In a neo-deconstructionist world faced with the breakdown of the Marxist/capitalist critical dialectic and a widespread distrust of Baudrillardian hyper reality, is the Edinburgh Festival the last vestige of a bourgeois Lacanian dialogue? Or is just somewhere where shouting "Penis" out loud on the street counts as a career move?
It is de rigeur for every journalist on every paper in every country to write "yes, but the fringe isn't what it used to be". Having paid our dues to the great God of cliche, maybe it's formative to peel back the layers of corporatism and commercialism to see if the original fringe spirit (irreverant iconoclastic and irascible - as mooted in the original 1947 fringe manifesto) still survives.
If you're looking for over-hyped under-achieving big name television stars hawking their tired wares on the fringe for over-priced tickets in over-sponsored shows, you'll find it. Similarly, if you're looking for genre-breaking, description-defying, state-of-the-art fresh creative expression, you'll find it. The fringe remains an artistic A-Z and this year the letter "I" (for Irish) was the joker in the pack.
It's always been a regular moan that stand-up has taken over the fringe to the detriment of theatre, music, opera, visual art and physical theatre (that's dance to you) , but of this year's 1,400 shows on the fringe, 38 per cent was theatre to comedy's 19 per cent. Put the disproportionate coverage down to just one too many all-lefthanded, dyslexic Albanian versions of The Dumb Waiter or the seemingly 100 different versions of Abagail's Party or yet another yawning adaptation of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Note to fringe theatre group: write something new and stop complaining.
If comedy has taken over the fringe, then the Irish have taken over comedy. Dispensing with the parochial flag-waving, it still remains that the huge hits this year were Dubliners Ed Byrne and Jason Byrne and Navan man Tommy Tiernan.
Sell-out shows, ten out of ten reviews, Tiernan's Perrier plus another Perrier nomination and a Perrier newcomer nomination between them was proof positive of their impact. We're not going down the "difference between Irish and British humour" road again, but suffice to say the two Byrnes and Tiernan work well simply because they refreshed many a jaded palate.
From the exuberant improvised madness of Jason Byrne to the shockingly good theatricalities of Tommy Tiernan to the high-velocity spray-gun patter of Ed Byrne these three covered all known comedy bases. The big British names of this year's fringe (Paul Merton, Bill Bailey, Rory Bremner, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel) have all been covered on these pages before so instead it was off for a gawk at the names of tomorrow - and in this respect a show called The Mighty Boosh (starring Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding) had us reaching for the superlatives.
Very loosely based on Waiting for Godot, The Mighty Boosh is an action-packed woodland bonanza featuring two men stranded in a forest not knowing why they're there or how to get out. Think early Vic 'n' Bob meshed with Izzardesque imagery and verbal gymnastics and you're looking at a startlingly original and wonderously funny show. For three weeks The Mighty Boosh ran neck-to-neck with Jason Byrne for the Perrier Newcomer Award (given to acts performing the first full show on the fringe) and they eventually shaded it. Due to arrive in Ireland soon, The Boosh is the business.
Elsewhere, Al Murray continued to add to the canon of character comedy with his "Keeper of the Pint Cosmic" show. Murray plays a pub landlord-cum-philosopher - "Theme pubs to the left of us, Alcopops to the right, mineral water everywhere and not a drop to drink". Single-handedly holding back the tide of bottled beer, the lager of life burned brightest in Murray's show.
Grade A madness abounded in Simon Munnery's The League Against Tedium show. With his "shield of irony, sword of truth, horse of music and hat of youth" Munnery impressed with his sheer audacity and gleeful tearing up of the comedy rulebook. Perhaps better known as Alan Parker (Urban Warrior), the League Against Tedium - with its opening line of "Attention Scum" is a fitting companion piece to the Urban Warrier. An interesting show by Scottish comedienne, Lynn Ferguson, saw her presenting five generic stand-up types in the space of an hour: the American, the lesbian, the Irish, the ditzy female and the newcomer were all paraded in an engrossing self-reflective piece of work.
Also bang on the button was Belfast comic Smiley, whose "recycling" show blurred the boundaries between stand-up and theatre by looking at the world of the much-maligned and much-battered bicycle courier. An excellent performance of material with real depth saw Smiley winning over even the Bolshiest of critics.
A major talking point this year in the micro climate of Edinburgh was how the fourth biggest venue on the fringe, the Stand, spearheaded a Perrier boycott under the clever banner "Neau Competition". According to the people at the Stand "the flagging Perrier is a symptom of big comedy business which has run out of ideas and has to hope that its own hype can substitute for excitement and effervescence.
Adding insult to injury, this London-based industry believes the capital city of another country to be in its own fiefdom - controlling and congratulating itself through its own cartel every August". Fighting talk and fair play to them - such sentiments are not what the Fringe wants but maybe they are what it needs.
