ARTS
Many visitors to this year's. Edinburgh Festival are likely to be dismayed by the vulgar flyposting of the city that has taken place since last summer. Princes Street and most municipally owned buildings are disfi- gured by posters and banners proclaiming the virtues of the district council's provi- sion of services and creation of jobs; they may also be displeased to find prices higher in the city's shops, restaurants and pubs, as proprietors try to recover from their cus- tomers the much higher rates imposed on them by the Labour administration's generosity and profligacy. No doubt they will say it is all in a good cause, and proceed to enjoy the Festival, though those who know the city's reputation for par- simonious treatment of its greatest asset, and those who fear or deplore the ideolo- gical stance of the present administration and know how it would like to influence the Festival, may regret the failure of the Festival Society's attempt last winter to reduce the district council's share of seats on the Festival council, where the local authority has a majority though contribut- ing less than 25 per cent of the Festival budget. Still, bearing in mind recent events at Meadowbank Stadium, where the recent Dairy-Crest-sponsored athletics meeting received no television coverage because of the district council's insistence on display- ing banners with political slogans ('Edin- burgh against Apartheid'), they may count themselves lucky if they get through an opera at the newly refurbished King's Theatre without being on the receiving end of a similar burst of crude propaganda.
Still, to give the devil his due, this restoration of the King's Theatre is more than welcome. Since it became clear that Edinburgh was never going to build its opera house, opera performances have been divided between the huge and ugly Playhouse, built between the wars as a mammoth cinema, and quite without charm and character, and the ever more tatty King's with its wholly inadequate orchestra pit. In recent years the King's has been more and more depressing, the build- ing having the air of a provincial rep sliding towards skid row. Now the council, which owns the theatre, has spent £1.25 million on restoring the auditorium to its old Edwardian elegance, on installing new seating and providing an orchestra pit capable of accommodating 90 musicians. Moreover, the job has been completed on time, contrary to forecasts which had prompted the Festival to make a provision- al booking of the Theatre Royal, Glasgow. The new interior should be worth seeing it includes copies of the original art nouveau glass pendant lightshades hand- made in the glass department of Edinburgh College of Art. The theatre re-opens with
Edinburgh Festival 1985
Allan Massie
the Opera de Lyon's productions of Chab- rier's L'Etoile and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande.
Frank Dunlop has pursued his predeces- sor's practice of taking a theme for the Festival, a practice actually introduced by Lord Harewood. This year's is the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland, and, if it is less glittering, less concentrated and almost certainly much less illuminat- ing, than John Drummond's last effort, Vienna 1900, it is nevertheless full of interest. On the music side in particular, there is the chance to hear more Debussy and Ravel in three weeks than most people might normally expect to manage in three years.
Interestingly the Scottish contribution is particularly strong, in contrast to the fre- quent grumble that there is very little Scottish in the Edinburgh Festival. I have always found this grumble silly, consider- ing that the most interesting and important part of the Festival is to show us in Scotland some of the best of what the world has to offer, and that showing Scotland to the visiting world takes second place to this. Nevertheless, there is much that is Scottish presented here which few have had the opportunity to see before.
That hardly applies to Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites by Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount. This theatrical classic from the brilliant, if brief, Scottish Renaissance (the real one, not Hugh MacDiarmid and Co's 1920s revival) was one of the great suc- cesses of the early Festivals in Tyrone Guthrie's production. It was revived last year and that production is being given 12 performances again. No play, except poss- ibly Bill Bryden's Mysteries, has better exploited the resources of the Assembly Hall, and it should be a 'must' for those who have not seen it, as it will be again for many who have already enjoyed it. There is also an interesting revival of The Wallace by Sydney Goodsir Smith originally com- missioned for the 1960 Festival. Smith, born in New Zealand, educated at Malvern and Oxford, adopted Scots (or 'Lallans' as it was generally called in the 1940s) as his poetic language; he was a delightful and much-loved man, who spawned anecdotes — once, hungover, he made his way into an Edinburgh Bank, and, deceived by the marble and mahogany, leaned over the counter and asked the cashier for a pint. His gift was for the lyric or monologue rather than for drama, and few have claimed that The Wallace is a great play. But it contains much splendid patriotic rhetoric, and for many, its revival will arouse happy memories of the smaller and more intimate early Festivals, when, long before the liberalisation of the licensing laws, which act has perhaps done more than anything else to justify to Sassenach visitors Edinburgh's claim to be a Euro- pean city, performers and members of audiences would congregate in the Festival Club after the evening's shows, where they would be likely to find such as Compton Mackenzie, Eric Linklater, Moray Mac- Laren and Sydney Goodsir Smith himself holding court.
Yet this year the most attractive Scottish contributions are in the visual arts. The Scottish Museum of Modern Art has a magnificent retrospective of S. J. Peploe, a painter hardly known perhaps in England — partly because Scottish collectors were smart enough to snap up most of his work and keep it. The National Gallery has A Tribute to David Wilkie and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is showing The Treasures of Fyvie Castle, which contains a wonderful group of Raeburn's, Edin- burgh's own greatest painter. At the Royal Scottish Museum in Chambers Street, there is a collection of French furniture and china, much of which found its way into Scottish ducal and baronial houses after the Revolution; there is a magnificent tea-service belonging to Napoleon I, however, never seen in Britain before.
Finally, despite the efforts of the district council, the city itself provides unending pleasures to the eye. For three weeks in the year it becomes again what it always claims, often unconvincingly, to be: a true capital. Oh, yes, there is also the Fringe, round about a thousand performances and shows, half or more probably tripe; a few gems. Follow the Scotsman reviewers cautiously is the best advice. There is a Book Festival too in Charlotte Square and of course the Tattoo for the 36th time with the Hong Kong police and the Navy Display team as well as the massed pipes and drums.
Previous page
