the first last

An evening of brave new appearances and big goodbyes.

My friend's new play launched at the Pleasance theatre while other friends played a farewell gig downstairs in the bar. What are the chances.. Tim the fiddler was meant to be at both. Time machines not being handy he found a stand-in to play upstairs for the play while he was on-stage for the gig. The programme described him as "currently performing with the Badwills". He certainly was and still doing so when the play finished.

So first the band. The picture is Simone Caffari and the badwills and dancers in the Pleasance Cabaret bar, where I was lucky enough to catch them after the play. Jamie the drummer is heading back home to a theology post at a uni there. He's the first the Americans I know to leave, a few more are due to head off at the end of the month. Edinburgh is a great town for such cultural collisions. Hope the memory of wild gypsy dancing sticks to him like the sweat on the walls. A glimpse of pulsing bright life to cheer him up. Certainly did for me.

Onto the first. I've seen Elspeth's struggles to get her Hebridean fuelled story onto a page, into a director, through actors, vibrate through musicians, land onto a stage and in front of an audience for about 6 months. She wrote it, produced it, stars in it, sings it and has aced it. The first night was fantastic, despite the epic battle in the second half between the cast and 25 beltin' beltane drummers in the bar below us. (they were the support act.. oops)

The idiot in the wall is a burning peat block of a story A dark fable pitching the age old folk wisdom of the islands against the encroaching "edifying" forces of modernisation, and sister against sister when one returns to the Island in 1919. It's a love story, a tragedy and an education in the strange beauty of Gaelic songs, sayings and stories. My good friend Simon also stars as the eponymous idiot. The title is from a Gaelic saying that's a bit like the village idiot . It refers to the custom of caring for vulnerable adults as if they were children, so positioning them at the warmest part of the house, on the wall that separates the livestock from the living space. When the idiot's strange visions start to get a little too real to be ignored, the consequences are shocking and savage.

.. we have to dance higher than the waves and sing louder than the wind.

Funny how downstairs the hot blooded meds were doing exactly the same thing. The play mentions a peat hearth that hasn't went out in 200 yrs. Elspeth's dad's not only coached all the actor's to speak and sing in Gaelic, but also provided the stories and Hebridean history research that sparked the story in the first place. A flame has been passed and rekindled anew.