Fudging it for the Blair era

`YOU would," he said, "get some normal people at the Ussher Hall."

"What? Nice posh people?"

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe was coming to an end, and people were lying about, half-comatose and comedy-overdosed, in the courtyard of the Pleasance Theatre. It had been a long three weeks. The Irish Times reporter on the scene had been transfixed for minutes by the official sign in the bike park outside the venue which said: "Bicycle Stance Must Be Used At All Times" (park your bike or fall to all fours and attempt a rolling motion?) Probably opinions were being expressed with less subtlety than usual. But still, it was depressing to hear university students making crude assumptions about the people who go to the main classical music venue in the International Festival, particularly as many tickets for these concerts cost less than tickets for the comedy shows which the young people had been seeing at the Pleasance.

The idea of the Fringe as the cheap and radical rival to the conservative, mainstream festival is plainly nonsense; the comedy, which makes up such a huge part of the Fringe now, is often subsidised heavily by drinks companies, because it trades on its popularity on TV. What is pathetic is how the Fringe and International Festival still play to their stereotypes, however - and all the noise about the possibility of a final split between the festivals is part of that. The Fringe Society is not, of course, responsible for the programme it puts together, because "open access" to those with the necessary funds is the rule; but the International Festival appears at some times locked in its role.

Going for what is deemed "the biggest, the best" isn't the most consistent way to put together an arts festival (though, because of its huge resources, it must always be part of what the International Festival does).

Pacific Northwest Ballet, based in Seattle, and one of the world's foremost ballet companies, brought coals to Newcastle with their British premiere of George Balanchine's version of A Mid- summer Night's Dream.

To the ballet-starved eyes of a Dubliner, there was great joy in the easy clarity of the dancers' steps; Anne Derieux as Titania, particularly, had a grace and flexibility which seemed superhuman. She is the central focus of the ballet because Balanchine's Dream is a dream only, an asexual version of one of the most telling explorations of the tension between sex and order in world literature. Balanchine's choreography mythologises the perfect woman, and Francia Russell's staging adheres to his original intention, and burdens his final, beautiful pas-de-deux with a reference to the Virgin Mary in the Apotheosis of St John. As the baby-blue dress swirled under the 12 stars, I thought all we needed was the face of Diana to appear among them for the level of camp to go right off the scale.

So much money: so much sponsorship, so many donations, so many credit-card melting ticket sales, to create a beautiful shell. Sometimes the effort can be so well worth it, as in the Royal Lyceum's production of the 17th century Spanish classic, Life is a Dream by Calderon. It tells of a prince imprisoned underground because his father fears an augury that he will be a cruel king - but as events bring this prince, blinking, towards the throne, to rule ruthlessly the play becomes breathtakingly modern, showing how a parent can actually dream his child into a monster, and how utterly illusory is power. Calixto Bieito directs a cast which includes Olwen Fourere.

I had a sense, again, of waste, however, during the final moments of I Masnadieri, Verdi's version of Schiller's play, The Robbers, as members of the audience around me actually sniggered. And not that I would blame them - in time to the beat of the last notes, Carlo, the renegade son of Count Massimiliano, quite unexpectedly ups, whips out his knife, and despatches his wife to eternal glory with the words "I sacrifice to you an angel!" I Masnadieri was part of the Verdi/Schiller season, one of the main focal points of the International Festival, which included a much-praised version of a superior opera, Don Carlos. Schiller's plays are concerned with personal and political freedom in the context of late 18th century Germany; by the time Verdi got his hands on them, in the middle of the 19th century, in Italy, they had new relevance in a society struggling to make of itself a united republic. The resonances for today's Scotland, on the verge of having its own parliament for the first time in 300 years, were probably intended by festival director, Brian McMaster.

The main contemporary drama on the menu also resonated with the Schiller. Botho Strauss is, reportedly, Germany's foremost contemporary dramatist, and Die Ahnlichen, or The Lookalikes, performed by Theater in der Josefstadt, Vienna, is his latest play. Like all his recent work, it is set against the backdrop of a recently united, and troubled, Germany.

It is a series of modern morality plays which attempt to expose different aspects of German society. His characters are cut-outs, and there is no dramatic tension or development; in fact, the play is probably more interesting to talk about than to see. Strauss portrays characters who are so wary of Germany's past they have no opinions, no vision, no identity.

