecting on the power and durability of the John Kander and Fred Ebb masterpiece. “The show was just so intriguing and intoxicating,” he says, adding that the character of the Emcee posed many questions when he portrayed him for the first time, but provided scant answers. A few years later, when he was an art-history student at Cambridge, he again tackled the part of the Emcee at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. At a dingy performance space called the Underbelly, he did two shows a night, the audiences getting rowdier and more intoxicated throughout the evening. He’d get up the following afternoon and stand along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile handing out flyers for the show, dressed in latex. “There was just a sort of general debauchery that lived in the experience,” he says. When his parents came one night, they were alarmed to find that their son had turned into a “pale, lacking-in-vitamin-D skeleton.”

Flash forward 15 years. The Underbelly cofounders and directors, Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, would approach Redmayne—now with an Academy Award for The Theory of Everything and a Tony for Red under his belt—with the idea of again playing the Emcee. Redmayne was eager to return to the role, but many questions remained—principally, who might direct it. In 2019 he happened to have been seated in front of the visionary young director Rebecca Frecknall at the last performance of her West End production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke. It was an emotional evening for Frecknall, who’d been working on the project on and off for a decade. She and Redmayne were introduced, but “I had mascara down my face and probably didn’t make a very coherent first impression,” she tells me from London, where her new show, The House of Bernarda Alba, has just opened at the National Theatre.

Redmayne was astonished by the depth and delicacy of understanding that Frecknall brought to Summer and Smoke, a romance with the classic Williams themes of loneliness, self-delusion, and unrequited love. A few months later, Redmayne asked Frecknall if she’d consider directing a revival of Cabaret. “I said, ‘Of course I’ll do it, but you’ll never get the rights,’ ” she recalls. Those rights were held up with another production but were shortly thereafter released, and Frecknall went to work assembling her creative team—among them musical supervisor Jennifer Whyte, choreographer Julia Cheng, and set and costume designer Tom Scutt. Frecknall’s transcendent production of Cabaret opened on the West End at the tail end of the pandemic and succeeded in reinventing the show anew, winning seven Olivier Awards, including one for Redmayne and one for Frecknall as best director.

When Cabaret begins its run in April at the August Wilson Theatre, starring Redmayne, Gayle Rankin, Bebe Neuwirth, and Ato Blankson-​Wood, it will be just the second major production of the show directed by a woman. (Gillian Lynne directed the 1986 London revival.) In Frecknall’s version, Sally emerges as the beating heart of the show. “I find that most of my work has a female protagonist,” says Frecknall, who has also directed radical new interpretations of A Street­car Named Desire, Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and Romeo and Juliet. “And I have a different connection to Sally,” she says. “I was really drawn to how young she was…and how she uses that sexuality and how other people prey on that as well.” The role of Sally Bowles, originated in this production by Jessie Buckley, who also won an Olivier for her performance, will be played this spring by the brilliant Scottish actor Gayle Rankin.

“When I first met with Gayle, I was blown away by her passion and fearlessness,” says Frecknall. “She’s a real stage animal and brings a rawness and wit to her work, which will shine through. She’s going to be a bold, brutal, and brilliant Bowles.” Redmayne also praises Rankin for the depth of emotion she brings to the part, and for the vulnerable and volcanic quality of her interpretation.

Rankin arrives at a candlelit West Village restaurant on a chilly winter evening in a sumptuous furry white coat that would put Sally Bowles to shame. Her platinum hair is pulled back from her face and her dark blue eyes project a wry intelligence. Rankin lives near the restaurant and mentions that she has recently joined a nearby gym—not that she’s going to have much time for workouts in the coming months. Over small seafood plates (of her shrimp cocktail, she shrugs and concedes, “It’s a weird order, but okay”), she shares her own rich history with Cabaret.

She grew up in a small Scottish village, watching Old Hollywood movies with her mother and grandmother. At 15, she left home to attend a musical theater school in Glasgow; on her 16th birthday, she visited New York for the first time with her family. “It sounds like a cheesy, made-up story,” she says, but when she and her parents took a tour of the city on a double-decker bus, they passed by the Juilliard School. “I thought,” she says, “ ‘I am going to go there.’ ” The following year, she and her father flew from Glasgow to New York for her audition. She would become the first Scottish drama student to attend the institution.

At Juilliard, there’s an annual cabaret night, in which all third-year drama students perform songs. Rankin sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl, but she recalls her acute sense that she could have chosen a number from Cabaret. “I think I secretly always wanted to be that girl,” she says of the classmate who did perform those songs.

A couple of years after she graduated Juilliard in 2011, Rankin’s agents approached her with an opportunity to audition for Sam Mendes’s 2014 revival of his celebrated 1998 Broadway version (first staged in London in 1993), with Alan Cumming reprising his Emcee role. She was cast as Fräulein Kost—an accordionist sex worker who is revealed as a Nazi—playing opposite a revolving cast of Sallys, including Michelle Williams and Emma Stone.

Rankin has recently emerged as a fierce presence in films and in television (The Greatest Showman and two HBO series—Perry Mason and the upcoming season of House of the Dragon), but then “it kind of came across my desk this summer to throw my hat in the ring for Sally.” How does Rankin make sense of this fascinating, mystifying character? “Everything is so sort of up for grabs…. People feel as if they have a claim over her or know who she is. And the real truth is, only Sally gets to know who Sally is.” She has been rereading Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 semi-autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin—the inspiration for the show—in which the English writer sets the dying days of the Weimar Republic against his relationship with the young singer Sally Bowles. (In 1951, the playwright and director John Van Druten adapted the book for the stage with I Am a Camera; in 1963, Broadway director-producer extraordinaire Harold Prince saw that the play could be musicalized and hired Joe Masteroff for the libretto and the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.) Isherwood based Sally—somewhat—on Jean Ross, a British flapper and chanteuse who later became a well-regarded film critic, war correspondent, political thinker, and Communist. (He gave the character the last name of writer and composer Paul Bowles.) For the rest of her life, Ross maintained (correctly) that Isherwood’s portrayal of her diminished her reputation as an activist and as an intellectual.

“Ross wanted so badly to write to Isherwood,” says Rankin, “and to condemn him: ‘You slandered my name. You said all these things about me that weren’t true.’ And as far as she got in the letter was ‘Dear Christopher.’ ” As Rankin builds the character, it’s this notion of the real Sally—not the fictive version constructed by Isherwood—that she finds so captivating, and heartbreaking.

The upending of Sally as an “object” is another core conceit behind the production. “I felt that other productions I’d seen had this slightly stereotypical male-gaze idea,” Frecknall says. She views Sally’s musical numbers as describing different facets of female identity. “Don’t Tell Mama” deals with the fetishization of youth and virginity, and in Frecknall’s production, Sally, disturbingly, appears in a sexy Little Bo Peep costume; “Mein Herr,” a song about manipulation, control, and female sexual desire, is in conversation with the cliché of the strong, “dominant” woman. “I think Sally’s very clever at being able to play an identity, and also play it against you,” she adds. The character “has secrets to tell us,” Rankin says. “Important things to share with us. And I think that’s the umbilical cord between her and the Emcee.”

Although Sally and the Emcee share the stage for less than five minutes, the Emcee’s musical numbers can be seen as a kind of meta-commentary about Sally’s actions. “What interested me was the idea that the Emcee was a character created by Hal Prince and Joel Grey,” says Redmayne, referring to the actor who portrayed the Emcee in the original 1966 production. “He doesn’t exist in the book Goodbye to Berlin and was their conceit to connect the story of Sally Bowles.” Rankin believes that there is a kind of mystical bond between the two characters. “As to whether or not he’s a higher power, or higher being, he does have an access to a higher knowledge,” Rankin suggests. “I think Sally feels that too.”

And who is the Emcee? A supernatural being? Puppeteer or puppet? There are no clues in the text. Prince conceived of the character as a metaphor representing Berlin itself. “The idea of him as an abstraction,” Redmayne says, “and so purposely intangible, meant that I actually found a new way of working.” Redmayne built the character from the ground up, starting with big, broad gestures that would be gradually refined. The “very fierce, ferocious intensity” of Herbert von Karajan, the famously dictatorial Austrian conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and a Nazi party member, served as a particularly fertile inspiration.

Historically, the role of Emcee has been coded as gay, and embodied, in most prominent productions, by gay actors. Frecknall’s production had to address what it meant to cast Redmayne, a straight white male actor, in the role. “Tom [Scutt] and I felt very clearly that, well, it’s not going to be the Emcee’s tragedy,” Frecknall says. A person like Redmayne—given his class, ethnicity, and sexuality—would emerge from the catastrophe unscathed. Redmayne concurs: “As the walls of fascism begin to close in, he has the privilege to be able to shape-shift his way out of it.” The character’s journey is from Shakespearean fool to Shakespearean king.

