A genial night of storytelling (could use more wow factor)
📍Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh
📅14 Oct
💷 From £5
🕖 7:30pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 2 hours (including interval)
🗣️ Performers: Mark Borthwick, Ailsa Dixon and David Hughes
🎂 5+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets
A fascinating, and apt idea for a night of traditional storytelling, Speak Out the Other welcomed its audience as members of the fey court (Fairie to the uninitiated). Set before them were the 3 Young Edinburgh Storytellers (YES): Mark Borthwick, Ailsa Dixon, and David Hughes. Each were challenged to tell a tale so wonderous as to earn their freedom from an unending booking as courtly entertainers to an immortal crowd. The audience, bedecked in green ribbons and silvered ash-seed wings (gifted on entry) played said undying judges.
The three bards certainly did their part, each taking a turn to hold centre stage with a story of their choosing. Hughes opened with an old Celtic legend concerning Fionn mac Cumhaill, and ‘The Lad of the Skins’, taking the rather earnest story of derring-do, and injecting more than a little modern mirth into the telling. Next up, Borthwick told of a remarkable midwife, renowned for her skill, and summoned to a eye-opening birth; and discovering long-hidden truths about her village, and its people. Dixon closed the opening act with a fun, modern, if unthreatening twist on the ‘Green Knight’, tester of valour amongst the court of King Arthur.
Borthwick’s tale was the most accomplished, his telling deftly straddling performance and familiarity; his story finding that trickiest of things: an ending which satisfactorily fails to answer every question. All three added musical talents (particularly Dixon on both Harp, and Cello), to create a truly friendly atmosphere.
The post-interval (post-judging – Dixon won her freedom handily) act, saw all 3 come together in a grand telling of Tam Lin. Now all tales change in the telling, but there’s always a danger when injecting modern sensibilities into old tales. Despite some neatly choreographed interactions, and unmistakable enthusiasm, much of the simple beauty of the story was thus lost. Not every villain requires redemption, and some old love stories wither before the fires of modern cynicism. Better to tell new stories, than re-work the old; better to be more risky in your endeavours, than playing to sentiment.
Which isn’t to say their Tam Lin wasn’t well executed, it was just rather safe. The audience were certainly greatly entertained, and provided fulsome applause when the storytellers fell silent. Taken as part of the wider programme during the Storytelling Festival there was more than enough talent on show to justify the show’s inclusion.
However, an opening concert has a greater function with regards a festival, a shop window for festivities to come, and a mouth-watering appetiser to stimulate further attendance (and ticket purchases.) In this regard, the show managed only one lip-service mention of other events to follow. There was no welcoming address from the organisers, no explicit joy at opening this internationally faced artistic & cultural endeavour. An opening event should blow an audience away, not shy from profundity for example, in favour of easy comedy. An opening concert must, above all things, wow, thus wetting the appetite for more.
Now, this first night audience was rich in other storytellers (particularly acts appearing later in the Festival), and so perhaps it was in playing to the in-crowd, that the show failed to look outwards enough. Nonetheless this was a fine event, based on an intriguing idea, and executed comfortably by three multi-talented young storytellers.
(Featured Photography Credit: Scottish International Storytelling Festival)
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