**** (4 stars)
“A superb performance”
I’m so glad I caught the last night of the run – it was such an enjoyable show, on so many levels. I thought we were getting a storyteller and a musician: we got two of each!
Ailsa Dixon and Ffion Phillips are playing as we enter the library: Ailsa on the cello, Ffion on the guitar – a lively dance tune that invites us to take part in, rather than simply looking at, the performance that’s about to begin.
Back when time began…there was the old woman [cailleach] and the old man [bodach] at the mouth of the cave beside the rippling lake: she milks the deer and makes the crowdie which he shapes into tiny figures and together they carry them in the creel to the top of the mountain…
And the birds [aderyn] come: the gentle little songbirds, which take the crowdie figures from the bodach’s right hand and carry them off to the sleeping people for their dreams, and the birds of the battlefield, the eagles, crows and suchlike, who take the crowdie figures from the bodach’s left hand and carry them off to be the nightmares of the people who are tossing and turning in their beds…
Birds fill all the tales – birds big and small, noble and cunning – the tiny wren, the massive eagle, the iridescent starling and kingfisher, the subtle colouring of the wise old owl, the skeins of geese calling to each other as they cross the sky, and the redstart, now colourful but once the drabbest of the drab.
Words and music fill the tales – Welsh, Scots Gaelic and [thankfully] English – I have a tiny bit of Welsh courtesy of Duolingo and a friend who lives in Dolgellau, and much much less Gaelic thanks to a friend who lives on Islay. The languages glint and flicker like the flames on a hearth round which the storytellers gather, flow one into the other in speech and song, adding to the richness and colour of the narrative even when you don’t know what each word means. The music and song flow through the stories, weaving their own gentle magic too.
Birds argue who should be king; boys go hunting the wren; seven brothers turn into wild geese; news of a Welsh princess’s ill-treatment at the hand of her husband, the king of Ireland, is brought to her brother by the princess’s only friend, a starling; and the redstart gains its colourful plumage when it brings the gift of fire and warmth to humankind.
Ailsa and Ffion don’t simply take turns to tell their tales; they sell them together, swapping phrases, languages, and music as they weave their magic and hold us spellbound for the hour. There is light and darkness, joy and deep grief; and at the end of it all the redstart returns to the cailleach and bodach, bringing warmth and light to the cave beside the rippling lake back in the day when time began…
A superb performance from both women – I’m so glad I caught their show, and wish them the very best as they move south to tell their tales elsewhere: and haste ye back to Edinburgh for next year’s Fringe, please!
Aderyn / Bird, The Fringe, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Venue 30, Run Ended, for more information go to: Aderyn / Bird | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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