AUGUST, when Edinburgh is taken over by all things festival, is traditionally a quiet one for the city’s Royal Lyceum Theatre Company.
Typically, for the three-and-a-half weeks of the great arts jamboree, the company’s glorious Victorian playhouse plays host to productions from the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival, allowing the Lyceum’s artistic director David Greig and his team to prepare for their autumn season.
Not this year. During the 2022 events, the Lyceum will, for the first time ever, be producing a full festivals programme of its own.
The Lyceum at the Festivals offering will include three Festival Fringe productions and a new play, adapted from a prose fiction, being staged as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
This in addition to three major shows from the EIF programme.
On the Fringe, the Lyceum company will present the world premiere of the intriguingly titled Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel (August 6-28), which is written and performed by celebrated English dramatist Tim Crouch.
Played in the Lyceum’s studio theatre, the piece promises to be a fascinating collision between Shakespeare’s King Lear, stand-up comedy and virtual reality.
Crouch is well known to Scottish audiences for such brilliant shows as ENGLAND (which he performed with Hannah Ringham at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery during the Fringe back in 2007) and I, Malvolio (a superb, one-man take on Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night).
This latest work promises to be both compelling and innovative.
Also in the studio will be Blood and Gold (August 11-28). Written and performed by Scots-Kenyan storyteller Mara Menzies, the piece is an acclaimed contemplation of the legacy of colonialism and slavery.
Interweaving ancient mythology with modern storytelling, and alighting on matters of identity, this revival seems certain to speak powerfully to contemporary Scotland.
The Fringe element of the Lyceum’s programme is completed by a re-staging of a modern Scottish classic.
Performed in the Playfair Library in the Old College of Edinburgh University, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (August 3-28) is a gloriously original play that combines the border ballads of the Scottish Lowlands with ghost stories and live folk music.
Written by Greig – in the days before he was Lyceum director – and co-created with director Wils Wilson, this enchanting play had its first outings as a National Theatre of Scotland production in 2011.
Greig and Wilson are together again for this revival of a much-loved journey into Scotland’s traditions in poetry, music and storytelling.
Meanwhile, in the Book Festival programme, Scottish author David Keenan’s novel This Is Memorial Device (August 13-29) is adapted for the stage by esteemed director Graham Eatough. Performed in The Wee Red Bar venue, a short walk from the Lyceum, the production will star the leading Scottish actor, Paul Higgins.
A hallucinatory exploration of the exhilarations of youth in Airdrie in the 1980s, Keenan’s novel is a history of the fictional post-punk band Memorial Device.
Eatough’s production will include music and sound design by Stephen McRobbie of The Pastels (who were contemporaries of Memorial Device, or would have been, if the Airdrie band had ever existed).
In addition to these Lyceum productions, the company’s famous Grindlay Street playhouse will, as usual, be home to work from the International Festival programme. Counting and Cracking (August 8-14) promises to be an emotive sweep through a dramatic and turbulent history.
Set between 1956 and 2004, the play traces the lives of four generations of a Sri Lankan-Australian family. Involving performers from six countries, running to around three-and-a-half hours (including two intervals), the drama is performed in English, Tamil and Sinhalese.
Samsara (August 18-20) brings together British-Indian dancer Aakash Odedra and Chinese dancer Hu Shenyuan in a piece inspired by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Together, Odedra and Shenyuan will explore the concept of samsara (the idea of the never-ending wheel of life), which exists in both Buddhism and Hinduism.
Finally, You Know We Belong Together (August 24-27) marks the European Premiere of the Black Swan State Theatre Company of Western Australia production starring writer and actor Julia Hales.
Hales (who has Down’s syndrome), wants to know why no-one with Down’s Syndrome has ever appeared in her favourite TV soap Home and Away.
She is joined by six actors in what promises to be “a joyful celebration of community spirit and a call for greater inclusivity”.
Announcing the programme, Greig said: “I am absolutely delighted that this year the Lyceum will be taking part across the festivals and across the city. I hope our programme will add to the renewed vigour and vibrancy of Edinburgh in August.
“It is quite simply the best arts festival in the world, and I am proud our theatre is playing a larger role at this wonderful international showcase for creativity and storytelling.”
For full details of the Lyceum at the Festivals programme, visit: lyceum.org.uk
