Trying to define the Edinburgh Fringe is not easy. It is like stuffing a wriggling octopus into a tiny string bag; one tentacle holds the mike of the stand-up comedian, another grasps the desperate flyer from the Cambodian political theatre collective. The free packet of Marlboro Lights from a corporate sponsor falls to the ground. And all the while the octopus is shouting into a tiny mobile phone and threatening to mutate into an eight-legged crocodile. What is this thing? How did it get here? And should I have anything to do with it? If this year’s three-week cultural marathon is an exuberant, wild sea monster, the first fringe in 1947 was more of an opportunistic baby squid. No centralised programme, posters, office, club or ticketing, no predatory agents, producers or promoters, just a bunch of hopeful enthusiasts who did not let their exclusion from the main programme put them off turning up and performing. Little more than a decade later the Cassandras were bemoaning the fact it had become too big. There were 18 companies taking part.
This time around there will be 16,191 performers working in an estimated 331 venues. Look past the perennials and this year’s fringe is in rude good health. There is real-life docudrama, The Exonerated, based on miscarriages of justice, using interviews, letters and court transcripts — and celebrity performers — to powerful effect. There is All Wear Bowlers, the Laurel and Hardy-inspired tale of two silent movie comedians trapped in a haunted theatre with rogue hats, angry ventriloquists and uncontrollable hard-boiled eggs. There is a play about two girls who fall in love with Arthur Scargill during the miners’ strike. There is Holland’s top comedy double act. There is even Gyles Brandreth.
That’s the fringe for you. Improbable old stagers pitch up this year like Rolf Harris, available in Edinburgh for one night only, and Jim Bowen, both of them hoping to experience the same strange magic which has infected some of their equally unlikely predecessors, like Paul Daniels and Nicholas Parsons.
But if these old favourites offer a degree of comfort, there’s plenty at the uncomfortable cutting edge. This year’s theatre bill yields the kinds of unmissable premieres which have defined the artistic currency of the fringe. From the Fringe First winners the Riot Group comes Switch Triptych, an uneasy and discordant successor to the brilliant Pugilist Specialist. Ruffian Productions tackle the myth of the modern Neverland in Martha Loves Michael, billed as “a dark tale of fame, fans and misfortune”.
There are musical productions on the grand scale, inspired perhaps by the recent success of Jerry Springer The Opera. Manifest Destiny performed by Daniel X Opera has already enjoyed sensational reviews; a successful Edinburgh run could mark the show down as a sure-fire commercial success. The Irish singer Camille emerges in the Spiegel Garden at George Square, the perfect venue for a performer whose most admiring critics reckon she is “raunchy, dangerously fragile (and) laced with dark erotica.” And among the riot of names on the comedy bill is Ava Vidal, tipped as the year’s hottest property, the former public schoolgirl and prison officer who has always felt out of place.
The pioneers of the fringe arrived because they realised that Edinburgh in August offered audiences, critics, influential directors and fellow thesps with whom they could discuss the craft over cheap pies and warm beer. These days the principle remains the same, but what has changed is the scale and the context.
Numerically, theatre is still the dominant art form but the rise of supervenues — Assembly, the Pleasance, the Gilded Balloon — the growing number of awards and the presence of big promoters such as Avalon and Off The Kerb mean comedy, cabaret and kitsch entertainment feel like the driving force of the fringe. Today’s fringe performers have to impress sophisticated media consumers who are jaded, sated and neophiliac.
The days when the fringe could rely on the official festival’s audience pitching up to their wacky late-night revues for a bit of something shocking after the opera are long gone. The festival has been co-opting the best of the fringe’s talent since the 1960s. Beyond the Fringe, featuring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett, took the Cambridge Footlights blueprint, gave it a wash and brush up and transplanted it into the Lyceum theatre.
As long as they bring the talent, the festival is happy to nanny the fringe’s enfants terribles. Last year’s Wonderful World Of Dissocia by Anthony Neilson was noticeably more challenging than the predictable anti-Bush-Big-Brother-my-baby-has-green-nappies gags that half-filled so many of the fringe’s smaller venues. In many ways the two festivals’ roles are interchangeable. The subsidised international event, once the natural home of stately opera and charming chamber music, can take the commercial and artistic risks — Peter Stein directing a new play by David Harrower, The Seagull in Hungarian, performed without costumes or sets — that the fringe, where each show has to wash its own face, can’t afford.
And yet all the while it sometimes seems too easy for jaded commentators to attack the fringe for being overblown, lazy and commercial. This is especially true of the critic, swirling an expense account espresso while haranguing a hapless press officer about his need for a pair of tickets for Screwmachine/EyeCandy (a surefire hit this year featuring Mike McShane in a very large dress) for Saturday night. But the truth is that the fringe is an open house.
In 2005, as in 1947, anyone with a train ticket and a sleeping bag is welcome to put on a production. Shows rise or fall depending on whether or not audiences want to see them. Anybody who points the finger at the fringe for failing to be daring or innovative is criticising the audience for preferring Puppetry of the Penis to other theatre. The fringe didn’t invite two naked Australians to come over here. We did.
Edinburgh in August has always had room for sauce, spectacle and a bit of garish entertainment. However much it may upset the purists, there will always be a market for buff, sweaty blokes, birds in bikinis and a cheery mid-evening show featuring a bloke off the telly.
But the purists have been sniffy about the populist elements of the fringe programme since its inception. It’s a tradition, like going to a poetry reading after work and ending up swirling a glass of white wine with Rodney Bewes at Late’n’Live.
Unconvinced? Have no fear, there are 2,000 or so other shows to choose from. That is without considering the film, book, jazz, television or official festivals. Who knows, somewhere there might even be a performance artist, an octopus and a string bag.
