Published in the Scotsman
NOT content with running an ambitious international programme in the
former Dick Vet, Summerhall’s artistic director Rupert Thomson is paying
homage to the city he made his home 13 years ago in a delicate and
beguiling one-man show that’s somewhere between walking tour and art
installation.
A
tall man in a suit, he meets us in the foyer and launches into the
performance without introduction. He was born in Manchester, he explains
but, like so many of us, it was the Scottish capital to which he
gravitated and fell in love with.
He takes us upstairs to a series
of rooms – one decked out as kitchen, one as artist’s garret, the third
a gloomy loft. Each space represents a stage in his engagement with
Edinburgh itself. The kitchen signifies the home, a place to share food,
stories and word games. The garret stands for the imagination,
somewhere for daydreams and creative leaps. And the loft is a metaphor
for the unconscious, a mysterious room of brief erotic visions.
As we
travel, Thomson offers a mixture of personal anecdotes and philosophical
musings. He considers the architectural allure of Edinburgh and the
psychogeography of the towering Old Town, the streets of Leith and the
Waverley trains that cut straight into the city’s heart. This is a city
where he felt immediately at home, even as a six-year-old visitor, yet
he also sees it as a place of loss, a home that conceals a terrifying
abyss.
Lest this sound too heady, he roots his monologue in
stories of romance and community, asking us to share our own visions of
this beguiling capital. Those people who ask why Edinburgh of all cities
should have become home to the world’s largest arts festival may well
find the answer in this subtle and warming show.
Star rating: * * * *
© Mark Fisher, 2012
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