In Hal Prince’s 1966 production, Grey’s delicate, meticulous performance as the cane-twirling Emcee is pure nihilism—as a representation of Germany’s conscience. In the later Mendes iteration, the Emcee emerges as the central victim: In that production’s chilling last scene, Alan Cumming’s louche Emcee removes a black trench coat to reveal a concentration camp uniform; a burst of bright white light follows, from, presumably, a firing squad. But in Frecknall’s version, the Emcee is exposed not as a victim of the system, but as the chief perpetrator. The show, she notes, “becomes the ensemble’s tragedy.”

“I was really intent that we cast it very queer and inclusive,” says Tom Scutt, Cabaret’s multitalented set and costume designer. We are sitting on a black banquette in the lobby of his hotel, across the street from Lincoln Center, where he’s working on Georges Bizet’s Carmen. To mount a revival of Cabaret in 2024, Scutt contends that “there’s no other way. That was really at the headline of our mission.”

There are two casts in the show: the main company and the prologue cast, which provides pre-curtain entertainment. In general, the members of the prologue cast don’t come from traditional musical-theater backgrounds, but from the worlds of street dance and hip-hop—“dancehall, voguing, and ballroom scene,” Scutt notes—and in the London production, some of the prologue performers have been promoted to the main cast. “There is something deeply, deeply moving about how we’ve managed to navigate the usual slipstream of employment.”

Part of Scutt’s intention with Cabaret has been to “smudge and diffuse’’ the audience’s preconceived notions. Inclusive casting is one mode for change; iconography is another. In this case, that has meant no bowler hats, no bentwood chairs, no fishnet stockings. The aesthetic is less Bob Fosse and more Stanley Kubrick. “We started off in a place of ritual,” he says. “I really wanted the place to feel as if you’ve come into some sort of Eyes Wide Shut temple.”

Scutt has reimagined the 1,250-seat August Wilson Theatre as an intimate club—warrens of labyrinthine new corridors and passageways, three new bars, and an auditorium reinvented as a theater-in-the-round. Boris Aronson, the set designer of the show’s iconic original 1966 production, suspended a mirror on the stage in which the audience members would see their own reflections—a metaphor that forced the audience to examine its own complicity; but in Scutt’s design, the audience members must look at one another. Access to the building is through a side entrance; as soon as you arrive, you’ve already lost your bearings.

In many ways, it’s remarkable that such a weird and complex work of art masquerading as a garishly entertaining variety show has had such longevity. Scutt has an explanation about why this piece—created by a group of brilliant Jewish men about the rise of antisemitism and hate, about the dangers of apathy—​continues to speak to us so profoundly almost 60 years after its Broadway debut.

“I can’t really think of anything else, truly, that has the same breadth of feeling in its bones,” Scutt suggests. “I honestly can’t think of another musical that does so much.” As grave, and as tragically relevant, as the messages of Cabaret are, he and the members of the company have found refuge in theater. Both Scutt and Frecknall grew up singing in their churches as children; theater is to them a secular church, a space where human beings can congregate and share healing. “It was made with such pain and such love,” Scutt says. “Which is absolutely the piece.” 

In this story: hair, Matt Mulhall; makeup, Niamh Quinn. Produced by Farago Projects. Set Design: Afra Zamara.

[mirandamckenni1]

Liked on YouTube: We Need to Talk About Boomers || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJl83vNuDL4 || Okay Boomer! Okay Millennials! Let's talk about how older adults are a marginalised group, how ageism is a socially acceptable form of bigotry, and how the generation war narrative helps capitalists. And while we're at it, let's make a vegan Irish stew with Guinness, and let's talk to our Dads because they're cool. Support the channel on Patreon ►► https://ift.tt/UfXFsc8 References: Arcoverde, C., Deslandes, A., Rangel, A., Rangel, A., Pavão, R., Nigri, F., Engelhardt, E. & Laks, J. (2008). Role of physical activity on the maintenance of cognition and activities of daily living in elderly with Alzheimer's disease. Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria, 66(2B), 323-327. Babyak, M., Blumenthal, J.A., Herman, S., Khatri, P., Doraiswamy, M., Moore, K., Craighead, W.E., Baldewicz, T.T. & Krishnan, K.R. (2000). Exercise treatment for major depression: maintenance of therapeutic benefit at 10 months. Psychosomatic Medicine, 62(5), 633-638. Butler, R. N. (1969). Ageism: Another form of bigotry. The Gerontologist, 9(4), 243–246 Burton, E. and Mitchell, L. (2006). Inclusive urban design: Streets for life. Elsevier. Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?. John Hunt Publishing. Fukuyama, F. (1989). The end of history?. The national interest, (16), 3-18. Greenberg, L., 1982. The implication of an ageing population for land-use planning. Geographical Perspectives on the Elderly, 401-425. Grusky DB, Mattingly M, Varner C, et al. (2019) Millennials in the United States. In Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (eds.) State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report. Pathways Magazine, 3–6. Hamilton, M., & Hamilton, C. (2006). Baby boomers and retirement. Dreams, fears, and anxieties. Sydney: The Australian Institute. Ipingbemi, O. (2010). Travel characteristics and mobility constraints of the elderly in Ibadan, Nigeria. Journal of Transport Geography, 18(2), 285-291. King, A., & Almack, K. (2019). Intersections of ageing, gender, sexualities: Multidisciplinary international perspectives. 17 Leigh-Hunt, N., Bagguley, D., Bash, K., Turner, V., Turnbull, S., Valtorta, N., & Caan, W. (2017). An overview of systematic reviews on the public health consequences of social isolation and loneliness. Public health, 152, 157-171 Li, Z., & Dalaker, J. (2019). Poverty among Americans aged 65 and older. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Lim, Y. J., & Lemanski, J. (2020). A generational war is launched with the birth of Ok Boomer in the digital age. The Journal of Society and Media, 4(1). Marottoli, R. A., De Leon, C. F. M., Glass, T. A., Williams, C. S., Cooney Jr, L. M., Berkman, L. F., & Tinetti, M. E. (1997). Driving cessation and increased depressive symptoms: Prospective evidence from the New Haven EPESE. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 45(2), 202-206. Mueller, J. C., & McCollum, J. (2021). A Sociological Analysis of “OK Boomer”. Critical Sociology, 08969205211025724. Nordbakke, S. (2013). Capabilities for mobility among urban older women: barriers, strategies and options. Journal of transport geography, 26, 166-174. Pinquart, M., & Sörensen, S. (2000). Influences of socioeconomic status, social network, and competence on subjective well-being in later life: a meta-analysis. Psychology and aging, 15(2), 187. Pope, S.K., Shue, V.M. & Beck, C. (2003). Will a healthy lifestyle help prevent Alzheimer's disease?. Annual Review of Public Health, 24(1), 111-132. Quoidbach, J., Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2013). The End of History Illusion. Science, 339(6115), 96–98. Röhr, S., Rodriguez, F. S., Siemensmeyer, R., Müller, F., Romero‐Ortuno, R., & Riedel‐Heller, S. G. (2022). How can urban environments support dementia risk reduction? A qualitative study. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 37(1). Troya, M. I., Babatunde, O., Polidano, K., Bartlam, B., McCloskey, E., Dikomitis, L., & Chew-Graham, C. A. (2019). Self-harm in older adults: systematic review. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 214(4), 186-200. Troya, M. I., Dikomitis, L., Babatunde, O. O., Bartlam, B., & Chew-Graham, C. A. (2019). Understanding self-harm in older adults: a qualitative study. EClinicalMedicine, 12, 52-61. World Health Organization (WHO). (2016) Mental Health and older adults. Media Centre Fact Sheets. World Health Organization. World Health Organization (WHO). (2021). Global report on ageism. Yasamy, M. T., Dua, T., Harper, M., & Saxena, S. (2013). Mental health of older adults, addressing a growing concern. Mental health and older people, 4-9. Yon, Y., Mikton, C. R., Gassoumis, Z. D., & Wilber, K. H. (2017). Elder abuse prevalence in community settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Global Health, 5(2), e147-e156. Yon, Y., Ramiro-Gonzalez, M., Mikton, C. R., Huber, M., & Sethi, D. (2019). The prevalence of elder abuse in institutional settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European journal of public health, 29(1), 58-67.

[reviewsphere]

Underbelly raise over £30,000 for Big Brain Tumour Benefit

Underbelly raise over £30,000 for Big Brain Tumour Benefit @BrainTumourOrg @FollowTheCow @mcewanhall @SusanCalman

In September 2016 Ed Bartlam’s son Alfie, then age 4, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. The road to recovery has been anything but smooth and despite extensive treatment two more tumours were found in his brain and spine in December last year.

Alfie still powers on with boundless energy and optimism but his fight is far from over, and throughout the experience Ed has been made all too…

[merely-player]

Review: Journey's End (w/ Tom Hiddleston)

written by Joshua Neicho KS, The Chronicle No 4023, 30th Nov 1999

Journey's End by Double Edge Drama

Reviewed by Joshua Neicho KS

No wonder they call them the Lost Generation. Over a thousand Old Etonians died in the First World War, the equivalent of the current boy population of the school being eaten up, in its entirety. And while across the world millions more met similar deaths this minor statistic is still an extraordinary reminder for us, who now sit at the burrys the young men left behind. We of the Pampered Generation need some persuading to see war as personal suffering, afflicting ourselves and people we know, and thus afflicting strangers and their people just the same; it is not just a bruise in the history books.

