Keith Bruce
From his first appearances in Edinburgh as the International Festival's director designate, there has been no doubting the "new broom" aspirations of Fergus Linehan. He talks of increasing and improving the profile of the Festival, of new audiences and new ways of doing things. He also talks of a five-year plan, however, so the changes that are most obvious in his first programme, unveiled yesterday, may see incremental or perhaps not as radical as some may have foreseen. There is, however, one repeated piece of boldness which may prove a brilliant stroke or a foolhardy millstone on his budget for future years.
Not only is the Ivo Van Hove-directed Antigone in residence at the King's Theatre for 14 nights, plus two matinees, as we already knew, but other new shows have the sort of runs that have rarely been a feature of recent EIF programmes, with 12 performances at the Royal Lyceum of a new adaptation of Alasdair Gray's Lanark in the writer's 80th year, five of a new opera from Ireland by Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh, The Last Hotel, at the same venue, and 10 and 13 respectively in specially built new spaces within the EICC for new works by Quebec's Robert Lepage and Simon McBurney of Complicite.
Linehan's belief - some might say "gamble" - is that there are two distinct audiences that the EIF should be catering to: the advance booking one, and the on-the-day audience that might be as likely to go to a Fringe show. By extending the runs of his theatre work in August 2015, he is confident that Festival audiences will back his belief that Edinburgh should be engaging in the process of creating new work, rather than travelling the world picking existing shows to feature in the Scottish capital.
"Edinburgh should be a place where things are seen as part of their first life. The vast majority of the money we get, we immediately give to artists. EIF is about engaging with artists and constantly trying to contribute," Linehan told The Herald.
Having already revealed the line-up of concerts and recitals at the Usher and Queen's Halls, yesterday's scheduled EIF programme launch was all about the rest of the programme, with Linehan's specialist background in theatre producing the sort of riches that many were hoping for. But there were musical surprises as well, with his first Festival acquiring a brand new free public musical opening to mirror the long-established Fireworks Concert at the end. Linehan sees the Usher Hall as the Festival's iconic building, and the public realm around it between the Traverse and the Lyceum as a potential Festival focal point. So his first event will be a free outdoor public concert of John Adams's choral work Harmonium, marking the 50th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, with the RSNO conducted by Peter Oundjian and video and lighting design examining singing created with the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh School of Art by 59 Productions, who originated in Edinburgh by now work in auditoriums and public spaces around the world.
At the other end of the musical scale are The Hub Sessions, a season of late night concerts at the Festival's home on Castlehill that takes the EIF into a whole new area of programming with concerts including new-folk talent Sufjan Stevens, Glasgow group Franz Ferdinand's new collaboration with 70s pop duo Sparks, jazz piano from Robert Glasper and Jason Moran, Anna Calvi with Heritage Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra playing works by Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire and Bryce Dessner of The National, and King Creosote reprising his From Scotland with Love soundtrack with Virginia Heath's documentary film.
Linehan denies that he is moving into the commercial sphere with this season, pointing out that previous similar initiatives on the Fringe have not had staying power.
"This is music that needs a degree of care to make it work, and it is not a commercial proposition in the context of the Edinburgh Festivals, but we can do it because we have our own building and production team.
It is not really a bold move, just us catching up with a culturally curious audience - and it is not replacing anything, it is an addition."
Beyond those musical events, Linehan admits that his first Festival is structurally not dissimilar to previous years. The Edinburgh Playhouse is the home for large scale dance events, with RSNO in the pit for Germany's Ballet am Rhein and choreographer Martin Schlapfer's Seven, set to Mahler's Symphony No7, and the BBC SSO playing the music of Max Richter there at the start of a week that ends with Ballett Zurich performing Wayne McGregor's choreography to the composer, and that of artistic director Christian Spuck to the music of Mozart and Philip Glass. At the Festival Theatre, Sylvie Guillem makes her Festival debut on her farewell world tour, dancing music created for her by the world's top dance-makers, and Israel Galvan's contemporary flamenco looks at the plights of the Roma people under Franco. The Lyceum sess two nights from Chinese choreography Tao Ye's acclaimed company, set to Steve Reich and indie folk-rocker Xiao He.
The Festival Theatre also sees two Mozart operas, a staged concert performance of The Marriage of Figaro by Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra and a international cast, choreographed by Veronika Vamos, and The Magic Flute from the Komische Oper Berlin, now directed by Australian Barrie Kosky. The staging of that production has been a collaboration with Herald Angel-winning British theatre company 1927, who combine bespoke animation with expressionist theatrical techniques from the last century. Contemporary dance company Ballet C de la B and founder Alain Platel combine with Belgian stage director Frank van Laeke on En Avant, Marche! at the King's, which explores the world of amateur brass bands in Flanders through musical theatre, and will involve Scottish brass bands. Ireland's The Last Hotel is a chamber opera written and directed by Enda Walsh (whose follow-up to Disco Pigs, Bedbound, was produced at the Traverse by Linehan), with music by Donnacha Dennehy, performed by his Crash Ensemble.
With Anne Carson's version of Greek Tragedy, Antigone, starring Juliet Binoche, in residence at the King's for much of the Festival, there is still room for four performances by Berlin's Volksbuhne of Swiss artist Dieter Roth's supposedly unstagable Murmel Murmel, in which a cast of a dozen work with a single word (roughly translatable as "rhubarb") for an hour and 20 minutes.
The EICC will be the home of two specially-constructed 500-seater "black box" EIF 2015 theatres, housing the European premiere of 887, by Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, which looks at his experience as a child in 1970, when the actions of the Front de liberation de Quebec brought troops on to the streets, and the world premiere of The Encounter, by Simon McBurney and Complicite, which will use sound technology in a work that in part adapts the book Amazon Beaming by Romanian Petru Popescu.
The Royal Lyceum has the new version of Alasdair Gray's Lanark, 20 years after TAG Theatre staged Alastair Cording's adaptation at the Assembly Hall. This Citizens Theatre production re-unites the three men who collaborated as Suspect Culture after university, writer David Greig, director Graham Eatough and composer Nick Powell. Linehan has also chosen to give Festival outings to two further Scottish theatre productions, in a another bold addition to recent EIF programming policy. The Vox Motus family show Dragon, created with the National Theatre of Scotland and Tianjin People's Arts Theatre of China, won Best Show for Children and Young People at the 2014 UK Theatre Awards, and is also at the Lyceum. The Queen's Hall has a run of performances of Pam Carter and Stewart Laing's acclaimed Paul Bright's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, "reconstructed by" Untitled Projects, the company that was wound up last year when it t was unsuccessful in winning funding from Creative Scotland.
Booking for EIF 2015 opens at The Hub on March 28, with priority booking for Friends and Patrons opening tomorrow by post and online only.
eif.co.uk
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