Author: Brett Herriot

**** (4 stars)

“Absolutely fascinating”

I’m always delighted when I get the opportunity to thank an artist or performer in person for their work, and today was such an opportunity.  Ken Currie was in conversation with [retired] art historian Tom Normand.  The two have been friends for years, and Tom has been a witness to Ken’s success as an artist right from his early beginnings as a student at Glasgow College of Art.  As one of the ‘New Glasgow Boys’ Ken was famous in the art world in a way you might associate with being a member of a boy band today.

Unlike previous Scottish artists, Ken didn’t have to teach to make a living.  On the strength of an early exhibition, he was commissioned in 1987 to paint eight panels for the ceiling of Glasgow’s People’s Palace [famous as the home of Billy Connolly’s banana boots].  These paintings clearly demonstrated his interest in Scottish [and particularly Glaswegian] working people and of figurative art as opposed to the abstract styles in fashion at the time, especially among members of the Edinburgh art elite.

In subsequent years a change in Ken Currie’s style and technique began to be visible, with greater luminosity and more universal themes.  In 2002 the Scottish National Portrait Gallery [NPG] invited him to paint the portraits of three prominent oncologists – his first ever portrait commission.  The resulting painting has become the most popular and most visited painting in the gallery.  [It’s one I am constantly drawn to, and I’m feeling the need to see it again asap.]  Ken remarked that people’s reaction is almost always “fight or flight” – it’s an extraordinarily compelling work, with the three men appearing almost ghost-like against a dark and potentially menacing background.

It was fascinating listening to Ken talk about how the painting was made.  The two surgeons were far too busy to sit for him, so Ken spent hours watching them in the operating theatre.  [The third was concerned with research, and equally busy].  All three allowed him to take plaster casts of their faces, so he was able to study how light and shade fell on their faces and incorporate that into his picture. 

Later on he talked about a more recent, equally compelling addition to the NPG’s collection, Unknown man, a portrait of anatomist Susan Black, who is pictured with a shrouded cadaver.  This was not a formal commission, but painted ‘because he wanted to’.  His studio journal at the time, as he tried to make sense of all the things he had seen in the anatomy department in preparation for the work, contained musings about the difference between live bodies in the operating theatre and dead ones in the anatomy department – the latter no longer a living person but a human-shaped object”.

In the Q&A at the end of the session, Ken spoke of being completely incapable of “painting for relaxation”.  For him it is a compulsion: through it he releases his inner tension that comes from his concern for and interest in the many crises, political and otherwise, that surround us locally, nationally and globally.   He also quoted someone else’s observation that an artist only makes 50% of any work – the other 50% comes from the viewer.

Ken Currie: Paintings and writings is a book that arose out of correspondence between him and Tom Normand and draws extensively on Ken’s studio journals.  They show his mindset while working on a painting and is a daily record of his thoughts and comments on what’s going on in the world around him.  He never intended them for publication and stopped writing them for some time after the publication of the book.  He has now resumed – so maybe one day there will be a Ken Currie #2!

This was an absolutely fascinating hour which will result in a visit to the Portrait Gallery as soon as I can make the time.  This was the penultimate session in Luath Press’s ScotlandsFest series – I’m already looking forward to next year!!!

Scotland’s Fest, The Heart of Darkness – Ken Currie, Paintings and Writings, St Columba’s by the Castle (Venue 367) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/scotlandsfest-the-heart-of-darkness-ken-currie-paintings-and-writings

***** (5 stars)

“Simply Brilliant”

Life, the universe and Lothian buses conspired to make me miss this show yesterday: I am SO glad I was able to get to it today – it’s brilliant!

As one who’s spent a moderate amount of time auditioning for singing jobs, I was prepared to offer some sympathy to Sophie Fisher during her Ode to a casting director.  I wasn’t prepared for this acutely observed and superbly acted show, which had the audience in fits and at times, I suspect, suppressed sobs.  Certainly the applause at the end demonstrated appreciation both for the artistry of the show and the emotional rollercoaster ride its protagonist experienced.

