Mixed

Had breakfast before being in online meetings most of the morning…DF left to start her island cruise fairly early and S went to see the Beyond the Little Black Dress exhibition. When my meetings were done I caught up on some emails and admin then we had lunch before heading out to see a show to fit our ‘acrobat/circus’ slot in the Festival matrix. We’d seen good reviews and it involved a singer and two cellists so we thought it would be interesting, but were not anticipating the performers crawling around amongst the audience when dressed as wild dogs, standing on some audience members or carrying some across the room, let alone swinging an axe inches from their faces (thank goodness we weren’t on the front row and ‘protected’ by the cellists in front of us!). Not inconsiderable talent, especially the singer, and a lot of strength and balance, including cellists playing on top of a human tower, but altogether weird! I was surprised to see so many of the front row jump to their feet to applaud having cowered in their seats, shrinking away most of the show (Stockholm syndrome?!)
From there we went over to the Book Festival to see Amy Liptrot and Karine Polwart talking about a sense of place. Amy had Covid so was on screen rather than in person, but there were some lovely parts of this session especially Karine’s singing (always gorgeous), and Amy came across as a very interesting and genuine person albeit struggling with the annoying interviewer’s abstract and overlong questions. She also followed every answer (even where they’d essentially said they didn’t know what she meant!) with a cloying ‘I love that’….rather a pain. I’d have liked Amy and Karine to just have talked together.
P doing well in hospital apparently and Mt’s going to see him tomorrow. I phoned whilst we’d been waiting in the book festival cafe trying to get warm between shows…it had turned really chilly this afternoon and felt very autumnal.
We stopped off for a quick slice of Civerino’s pizza (tasty) on the way to the Festival theatre, where we joined CR at a reception before the Threepenny Opera. We were looking forward to it, as it had been billed as one of the highlights of the Festival, and it was an absolutely full house, but I really didn’t like it and neither did S or CR. Lot of speaking as well as singing, all in fast German which I don’t know a word of, so hard to follow even with the surtitles, singing that I assume(?) was deliberately off key and sometimes screechy, and apparently comic parts that some of the audience thought were hilarious but left us cold. Needed the G&Tin the interval, when S decided to call it a day and went home, but CR and I gritted our teeth and went back in. On the upside there were some interesting staging and production decisions, but it was obviously a very particular style (Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill) that those who like/understand it loved, but it was a thumbs down from me…what a shame. Guess there are always highs and lows through August…and of course the lows are often the things we remember most vividly!