tre (not to be confused with Britain’snNational Youth Theatre), whichnmounted an original production callednOctober’s Children. The story is basednloosely on the life of Gogol but isnessentially about the street childrennthat wandered the countryside followingnthe October Revolution in 1917.nThe father of our heroine, Natasha, isna nobleman, but after his death thisnlittle child of privilege finds herself leftnto her own devices on the streets of St.nPetersburg, finally joining up with angang of likewise lost or abandonednchildren. There were some good moments:none clear boy soprano, and angood Baba Yaga number done by threenyoung girls as the witch’s three heads,ndramatic and funny and tuneful all atnonce. But most of the rest of the musicnwas entirely modern, which is to sayntune-free, and quite difficult, andnyoung Natasha did not quite have thenvoice for it. The book was terrible.n”Did your mother sing you thatnsong?” asks the hero at one point.n”Then she was a Russian!” Similarlynthe politics would have gone over bet­n48/CHRONICLESnLIBERAL ARTSnter three years ago when Jeremy JamesnTaylor and Frank Whateley and DavidnNield started putting the show together.nGogol is not perhaps the man of thenmoment, caught as that country is nownbetween perestroika and the crackdownnin the Baltic states.nLeaving the Western wodd altogethernwas the Ninagawa Company’sndoublebill of a traditional Noh play,nSekidera Komachi, and Yukio Mishima’snreworking and modernizing of thensame story, Sotoba Komachi. In somenways Yukio Yoshimura, performingnthe traditional Noh, was the less disconcerting,nthough his performancenof an old woman remembering thenconquests of her youth contained nonaction, little drama, and almost nonmovement. We were watching the playnof her thoughts acro.ss her painted face,na piece of theatrical haiku that was verynstrange for a Westerner. But thenMishima, with its mix of East andnWest, its magic and overblown emo-,ndons, and its typically Mishimesquenfinish (love = death), in its effort tonblend two traditions failed to encom-nITALIAN DISSENT ON THE GULF WARnMost of the major political parties in Italy support theirncountry’s participation in the anti-Iraq alliance, but a strangenanti-war coalition has emerged, of Communists, Greens,nCommunion Liberation Catholics, and the Lega Lombarda,nwhose leader. Senator Umberto Bossi, has been the mostnoutspoken critic of the war. According to the Corriere dellanSera (January 20), Bossi told his followers that the War innthe Gulf and the suppression of Lithuanian independencenare parallel developments:n”The war in the Gulf and the repression of the autonomistntendencies in Lithuania serve the same objective: tonreimpose the division of the world into two blocks as in thentime of Yalta. On the one hand, there is Bush flexing hisnmuscles in the Gulf: on the other is Gorbachev repressingnthe struggle for agreement. We regret that America nonlonger has a Reagan but a man full of doubts and hesitationsnlike Bush. . . . The dead Lithuanians are our heroes.”nnnpass either. Again, the production valuesnwere very high; the wonderfulnfalling hibiscus flowers made for annexcellent effect, but the play was disturbingnin a way that was only creepynand brought no emotional release, andnso as a tragedy it failed.nFinally, what seemed to be the hitnamong the invited Festival shows, andnsomething I did not see, was thenFrench company Archaos’ Bouinax,nwhich was generally described as anpostmodern. Mad Max circus. Butnthere are some things I cannot manage,nand these include productions thatnopen with an intended-to-be-humorousndwarf in a wheelchair and finishnwith a staged beheading complete withnthe drinking of the “dead” man’snblood. It seems inevitable that thisnshould come to New York and you willnjust have to read the Times for a morencomplete description.nWith the possible exception of thenEnquist play, the best night we spentnout was not at the theater at all but atnEdinburgh’s Acoustic Music Centre.nEvery year during the FesHval thenCentre sets aside one room for ansing-along. Anybody with enoughncourage and a song to sing can comenup and perform, and almost anybodyndoes; the night we were there thencrowd ranged from some moderatelynsuccessful Scottish folksingers (such asnRobin Laing) to visiting American andnEnglish tourists, and the songs variednfrom the Beatles to “The SoldiernMaid” — happily more of the latter. Itnoccurred to me, sitting there, that thisnhaphazard and very Scottish singalong,nwhich cost the bar nothing andnthe patrons only the price of a fewnpints, was more appealing and in andeeper sense a real “cultural experience”nthan Festival productions such asnthe Japanese Noh or the French circus,nwhich probably each cost thousands ofnpounds to bring over. In other words,nbetween the Centre and the Traverse,nwhat was truly best about this InternationalnFestival was its most Scottishnparts. And I hope that one of thenbenefits of English/Scottish tensionsnand Scotland’s relative poverty is thatnboth have encouraged a very deeplynfelt Scottish pride, so that the Scotsnknow this.nKatherine Dalton is the managingneditor of Chronicles.n