Last night at the Fringe

This is my final post about the things I’ve seen at the Adelaide Fringe Festival this year, because Friday was the night of the last Fringe event that I’d booked to see. The event was Mediaeval Magic by the Lumina Vocal Ensemble, a choiral presentation of music from Europe in the Middle Ages. I went with a friend who I had invited to the show.

My hopes for the performance were mostly realised. For example I had been concerned that it would be too England-centric and limited in variety, but I needn’t have worried. The performance included songs from various parts of Europe, songs with various themes whether religious or secular, and songs both famous and obscure. Plenty of historical background was provided - mostly in the printed pamphlet but also in summary by spoken word - and it was delivered with a sense of humour. On the whole I was very pleasantly impressed.

The enthusiasm of the singers was evident throughout, particularly in the performance of Sumer Is Icumen In. They really breathed life back into this old classic.

My criticisms are mostly a consequence of the venue. The performance took place inside an old church with uncomfortable pews and no air conditioning (free water was mercifully provided in the interval). At times the voices of the singers failed to adequately fill the size of the room, and my favourite songs were generally those with a little musical accompaniment - even if it was only a drum or a bell to mark the beat - because this helped the sound to fill the available space.

The singers departed at the end of the show without interacting with the audience, so there was no opportunity to thank them for the entertainment or to share any encouraging comment that one might wish to share. That felt a little disappointing, but it may well have had something to do with the fact that the two-hour performance finished not long before eleven o’clock at night.

In summary, my friend and I both found the performance to be most enjoyable and interesting. The night out was definitely worth it.

As a postscript, I would like to share a couple of links on a historical theme - links that I suspect the Lumina Vocal Ensemble themselves would enjoy. The first is the transcript of Flanders and Swann’s comic version of the history of Greensleeves, and the second is David Parlett’s page of card games from history, which includes a few from the late mediaeval period.