Journey's End is a play that can work on this level. The reality of Raleigh’s and Stanhope’s and Osborne’s pain comes through to a Public School audience, and in so doing creates a vivid portrait of the war. ACDG-C’s production was so strong because, perhaps, it mastered the personal approach. There were no gimmicks added into the pot - the Edwardian sporting spirit was not overdone, and the refer­ences to Eton inserted into the Caccia Studio show simply added a smile. It was the physical appearance of the cast and the way they placed their characters that was so effective. For with a combination of recent OEs, the present B Block and an avuncular PB, the age of the actors fitted their parts fairly precisely, and the beginnings of a chummy relationship between them could be firmly established. Beyond this, superb understanding of the characters by the actors playing them and a shared sense of a stormy dugout atmosphere made for a moving and convincing picture of war.

Playing Stanhope with energy and variety was Tom Hiddleston (ex-CWM). Just that much older than the young officers he was commanding, as represented by Raleigh, he had an ideal-starting point to create the erratic hero of the company, and he ran with this to produce a superb performance. He could hold authority over his juniors and he could be a vulnerable child when drunk and down-and-out; he could communicate with his body and his face (often screwed up in concentration) or with a clear, natural voice. Interestingly, though charged with other emotions, he played Stanhope’s great anger, particularly with Hibbert, quietly. This did not make the Play into quite the rollercoaster ride it could be, but it certainly helped the realism of the officer’s situation that was such an important aspect of the production, and must have been the best way to deal with the characteristic.

PB was Osborne, the ex-teacher and rugby player who provides a rock of stability in the dugout. His considerable seniority in years to the rest of the cast was striking, and breathed life into the officer’s social world; Osborne must be looked up to without a trace of fear or of mockery, and there was no question PB fulfilled this. He was vocally smooth but powerful - maybe too powerful - contrasting effectively with Stanhope, and he kept a schoolmaster’s level-headedness through all the crises the play throws up. Most importantly, he managed to make Osborne a gentle force for good. Whether making Raleigh feel comfortable, or chatting unselfconsciously to Mason and Trotter, or dealing with a drunken Stanhope, he gave no impression of snobbery or pride or even self-satisfaction. Therefore we felt great sympathy for Osborne when he dies, and a sense of loneliness and desperation in the world of the war without him - the feelings Raleigh takes with him in the last part of the play.

Besides these two strong characters, it might seem that the actor playing Raleigh would have to fight to hold his comer. But it is the innocence of Raleigh, particularly next to Stanhope who is of such similar age to him that he knows him from school, which must be communicated and which persists through the play. Mark Richards KS’ underplayed performance was well-judged, and fitted in perfectly with the Stanhope and Osborne he was acting off. He showed a beautiful sense of character development during the play, from uncertainty on arrival to considerable intensity when resisting Stanhope after Osborne’s death. Like Osborne, he was principally successful because he was such a sympathetic figure. It could be suggested he was too quiet; once again, however, for the benefit of realism, his chosen level was ideal.

The most pleasant surprise in the production was Ken Thompson (ex-KS)’s portrayal of Trotter. He managed to build a believable character out of the jolly, down-to-earth NCO who has been promoted to the offieer’s dugout. Instead of being brashly comic, he played Trotter very quietly, chuckling rather than laughing at his own bad jokes and giving deadpan insights into his steady, simple mindset. When Stanhope declares Trotter has no imagination - and how wonderful that is - you could actually believe it. Ken had great stage presence, and was physically very much in control, so that one felt he had the respect of his colleagues as a fighting man. His emotional relationship with the other characters, and with audience was, on the other hand, rightly awkward; the basic truth that he is a strange fish in his new environment, not fully understood by the others, came across wonderfully.

The rest of cast enriched the atmosphere of realism established by the principal dugout officers. Hibbert is the weak man, who feigns sickness to avoid fighting; Adam King (ex-RAAC) made him sympathetic with a sensitive portrayal of his self-conscious playacting and underlying pain. He let Stanhope and the others physically dominate him while exercising great physical and emotional control during his attempted departure and the party scene. The characters from outside the dugout represent views of the war which clash with those of the officers and are thus intentionally two-dimensional and unsympathetic; Ed Bartlam (ex- RAAC) portrayed two different figures, the carefree Hardy and the out-of-touch Colonel, as wonderfully skewed. And William McMyn (PB) as the captured German was an important reminder of the wider dimension of war - a human enemy not so different from Raleigh or the other young men on the Allied side, distinguished simply by the colour of his uniform.

Journey s End received great acclaim in Edinburgh, with a five-star rating in the Scotsman, and a glowing write-up in the Independent, in which the reviewer declared she has been moved to tears. It managed to roll on beyond the end of the festival with two performances at the beginning of this half, one at Wycombe Abbey, the other here, in the Caccia Studio. Hopefully outsiders found the dramatic shape and relationships of the play as real as the publicity suggests. As Etonians we could hardly have missed them. In a place where we rush daily past the names of the dead, this production was a living and breathing reminder of what war was like. Lest we forget.

[onlinebusinessreviewsblog]

Pop-up festival set for Wimbledon Park this month

Online Business Reviews

A FOOD festival is set to return to Wimbledon Park this month.

Outdoor pop-up 'StreetEat' will launch in Merton from May 20 for a total of five weeks.

Free to enter and completely outdoors, StreetEat will welcome local artists and independent street food traders, open air bars, socially distanced seating, and free live music.

This year’s pop-up will see the return of some of the best street food in London, including Seawise, It’s A Wrap, Pabellon, Cripes it’s Crepes, Simply Falafel and Kurbside Kitchen.

Lauren Carroll

The event first came to life in 2020 and was one of the first socially distanced festivals in London.

StreetEat will again be produced by the team behind Underbelly Festival, one of London’s original pop-up sites and one of the UK’s biggest and best-loved multi-arts festivals.

Directors of Underbelly Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood said: “We are thrilled to be bringing StreetEat back to Wimbledon Park and to be a part of bringing outdoor festivals back to the community.

Lauren Carroll

"StreetEat is a great chance for the whole family to enjoy free live music, as well as outdoor food and drink in a safe, socially distant environment.

"It promises to once again, bring the atmosphere London loves from Underbelly’s festivals while supporting local artists and independent food operators by providing a platform for them to start trading and performing again in their local communities.

"Come down, have a great time and show your support for the community."

Opening times are as follows:

Thursday – Sunday (including the Bank Holiday Monday)

Thursday & Friday: 12pm – 10pm

Saturday & Sunday: 11am – 10pm

For more information visit their website here.

We at Online Business Reviews provide useful tips and resources on online marketing processes, strategies, tools and much more that would be helpful to any online marketer.

https://onlinebusinessreviewsblog.blogspot.com/2021/05/pop-up-festival-set-for-wimbledon-park.html

[theedinburghreporter]

Edinburgh's Hogmanay 2019 - the Loony Dook - were you mad enough?

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay 2019 – the Loony Dook – were you mad enough?

Those who were brave enough gathered on the shore at South Queensferry earlier today to brave the chilly waters of the Firth of Forth for the Loony Dook all part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay. 

In the centre Cllr Donald Wilson PHOTO © 2020 Live Edinburgh News

1,100 ‘Dookers’ including Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood co-directors of Underbelly who produce Edinburgh’s Hogmanay on behalf of the City of…

[morganbelarus]

Europe theme for Edinburgh Hogmanay events

Image copyright David Cheskin

Image caption The Torchlight Procession marks the beginning of Edinburgh's Hogmanay events

The organisers of Edinburgh's Hogmanay are set to confirm their full programme of events later.

In the year of Brexit, 2019's line-up is a celebration of Scotland's cultural and historical connections with Europe.

The official events get under way on Sunday when pipe, drum and dance bands lead the annual Torchlight Procession.

Other highlights over the three days include the famous Street Party, the Concert in the Gardens and a ceilidh in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle.

Organisers said a handful of tickets were still available for the main events.

Writers pen 'love letters to Europe'

Go-ahead for Edinburgh's festive events

Franz Ferdinand to headline Hogmanay party

Scottish singer Stephanie Cheape will headline the finale of the Torchlight Procession, ahead of fireworks from Calton Hill at 21:00.

Sunday's event will also mark the end of Scotland's Year of the Young People, with 14 wicker sculptures created by young people forming apart of a flaming outline of Scotland created by torchbearers in Holyrood Park.

Image copyright Franz Ferdinand

Image caption Scottish band Franz Ferdinand will headline the Concert in the Gardens

Franz Ferdinand will headline the Concert in the Gardens on Hogmanay while DJs The Mac Twins will host the Street Party event.

The annual Loony Dook will see brave bathers charge into the Firth of Forth on New Year's Day.

The Message from the Skies event will also get under way on 1 January.

