EDINBURGH 2026: LUDWIG: UNFINISHED BUSINESS Q&A
Ludwig: Unfinished Business runs at Edfringe 6 - 30 August
BWW caught up with Mike Hatchard to chat about bringing Ludwig: Unfinished Business to the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Tell us a bit about Ludwig: Unfinished Business.
Ludwig: Unfinished Business is a dream for me, a project that has literally been thirty years in the making. Guy Masterson commented that I looked like Beethoven as early as 1986 and we agreed that we should take that further and develop a play. I shied off this because I was a musician, and lacked the confidence to act. But over the years I've become a lot more extravert somehow and fallen into acting. Meeting up with Guy again after many years has been quite game-changing.
Why premiere it at the Fringe?
It has to be the fringe. For many years I performed at the Fringe with rock legend Herbie Flowers (of Walk on the Wild Side fame). Herbie too was a musician who, in later life, discovered a taste for...well, not actually acting but talking to an audience rather than playing music.
How did you come to be working together?
I first met Guy before he performed at the fringe. I was doing a show and he was checking out the Fringe. At the time I don't think he intended to ever perform at Edinburgh, he changed his mind quite substantially...
Years later and here we are working together, it's very exciting.
Who would you like to come and see it?
Naturally I'd like as many people as possible to come. Some people might hate it, but that's not a bad thing...but I hope that those that do still carry away something. For all its comedic aspects there is a lot of integrity in this production.
What would you like audiences to take away from it?
I would hope that I'm able to put something over of the SPIRIT of Beethoven. No-one can truly know what the man must have been like but all indications are that he was a mass of contradictions, a man trapped in his own personality who struggled to reconcile the beauty, originality and orderliness of his music with day to day living.
Ludwig: Unfinished Business will be at Assembly George Street - Front Room at 12:35 for tickets go to www.edfringe.com
Photo credit: Peter Mould
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