About 20 minutes into the Blood and Roses experience, I started feeling guilty. The reason I felt guilty was that before the show my brother, Sam, and I went to the overly crowded St.Georges West looking for a room where the show would be shown, so we could sit down, watch and leave. We could find no such room. We asked around and a nice woman who I would later meet again asked me what I knew about the show. I was not enjoying the crowded room, I wanted to sit down and watch whatever I was going to be shown. I embarrassingly replied that I knew nothing of what I was about to see, her eyebrows raised, I've forgotten her exact words because I couldn't hear them after she said the word "tour." That's when my heart sunk, along with any good expectations I had for the forthcoming show. So, the guilt, the reason I started feeling guilty was for doubting the adventure, the adventure that I was part of.
The friendly woman who told me that I had bought tickets to see a tour guided Sam, five mismatched strangers and I down a small flight of stairs to the back exit of St.Georges West. There were headsets on a table, if it was possible, my heart sank further. We were given an introduction to Electra, who I guess was our guide. Everyone donned some large headphones that were connected to a long wire and then a small MP3 player. Electra and the nice woman (I apologise for forgetting her name, she was nice though) tried to start everyone's MP3 players at the same time. It didn't work first time so they had to try again, this took a little time and I started to think about the small group of 7 who had decided to trust Electra with the next 90 minutes of their lives. Firstly I noticed a middle-aged man, all in black, carrying a black leather folder, he wore black glasses and as far as I know avoided eye contact. I wondered if he was going to be part of the show... He wasn't. My wondering about this man was interrupted when music started playing in my ears. It was Scottish music. A tour of Edinburgh accompanied by Scottish music, I imagine that at this point I was pulling the same face I do when asked to tidy my bedroom, frankly I was sulking.
The group followed Electra down the street, it looked like she'd done the route a hundred times but still enjoyed every step and sight. I have no idea where we were, I'm terrible at directions. I just followed Electra as she calmly guided us, listening to her own headphones and looking content. I was listening to a story told by a broad Scotswoman, she said something about the people passing and I looked in the faces of the real people passing. My bother and I quietly giggled to each other silently, I don't know about him but I was laughing because I was expecting a normal play and then somehow there I was walking down a street with headphones on, an interesting story in my ear, 6 mismatched strangers around me, following Electra.
The story was clever, it was told from different generations, different times in the stories and also included a Russian myth. The stories were overlapping and interrupted each other. It was Scotland meets Russia, reality meets fiction. It was like the Archers meets Harry Potter. We were led behind a building, into a stone walled path, Electra opened a grand door and we were led inside, if felt like we weren't supposed to be there but we went into a room and everything was white, it was beautiful. On the wall was the family trees of people I was hearing about on my headphones, on the floor was a model of a town and on the windowsills were small paper wedding dresses which coincided with the story. Whilst in the room I looked around at the people sharing this with me, the woman with curly hair next to me, she was alone and had blisters on her feet. Another woman on her own who wore a blue velvet jacket. An elderly couple, he wore all beige and a faded green fishing hat, she wore a navy body-warmer and took his arm when they crossed roads. There was the man all in black. There was Sam, a 20-year-old engineering student with a friendly face and skating shoes. And there was me, blonde hair past my waist, smart navy blazer and a large necklace which says "bang tidy"
As two of the characters were falling for one another, Electra threw a handful if confetti into the air and we saw a Banksy-esque paining on a wall of the characters kissing. As a story about times spent drinking in pubs was told, we were sat in the corner of a pub and were served water. At the scary part of the myth we were taken to an overgrown, secret courtyard that had been decorated with photographs, furniture and women with cabbages for heads. We finished off in a church garden where names were tied onto a tree, we read them then were led to stand around a stone carved heart as the stories came together and ended.
The mismatched strangers and I removed our headphones and tried to absorb the medley of experiences we'd just been given. Electra almost debriefed the dazed group and we dispersed, though I stayed to have a little chat with Electra about writing this! The experience has become a surreal blur of adjoining stories, strange people and Edinburgh's underbelly.
It is very hard to review this piece as the next person who sees it will not experience what I did, the stories and places will be the same but the crowd, weather and atmosphere will be different. Also, I've never seen anything like this so I have nothing to compare it to.
I very much enjoyed my 90 minute "tour" and I regret being moody to begin with. I would have liked to improve was the technology, me and Sam were out of sync so he reacted about 5 seconds before me to everything, he said that this could have been fixed with different MP3 players and a remote control, though most of the technological stuff he says goes strait over my head, I agreed that there must've been a way to sync everybody.
Here's the hard part:
I'm going to give this show 8/10 this is because I really enjoyed the story and seeing parts of the city that I would not have otherwise seen.
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