Newsflash – the Edinburgh International Festival is fun!

I so enjoy living in Edinburgh and festival time is one of my favourite times of year. I’ve been here almost seven years now and still get excited by the incredible buzz, energy and excitement that characterise the city during August. OK, you can’t walk along the Royal Mile at more than a snail’s pace, can’t get served in shops without waiting an age, can’t get a table anywhere decent without booking and taxis…? Forget it! But those inconveniences are a small price to pay for the magic of the festivals.

However, I must say that up until now I’ve paid lip service to the grand dame of festivals the EIF. Yes, I’ve delighted in the fabulous fringes of the book, jazz, film, art, and of course Fringe festivals but have carefully avoided the heavyweight seriousness of EIF.

What I heard yesterday at the EIF press launch though, is about to change all that. I heard it from the horse’s mouth, from Jonathan Mills himself. Yes, the Edinburgh International Festival is fun. And the programme seems to bear him out. My hot tips for this year are:

Opera - Candide
Theatre – Poppea and Mabou MinesDoll House
Dance - On danse
Music – The Tiger Lilies A Tribute (of sorts) to Monteverdi

Leornado Bernstein’s Candide will be the opening show on 10th August, two days earlier than usual. Mills described it as “made in the shadow of Broadway, created at the time of the McCarthy trials… enormously witty and a great deal of fun but a very savage satire at the same time”. Candide not only provides a dramatic opener it also closes the Festival at the Bank of Scotland Fireworks night on 2nd September.

While many people are rightly excited about the return to the Scottish stage after 17 years of Alan Cumming, who stars as Dionysus in the National Theatre of Scotland’s The Bacchae, I’ll be queuing up for Poppea – a contemporary reworking of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea). A heady mix of passion, politics, love and sex it’s been described as “Cole Porter meets Monteverdi by way of burlesque”. The original text is sung, spoken, whispered and screamed. I’m so looking forward to this one, a definite must-see.

Mabou Mines Dollhouse is an incredibly exciting production. Lee Breuer’s adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is set in a doll’s house. What will give real visual impact are the dimensions of the cast and set – the women are all over 5’ 7” while the then men are all under five feet and the set is proportioned for the men, leaving the women to fit in. A highly charged drama commenting on Victorian sexual politics which has resonance today.

On Danse combines a cocktail of contemporary dance styles with the delightfully decadent world of eighteenth century composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. There are bodies on stage and on screen in this innovative production which Le Monde describes as “A visual treat, enhancement for the soul”.

The Tiger Lilies tribute of sorts is an inspired idea and I salute whoever came up with it. It’s a bit of dangerous excitement on the EIF programme and I love the warning issued in the programme “Please note the Tiger Lilies have been known to use bad language, very bad language indeed”. Well, I just can’t wait to see this cult Vaudeville trio who have apparently “delighted and shocked audiences around the world with their slick, dark cabaret style, deranged comic madness and brazen theatrics”. The mind boggles!

Well EIF might be 60 this year but it’s showing no signs of age. Under the leadership of Jonathan Mills, pictured “wearing the programme” it’s exciting, vibrant, provoking and surprising, with no fewer than 6 World Premières. This year, instead of staying in the Fringe, I’m going to be diving right in to Festival Proper and I hope if you’ve only dabbled in the past, you’ll be joining me in a full frontal assault on the EIF programme.

You can read our profile of Jonathan Mills here, when he spoke to Christine Richard last month.