Devil’s work as Gray play debuts at festival

Arts Correspondent

Friday 17 June 2011

A stellar cast of authors and actors will perform the premiere of a new play from one of Scotland's greatest artists, Alasdair Gray.

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Phil Miller Arts Correspondent

This year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, which launched its 2011 programme yesterday, will culminate in the first public performance of Fleck, Gray’s play inspired by Goethe’s Faust.

Gray, the writer of Lanark, and a lauded artist, muralist and illustrator, will perform himself as Satan in Fleck, and will be joined onstage by some of the cream of Scottish writing in acting roles – Ian Rankin, AL Kennedy, Alan Bissett, Liz Lochhead, Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan as well as Will Self, and the actress Cora Bissett, among many others.

Gray wrote Fleck in 2007, but it has yet to be commissioned by any theatre in the UK.Nick Barley, artistic director of the festival, said: “He has asked various theatres across Scotland to produce it, but no-one has either had the courage or the resources,” he said.“It is funny, irreverent and biting.”The play, which will be performed on the final Monday of the festival, which runs from August 13 to 29 and has revolution as its theme, is being presented as a two-hour “live reading” in the 500-seat RBS Main Theatre, in collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland. Mr Barley said he expects tickets to sell quickly.The NTS said it has no current plans to launch a full production of Fleck, but a spokeswoman added: “We do, however, continue to explore his inspirational work, and that of many other such distinguished writers, as part of developing our future programme.”Mr Barley, whose festival includes 750 events and 800 participants, said he does not want to move such popular or big events out of the festival’s traditional Charlotte Square home, although he had spoken in the past of closing one or two of the roads in the square to enlarge the festival’s physical size. But, he said the intimacy of the festival was one of its strengths.“I don’t want events to be too big, and what I think has made Edinburgh so powerful is its Charlotte Square site, and we toy with that at our peril,” he said.“It’s easy to imagine that we grow and grow, and put it somewhere else, but I am absolutely committed to Charlotte Square and I think if we got into the habit of all of our headline events elsewhere, that might draw some of the energy out of Charlotte Square. I think there are things we can do with the site that are very exciting.”This year’s festival features appearances from the exiled Chinese Nobel laureate, Gao Xingjian, First Minister Alex Salmond interviewing Iain Banks, the launch of AL Kennedy’s new novel, appearances by Irvine Welsh, Michael Ondaatje, Ian Rankin, AS Byatt, Alexander McCall Smith and many others.There will be two writers from China, who, according to Mr Barley, “raise an eyebrow” at that country, Wang Hui and Bi Feiyu, as well as writers from Australia, India, Germany and elsewhere.There will be a first: a Premier League footballer is to appear at the event, when on August 15 John Hartson, formerly of Celtic, West Ham and Arsenal, talks about his memoir and battle with cancer.Mr Barley said he already had authors in place for 2012.“Emphatically, Edinburgh is still a draw for authors,” he said. “But we have to stay in that position, which is why we still have to keep innovating and keep making headlines.”There are four guest selectors, or curators, this year, in Allan Little, the veteran BBC correspondent, Audrey Niffenegger, the bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s [sic] Wife, Joan Bakewell, the journalist and broadcaster, and Julia Donaldson, new children’s laureate.There will also be a repeat of last year’s innovation, the Unbound series of late-night, unticketed events in the Charlotte Square Spiegeltent. The festival will also see the celebration of the Newton First Book Award, the Scottish Book of the Year prize and a large children’s book programme.

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Devil’s work as Gray play debuts at festival

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