For three weeks this summer a venerable Scottish city attracts the best and brightest dance, drama and music in the land – this even as the London Olympic Games wind down. It’s time for the 66th Edinburgh International Festival, an event that should see some 12,000 souls pack the city’s venues the first weekend alone.
Tonight, Thursday, Aug. 9, the festival takes off in spectacular fashion at Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh’s city center extinct volcano. That’s the site of NVA’s Speed of Light, a participatory, pulsing, light and sound show that sets the tone for the festival. Audience members grasp light sticks which emit sound, this as hundreds of runners clothed in light suits sew streams of living light around the ancient volcano. Wow.
Friday, Aug. 10 it’s time for timeless music at Usher Hall, and it just so happens this is Frederick Delius’ 150th anniversary. In the composer’s honor the festival opens up with A Mass of Life, perhaps the man’s most ambitious creation.
Saturday night it’s on to the festival’s new Lowland Hall at the Royal Highland Centre. This is where great drama takes top billing. This being Scotland, it’s hard to come up with a more compelling play than Macbeth. This one is an electrifying Polish adaptation directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna.
There will be shows across the city Saturday: a sexy, scintillating adaptation of Eugene Onegin’s Tatyana at the Edinburgh Playhouse, Waiting for Orestes: Electra at King’s Theatre and the one-man play Watt at the Royal Lyceum.
The Edinburgh International Festival 2012 itself runs through Sept. 2. That affords you an opportunity to get over there and get plugged in. United Airlines offers twice-daily nonstop 727-200 service from its Newark Liberty International Airport megahub to Edinburgh this time of year.
(Image: Alastair 2008)
