Various venues, Leith, June 28th 2012 4 stars On a rare evening of summer sun, for one night only, Leith Walk itself became a little piece of live art promenade theatre it's sort of always been. From Whitespace and Superclub in Gayfield Square at the top to Henderson Halls in South Leith Parish Church at the left of the bottom, some nineteen largely bespoke venues from the Windsor Buffet to Oscar's Alterations, Leith Walk Barber's Salon and beyond played host to a cavalcade of live music and pop-up exhibitions that fused a civic and social experience with an artistic one to expand the aesthetics of community spirit in the best sense of that much overused phrase. Individual events were sometimes rough and not always ready, but in their willingness to experiment with form, content and circumstance, facilitated an explosion of noisy life that captured a sense of what's going on artistically in Leith – and indeed Edinburgh – away from the city's more august institutions and designated cultural quarters. The sound may have been a mess for much of the after-show party headlined by Remember Remember's mighty Steve Reich for indie kids routine, but seeing the multitude of chit-chatting auteurs, rogues, vagabonds and other creative types in the same room makes you realise what a glorious playground the neighbourhood's become. This was the city's real avant-garde out in force. The List, July 2012 ends
When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid
Comments