Book Festival 2024 round-up 1
Paul Bright re-excavated, Perambulations of a Justified Sinner, Lone Tree
by Hugh Simpson
The Edinburgh International Book Festival has moved home again for 2024, to its new (permanent) home at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, part of the Quartermile development at the old Infirmary.
This is a couple of minutes’ walk from the last site, and a stone’s throw from George Square, so the inevitable grumbling about it being ‘so far out’ will soon subside. The shock of having the large outside space overlooked partly by flats and hotels takes some getting used to, but the new venues (particularly the huge main Venue T) are well appointed, and having proper (and numerous) toilets is a bonus.
The Book Festival site in Quartermile. Pic EIBF
The most eagerly awaited theatre-related event at the Festival was surely Extraordinary Trash, the ‘theatre essay’ in collaboration with the NTS. Part of the festival’s strand celebrating the 200th anniversary of James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, this was a remembrance of the NTS and Untitled Projects’ 2013 production Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner. (See review: Justified and Modern)
Supposedly itself an exploration of earlier theatre productions, Paul Bright was a tricksy, modern and oddly faithful version of the book, exploring truth and lies, artifice and authorship.
archivist
Writer Pamela Carter and director Stewart Laing were once again responsible for this version, featuring the wonderful Adura Onashile as an archivist tasked with sifting through the detritus of the previous production and deciding what to save.
Unhappy about a production built on ‘lies’ and unfamiliar with the theatrical process, the archivist sought help from someone from that world. Who turned out, of course, to be the writer, director and performer Adura Onashile.
Pamela Carter, Adura Onashile and Stewart Laing. Extraordinary Trash.
To the previous ruminations on meaning, fiction authenticity and Scottishness were added new layers about representation, inclusion, emotion and why theatrical adaptations are ever attempted in the first place.
The era of ‘alternative facts’ has of course changed the landscape since 2013, but the new version of this ever-twisting tale was funny, witty, moving, always willing to undercut itself and suitably self-referential. The material about how you can’t trust Pamela Carter, her biography and her scurrilous diaries ‘when she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry’ are a fitting response to the original book.
Danny Hughes’s video and stage manager Fi Johnston added greatly to the impact of a hugely enjoyable and intelligent hour.
Perambulations of a Justified Sinner
Another part of the Sinner celebration is the Perambulations of a Justified Sinner, a mobile phone-led walking tour featuring audio and video content. Once booked and downloaded, the immersive tour can be done at your leisure and your own pace until Sunday 25 August, starting at the Futures Institute and ending in the Cowgate, walking around one-and-a-half miles along a (largely) flat route.
This is another response that is very much in the spirit of the book. The filmed scenes are written and directed by Ben Harrison with ‘editorial’ interventions by Louise Welsh in between. Dylan Wood is suitably conflicted as the anti-hero Robert Wringhim, with Sandy Bachelor as his heartier brother George and a quite brilliant Catriona Faint as the mysterious Gil-Martin. Joshua Knowles, Fletcher Mathers, Kirsty McDuff. Samuel Edgren, Lucy Doig and Scott Johnston complete the cast in scenes filmed atmospherically on location by Harrison and director of photography Ross Scott, with ominous music by Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite.
Perambulations of a Justified Sinner Screenshot.
The whole experience is heartily recommended, but there are a couple of tips for better enjoyment. You will need a good signal on your phone to download the tour; navigating the technology is pretty painless, although you will probably need to charge your battery fully beforehand with all the video content you will be watching. It is possible to borrow a device from the Book Festival if you enquire when booking, and subtitles can be accessed for all the content.
Hot tips
The recommended time of 80 minutes seems too short; better to allow two hours. It might take 80 minutes to watch and listen to all of the content, but you will be walking about, starting and stopping. Staring at your phone when walking through Festival crowds, or crossing George IV Bridge, is definitely not recommended.
The map directions are not always that easy to follow if you’re not familiar with Edinburgh. There are stickers when you reach the various locations, but they aren’t that easy to spot even if they haven’t been peeled off. I would recommend going from Chambers Street to the High Street via South Bridge or George IV Bridge rather than following the map’s directions, unless you are very familiar with the area. Looking for Borthwick’s Close from below is liable to leave you lost in the bins of Tron Square, which might chime with the tone of the book but otherwise isn’t much fun.
Fay Guiffo with David Paul Jones. Pic EIBF.
Ben Harrison is joint artistic director of Grid Iron, whose frequent collaborator David Paul Jones has composed a song cycle based on some of the nature poetry of Kathleen Jamie. The result, Lone Tree, is being performed twice at the Book Festival.
Another piece that owes at least part of its genesis to the Playing With Books events of years gone by, it features Jones on voice and keyboards, Fay Guiffo on violin, Justyna Jablonska on cello and sound designer Gabriel Kemp. Unashamedly lyrical and romantic, the music is built up from repeated piano figures, with evocative electronics and questing strings.
At times the violin is operating at the very upper limit of its register, as if searching for something it cannot reach. Jones seems to be similarly reaching for some unseen object,even physically at times.
filmic
There is something filmic about the music, which also has echoes of the wilder shores of pop music of the last 40 years. Although it doesn’t really sound anything like it, there is something about the feel of this music that is reminiscent of those extraordinary last two albums Talk Talk made after they stopped bothering the charts. Anyone who likes Beth Gibbons’ recent album Lives Outgrown will also appreciate this – although, once again, it doesn’t really resemble it.
Rather than trying to describe the effect of Lone Tree, it is probably better just to point out that it can be experienced again on Friday 23 August.
The Book Festival continues until 25 August.
Bookfest Website: https://www.edbookfest.co.uk
Perambulations of a Justified Sinner.
Sat 10 – Sun 25 August 2024
Daily: 9.30am – 8pm.
Tickets and download details: Book here.
Lone Tree
Fri 17 & Fri 23 August 2024
Both days: 6pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
ENDS
