The tenth birthday of our partnership with the Bank of Scotland for the Herald Angel Edinburgh Festival Awards was celebrated in some style on Saturday at the bank's imposing headquarters at the top of The Mound, overlooking Princes Street Gardens.
One of the liveliest events in the history of the awards included music, juggling, original poetry and a flashmob of young performers from Glasgow.
Welcoming the award winners, their supporters and our other guests Saturday morning, Susan Rice, managing director of Lloyds Banking Group Scotland, said: “We are so proud to celebrate a decade of support for Bank of Scotland Herald Angels, rewarding creative and ground-breaking work staged across the Edinburgh Festivals.
“And on Friday evening, for the first time, Bank of Scotland sponsored the Edinburgh International Festival’s Opening Concert, a wonderful choral work reflecting Europe’s fascination with things oriental in the 19th century.
“We are looking forward to seeing what the rest of the month brings, and what the Herald will highlight for us at next week’s awards.”
She was joined on the stage to present the first Bank of Scotland Herald Angels of 2011 by performer Ruby Wax, whose bold Fringe show with musician Judith Owen, Losing It, is playing to packed house at Udderbelly.
Roy Hutchins, the performer of a catalogue of Fringe hits written by Heathcote Williams accepted this week’s Archangel award on behalf of the poet and playwright. Williams was now more prolific than ever, Hutchins revealed, producing a poem composed especially for the occasion. A moving eight stanzas on the creative process, it concluded:
Each poem written
Has something hidden in clouds
Of floating language –
Something no-one knew
Before it flew into their mind
And they wrote it down.
A special something
You go on dreaming about
When you’ve woken up.
This week’s Angel awards continued the Traverse Theatre’s run of success with two shows from its Fringe programme. Young American company The TEAM received an award for the latest show, Mission Drift, whose short run ended yesterday. The Angel for the National Theatre of Scotland’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart was accepted by the show’s co-creator, Wils Wilson, and a quartet from the company performed the show’s opening song, The Twa Corbies – a significant treat as tickets for the full show are now sold out.
Their performance was preceded by a taste of the skills of Mat Ricardo, who served himself a drink to toast his Angel from a glass atop a tower of cigar boxes balanced on a cigar. Jorge Ramos of Brazilian company Zecora Ura won special praise for staying up while his colleagues slept to collect the award for Hotel Medea, a show at Summerhall that runs from midnight to 6am, and Pat Kinevane dedicated his Angel to his late brother, the inspiration for his Dance Base show, Silent.
His emotional speech was followed by the arrival of the entire Junction 25 youth company from Glasgow’s Tramway and enthusiastic thanks from Francesca Lacey, elected as spokeswoman and a fine example of the ebullience of their show I Hope My Heart Goes First, despite the tragic love-life she reveals in it. Director Lorne Campbell, recovering from his cycle crash, was just as gracious in his collection of the week’s Little Devil – honoured, he said, to be part of Edinburgh’s Festival of falling over.
Later on Saturday, the first of this year’s students of arts reviewing, who are taking part in The Herald’s Young Critics scheme with the EIF, attended the first performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble at the Playhouse. The winner of the 10 submissions is printed right.
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