Edinburgh International Festival 2012 highlights
Highlights from the 2012 International Festival programme
2008: Macbeth
It’s the Scottish play in the country’s capital, but given a distinctly international perspective by TR Warszawa and director Grzegorz Jarzyna. Back at the EIF after a four-year absence (if you saw their 4.48 Psychosis, it’s unlikely you’ll have forgotten it), the company pitch Shakespeare’s macabre classic into a blood-soaked Middle Eastern conflict where morals are loose and murder is rampant.
Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre, 0131 473, 2000, 11–18 Aug (not 14 & 15), 7.30pm; 15 Aug, 2pm, £30–£35.
Batsheva Dance Company - Hora
They last stirred the festival in 2008 with the blazing Deca Dance, which featured the relatively rare sight of some members of an EIF audience on stage with the performers. Under the guidance of innovative choreographer Ohad Naharin (the man who developed the Gaga technique), Batsheva return with the visceral Hora, in which contemporary movement merges with ideas from the alien worlds of science fiction.
Edinburgh Playhouse, Greenside Place, 30 Aug–1 Sep, 7.30pm, £10–£30.
Deborah Colker Dance Company - Tatyana
A true clashing of cultures here as Brazil’s major dance company take on Eugene Onegin, Pushkin’s tale of obsession in 19th century Russia, and give it a very steamy Rio twist. As if that wasn’t enough of a festival thrill, music comes from Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Terry Riley.
Edinburgh Playhouse, Greenside Place, 11–14 Aug, 7.30pm, £10–£30.
Gulliver’s Travels
Following their staggering Faust of 2009, Romania’s Radu Stanca National Theatre of Sibiu have quite a daunting task ahead of them to match that. But something tells you that Silviu Purcarete’s company will relish the mission. xpect plenty antes to be upped as they take on Jonathan Swift’s satirical epic and bash around its themes of journey, dreams, exile and solitude.
King’s Theatre, Leven Street, 17–20 Aug, 8pm; 19 Aug matinee, 2.30pm, £12–£30.
Meine faire Dame: ein Sprachlabor
Theater Basel present this (very) loosely-based take on My Fair Lady, in which a Hungarian linguist discovers a somewhat sinister note whose various mysteries have to be solved quicksharp. This witty and quirky play features music from Wagner, Ravel and, of course, Bryan Adams.
Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre, 14 & 15, 19 Aug, 7.30pm; 17 & 18 Aug, 2pm, £25–£30.
Scottish Opera
To mark their half-century and as part of a long-term exploration into what the genre of opera might mean in the 21st century, Scottish Opera have brought together an extraordinary array of talent for four new works inspired by the likes of Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Hardy. Among those involved in this eclectic project are composers Craig Armstrong and James MacMillan, and writers Louise Welsh, Zoë Strachan and Michael Symmons Roberts.
Various venues, dates, times and prices.
Virgin Money Fireworks Concert
The spectacular finale to the festival season is never anything less than a musical and pyrotechnical extravaganza, and this year revolves around twin inspirations: the Diamond Jubilee and the World Shakespeare Festival. Garry Walker conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra through a quartet of pieces: two works by Walton, excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and Vaughan Williams’ evocation of folk standard ‘Greensleeves’.
Princes Street Gardens, 2 Sep, 9pm, £12.50–£27.50.
Wonderland
Vanishing Point are by no means the first to put their personal stamp on Lewis Carroll’s most famous writing, but this should be an interpretation that will sear itself on your mind long after this festival draws to a close. Tackling the modern concerns of fame, power and the mainstreaming of pornography, Wonderland portrays an uncompromising vision of the dark side to curiosity.
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Grindlay Street, 29 Aug–1 Sep, 7.30pm, £10–£30.