Back from the Fringe

[bookzombie]

We've just had a week at the Edinburgh fringe, which was great. It was also great to see andrewducker for the first time in ages, and to finally meet the delightful Julie. We also had dinner with Helen, a new friend we made at Eastercon this year, and unexpectedly ran into Paul Cockburn in the queue for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary piece at the book festival. It sounds as if autopope was also around that evening, but sadly we missed him.

pennski has put up a brief write-up here http://pennski.livejournal.com/130943.html, so I won't describe all the shows, but a few additional notes:

• Grimm Ever After committed the common sin of trying to involve the Grimm brothers in fantastical situations, which is totally misreading their role as collectors of fairy stories (in fact there's a - quite possibly apocryphal - story that Hans Christian Anderson once turned up on their doorstep, excitedly telling them 'look, I write stories too!' and they weren't quite sure what to do with him...


• Merrily We Roll Along was apparently a massive flop when it first came out, with audiences and critics unhappy with the cynical tone and confused by the way the play is told backwards in time (each successive scene is earlier in time). Maybe in the 30 years since the play was first released we've become much more used to non-standard narratives (t.v. programs do this quite frequently these days), but I found it perfectly easy to understand. Also I didn't find it particularly cynical; the first scene (last chronologically), shows the characters when their relationship is at it's worst and the story moves backwards to their first meeting. To me, it was very good at showing how small incidents lead to great changes in relationships, without anyone being intentionally unkind. Not upbeat, admittedly, but not nasty either.


• I could rant for ages about all the things Armada gets wrong. Bad script, banal songs ('Our land / Is an Island' apparently), hammy acting, ill-conceived political viewpoint - particularly if you are performing in Edinburgh - and some rubbish pre-filmed inserts. But what is really surprising is how many good reviews it seems to have got over the last couple of years. Some people seem to have deeply atrophied critical faculties...


• The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary panel could have a write-up all of its own, but in passing I'd say the most interesting comment was from Ben Aaronovitch (who wrote a couple of late stories for 'classic' Who), who reckons that even given the revival's (unexpected) success, the Powers That Be still don't actually like it. They'll market the hell out of out, of course, but they still wish they didn't have to make it!