EIF reviews: Dusk | Buddha Passion | The Lost Lending Library | Ogresse | Stefan Jackiw and Friends

Our critics’ verdicts on the International Festival’s opening weekend

THEATRE

Dusk *****

Lyceum Theatre, until 8 August

Dusk, a brilliant and disturbing update of Lars Von Trier's Dogville by the acclaimed Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy.

IT’S 20 years, this year, since Lars von Trier’s ground-breaking film Dogville first appeared, dividing opinion both with its bleak, anti-naturalistic style - filmed entirely in studio, with minimal set and props - and with its grim vision of the limits of the human welcome to strangers. Von Trier set his story in a version of small-town America; but now, the acclaimed Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy opens the Edinburgh International Festival theatre programme with her brilliant and disturbing stage re-working of the Dogville story in a 21st century European context, for the Comedie de Geneve.

Dusk therefore features a (mainly) white European company of actors trying to adapt to the introduction of a new member, while also making a film about a small community’s response to the arrival of a migrant, fleeing from human rights abuses in her own country; and over a hundred piercingly memorable minutes, Jatahy’s brilliant international ensemble - including Julia Bernat as the stranger Grace, Matthieu Sampeur as the director Tom, and Philippe Duclos as the old man of the community, Jack - negotiate the darkening landscape of the relationship between community and newcomer.

At first, there is welcome and even celebration; but soon, the transactional nature of that acceptance becomes clear, with Grace increasingly viewed with suspicion, expected to work for very little, and treated as an unsatisfactory servant, while the price of acceptance furtively demanded by the men of the community becomes ever more predictable.

In the end, Grace tells the truth of her experience both to the community, who broadly reject it, and then, in a profoundly moving finale, to us; and it’s part of the power of this magnificent and meditative piece of theatre to leave the final question open, as to whether we will truly hear, accept and respond to Grace’s history of pain and exploitation - or will close our minds like the community in the story, and abandon ourselves to a future shaped by inhumanity and violence.

Joyce McMillan

THEATRE

The Lost Lending Library ****

Church Hill Theatre Studio, until 27 August

AS THE show begins - in a wood-panelled corner at Church Hill Theatre - it seems that the Lost Lending Library really is lost, in this magical show for children by London-based immersive theatre stars Punchdrunk. Our small audience of 20 or so - adults and children - are warmly welcomed by enthusiastic apprentice lPenny; but when we try to enter what looks like the library door, we find it has vanished, and the adventure begins.

So first, we have make up a story of our own, inspired by some exciting objects on Penny’s trolley; then, messages start to arrive from the library - which is always in motion - suggesting we search for the new entrance. There’s a treasure hunt for clues, a hidden door into a magical new space, and a chance to do some more storytelling with the lovely Peabody, curator of the huge imaginary library’s miscellaneous section.

And if the show - co-written and directed by Mia Jerome and Peter Higgins, with terrific sound by Stephen Dobbie - is almost too packed with incident to allow the young audience time to explore the library’s lovingly crafted spaces, it still offers a glorious hour of theatre for young Festival-goers, packed with fun, imagination, and the fierce passion for storytelling that almost every child shares, and instantly understands.

Joyce McMillan

MUSIC

The Opening Concert: Buddha Passion ****

Usher Hall

There was a palpable aura of anticipation in the packed audience readying itself for the opening concert in Nicola Benedetti’s first Festival as artistic director. Her role on the night was momentary - a friendly on stage welcome before heading to a balcony seat beside her mother - but her engaging, circumspect influence was immediately soaked up in a largely impressive Scottish premiere of Chinese-American Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion, featuring the RSNO, the Edinburgh Festival and RSNO Youth Choruses and a bristling array of classical and traditional solo performers, conducted by the composer.

There was spectacle, not just from a strikingly visual performance that had choristers laughing, clapping, gasping and tinkling Chinese bells, and an exotic cameo exquisitely danced by pipa player Chen Yining, but also experienced aurally through a score reflective of Dun’s own life experience, ancient Chinese tropes collated within a Western, and to a growing extent Hollywood, soundtrack.

Inspired by the extravagance of Buddhist murals in China’s Mogao Caves, Dun’s Passion is set out in six acts, a two-hour quasi-operatic characterisation of Buddha’s doctrine of compassion. What impressed most was the strength with which Dun’s vital self-belief translated into a response wholly at ease with the music’s hefty challenges.

From the Festival Chorus, the richness and intensity of the many religioso chants was haunting; the children’s chorus rang piercingly with ecstatic naivety. The orchestra took full advantage of the score’s restless jumble of post-Puccini, John Williams and a hint of Broadway in its eruptive motorised finale. Among the soloists, soprano Louise Kwong and mezzo-soprano Samantha Chong were exhilarating. The stentorian throat singing of khoomei overtone vocalist Batubagen added a visceral mysticism.

If anything, Buddha Passion is a tad too long, noticeably slow in building up steam. And was the interval necessary? Probably, but not for musical reasons.

Ken Walton

MUSIC

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Ogresse ****

Festival Theatre

Drawing on Haitian goddess myths and the all-too-real historical horror story of Sarah Baartman, aka 19th century freakshow attraction the Hottentot Venus, US singer/composer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s song cycle Ogresse marshalled diverse musical styles and tonal shifts with seamless storytelling skill and mischievous personality at its UK premiere.

Salvant, looking every inch the goddess herself in extravagant golden robes and glittering laurel headdress, fronted a 13-piece orchestra, including banjo, marimba and melodica – not your average set-up for not your average fairytale of a lovelorn woodland giantess who takes on all-comers with her supersized appetite.

Salvant sang as narrator and inhabited the roles of the ogresse and a couple of curious townsfolk with an impish humour which elicited chuckles from the audience, occasionally diverting to her first language, French, while teasing out themes of prejudice, acceptance and desire, and shapeshifting musically from Judy Garland-like old school musical theatre to vaudeville playfulness, dramatic dissonance and noirish folk.

The entire piece was embellished with Salvant’s own naïve animation in warm pink hues and, if that was not quite enough smart artistry from this talented auteur, she had also designed the colourful floral banners which brightened up the theatre foyer with yet another layer of vibrancy.

Fiona Shepherd

MUSIC

Stefan Jackiw & Friends *****

Queen’s Hall

The EIF’s Queen’s Hall concerts started not with a showy pronouncement but with a long silky whispered note. Sir James McMillan’s Violin Sonata, played here by Stefan Jackiw, explores the instrument - and the William Soutar poem that inspired it – with great beauty, balancing caress and choppy aggression, skipping violin dance and shadowy weaving piano. The music talks of love, of energetic passion, of animated erotic discussion before the piano’s slow chords persuade the violin away from its chippy outbursts, to sink panting onto pale low lines.

In Charles Ives’s piano trio, Jackiw and pianist Orion Weiss were joined by cellist Sterling Elliot, a player whose sound invoked a hug of dark warmth. Ives rolls out a fantastical melee of Americana: New England yawning conversational pretension and rollicking colliding brass bands resolve untimately into Mendelssohnian serenity – what the composer’s bewildered Yale mentors would have perhaps deemed “proper music”. A fine piece of chaos and reflection.

Then to Brahms, with violist Jessica Bodner joining for a superb celebration of the G minor quartet’s great music between friends of rare mutual musical understanding. Where do we go from here? If this is our start, onwards to more challenges and triumphs.

Mary Miller