Six Scottish writers were asked to each write a love letter to Europe with these then projected onto iconic buildings and landmarks around Edinburgh animated by a range of different composers and projection artists.

Image copyright Aly Wight

Image caption The Mac Twins are hosting the Street Party

Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, directors of Edinburgh's Hogmanay said: "The Torchlight Procession is an iconic event in Scotland's annual calendar enjoyed by tens of thousands of people as the opening of Edinburgh's Hogmanay.

"After last year's successful change of route to weave through the Old Town and its blazing finale celebrating the voice of Scotland's young people we are thrilled that this year's procession culminates in the torchbearers creating the outline of Scotland with sculptures chosen by Scotland's young people at the heart of the display, marking the end of its highly successful Year of Young People.

"This year's Edinburgh's Hogmanay has a fantastic line-up of events for young and old under the banner We Love You, a celebration of Scotland's long-standing cultural ties with Europe.

"From our Concert in the Gardens headliner Franz Ferdinand to Carlos Nunez at the McEwan Hall, Massaoke at Bairns Afore to Gerry Cinnamon and Snap! at the Street Party, and the Loony Dook to our six writers creating love letters to Europe in Message from the Skies across the city, the programme is diverse, exciting and fresh."

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Edinburgh

Original Article : HERE ; This post was curated & posted using : RealSpecific

=> *********************************************** Originally Published Here: Europe theme for Edinburgh Hogmanay events ************************************ =>

Europe theme for Edinburgh Hogmanay events was originally posted by Latest news - Feed

[vileart]

Dumbstruck Dramaturgy: Sam Goodburn @ Edfringe 2017

Sam Goodburn: Dumbstruck

Presented by Underbelly and Sam Goodburn

Underbelly Cowgate (Belly Button), 66 Cowgate, Edinburgh, EH1 1JX

Thursday 3rd – Sunday 27th August 2017 (not 14th), 14:40

Dumbstruck, a world premiere by multi-award-winning performer Sam Goodburn, tells the story of an endearing young man taking his first steps into adulthood. This exciting lo-fi circus show features offbeat comedy, world class unicycling, juggling, knife throwing and impeccable feats with sliced bread. Dumbstruck takes place ‘the morning after’ as Sam creeps around a girl’s apartment, collecting his discarded clothes from the night before; as he wonders what on earth he’s doing, he learns that his introverted nerdiness can actually be joyous, empowering and just a little bit charming.

What was the inspiration for this performance? I find circus performances that tell a story, however simple, are hugely interesting. There is a hula hooper called Annabel Carberry who I watched in a cabaret in Blackpool in 2014 who tries to pour a glass of wine whilst keeping the hoop going.  The hoop becomes normal, it is always there and it has to be there and it leads to excellent situation comedy. You can see the same premise in Dumbstruck - every circus trick is used to complete a task or fix a problem. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?  I love those brief moments in shows when the audience are so completely absorbed in the rhythm or the scene that they forget themselves. Not many other media can make you feel connected with the performers and see things through their eyes in the same way.  You have the audiences undivided attention unlike most other forms of entertainment.  How did you become interested in making performance? I become interested in making performance accidentally. When I was 18, I joined a traditional circus as a unicyclist. The clown was in a traffic accident and left the show. With no time to find a replacement and a full house that night, I was naive enough to think I could fill in, the owners agreed and I bodged together and improvised four clown acts.  Nothing went to plan, everything messed up. And

it was very funny, just not in the way I had intended. I've been creating comedy material and messing up ever since.  Is there any particular approach to the making of the show? I spent a long time training and inventing tricks with everyday objects with just a rough guide in my head of what might happen in the show. In rehearsals we wrote the show chronologically finding the comedy naturally as the world unfolded. Lots of tricks I know haven’t been used, but having a big artillery to choose from meant the blend of visual comedy, circus and theatre does not feel at all strange.  

Does the show fit with your usual productions? I am most in demand for shows as a unicyclist and the comedy character and all my other skills come second. Which is great, but it usually becomes a game of which is the most impressive trick I can do right that’s 100% consistent.  What I like about the show Dumbstruck is if you took out all of the circus skills out it would still be a great show. The tricks aren't just there to impress but to push the narrative and create hilarious situations.  What do you hope that the audience will experience? I would like the audience to come away feeling like children again. The show is about finding ways to enjoy and play with everyday situations even when things are getting perpetually worse.  What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? As I am writing this there are still 4 days left of creation so who knows where the ending could go. But things we have considered on the journey are a toaster that fires bread when you're not looking, an inflatable sofa that surfs the audience and a line of 40 beer bottles used to unicycle across the top of. Only 66% of these ideas have made it into the show!

Directed by renowned clown Fraser Hooper, Dumbstruck showcases the amazing skills of Underbelly’s Circus Maximus Winner - a competition held at the Udderbelly Festival on London’s South Bank to find an exciting new circus performer.

Underbelly director Ed Bartlam comments, Underbelly are delighted to welcome Circus Maximus winner Sam Goodburn to the Fringe this year. Circus Maximus was created to discover and nurture homegrown circus talent and to give young performers a chance to showcase their work on an international platform at the world’s biggest arts festival. Sam was chosen for his outstanding skills and creativity in the 2015 Circus Maximus competition and we are very much looking forward to his Edinburgh debut.

Director Fraser Hooper comments, I'm thrilled to be working with Sam Goodburn on this new exciting project. His unique skill set combined with his ease at making audiences laugh is such a great recipe for creating a wonderful circus comedy show.

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2rKqJDK

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Eddie Redmayne’s Cabaret gamble: ‘I lie in bed going through routines in my head’

The actor has dreamt for years of bringing the Kit Kat Club to the stage — he talks latex, tights and first night nerves with co-star Jessie Buckley

Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne

PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON HETHERINGTON AT SERLIN ASSOCIATES. STYLING BY JAY HINES. REDMAYNE: GROOMING BY PETRA SELLGE. BUCKLEY: HAIR BY MARK FRANCOME PAINTER, MAKE-UP BY GINA KANE

Eddie Redmayne has a dilemma. His children, aged three and five, are desperate to come and see him on stage in a new production of Cabaret. He has been playing the music nonstop at home and they’ve even learnt the moves to the song Money Makes the World Go Round. “They enjoyed Frozen, so they think it’s going to be like that,” he says, chuckling “Their favourite number is Don’t Tell Mama, but they have no idea what it’s about.” The jaunty tunes belie the fact Cabaret is probably one of the darkest musicals ever written. Set in Weimar Germany as the Nazis begin their ascent to power, there’s violence, antisemitism and the leading lady, Sally Bowles —who can’t tell her Mama she’s appearing on stage in her underwear — has an abortion. It’s not one for the kids.

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sunday november 21 2021

Culture

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Eddie Redmayne’s Cabaret gamble: ‘I lie in bed going through routines in my head’

The actor has dreamt for years of bringing the Kit Kat Club to the stage — he talks latex, tights and first night nerves with co-star Jessie Buckley



Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne

PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON HETHERINGTON AT SERLIN ASSOCIATES. STYLING BY JAY HINES. REDMAYNE: GROOMING BY PETRA SELLGE. BUCKLEY: HAIR BY MARK FRANCOME PAINTER, MAKE-UP BY GINA KANE

Kirsty Lang

Sunday November 21 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times

Eddie Redmayne has a dilemma. His children, aged three and five, are desperate to come and see him on stage in a new production of Cabaret. He has been playing the music nonstop at home and they’ve even learnt the moves to the song Money Makes the World Go Round. “They enjoyed Frozen, so they think it’s going to be like that,” he says, chuckling “Their favourite number is Don’t Tell Mama, but they have no idea what it’s about.” The jaunty tunes belie the fact Cabaret is probably one of the darkest musicals ever written. Set in Weimar Germany as the Nazis begin their ascent to power, there’s violence, antisemitism and the leading lady, Sally Bowles —who can’t tell her Mama she’s appearing on stage in her underwear — has an abortion. It’s not one for the kids.

It’s 11 years since Redmayne last appeared on stage. But it isn’t the first time the Oscar-winning actor has played the role of the androgynous ringmaster in Cabaret. Aged 17 he was cast as the Emcee in a school production at Eton that was later taken to the Edinburgh Fringe. He remembers “running up the Royal Mile in latex and tights handing out leaflets for the show”. It was in a brand-new venue, the Underbelly, set up by two fellow Old Etonians, Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood. Back then it consisted of a few cramped, damp, beer-stained performance spaces frequented by aspiring comics and student musicals. Now the Underbelly is a successful production company that hosts festivals in London and Edinburgh. Redmayne’s early performance must have made an impression on the two producers because many years later they contacted him to see if he fancied doing Cabaret again. The answer was yes.