One of the better, funnier and more disturbing scenes shows an 11-year-old girl (cleverly masked, in Peter Stein's production), who is suing her parents for allowing her to be born with a mild handicap. The parents' heads are so stuffed with the words of psychologists they can barely respond - except that the father's wish that the little girl should use her gift of a voice to become beautiful rather than contenting herself with her ugliness gives him away. The piece is an obvious comment on Nazi eugenics, in reverse.

What also comes up as a theme in the scenes, whether intentionally or not, is a fear of the power of women in contemporary society - it is as if this power is part of the political correctness we can do without. The women in the plays are misogynist "temptress" stereotypes, complete with ravishing beauty and high heels. Whether you agree with this vision of today's woman or not, it is good that such ideas are expressed rather than smothered and left to fester. It is around issues such as this that real contemporary political tension lies, not around traditional concepts of left and right (or rich and poor, or main festival and fringe), as became evident again and again during the festival, making Michael Billington's comment in The Guardian - "Given Scotland's intense debate over its constitutional future, it is curious how its best dramatists seem to eschew politics" - seem uncharacteristically unperceptive.

Billington's comment was particularly off-the-mark considering it was made in the context of a combined review of plays which included Liz Lochhead's Perfect Days, which premiered on the Fringe, a Traverse Theatre production. A Fringe First winner, it is perhaps the popular hit of the festival, and under the guise of being a Glaswegian mixture between Rhoda, My Best Friend's Girlfriend and Friends, it is hugely political.

Babs Marshall (magnificently played by Siobhan Redmond) is a 39-year-old, highly successful hairdresser, but is her career enough for her? No way - she wants a baby. Much of the comedy and the drama focuses on her efforts to climb up that slippery pole.

Lochhead cleverly explores the difficulty modern women experience in "having it all", and finding the men who understand them enough to share it all - or even some of it; she is not afraid to touch on the ruthlessness with which contemporary middle class society treats pregnancy among women of the age at which they are best physically suited to have babies (witness the outrage caused by the Spice babies). And she fearlessly pokes her pen into the yawning gap between today's women in their 30s and women of their mother's generation. It would be depressing if this play didn't make it here, but at least a screenplay has already been commissioned.

Interestingly, by far the most arresting work in the exhibition by Lebanese artist, Mona Hatoum, at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, is a video piece called Measures of Distance (1988). It shows images of the artist's mother, naked and in the shower, at times almost grotesque and at times very beautiful, through curtains of Arabic script. The script is from letters to her daughter, and are read, in English, on the voice-over. There is a cultural difference between mother and daughter, because the artist is now based in England, but perhaps the generational shift is greater; of course women should enjoy sex, says Hatoum's mother - "Why do you think I keep telling you to get married?" Even by using an endoscopic camera to explore the inside and outside of her own body (Corps Etranger, 1994), Hatoum could not create as vivid an image of the body as does Beckett in All Strange Away, which was given its European premiere by Asylum Theatre Company on the Fringe. Spoken by Mark Stuart Currie, Beckett's words obsessively pan over the bodies of a man and a woman to interrogate the nature of our physical being in space and time.

The Almeida Theatre Company along with vaudeville duo and Galway Arts Festival veterans, The Right Size, presented Brecht's Mr Puntila And His Man Matti (another Fringe First winner for the Traverse). It is bravely and brilliantly crafted political theatre for the Blair era. Originally taken from Finnish folk stories, and here presented in a new version by Lee Hall, it tells the story of a corrupt landowner and his abused serfs, but not in simple terms. The landowner, whenever he is drunk, has "heart", and echoes the media's false egalitarianism and concern when he says: "Tell me about yourself". But, sing The Right Size merrily to their ukuleles, it is "Balderdashy/ to talk of one big family/ when half the world is starving."

In this context, the real nub of Conor McPherson's Rum and Vodka, which was given its UK premiere by Lucid Productions, became evident. The monologue of a young, married alcoholic on a binge, spoken without enough texture by Alexander Downes, it unpicked the no longer simple differences between what it is to have and to have not in today's Dublin. The narrator has a rushed marriage, Crazy Prices on a Saturday, a boring job - and drink. Myfanwy, his lover for a night, has a bathroom-en-suite, a degree in Italian, friends called Rupert who write screenplays, opportunity, hope - and no doubt the freedom to go, if she wishes, with the other nice, posh people to a concert or two at the Ussher Hall.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is over, but the International Festival runs until Saturday. Information on 0044-131- 4732000