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Haven’t quite worked out my policy* on blogging about shows I see in Edinburgh, yet, nor do I really have two spare hours to rub together to do so anyway… So expect sporadic at best. Will talk about things I love though. And Oh Fuck Moment (or ‘the show on at 5:30’ as the usher at St. George’s West demurely put it when she had to gather us together) is definitely one of them.
Supportively participative, by turn extremely funny, poignant, breathtaking, and wince-inducing as anything I’ve seen for a long while. And some fucking amazing writing. Chris Thorpe and Hannah Walker sit around a board meeting type table in a brightly lit magnolia coloured room with no windows, and talk to you about fuck ups. Really, monumental, absolutely no-way-back, fuck ups. And ask you about yours (mine was rubbish, I’m glad I didn’t read it out) and talk to you about chaos, and society, and how we learn from stupid, human mistakes, and how we like to pretend ‘we’re perfect beings who occasionally fuck up. Not Fuck Ups who occasionally do something perfect’.
It also had this amazing line. Which the second it came out of Hannah’s mouth I knew was Chris’, though only later did I really know how much.
‘He smoked cigarettes like they were an antidote to death’ (paraphrased, with apologies)
My best friend smokes like that. He also thinks he’s a fuck up. Because of a couple of things he did in his life which he can’t undo. Including not visiting his mother just before she died. When he was 15. 15. I wish we lived in a society that grew people who could forgive themselves for fuck ups like that. A society in which ‘fuck ups’ were more accepted would be one with much better politicians, press, and ensuing #ukriot debates, for a start.
And we would know who at the National Theatre called someone a ‘cunt’, too.
Today: Alma Mater, After the End, Alvin Sputnik, Bryony Kimmings, (g)host city, and Paper Disco.
P.S. It’s proper beautiful here.
*policy? Shut the fuck up, Hannah.