Life as a struggling artist is bad enough if you have a loving, supportive family and dear ones.  If you don’t it’s total hell…. It’s a miracle our aspiring actress has continued to turn up for anything and everything for which she gets an audition, while shelling out a small fortune on coaching sessions of questionable value.  Her parents are eternally underwhelmed by all she is doing, convinced that she should have continued her law degree and become a solicitor, or at the very least an accountant.  Her boyfriend of eight months has no interest in her career or her as a person.  Her saccharine-voiced [and totally incompetent] agent can’t be bothered to ensure she has the script she needs for an audition: and as for offering any form of support or sympathy – forget it!  We are rooting for her every inch of the way – but will she continue with her resolve to be an actor, or will the mounting tsunami of criticism and discouragement drown her?

The auditions and acting classes themselves are continual exercises in maximum humiliation with minimum return,  every excruciating minute making us cringe still further.  Crisps, screaming Viking warriors, riding a rainbow to land on a sofa, non-drumming, ‘ordinary person’ dancing…

You’d think it couldn’t get any worse – until you encounter the partner exercises with what must be the world’s most un-giving, un-supportive, most self-obsessed wannabe actors.  And there is, of course, the boyfriend’s ‘caring and concerned’ ending of their relationship…. Sophie’s renditions of her acting partners [and the boyfriend] are absolutely spot-on: her co-star [and director]’s Method Acting á la Brando is priceless.

I don’t want to give anything away, but I must give a huge shoutout for the final two scenes – an absolute masterclass in transparent emotional sincerity.

Today’s show was a sell-out.  Don’t delay, get your tickets today!

An Ode To The Casting Director, The Penny Gilded Balloon Patter House (Venue 24), for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/an-ode-to-the-casting-director

***** (5 stars)

“A Triumph”

Utterly astounding! Brilliant, breathtaking, beautiful beyond belief…

Here the Orpheus legend was pared down to its very bones:  Euridice is dead on her wedding day, Orpheus is inconsolable.  Amor, the god of love, is moved by his grief, and permits him to go to the underworld to bring her back to life – but he must neither look at her nor speak until they are once more in the land of the living.  Orpheus braves the tormented spirits in Hades and arrives in the realm of the blessed spirits, where he finds his beloved, and tells her to come with him.  She cannot understand why he will neither look at her nor speak to her – does he no longer love her?  Her anguished pleading eventually overcomes his resistance: he turns, speaks – and she drops dead.  Even more grief-stricken, he longs for his own death.  Amor consoles him and rewards his great love by bringing Euridice back to life.  Cue general rejoicing.

Only in this production, it doesn’t quite turn out that way…  As the curtain rises, we see Orpheus manacled to a bed in a sterile white environment: what follows suggests that everything we see on stage is a product of his grief-stricken madness.  In a stark black and white environment, the only note of colour is the shocking red of Euridice’s dress – the colour of blood, of life itself.  Can love triumph over death, or is death the only certainty in this world…?

Superbly supported by the brilliant Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Laurence Cummings, Samantha Clarke and Iestyn Davies are joined on stage by a chorus of artists from Scottish Opera and Circa, an Australian-based ensemble of circus artists.  Their extraordinary display of acrobatics, tumbling, and aerial work bring involuntary gasps of amazement and apprehension from the audience. 

Orpheus is surrounded by bodies leaping, tumbling, writhing around his bed.  People build themselves into towers and the topmost members fall like stones to the floor, being caught, or curling themselves to safety at the last possible moment.  There’s a mesmerising piece of aerial work with two immensely long bands of cloth, and innumerable other feats both on stage and in the air that leave one’s jaw hanging open in disbelief. 

Even Orpheus is drawn into the action as he climbs ever higher over a pile of bodies on his journey to the realm of the blessed spirits, while Samantha Clarke in her role as Amor sings suspended in mid-air, as befits the god of Love.  The chorus are superb as they interact with Orpheus and moving the plot forward: thankfully they remain for the most part at stage level.

And weaving around all this is Gluck’s sublime music, expressing the deepest human emotions pared down to their basic essence.  Iestyn Devies is an incomparable Orpheus, his voice ringing clear and true and so full of pain it hurts to witness it.  And there’s the rub: while such anguish is being poured out, should there be the distraction of extraordinary feats of Circa?  Much of the time, it’s completely appropriate, giving physical shape to Orpheus’ torment – but in the most intense moments, it was an unwelcome distraction.

That aside, the production is a triumph.  Visually stunning, lit to perfection, shocking in its simplicity, small wonder the 3,000-strong Playhouse audience erupted in a storm of applause at the final curtain.

EIF, Gluck: Orpheus and Euridice, Edinburgh Playhouse, for more information go to: https://www.eif.co.uk/events/orpheus-eurydice