Redmayne is now 39 but looks about 23, with a fresh, freckled complexion and a boyish enthusiasm. I meet him in a hotel café opposite the Playhouse Theatre in London’s West End. He is with his co-star, the Irish actress Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose, Chernobyl), who plays Sally Bowles, the “divinely decadent” cabaret singer who arrives in Berlin in search of adventure. Buckley was Redmayne’s choice for the role. He didn’t know her, but he’d seen her act and sing and thought she had the right combination of grit and youthful vulnerability required to play Sally. “I thought you were formidable,” he says to her across the café table. The actress sticks her fingers in her mouth and mimes vomiting. Buckley came to fame aged 17 as a contestant on the TV talent show to find a new Nancy for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of Oliver! She came second but has never looked back. Much to her embarrassment, Redmayne tells me how he watched the whole series of I’d Do Anything and loved it. His only other West End musical appearance until Cabaret was playing “fourth workhouse boy” in a production of Oliver! aged 11.

Going to a boys’ school meant that Redmayne was cast in female roles from an early age. His first lead at Eton was playing Adela Quested in a stage version of A Passage to India and his first professional role was Viola in an all-male production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night opposite Mark Rylance. Meanwhile Buckley was at an all-girls school and was always given male roles: “I played Tony in West Side Story and God in Children of Eden.”

It has taken about six years to get Cabaret off the ground, partly because both actors are so in demand. Redmayne has just finished shooting the latest instalment of JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts franchise and before that The Good Nurse, the true story of Charlie Cullen, a nurse who was one of the most prolific serial killers in history. By coincidence Buckley was in the US at the same time playing a similar role in the TV drama Fargo. “Yeah,” Buckley says, grinning, “we bonded over playing psychotic serial killer nurses.” She’s also appearing opposite Olivia Colman in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, a film based on an Elena Ferrante novel.

Given how busy they are, both actors have been unusually involved in the early stages of Cabaret. They chose the director Rebecca Frecknall, having seen her acclaimed production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke and describe how they originally wanted to stage it in a basement in Islington rather than a traditional theatre. “We wanted the atmosphere of a Berlin nightclub rave at 2am,” Redmayne explains. In the end they could not get that venue, but the Ambassador Theatre Group, which owns the Playhouse, agreed to transform the Victorian theatre into a Weimar-era cabaret club at considerable cost.

We meet on the day of the dress rehearsal. Both confess to anxiety and sleepless nights as the opening looms. They’re going to be performing in the round, appearing on and off stage through a rabbit warren of entrances and exits. “I lie in bed going through the different routes in my head,” says Redmayne, who is worried about taking the wrong turning and popping up somewhere he shouldn’t be. “Sounds like the story of my life,” Buckley quips. Redmayne says there are recordings of Judi Dench reciting poetry in the hotel lavatories. “I’m going to pop over here every night before the performance, sit on the loo and listen to Judi, because that’s calming.”

I can see why he’s anxious when I’m taken on a tour by the designer, Tom Scutt. The place is buzzing with carpenters, painters and musicians tuning up their instruments. A floor has been built over the stalls, levelling up the once cavernous auditorium and shrinking it into the intimate Kit Kat Club of the musical, which reduces seat capacity from 832 to 590. There’s a small round stage bisecting the proscenium arch with seats on every side. The first few rows are café tables, so the audience, performers and musicians share the same intimate space. Tickets start at £30 and table seats are £120, with food and drink packages that can go up to £325 in total for a gourmet deal. There’s also a daily £25 lottery for seats that include table seating.

The audience will enter down a narrow staircase to the side of the theatre, with old pipes overhead and concrete walls dimly lit in a magenta red. Before they get to the auditorium they will be guided through a series of winding corridors covered in beaded metallic fringing with small performance nooks for musicians and dancers. “There will be music as soon as you come in, so it will feel like you’re going into a nightclub,” Scutt says. “It’s immersive without being a Punchdrunk or Secret Cinema show. We wanted an atmospheric prelude with the audience entering through a dingy corridor while being entertained by the musicians and dancers.”

The theatre walls have been repainted in dark colours, and a flashing-eye logo appears throughout to “convey the idea of voyeurism and paranoia; a Seventies and Eighties Berlin feel”. The cast and crew set up a WhatsApp group to share images and ideas. These included clips from Fassbinder films and videos of Annie Lennox and the avant-garde 1930s choreographer Mary Wigman. I ask Redmayne how he sees his character, the mercurial Emcee. “I see him as a survivor who can shape-shift himself out of every situation. There are elements of Karl Valentin [the Charlie Chaplin of Weimar Germany] and there is this extraordinary maître d’ at the Sunset Towers in Los Angeles called Dimitri. I’ve put a bit of him into the mix.”

The script of Cabaret doesn’t put a label on the Emcee, but the character is often played by LGBT actors, so Redmayne’s casting has come in for criticism. “Of all the characters I’ve ever read, this one defies pigeonholing. I would ask people to come and see it before casting judgment,” he says firmly. This is a sensitive conversation for Redmayne. He came in for considerable flak for his Oscar-nominated role in The Danish Girl, based on the true story of the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

His critics believed the role should be played by a trans actor. Would he take it if he was offered it today? “No, I wouldn’t take it on now. I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake.” I point out that it probably would not have been made without him. The script had been around for years and was only greenlit when Redmayne was cast off the back of winning an Oscar for his portrayal of the disabled scientist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. His reply is thoughtful and diplomatic. “The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don’t have a chair at the table. There must be a levelling, otherwise we are going to carry on having these debates.”

Buckley interrupts to say: “This is the most diverse company I have ever worked in. On the first day everyone introduced themselves and said their pronouns, he, she, they . . . and it was lovely to be part of that conversation. Our Kit Kat Club welcomes everyone, whoever you are.”

Redmayne says that one of the joys of doing Cabaret has been learning about the Weimar period, when hedonism, gender fluidity and sexual liberation coexisted with the rise of populism, intolerance and hyperinflation in a Europe still traumatised by the catastrophe of the First World War. It was a highly polarised society. The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote that “Berlin was the Babel of the world […]where hundreds of men in women’s clothes and women in men’s clothes danced under the benevolent eyes of the police”. Do they see any parallels with now? “Absolutely,” Buckley says, “and this production draws on elements from then and now. Many of the themes are timeless.”

Cabaret is at the Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre, London WC2; kitkat.club

Sunday times

[reviewsphere]

36 Winter Windows from 37 Edinburgh Schools UNVEILED!

36 Winter Windows from 37 Edinburgh Schools UNVEILED! @FollowTheCow @Edxmas @StGilesHighKirk @Edinburgh_CC #edinburghchristmas

Winter Windows is back! This special creative project conceived by Underbelly in 2014 as part of Edinburgh’s Christmas encourages Edinburgh’s young and budding artists to showcase their talents to residents and visitors outside of the classroom and in our streets and community hubs.

This year, Winter Windows will be displayed in West Parliament Squareoutside St Giles’ Cathedral and continue in…

[bespokeredmayne]

Headliners

Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club stars Eddie Redmayne + Jessie Buckley are featured in the Sunday Times Culture section in this article by Kirsty Lang, with fresh insights about the paths that led them to the phenomenal new production.

Eddie Redmayne has a dilemma. His children, aged three and five, are desperate to come and see him on stage in a new production of Cabaret. He has been playing the music nonstop at home and they’ve even learnt the moves to the song Money Makes the World Go Round. “They enjoyed Frozen, so they think it’s going to be like that,” he says, chuckling “Their favourite number is Don’t Tell Mama, but they have no idea what it’s about.” The jaunty tunes belie the fact Cabaret is probably one of the darkest musicals ever written. Set in Weimar Germany as the Nazis begin their ascent to power, there’s violence, antisemitism and the leading lady, Sally Bowles —who can’t tell her Mama she’s appearing on stage in her underwear — has an abortion. It’s not one for the kids.

It’s 11 years since Redmayne last appeared on stage. But it isn’t the first time the Oscar-winning actor has played the role of the androgynous ringmaster in Cabaret. Aged 17 he was cast as the Emcee in a school production at Eton that was later taken to the Edinburgh Fringe. He remembers “running up the Royal Mile in latex and tights handing out leaflets for the show”. It was in a brand-new venue, the Underbelly, set up by two fellow Old Etonians, Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood. Back then it consisted of a few cramped, damp, beer-stained performance spaces frequented by aspiring comics and student musicals. Now the Underbelly is a successful production company that hosts festivals in London and Edinburgh. Redmayne’s early performance must have made an impression on the two producers because many years later they contacted him to see if he fancied doing Cabaret again. The answer was yes.

Redmayne is now 39 but looks about 23, with a fresh, freckled complexion and a boyish enthusiasm. I meet him in a hotel café opposite the Playhouse Theatre in London’s West End. He is with his co-star, the Irish actress Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose, Chernobyl), who plays Sally Bowles, the “divinely decadent” cabaret singer who arrives in Berlin in search of adventure. Buckley was Redmayne’s choice for the role. He didn’t know her, but he’d seen her act and sing and thought she had the right combination of grit and youthful vulnerability required to play Sally. “I thought you were formidable,” he says to her across the café table. The actress sticks her fingers in her mouth and mimes vomiting. Buckley came to fame aged 17 as a contestant on the TV talent show to find a new Nancy for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of Oliver! She came second but has never looked back. Much to her embarrassment, Redmayne tells me how he watched the whole series of I’d Do Anything and loved it. His only other West End musical appearance until Cabaret was playing “fourth workhouse boy” in a production of Oliver! aged 11.

