BEST OF THE YEAR
What were my favourite entertainment moments of 2015?
From a purely personal perspective 2015 has been one of the most enjoyable years of my life. It's wonderful to be back living in my home city again, not least because there are so many things to do. Whilst I've had fun posting in this blog over the past twelve months, it's been the other blog I began in February which perhaps best reflects how much there has been to relish in the twelve months just gone by.
Go Live gave me a chance to combine two of my favourite hobbies - writing, and going to see live performances. Since I get pleasure from the former, and spend a great deal of time on the latter, why not try my hand at writing reviews? I don't claim it to have been any great success, but I do love the challenge and have no plans to stop anytime soon.
At the start I thought I'd write about every live event I went to, plus any films I saw in the cinema. At first I included reports of ice hockey matches, but this was soon dropped. I don't think I have any future as a sports writer! (And hockey now plays such a big part of our winter lives that it would dominate the blog if I let it....) So the blog concentrates on music and comedy gigs, plays and films.
The very first post was actually, bizarrely, two totally unconnected reviews in one. Not a mistake I've repeated since. I came closest to breaking the pattern in August, when I saw over 60 Fringe shows and simply finding the time to write the reviews became a problem on occasion. But they're all there....
Today it's time to look back over all of those reviews and recall what were my favourites - in Comedy, Music, Drama and Film. In doing so I see I've reviewed 51 comedy gigs, 45 music gigs, 27 plays and 31 films. (And 7 ice hockey match reports.) Oh, and one oddity that doesn't quite fit into any of the above.
1) Comedy
The easy answer would be Mark Thomas who once again demonstrated his genius for combining radical politics with gut wrenching laughter. But I'm going to go for someone who I'd never seen before and who has stuck in the memory like no other. George Egg : Anarchist Cook was a stand up show like no other as he produced a delicious three course meal before our eyes using cooking implements that can be found in a hotel room. Imaginative, instructive and hilarious.
Mind you, there have been so many other great comic moments from the likes of Mark Steel, Stu & Garry, Sarah Kendall and our mate Aidan Goatley that the choice wasn't as simple as I make it sound.
2) Music
As with comedy I could simply choose my all time favourite band, Lau, and the two magnificent performances they gave in London and Edinburgh. But, as above, I'm going to go with an act that was new to me and left a big impression. So I'm choosing Himmerland who were one of the most original outfits I encountered combining Danish folk, jazz and Ghanaian rhythms. Superb entertainment and great studio album too. (Plus, bizarrely, reviewing them resulted in my words being translated into Danish. A surreal experience.)
Other great bands I saw this year? Dallahan, Dean Owens, Viper Swing,Woody Pines.... it would be so easy to go on and on.
3) Drama
Seeing Jonathan Pryce as The Merchant of Venice at The Globe was certainly memorable, but the story was too weel kent to make any real emotional impact. So my choice is a far less ambitious production staged in a square box of a room in a modern Edinburgh University building. Hannah and Hanna was a simple, low budget, two hander with a powerful message.
Honourable mentions go to The Driver's Seat, Hotel Paradiso, Tracks of the Winter Bear and all ten of the productions in the A Play, A Pie and A Pint series.
4) Film
Only one winner for me here. Hector has stayed with me like no other big screen experience this year. Peter Mullan is magnificent, the story life affirming, a tale that needed telling.
I also loved Welcome to Me, 13 Minutes, Suffragette and Still Alice.
5) Book
No, I don't do book reviews, but I do read a lot. Forty three this year, down from previous years, but maybe because I've been out so much! They cover a wide variety of genres and periods, although only one was non-fiction. The most memorable of these was The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan. Telling the story of Anais, a teenager in a young offenders institution, it's a powerful reminder of how easy it is for anyone to become one of society's outcasts, and how little we try to understand the people our systems fail.
Other memorable novels have been Learning to Lose by David Trueba, The Kiln by William McIlvanney and Alice in Exile by Piers Paul Read.
6) Hockey Match
I might not write match reports any longer, but I couldn't refrain from comment on what's become such an important part of my life. At it's best live sport can provide all the drama of a Shakespeare - heroes and villains, elation and despair, ugliness and beauty, uncertainty and commitment. All of these were fully delivered in the Edinburgh Capitals match against Cardiff Devils on 4 December. The Welsh side took a one goal advantage from the first period, dominated the second with another score early on before making it three just before the hooter went. There was little more than 10 minutes left on the clock when Caps got their first, a maiden EIHL goal for young Sean Beattie. They got a second with less than 3 minutes left, and the equaliser came with only 28 seconds on the clock. There's drama for you. Overtime saw Caps complete an unlikely comeback with a Jacob Johnston goal after only 24 seconds. What a night.
And finally....
Just in case you think that everything I get to see turns out to be wonderful I should maybe mention some of the turkeys of the year. North v South was a tedious film to endure. Sparrow Folk weren't as funny as they thought they were. Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour was a musical drama that never got my interest. And In the Pink didn't seem to know what they wanted to be. But the bin bag of the year award has to fall to 'comedy' show Relatively Normal, an hour of my life I have no wish revisit. Dire.
Here's to a hugely entertaining 2016.
Thursday 31 December 2015
Thursday 24 December 2015
You're never too old....
THE SINGER, NOT THE SONG
One such occasion never fails to make me laugh when I recall it. Barbara, as you do, started to sing along to the track she was listening to. In saying 'sing' I am being extremely generous. There were noises, a few of which resembled something like a tune. Which tune was impossible to say until I heard a fragment of lyric, words I recognised, and bust out laughing that what I was hearing was in any way connected to the song I knew so well.
Fast forward to the present. Back in April Barbara joined a local choir. No auditions, just find the vocal range that suits you best and away you go. Just for fun, have a good laugh, enjoy yourselves. Except. They sometimes get asked to give public performances, perhaps three or four times a year. And then it becomes more than just a bit of fun, when there's an actual audience going to be there.
The choir provides the lyrics and the music, broken down into the various voice types, for people to download and practice at home. So Barbara has got into the habit of taking her phone into the bathroom in the morning and singing along to the songs they are currently learning.
Guess what (part 1)? She loves it.
Guess what (part 2)? The noises coming out of that bathroom sound pretty good (albeit a bit odd, as there seem to be a lot of passages that are more ooooh, dum dum dum and aaaah than actual words). They sound like songs.
To date she's taken part in three live performances. The first two were outdoors, so the wind played a role, and the rehearsals didn't seem to have been taken all that seriously, so nerves were there in abundance. Last weekend the choir performed in the National Museum, and the preparation for this one was much more thorough. Even I could tell, just from listening to those toilet rehearsals, that it was going to be better for Xmas.
Is there a moral to this tale? Well, sort of. There's an 'old dog, new tricks' vibe going on here, don't you think? Or is just to say that you should ignore the laughter of your life partner and go and do what you want to do anyway....
And just in case you don't want to take my word for it, here's some video footage of the event. (It's not very good quality, and there a few slightly odd audience noises at times, but you'll get some idea of what it was like.)
Merry Xmas everybody, and an excellent 2016.
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