My Mother’s Funeral: The Show
It feels like Summerhall, the arts hub housed in the old veterinary college on the east side of the Meadows in Edinburgh, has been around for ever. The building has been there for more than a century, but the Dick Vet College only moved to its new campus south of Edinburgh 13 years ago, and new life breathed into the premises on the southside the following year. Sadly, early this year, the family trust that owns Summerhall announced that it was seeking new owners who may or may not want to continue to operate the venue as "a uniquely flexible multi-arts multidisciplinary set of exhibition and performances spaces to accommodate all creativity & cross-currents in our sciences & arts."
On the evidence of the last three days when I have visited a sun soaked Summerhall, it would be a great loss to Edinburgh should in the future this beautiful building be lost to "extensive mixed use re-development and refurbishment options including residential, boutique, hotels, offices, studios, and student housing, subject to the necessary consents". There is a welcome relaxed buzz about the place which you don't get in the likes of George Square or the Pleasance during August. This is the home of Richard Demarco's European Art Foundation. Rikki Demarco, co-founder of the Traverse Theatre, still working age 94, has exhibited at every Edinburgh Festival since 1952. Shunned by the establishment, he epitomises the true ethos of art.
Summerhall is also the home of Colin Sanderson, director of Artiscience. After viewing a few exhibitions on Saturday - Helen Denerly (beautiful), Sam Kissajukian (blissful), Robert McDowell (bonkers) - my wife & I took a wrong turning along a corridor and bumped into Mr Sanderson who asked if we wanted to see his library. What followed was a fascinating hour in his company as he explained the theory and practice of integrating and harmonising art and science. We left with a copy of The Scottish Refractory Industry, 1830-1980 by Kenneth W. Sanderson. This is what the Festival is all about.
And so to My Mother's Funeral: The Show. This is a Paines Plough production, a theatre group who have been consistent in bringing quality writing to the stage, at least since 2003 when I first saw Gregory Burke's The Straits. The play is performed in Paines Plough's own Roundabout theatre, a compact space which means that no seat is more than a couple of metres away from the stage.
My Mother's Funeral is about the inequalities around death and the cost of funerals. Not necessarily laugh out loud stuff you might think, but the subject is handled sympathetically by writer Kelly Jones and it is cleverly wrapped around the process of writing & pitching a play to an agent with some nice observations on class divide. Nicole Sawyerr is superb as an increasingly frantic bereaved Abigail. Between them, Debra Baker and Samuel Armfield play 18 parts.
Deservedly so this got a standing ovation which, as I've noted before, from an Edinburgh audience, is something else.
My Mother's Funeral: The Show at Summerhall, until 26th August
Image © Rebecca Need-Menear