Going to a boys’ school meant that Redmayne was cast in female roles from an early age. His first lead at Eton was playing Adela Quested in a stage version of A Passage to India and his first professional role was Viola in an all-male production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night opposite Mark Rylance. Meanwhile Buckley was at an all-girls school and was always given male roles: “I played Tony in West Side Story and God in Children of Eden.”

It has taken about six years to get Cabaret off the ground, partly because both actors are so in demand. Redmayne has just finished shooting the latest instalment of JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts franchise and before that The Good Nurse, the true story of Charlie Cullen, a nurse who was one of the most prolific serial killers in history. By coincidence Buckley was in the US at the same time playing a similar role in the TV drama Fargo. “Yeah,” Buckley says, grinning, “we bonded over playing psychotic serial killer nurses.” She’s also appearing opposite Olivia Colman in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, a film based on an Elena Ferrante novel.

Given how busy they are, both actors have been unusually involved in the early stages of Cabaret. They chose the director Rebecca Frecknall, having seen her acclaimed production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke and describe how they originally wanted to stage it in a basement in Islington rather than a traditional theatre. “We wanted the atmosphere of a Berlin nightclub rave at 2am,” Redmayne explains. In the end they could not get that venue, but the Ambassador Theatre Group, which owns the Playhouse, agreed to transform the Victorian theatre into a Weimar-era cabaret club at considerable cost.

We meet on the day of the dress rehearsal. Both confess to anxiety and sleepless nights as the opening looms. They’re going to be performing in the round, appearing on and off stage through a rabbit warren of entrances and exits. “I lie in bed going through the different routes in my head,” says Redmayne, who is worried about taking the wrong turning and popping up somewhere he shouldn’t be. “Sounds like the story of my life,” Buckley quips. Redmayne says there are recordings of Judi Dench reciting poetry in the hotel lavatories. “I’m going to pop over here every night before the performance, sit on the loo and listen to Judi, because that’s calming.”

I can see why he’s anxious when I’m taken on a tour by the designer, Tom Scutt. The place is buzzing with carpenters, painters and musicians tuning up their instruments. A floor has been built over the stalls, levelling up the once cavernous auditorium and shrinking it into the intimate Kit Kat Club of the musical, which reduces seat capacity from 832 to 590.

There’s a small round stage bisecting the proscenium arch with seats on every side. The first few rows are café tables, so the audience, performers and musicians share the same intimate space. Tickets start at £30 and table seats are £120, with food and drink packages that can go up to £325 in total for a gourmet deal. There’s also a daily £25 lottery for seats that include table seating.

The audience will enter down a narrow staircase to the side of the theatre, with old pipes overhead and concrete walls dimly lit in a magenta red. Before they get to the auditorium they will be guided through a series of winding corridors covered in beaded metallic fringing with small performance nooks for musicians and dancers. “There will be music as soon as you come in, so it will feel like you’re going into a nightclub,” Scutt says. “It’s immersive without being a Punchdrunk or Secret Cinema show. We wanted an atmospheric prelude with the audience entering through a dingy corridor while being entertained by the musicians and dancers.”

The theatre walls have been repainted in dark colours, and a flashing-eye logo appears throughout to “convey the idea of voyeurism and paranoia; a Seventies and Eighties Berlin feel”. The cast and crew set up a WhatsApp group to share images and ideas. These included clips from Fassbinder films and videos of Annie Lennox and the avant-garde 1930s choreographer Mary Wigman.

I ask Redmayne how he sees his character, the mercurial Emcee. “I see him as a survivor who can shape-shift himself out of every situation. There are elements of Karl Valentin [the Charlie Chaplin of Weimar Germany] and there is this extraordinary maître d’ at the Sunset Towers in Los Angeles called Dimitri. I’ve put a bit of him into the mix.”

The script of Cabaret doesn’t put a label on the Emcee, but the character is often played by LGBT actors, so Redmayne’s casting has come in for criticism. “Of all the characters I’ve ever read, this one defies pigeonholing. I would ask people to come and see it before casting judgment,” he says firmly. This is a sensitive conversation for Redmayne. He came in for considerable flak for his Oscar-nominated role in The Danish Girl, based on the true story of the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

His critics believed the role should be played by a trans actor. Would he take it if he was offered it today? “No, I wouldn’t take it on now. I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake.” I point out that it probably would not have been made without him. The script had been around for years and was only greenlit when Redmayne was cast off the back of winning an Oscar for his portrayal of the disabled scientist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. His reply is thoughtful and diplomatic. “The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don’t have a chair at the table. There must be a levelling, otherwise we are going to carry on having these debates.”

Buckley interrupts to say: “This is the most diverse company I have ever worked in. On the first day everyone introduced themselves and said their pronouns, he, she, they . . . and it was lovely to be part of that conversation. Our Kit Kat Club welcomes everyone, whoever you are.”

Redmayne says that one of the joys of doing Cabaret has been learning about the Weimar period, when hedonism, gender fluidity and sexual liberation coexisted with the rise of populism, intolerance and hyperinflation in a Europe still traumatised by the catastrophe of the First World War. It was a highly polarised society. The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote that “Berlin was the Babel of the world […]where hundreds of men in women’s clothes and women in men’s clothes danced under the benevolent eyes of the police”. Do they see any parallels with now? “Absolutely,” Buckley says, “and this production draws on elements from then and now. Many of the themes are timeless.”

(Eddie is groomed here by the talented @petransellge; photos by @jasonhetheringtonstudio).

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Thistle

The Daily Thistle – News From Scotland

Thursday 27th September 2018

"Madainn Mhath” …Fellow Scot, I hope the day brings joy to you…. Bleak weather has come to the Costa del Sol this morning, … Thick heavy clouds are boiling above Bella and my head as we venture out for our morning walk.. rain looks imminent… but to be honest, I don’t mind, life is like that, sometimes it rains sometimes the sun shines…we just have to learn to accept what we are given and make the best of it, sometimes the lemons taste good….

RAF TYPHOON FIGHTER JETS INTERCEPT RUSSIAN BOMBERS…. RAF fighter jets were scrambled to intercept Russian bombers near UK airspace. Typhoon fighter aircraft were dispatched from RAF Lossiemouth to monitor two Russian planes approaching UK airspace. The Russian Blackjacks long-range bombers were not talking to air traffic control, making them a "hazard" to all other aviation. The jets were monitored passing through a variety of international airspace before they were intercepted by the RAF over the North Sea. They were then escorted north, out of the UK's area of interest. RAF fighter jets have intercepted Russian aircraft over 100 times in the last ten years. The Moray airbase is home to one of the UK's two quick reaction squadrons, which are permanently on alert and ready to fly in minutes. More than half of 179 launches from RAF bases at Lossiemouth and Coningsby between 2005 and 2015 were in response to Russian aircraft, according to Ministry of Defence figures. The number of launches rose dramatically in 2007 after Russian President Vladamir Putin reinstated a policy of carrying out regular long-range patrols in European airspace. Russian aircraft are not thought to have entered UK airspace during any of the most recent incidents. Defence secretary Gavin Williamson said: "Russian bombers probing UK airspace is another reminder of the very serious military challenge that Russia poses us today. "We will not hesitate to continually defend our skies from acts of aggression. Once again the rapid reactions of our RAF have demonstrated how vital our Armed Forces are in protecting Britain."

THIEVES USE STOLEN FORKLIFT TO RIP ATM FROM SHOP WALL…. Three people wearing balaclavas targeted a Co-op in Dumfries and Galloway on Thursday. The alarm was raised after three people wearing balaclavas targeted the Co-op on Annan Road, Gretna, at 2.45am on Thursday. The trio used an industrial Manitou forklift to forcibly remove the machine from the outside wall of the store causing extensive damage to the building. It is understood the forklift was stolen from a nearby farm prior to the incident. The suspects made off from the scene in a stolen silver Vauxhall Vectra, which had been adapted to fit the ATM in the boot, heading along Surrone Road onto Loanwath Road. The ATM is believed to contain a five figure sum of cash. Chief Inspector Colin Burnie said: "Enquiries are at an early stage to trace the individuals involved in this reckless incident and I am appealing for members of the public to come forward with any information that could assist our investigation. "Detectives are currently carrying out extensive enquiries including examining CCTV and speaking to local residents. "I would ask anyone living in the area who saw or heard anything suspicious, and is yet to speak to police, to please get in touch. "I would appeal to anyone who saw a forklift or a silver Vectra car in the area in the early hours of this morning to please get in touch. "I would also ask any motorists with dashcams, or residents with CCTV, to check in case they have captured any footage which could be of significance." Anyone with information is asked to contact 101.

