Magnificently clad in turquoise and purple dresses, Tiffany and Felicity
Redmond, operatic buskers from Essex, introduced the Edinburgh Festival
Fringe in song yesterday, from the rooftop garden of a luxury hotel.
These soprano sisters are just two of more than 19,000 artists who will
descend on the city this August in the annual three-week pageant of stars,
undiscovered heroes, has-beens, wannabes and misfits.
The full programme, published by Jon Morgan, the director of the Fringe, lists
2,088 productions and includes the former model and film star Britt Ekland
in a show in which talks about herself; the quiz show host Roy Walker as a
stand-up; and a play about the late Spike Milligan, starring Michael
Barrymore, whose own life has read like a bleak drama since 2001, when the
corpse of his friend Stuart Lubbock was found in Barrymore's swimming pool.
Serious theatre is provided by the Royal Court Theatre, from London,
performing Free Outgoing at the Traverse, and the National Theatre of
Scotland, which is collaborating with The Team, an American company, in
Architecting, a “multimedia, time-
bending epic” about the collapse of the American dream.
Musical stars include Kate Nash, Scouting for Girls and - for the first time
at the Fringe - Scottish Opera. At the other end of the scale, at least two
of this year's acts rely on their ability to break wind to entertain their
audiences.
Despite Mr Morgan's evident delight at boasting performers drawn from 47
different countries, and more than 800 world premieres, this year's
announcement had been pre-empted by the unveiling of the Edinburgh Comedy
Festival on Fringe, an event organised by the promoters of the “big four”
Fringe venues, Assembly, the Pleasance, the Gilded Balloon and the
Underbelly. They have set out to raise £1.8million in sponsorship, which
rival promoters fear will drain resources from other art forms and venues.
William Burdett-Coutts, the director of Assembly, said that one of the aims of
the comedy festival was to “shake up the Fringe”.
Mr Burdett-Coutts said: “Sustaining big theatre is a big financial issue. We
have to find funding to make it happen, and comedy is a big driver of what
we do. Last year, these four venues spent £10 million but we all lost money.
We never get recognition as producers, and we are not at the table when the
festivals' future is discussed, but we take the biggest risk of any of the
bodies involved.”
His venue is staging more than 30 different theatre productions this year, as
well as a hatful of comedy shows. Mr Burdett-Coutts attacked the organisers
of Edinburgh's festivals for their failure to market themselves, for an
absence of advertising in prominent venues, and for their inability to
achieve listings in recent newspaper guides to Britain's burgeoning festival
market.
These criticisms were rejected by Faith Liddell, the director of Festivals
Edinburgh, the body established 18 months ago to coordinate the growth of
the city's 12 festivals. She said Festivals Edinburgh was drawing together a
marketing strategy that would receive substantial public funding when it was
implemented in time for 2009.
The divisive impact of the new comedy festival was made evident when it was
announced on Wednesday and leafleted by representatives of the Stand, a
rival comedy club.
But while in private Mr Morgan may support the comedy festival only as the
noose supports the hanging man, he expressed his appreciation for its
organisers and said he was “delighted” that the umbrella of the Fringe was
big enough to hold so many different festivals.
This year, these “mini festivals” include The Edge, the rock and pop music
festival re-invented by its organisers after the brewer Tennents pulled out
of sponsorship of T on the Fringe. George Square theatre will be dedicated
to musical theatre, while the InvAsian festival at Club West will celebrate
Asian arts. The World @ St Georges West features dance and music from
Brazil, Cuba, Cambodia, Tanzania and Tibet.
Mr Morgan said he had been inspired by “the creative diversity, invention and
sheer tenacity of the tens of thousands of artists who overcome barriers,
whether geographical, physical, or financial to participate in the world's
biggest celebration of the arts.”
Comedy
There are plenty of famous names at the self-styled Edinburgh Comedy Festival
on the Fringe. The veteran television stars Jim Bowen and Roy Walker make
the move back from small screen to big stage, but the new order of comedians
formerly known as “alternative” make up the bulk of the bill, among them
Jimmy Carr, Richard Herring, Bill Bailey, Jason Byrne, Jimeoin, Rich Hall,
Ed Byrne and Omid Djalili.
The Stand, the biggest of the 40 or so comedy venues that remain outside the
new festival, offers Jo Caulfield, Stewart Lee, Daniel Kitson, Phil Nichol,
an if.com award winner,
and the minor Irish genius David O'Doherty. Look out for two Scottish legends,
Arnold Brown in Happiness: The Search Continues, and Bob Doolalley, Paul
Sneddon's brilliant sub-Denis Law creation, in Live and Talking Balls.
