2003 EIF Takes Flight with Stein's All-Star SeagullDate: 11 August 2003
The 2003 Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) officially opened yesterday in the Scottish captial. EIF - the parent to the much larger and more chaotic Edinburgh Fringe, which opened last weekend - runs from 10 to 30 August this year with its mix of opera, ballet, music and theatre from around the globe. The biggest highlight of EIF's theatre programme, a much-anticipated staging of Chekhov's 1896 classic The Seagull, opens tonight (11 August) at the King's Theatre. (Not to be confused with Steven Pimlott's revival of the play, which has just opened at Chichester Festival Theatre, the final production in that venue's annual summer season - See Reviews.)
The Edinburgh season for The Seagull, continuing to 23 August 2003, represents the only British performances of this production. The revival is co-produced with the Russian Drama Theatre of Riga, Latvia, and directed by the legendary Peter Stein, previous productions of Chekhov's Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard are among the most acclaimed of modern times. This will be the first time Stein has directed The Seagull, and the first time he has worked with an English-speaking cast.
The all-star company assembled includes: Fiona Shaw (pictured - whose recent London stage appearances include The Powerbook and Medea, which transferred to Broadway earlier this year) as Arkadina, Iain Glen (The Blue Room and last year's A Streetcar Named Desire with Glenn Close) as Trigorin, Jodhi May as Nina, Michael Pennington as Dorn, Charlotte Emmerson as Masha, Tom Georgeson as Shamrayev, Paul Jesson as Sorin and Cillan Murphy as Konstantin.
In other highlights from EIF's theatre programme, San Diego, a new play written and co-directed by Scottish author David Greig (whose previous work include Outlying Islands and the new translation of Camus' Caligula for the Donmar Warehouse), runs from 15 to 17 August 2003 in a co-production with Glasgow's Tron Theatre. Billed as a weird and wonderful journey of discovery through the American Dream", San Diego was inspired by a trip Greig made to the US to see an American premiere of one his earlier plays. The surreal comedy brings together stories from all walks of life - from illegal immigrants, to pilots and film stars.
Controversial Spanish director Calixto Bieito and actor George Anton, who were last seen together at EIF in the 1998 production of Life Is a Dream, reunite this year for a reworking of Shakespeare's Hamlet, with Anton taking the title role. Bieito made headlines in London this past spring with his controversial version of Macbeth at the Barbican (See News, 12 Apr 2003). His new Hamlet, presented by Birmingham Rep, runs at Edinburgh from 20 to 30 August 2003.
In addition, from 11 to 13 August 2003, Argentine company El Periférico de Objetos will make its UK debut with its production of The Last Night of Mankind; and Tamasha Theatre Company (East is East and Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral) premieres its new dance theatre piece Strictly Dandia. A contemporary British Asian West Side Story meets Strictly Ballroom meets Saturday Night Fever, written by Kristine Landon-Smith and Sudha Bhuchar, Strictly Dandia plays Edinburgh from 27 to 30 August 2003, ahead of a month-long London season at the Lyric Hammersmith in January 2004.
EIF 2003 also features a full programme of opera, dance and classical music. One of the biggest highlights across the rest of the festival is Scottish Opera's first stagings of two complete cycles of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. The cycles have been eagerly awaited since the start of the Ring in 2000 with Das Rheingold, followed by Die Walkure in 2001 and Siefried in 2001.
The granddaddy of them all, the Edinburgh International Festival is just one of some seven festivals that overtake the Scottish city in August. The others are the Edinburgh Film Festival, Book Festival, Jazz & Blues Festival, Visual Arts Festival, the Military Tattoo and, of course, its main spin-off, the Edinburgh Fringe which, on its own, qualifies as the world's largest arts festival, with more than 1,500 shows presented. This year's Fringe opened on 3 August and continues to 25 August 2003 (See News, 1 Aug 2003).
- by Terri Paddock
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