THE BODY OF A MAN HAS BEEN DISCOVERED IN A GARDEN IN ABERDEENSHIRE…. John Thomson was found dead outside a house on the outskirts of Sauchen. Detectives were alerted alerted following the discovery of the 65-year-old at 2.35pm on Sunday. Mr Thomson had been at an event in Thainstone, Inverurie, before he died. On Monday night Police Scotland confirmed the death is not being treated as suspicious. Detective Inspector David Howieson said: "Inquiries remain ongoing however at present we are content there is nothing to suggest any suspicious circumstances.  "We are grateful to the community for its support whilst enquiries are carried out and thankful to those members of the public who have contacted Police to provide information."

EDINBURGH'S HOGMANAY TO CELEBRATE TIES WITH EUROPE…. This year's theme has been announced as the UK prepares to leave the EU in 2019. Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations will celebrate the ties between Scotland and the continent as the UK prepares to leave the EU in 2019. Franz Ferdinand and Capercaillie are among the Scottish bands performing alongside European acts including French performance artists Compagnie Transe Express. Youngsters will also play a key part in the festivities to mark Scotland's Year of Young People 2018 drawing to a close. The three-day festival opens on December 30 with a traditional torchlight procession through the city. This year's procession will be led by pipe and drum bands and will culminate in a "stunning" visual moment in Holyrood Park, where the procession will form the outline of Scotland lit by torches. On December 31, bands, DJs, street performers, dancers, acrobats, disco divas and fire eaters from Scotland and mainland Europe will be performing at the street party, which starts at 7.30pm. Franz Ferdinand will headline the Concert in the Gardens at the foot of Castle Rock, supported by Metronomy and Free Love, while some of the country's top ceilidh bands will play at Ceilidh under the Castle. Scots singer-songwriter Gerry Cinnamon will headline the Waverley stage, with Judge Jules headlining the DJ stage on Castle Street while Elephant Sessions will perform at South St David Street. At midnight, German band Meute will provide the soundtrack to the fireworks display from Edinburgh Castle. The McEwan Hall will be a Hogmanay venue for the first time, hosting three major concerts - Symphonic Ibiza on December 30 and Capercaillie and Carlos Nunez with special guests on January 1. Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, directors of the Hogmanay, said: "Edinburgh's Hogmanay is all about inviting the world to come on in and celebrate the end of one year and the start of a new, and as we move from 2018 to 2019 there's no better time to celebrate Scotland's cultural ties with Europe. He added: "We're confident that Edinburgh's Hogmanay offers something for everyone." "It's appropriate that this year we have chosen to say loudly and proudly to our European friends - 'we love you!"'

MORE THAN 30 SHEEP STOLEN FROM ISLE OF SKYE LAND…. The livestock was taken sometime in the past six weeks. The theft took place sometime within the past six weeks from an open hill ground on the Trotternish Ridge. The sheep all vary in age and were marked with black paint on their shoulders. Constable Katherine Tindall said: "We are asking that crofters in the Trotternish area check their land and also to report any suspicious activity including unfamiliar vehicles with animal trailers in the area. This comes as 50 sheep were stolen from a farm in Moray between Tuesday and Wednesday. "Rural crime be it the theft of animals, machinery or damage to property hits hard at the heart of small communities and by all being vigilant we can make the area a hostile place for those intent on committing such crime. "Anyone with information is asked to contact 101."

On that note I will say that I hope you have enjoyed the news from Scotland today,

Our look at Scotland today is by John Sinclair and his wife who were on the north of Iona when they spotted the dark clouds sweep over Mull.

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Thursday 27th September 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #Scotland #News #Spain

[scottishdreams]

Edinburgh > | Ice museum to be built for Edinburgh's Christmas

...Square.Edinburgh's Christmas Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, Edinburgh ... economic impact of Edinburgh's Christmas on the city is growing... http://ift.tt/2ymr5E1

[londontheatre]

Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen

Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel hits the West End for three dates only: Tuesdays 5th December, 23rd January & 13th February at the Piccadilly Theatre. Tickets on sale Thursday 14th September Follows a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe & a major UK tour.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that anyone in possession of wit and good taste must be in want of great entertainment…

Join Austentatious for the social event of the season, as they take London’s West End by storm.

Austentatious is an entirely improvised comedy play, starring a cast of the country’s sharpest comic performers, who conjure up a ‘lost’ Jane Austen novel based on nothing more than a title suggested by the audience. Whether you’ve read all of Austen’s works or none of them, this hilarious show will be a totally new experience.

Performed in full Regency costume with live musical accompaniment, no two shows are ever the same. Previous ’lost‘ masterpieces include The Sixth Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Shark and Double 0 Darcy. Expect witty heroines, dashing gents and preposterous plots. Swooning guaranteed.

Underbelly Productions’ Ed Bartlam said: “Austentatious has been one of the most successful and best-loved shows we’ve worked with in both Edinburgh and on the South Bank in recent years, so it’s a huge privilege to be able to bring them to a West End audience for the first time. It’s their biggest production ever but, as the great lady herself said: ‘One cannot have too large a party’, so bring it on.”

Austentatious said: “Where better to spend the night with one’s most favourite and wittiest friends than at the Piccadilly Theatre? Let literary mischief commence...”

Austentatious’ West End shows will coincide with their national tour, running from 22 September – 23 November 2017. Information: http://ift.tt/2doWUTd

Austentatious & Underbelly Productions present Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel Piccadilly Theatre, 16 Denman St, Soho, London, W1D 7DY.

Performances 5th December 2017 7.30pm 23rd January 2018 7.30pm 13th February 2018 7.30pm

Bookings Open Thursday 14th September 2017

http://ift.tt/2wXayaQ LondonTheatre1.com

[theedinburghreporter]

Edinburgh's Hogmanay dispel the myths over use of volunteers

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay dispel the myths over use of volunteers

At this morning’s launch of the full programme for our end of year festivities, Underbelly director Ed Bartlam explained that Underbelly, as producers of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, will use volunteers or ambassadors once again – and they are pleased to do so.

Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam of Underbelly with Culture Convener Donald Wilson in the middle alongside Johnnie Walker who will sponsor the Street…

[trendingnewsb]

How Edinburgh changed British comedy – BBC News

Image caption Lee Evans won the top comedy award in Edinburgh in 1993

Comedy did not feature at all when the Edinburgh Fringe began but over the past three decades it has become the “spiritual home” of Britain’s funny folk.

While London lays claim to being the birthplace of “alternative” comedy in the 1980s, it was the Scottish capital where the new generation of comics received their education before transforming British humour.

Image caption Sarah Millican is one of the many stars to have broken through in the past decade

Comedy talent such as Steve Coogan, Lee Evans, Bill Bailey, Alan Davies, Harry Hill, Jo Brand and Al Murray all got their big breaks in Edinburgh.

According to comedy impresario Nica Burns the “golden year” was 1991 when Frank Skinner won the Perrier Award, beating Eddie Izzard, Jack Dee and Paul O’Grady’s character Lily Savage.

Some found fame quickly while others such as Graham Norton and Michael McIntyre slogged away in Edinburgh for years before getting their big break.

Despite constant claims of its imminent demise, the Edinburgh Fringe has continued to be a unique showcase for comedy talent over more than 30 years.

Image caption Jack Dee was nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award in its “golden year”

In more recent times John Bishop, Sarah Millican, Kevin Bridges, Ross Noble, Russell Kane and many others have seen successful Edinburgh runs springboard them to TV fame and arena tours.

Image caption Bridget Christie won the Edinburgh comedy award in 2013

This year’s Fringe features more than 3,000 shows and more than a third are comedy.

That means more than 1,000 comedy acts from all over the world will be in the city during August.

Nica Burns, who took over the Perrier’s, the awards that became synonymous with Edinburgh comedy, says: “When I started with the awards in 1984 I used to personally go and see all the shows. You could not start to do that now.”

Image caption Steve Coogan returned to Edinburgh to present the Edinburgh comedy award in 2013, two decades after winning it

These days she employs a judging panel to go around the 700 eligible comedy acts and make a shortlist for the award, now sponsored by lastminute.com but still coveted by comedians.

Richard Herring, who has appeared in Edinburgh for most of the past 30 years, does not qualify for the comedy award because it does not include people who have already had a TV series.

He broke into TV in the mid-90s with Stewart Lee in Fist of Fun but even though he is a 50-year-old Fringe veteran he says: “Sometimes I’ll be annoyed I’ve not been nominated – then I remember that no judge has seen my show because I’m not eligible.”

The Edinburgh hour

Image caption Richard Herring, here with Arthur Smith in 2011, says the Edinburgh hour was important leap for comedians

Herring says that the Fringe is still the “best arts festival in the world” but it has changed beyond recognition since he first performed in a student revue in 1987.

He says that sketch shows by Oxbridge students such as him were coming in for a lot of stick from the new wave of comedy stand-ups who were starting to see the Fringe as their domain.

They saw it as a place to come for three weeks, hang out with other performers and hone their material.

Herring says one of the major changes that Edinburgh developed was the one-hour comedy show.

Even in the late 1980s it was rare for stand-up comedians to do a full hour-long show on their own and they would often partner up with other performers to fill the Edinburgh hour.

