by Chris Hammond
SquareOne Entertainment
The Launch of the Edinburgh International Festival at the Hub, was so I thought, going to be a fantastically frivolous jaunt. Here I expected to swagger in to find myself surrounded by whimsical nubile arty young women and ruddy faced homosexuals pontificating on War poets and the best way to eat an egg. A promiscuous net-workers dream, I envisioned an evening where even my most mildly debauched anecdote would seem hilariously avant garde. I was going to get numbers, I was going to meet people and I was going to consume an impressive amount of free alcohol.
Were things as expected? Not quite. As I sauntered into the guts of the Hub I was confronted by a collection of coves so crusty a couple could have been cadavers. Oh dear. Spider senses tingling (largely this manifests itself in a dull ache in my left testicle) it dawned on me that I was out of my depth. Even the fail safe mantra of “what would Richard Sharpe do?” couldn’t help me. Not to worry as long as nobody spoke to me I couldn’t cause any damage and as long as there were speeches going on nobody was going to speak to me. But as detailed in outlining events as festival director Jonathan Mills was in his speech, it did of course have to finish.
Afterwards polite applause ensued. Polite this is except for me, who caught up by the fact there actually seemed to be blood pumping in the audience after all, had embarked upon what can best be described as the kind of over zealous palm slapping witnessed only at football grounds. I was drawing glances, but then that could have been because of the urinal splashback which seemed to have deposited itself all over the toes of my badly polished shoes.
I was being sized up. A crumpled, jaded, 24 year old hack in crumpled jaded untucked shirt was fair game for this wizened selection of tweed clad society types. A younger sort (mid 60’s perhaps?), beefy, handsome but wearing a deranged smile came over: “what do you think of the bill?” Mind focusing I replied “I don’t think it’s been the same since they axed Reg.”
Frequent feckless festival themed faux pas aside, I began to hit some sort of stride and can confirm now, as I did that evening to many, that the Edinburgh International Festival 2008 will be ‘s_t hot’.
SquareOne’s International Festival Picks 2008
1 Roby Laktos and Ensemble
2 Alfred Brendel
3 Matthew Bourne New Dventures of Dorian Gray
4 Devils Ship
5 Class Enemy
Don't take my flippant word for it visit the International Festival website for more www.eif.co.uk
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