For some Fringe performers, comedy is always based on a theme. A growing
obsession with instant messaging and e-mails finds its way into Justin
Moorhouse's Ever Decreasing Social Circle, while Dan Marsh's My Myspace Baby
is a tragi-comic window into an internet love affair. Edward Aczel poses the
question Do I Really Have to Communicate With You?
Others prefer to tackle politics. In Eco-Friendly Jihad, the environmentalist
Abie Philbin Bowman joins al-
Qaeda in her fight to reduce American carbon emissions, while the Comedy Bus
offers “a side-splitting sightseeing tour of Edinburgh” along with a
“critique” of public transport. But could there be the laughs in the Middle
East conflict? Find out at The Arab, The Jew and the Chicken, a show created
by Jewish and Muslim actors.
Some audiences will prefer the old stagers. Nicholas Parsons offers a “truly
interactive” show, with “heart-stopping” guests, and Clive James is lined up
for a series of talking shops. There's no room this year for the chat show
host Tommy Sheridan, but Neil and Christine Hamilton return.
While most comedy prices range between £7 and £15 a ticket, ten pubs across
Edinburgh are hosting free shows. At the Standing Order the former
broadcaster Martin Kelner hosts an audience with Macclesfield's Mr Methane,
an event which its promoters promise is odour-free.
Drama
The lives of great and not-so-great artists feature across the Fringe theatre
bill. Charles Dickens's public readings once captivated huge audiences, and
this year the Victorian novelist returns to the Assembly Rooms in the form
of actor Simon Callow.
Vincent Van Gogh's life is recalled in his letters to his brother Theo, in a
revival of Vincent, the play written by Leonard Nimoy in the 1970s. In Britt
on Britt, Britt Ekland “looks through her remarkable life, revealing unknown
truths, from Sweden, [Peter] Sellers and Hollywood”.
Where would we be without audience participation? In Scavengers (Joshua
Sofaer/Escalator East To Edinburgh) participants contribute to a unique
exhibition after 40 teams follow clues across Edinburgh. In Death by
Chocolate (IMMI HQ) audiences experience an interactive chocolate-tasting
murder mystery. In the Liar Show (Liarshow), you can listen to four
storytellers, before deciding which one is telling the truth.
Tough contemporary dramas are prominent. Deep Cut (Sherman Cymru) explores the
recent deaths at Deepcut Barracks, basing itself on testimonies from the
official investigation. Charlie Victor Romeo (Scamp Theatre/Mercury
Colchester/Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds) uses transcripts of real black box
flight recordings. Pornography (Traverse and Birmingham Rep) documents the
brief period between London's successful 2012 Olympic bid and the 7/7
bombings.
In Free Outgoing (Royal Court), a mobile phone video clip of a girl having sex
in her classroom is spread across a nation. About Face(book) (Penn Theatre
Ensemble), Table 23 (Hot Tubs and Trampolines) and I Love You, Bro (Three To
a Room) all peer into the darker side of online social networking and
internet chatrooms.
The Boy from Centreville (Central School of Speech and Drama) documents the
massacre at Virginia Tech University and Columbinus (Syracuse University
Drama Department) returns to the Columbine High School killings. Zimbabwe is
the focus for I Am Robert Mugabe and Requiem for Robert Mugabe (both by xit
Theatre.) Perhaps most demanding of all, in The Factory (Badac
Theatre/Escalator East to Edinburgh) audiences experience a claustrophobic
cellar which seeks to convey the experience of the Auschwitz/Birkenau gas
chambers.
Music
Scouting for Girls, the three-man pop group, opens the Edge festival at the
Corn Exchange on August 7, the first of more than 30 contemporary music acts.
The singer Kate Nash, after her triumph as best female solo artist at the
Brits, makes her debut on the Fringe, while Kirsten Hirsch captures the
festival's flavour over seven nights at St Cecelia's with a “live spoken
word project incorporating film, music and essays”. Maxïmo Park and the
multi-instrumentalist Xavier Rudd feature on successive nights in the second
week of the festival.
The Liquid Room bill includes Dizzee Rascal, the Mercury Music Prize winner,
the German duo Digitalism and Deadmau5.
Clare & the Reasons, 1950s throwbacks from New York, make their Scottish
debut at Cabaret Voltaire, the Blair Street venue that also hosts Paul Haig,
the legendary frontman of Josef K, the Scottish “post-punk” band.
George Square Theatre's celebration of musicals includes the almost inevitable
Big Bruvva - The Musical, and Cannibal! - The Musical, based on the cult
film by Trey Parker, the creator of South Park, the television cartoon
series.
Apocalypse - the Musical blows into C Venues, which also hosts Beyond Breaking
Glass, starring Hazel O'Connor, fresh from the 1980s.
Rossini's Cinderella brings seven of Scottish Opera's finest to the Assembly
stage for the company's Fringe debut.