Image caption Nica Burns, seen here in 1993, has been in charge of the comedy awards for 33 years

Nica Burns says: “The Edinburgh Fringe became the learning ground because in the clubs you could only do part of the show.

“You started with a five-minute guest spot, if you were any good you could do 10 minutes and work up to 20 or 30 minutes for the headline act.

“For that jump to a whole show, to be able to play in a larger theatre, to be able to go on the road, you need to develop your material live.

“Comedians suddenly realised that Edinburgh was a fantastic place to come and book yourself a hall.

“That’s the great thing about the Fringe, it’s not curated, so anybody can do it.”

Image caption Simon Munnery has been appearing at the Fringe for 30 years

Comedian Simon Munnery, who has also been performing in Edinburgh for 30 years, says: “The hour-long slot gives you more space to experiment. For most comedians it’s a big step to go from 20 minutes to an hour.

“When you are doing that sort of time there is more pressure to have some sort of theme or to have something to say.”

Fred MacAulay first appeared at the Fringe in 1989 as part of a collective of Scottish comedians called the Funny Farm.

Image copyright Robert Perry

Image caption Fred MacAulay said the move to doing an hour-long show was a big moment for comedian

For his first four Fringes he was part of a composite show with other comedians, taking a bigger time slot each year.

He says: “It is always there very much on the horizon for you as a new stand-up that the target is to do an Edinburgh hour.”

“I always thought it was very much like a skiier,” he says.

“You are skiing on the blue runs but out of the corner of your eye you can seeing a red or a black run and you know ‘I’m going to have to tackle that one day’.”

MacAulay says that a few festivals around the world, such as Melbourne in Australia, have followed Edinburgh’s comedy model but the Fringe remains unique in its scale and scope.

Political movement

Image caption Karen Koren has been running the Gilded Balloon for more than 30 years

Karen Koren was there at the start of Edinburgh’s comedy boom.

She founded the Gilded Balloon venue in 1986, which along with The Pleasance and The Assembly led the 1980s comedy boom.

“I was certainly there at the beginning of the stand-up comedy surge,” says Koren, who set up her first comedy club because her friends were looking for a place to perform “alternative” comedy.

“I blame Margaret Thatcher myself,” she says.

“It was really satirical and political back then.

“Nowadays anything goes but then it was quite serious comedy, with the likes of Mark Thomas and Mark Steel, Jeremy Hardy and Kevin Day. Although there have always been silly performers as well.”

Image caption Alexei Sayle, one of the originators of alternative comedy, is back at the Fringe this year

Nica Burns agrees that the Edinburgh comedy boom was fuelled by acts who were reacting to the politics of the time and Prime Minister Thatcher.

But she says they were also seeking to overthrow the old comedy establishment.

Burns says: “It was a really exciting time because alternative comedy was a political movement.

“For the original comics, such as Alexi Sayle, it was about changing what comedy stood for – no more homophobic, racist or sexist jokes.

“Within a very short time they had run off all the old comics and TV moved into the new era.”

Burns says that the new comedy movement may have begun in London but Edinburgh was the “school for clowns”, where they learned to how to perform.

Comedy around the clock

Image copyright PA

Image caption Al Murray won the Edinburgh comedy award in 1999

Koren quickly went from running one studio theatre with 150 seats to 14 venues of various sizes dotted around the Cowgate.

To maximise use of her spaces Koren wanted comedians to perform day and night.

She says: “I remember that stand-up was always considered to be for the evening.

“No performers wanted to go on before 7pm and they didn’t want to go against each other.

“I had to push that concept to them all. The more the merrier. Think about your own show and what you are doing.”

As well as getting to perform your own show there was another factor that attracted comedians to Edinburgh – the camaraderie.

Munnery says: “It’s wonderful to be in the same place at the same time as all these other people who are in the same sinking boat.”

Funny women

Image copyright PA

Image caption In 2005, Laura Solon was the second woman in 25 years to win the Perrier

For Herring his early appearances are as memorable for the nights out with fellow comedians as they are for his shows.

Koren says: “I started a show called Late ‘n’ Live. It ran from midnight to four in the morning.

“We had the latest licence on the Fringe. It became a place where people came to see other comics die.

“It was where all the comics got drunk and had a great time together. That type of camaraderie that was around then really enhanced it and pushed it forward.

“There was lots of young kids going ‘I want to be like that guy up on stage’.”

Image caption Jenny Eclair was the first solo female winner of the Perrier Award

And it was usually a guy.

Despite Burns and Koren being a strong female presence on the comedy scene they both agree that it was very much a “boy’s club” in the early days.

Burns says: “The number of women doing shows was so small you could count them on one hand at the beginning.

“When it started it was much harder for women.

“There was a real feeling that when a woman came on there was a collective folding of the arms by the audience, and they were saying ‘OK, show us you are funny’.

“The audiences was very male because it involved smoking and drinking as well and quite a lot were above pubs.

“There was nowhere to get changed back stage, certainly nowhere for women, they had to get changed in the toilet. It was a tough environment and a tough way to learn your craft. They had to overcome a lot of hurdles.”

The first women to win the Perrier Award was Jenny Eclair in 1995 and it was another decade before the next, Laura Solon.

However, Burns feels that recent years have seen a breakthrough and women, who still only make up less than a third of comedy performers, do not have to persuade audiences they can be funny any more.

Adventurous audiences

Image caption Ed Bartlam has been running the Underbelly since 2000

Female comedy performers, just like their male counterparts, are cashing in on a comedy boom that has seen more and more of them touring large venues.

As comedy has become big business, festivals have sprung up all over the UK but Edinburgh has maintained its position as the number one place for comedians.

Ed Bartlam, who founded the Underbelly venues in 2000, says: “Edinburgh has been a platform for alternative comedy and that is still the case.

“The Edinburgh audience and the Edinburgh critics are adventurous and they like to see something different. Edinburgh is a great example of a festival that manages to fit both the mainstream and the alternative very nicely.”

Underbelly runs comedy venues on the South Bank in London but it is Edinburgh that acts as a feeder for new talent.

Bartlam says: “In Edinburgh we have got 17 venues ranging in size from 50 seats to 400 seats, therefore we can show lots of different acts at different levels.

“In London we have got two tents and they have both got 400 seats.

“Inevitably it means we are programming shows we think can sell that amount of tickets.

“In Edinburgh we’ve got this broad range of venues so we can programme interesting new material which might only sell 50 seats.

“Edinburgh is so important because it allows those at the beginning of their career to play in small spaces.”

Constantly evolving

Image caption John Kearns started his career on the Free Fringe

Another factor in Edinburgh’s reinvention has been the rise in the Free Fringe over the past decade.

Free Fringe shows, which are predominantly comedy acts in the spare rooms of pubs, allow the audience to watch for free and they are invited to make a contribution at the end.

It is a cheap way of getting to perform on the Fringe and has led to comedy careers for a number of new comedians such as Imran Yusuf and John Kearns.

Herring says his generation of comedians often wonder if they would have made it if there had been the same amount of competition when he was starting out.

He says the current crop of comedians are much more polished and professional than the acts of the 1980s.

“In 1992 I came up with shows I was still writing,” he says.

“By the end of Edinburgh I hoped to have a good show but now you can’t really behave like that. You need top be good on day one.”

Image caption Imran Yusuf has also progressed from the Free Fringe to larger paid venues

He says many comedians these days keep themselves fit and don’t drink.

“The performers from the 1980s and 90s would find that very strange,” he says.

Another major change has been the costs involved.

“It was bit cheaper for everyone in those days – for the punters and for the acts,” Herring says.

He says he has lost thousands of pounds on Edinburgh shows but always hoped to win enough work to make up for it later.

The gig economy

Image caption Russell Kane won the Edinburgh comedy award in 2010

For Fringe veterans such as Koren, whose Gilded Balloon venues were forced to move to the Teviot after a devastating fire in 2002, the peak was in the late 80s and early 90s.

“Now everybody wants to be a star and not everybody is going to become a star,” she says.

Munnery says some aspiring comedians go to extreme lengths to get noticed.

He says: “There are some ridiculous things like huge twice-human size posters for a show and then venue is some portable cabin.

“They are spending more on advertising than they can possibly make back at the box office.

“I used to be with an agent like that,” he says.

“They tell you that you are investing in your future and at some point you have to ask ‘when is my future going to start?’.

Munnery adds: “You basically go to Edinburgh, lose thousands of pounds, spend a year paying it off and then go and do it again.

“It would probably be illegal to be employed on that basis but because you are employing yourself it’s alright. It’s the gig economy, literally.”

Despite the skyrocketing costs of Edinburgh rents and they increased competition for audiences, performers keep coming back year after year.

Herring says: “Even when I’m negative I’ve never said it’s not amazing.

“It’s the best festival in the world and it is an amazing thing to be a part of.

“I’ve spent two years of my adult life in Edinburgh just by coming to the Fringe.

“It’s a phenomenal festival and it’s breath-taking how good the shows are.”

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