Words with A. L. Kennedy in the Assembly Rooms' Drawing Room? Who could resist? Certainly not this reviewer, referred to (jokingly, one hopes) by friends as ‘A. L Kennedy's stalker', for taking a bit more than a passing interest in a career which now spans novel and short-story writing, film scripting, stand-up comedy and now .. what? For ‘Words with A. L. Kennedy' is a tricky piece to describe, define, or pin down. Rather like words themselves, sometimes.
The relative comfort on the ‘reserved' seats behind the lighting desk (note to fellow reviewers - always make sure you're seated where you can see to scribble, or you'll end up trying to decipher what look like the doodles of a three year old) proved as good a spot as any to watch Kennedy wrestle with those dubious characters sometimes made up of dubious characters, i.e., words.
Kennedy began, as we all do, in childhood.
Hailing from Dundee, and spending part of her childhood in the reviewer's hame turf of Arbroath, a certain semi-spurious fellow feeling creeps in here, but Kennedy's world is of course much larger, contained within her own highly creative head.
For Kennedy's real theme is nothing less than the miraculousness of consciousness and it's capacity to allow us to imagine ourselves elsewhere, being someone else, doing anything we wish. The root of our being and the route to being who and what we wish.
It's an ambitious hour which Kennedy packs with wit, wisdom and a canny understanding of what makes her fellow humans tick. She encourages, cajoles and pleads for a humane and purposeful approach to life and the people we find ourselves living it with.
There's much high humour to be had with words and the way Kennedy tells them, but her purpose is beyond the throwaway joke and certainly the disposable sound-bite. If you enjoy exercising the largest organ in your body (no, it's your brain, actually) you're almost certain to enjoy this.
Times: 9-30 August (not 17 or 24), 4.50pm
Copyright Bill Dunlop 2009
First publsihed on EdinburghGuide.com 2009