• Duke Special. Stuff from his new album, The Stage, A Book and the Silver Screen, with songs about the films of Hector Mann (is this a real person or just a character in a book?), a Kurt Weill musical about Huckleberry Finn (unfinished) and an anti-war Brecht play. There were a few fan favourites as well, including the terminally catchy Salvation Tambourine.

• The Penny Dreadfuls. I have no idea if this show had a name, but it was a comedy sketch show with no particular theme. In previous years they have mined the comic depths of Victoriana with sketch shows and comic plays. Last year’s show was a stand-out amongst several shining examples. This year wasn’t bad though I felt I didn’t get the same weeping pain and fear-for-my-underwear that I’ve felt in previous years.

• Miles Jupp: Fibber in the Heat (A Cricket Tale). Brilliant tale of one cricket fan’s bid to blag his way into the press box for an tour in India. I know nothing about cricket but it was still a marvellously-told and hilarious story.

• Gutted: A Revenger’s Musical. A late-night comedy musical with the Dreadfuls in supporting roles. It was fun in a slapstick farcical way. Definite Fringe material, though I don’t mean that in the worst possible way. I laughed a good deal more than at some of the stuff I’ve seen…

• Henry Rollins: Frequent Flyer Tour. I had heard a great deal said about Henry Rollins and seen one or two clips on YouTube but had no real measure of what the show would contain. It was an hour and a bit of white-knuckle anecdote and comedy. Totally recommended if you can catch his show anywhere, and from the way he talks he does about a million shows every week.

• Opera de Lyon: Porgy and Bess. A free “orchestra rehearsal” at the Festival Theatre. Sadly the singers were a bit mumbled and even the songs which I knew didn’t come across very well. The interval provided some nice insight as the conductor made some members of the cast re-do certain lines and phrases. I’m just sorry he didn’t get them to sing a bit more clearly at the same time. The dancers were amazing.

• Axis of Awesome: Songs in the Key of Awesome. Comedy musical trio with parodies and hilarious ditties, including the ever-flexible four chords…

• Caledonia. Another free preview, at the King’s Theatre this time, of the latest NTS production. This is a dark and satirical comedy about the Darien venture, Scotland’s ill-fated attempt at empire-building which led to its bankruptcy and eventual merging of parliaments with England. And what better time than now to look at the past of financial speculation and ruin, and claims that “trade begets trade, money begets money”? While enjoyable it was, I think, under-rehearsed: some slightly stumbled lines and one or two on-stage collisions between actors betrayed some lack of familiarity. Mostly this didn’t detract from the show though. Not as completely riveting as Black Watch, but then what is?

• Nofit State Circus: Tabu. Gritty, energetic circus fun with moody live band providing klezmer jollity, rock and cinematic soundscapes. I nearly laughed at the very beginning because the speaker said “it’s been raining for four years, eleven months and two days…” and behind me I could hear the popcorn machine making rain-like pop-pop-pop noises. Funny, alarming, wildly athletic and terrifyingly immediate. Catch them wherever you can. Now when are Archaos going to come back to Edinburgh…?

I’ve probably forgotten something in this list, and we’re going to an Aussie opera on Saturday, so there’ll be more to come.

In other signing news, I was at an EdSign34 lecture on Symmetry in Sign Language. It was quite interesting in terms of picking apart common structures in signs — signs that are left/right reflections of each other, signs that rotate around each other, that are translated along a plane and so on. Some styles of symmetry are much more common than others and it seems that the less-common ones are generally harder to perform. Over time they tend to change so that they’re easier to produce, like words that get their hard edges ground down. (“Fo’c’sle” comes to mind, or “Wednesday”.) The symmetry aspect was also an appeal because who can really say no to a bit of group theory?

In a few weeks a friend of mine is doing her own presentation there so I’ll be hecklingshowing my support.

We were due to watch it on Sunday (both shows in one day!) with other friends but ended up double-booked. So we passed our tickets on and got new tickets for the Thursday and Friday evening performances. These are my thoughts after each performance. Despite what you may think from reading them, I did enjoy it a lot!

Part 1, Thursday night

I’m quite enjoying it so far. It’s a long production but I haven’t ever felt bored. The story has quite a pace. I’m not convinced it translates very well to the stage though. You have to know the story to work out what’s going on, I think. And obviously there are so many elements that can’t be reasonably represented on stage — the armoured bear fight between Iorek and Iofur is an obvious example — and are better left to the imagination.

There’s quite a big cast of players but sadly the actor playing Lee Scoresby has the worst Texan accent ever concocted. It isn’t even an accent. It’s just a silly, shifting, intangible “voice”. The actor’s ham-fisted attempt at being Texan was getting a lot of laughs, and not in a good way. It was embarrassing, like a bad amateur production.

I’m also not sure about the daemon puppets. Some of them are good — Roger’s collie was particularly good, I thought, and Pantalaimon is generally excellent — but they still fall short of the descriptions. The children’s daemons never change shape, which is odd considering that’s a large part of the story.

Maybe I’m just spoiled by special effects, of course.

Part 2, Friday night

Yesterday was the first performance of part one in Edinburgh. There was another performance earlier today. So why is the first performance of part two so empty? There are two sets of audiences who you’d expect to be here. Maybe it’s just because it’s a Friday night, and people are more likely to have other plans. There are a couple more days after this to see it.

The atmosphere of the performance shifts quite a bit in this half. There is more slapstick, more laughs. The Gallivespians, for example, were extremely silly. I guess there is no way to depict 4-inch tall people with the necessary level of gravitas, so why bother.

The ending of The Amber Spyglass is one of those intensely emotional experiences that leaves a person listless and disconnected for an extraordinary length of time. I know it has that effect on me, which is why I haven’t re-read the book as much as I have the first two. It’s just not worth the emotional anguish. The ending of the play was similarly harrowing. I could hear restrained sniffing coming from all around me, as people just welled up uncontrollably.

I’m glad it’s over, but I’m still rather shocked at the power that ending has over me.

We ate at Blue, the restaurant attached to the Traverse. I met Helen’s cousin, cousin’s husband and baby girl. Also Helen’s aunt, who I dimly recall meeting before, but that would be about eight years ago.

We saw Hoors at the Traverse Theatre, written by the same guy who did Black Watch. It’s a bit more low-key than the military play but still wickedly funny. The ending seemed a bit abrupt though. I’m still not sure what it was supposed to be. Helen thought that was a break for the interval because it was such a non-ending.