This year’s fringe, the largest arts festival in the world, features a staggering 41,689 performances of 2,542 shows
THE CRUELLEST joke at the opening weekend of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is not the one about Amy Winehouse, Kate Middleton or any of the stand-ups comedians’ long-lost exes – it’s the one where the ushers urge ticketholders to fill the seats from the front.
One minute you’re an anonymous student moonlighting at the Disney Store, laughing away in the comfort of a darkened auditorium, the next minute you’re on stage spinning plates with a paramedic and a fireman, while Irish comedian Jason Byrne pretends to play the xylophone on your groin.
Everyone knows you don’t sit in the front row at a comedy gig unless you enjoy being picked on mercilessly.
Outside, on the pedestrianised slope of the city’s Royal Mile, clusters of show promoters are being rained on mercilessly.
This year’s fringe, the largest arts festival in the world, features 41,689 performances of 2,542 shows, some 607 of which are free.
It’s a special brand of body-paint that helps you stand out from the competition.
“There’ll be a big dragon on stage,” promises one flyer distributor for a play about a fantasy novel reader with a worried psychiatrist.
Over at the wood-panelled Venue 150 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Irish comedian Ed Byrne begins his Crowd Pleaser set by saying what at least 75 per cent of the audience are thinking: “This doesn’t feel like the fringe.”
Across town, a decent chunk of the 258 venues are dingy cellars, cramped attics and beer-swilled tents – none of which were, like the conference centre, officially opened by Queen Elizabeth.
“Take off a layer of clothing now . . . You’ll thank me later,” says Abie Philbin Bowman, performing his fast-talking, geopolitical comedy show Pope Benedict: Bond Villain in the bubble-like Pleasance Green tent – a benched space that’s like the innards of a Michelin man or, appropriately enough as Philbin Bowman points out, the futuristic lair of a Bond villain.
The largest block of the directory-like fringe programme is comedy, which makes up 37 per cent, followed by theatre at 30 per cent and music at 14 per cent. Musicals, opera, children’s shows, dance, exhibitions, events and cabaret (the festival’s newest category) make up the rest. The festival runs until August 29th.
Among the comedians, the Irish contingent represents a decent range of styles, including surreal sketches, character comedy and stand-up that encompasses topics such as childhood, recession and Antarctic exploration.
From the madcap audience-participation stunts of veteran Jason Byrne’s Cirque du Byrne to Colm O’Regan’s deadpan Dislike! A Facebook Guide to Crisis – in which Ireland’s history is reinvented as a Facebook news feed (with hilarious consequences) – there are, most importantly, plenty of laughs.
More than 500 shows are eligible for the coveted Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award for best comedy show (formerly known as the Perrier), which will be announced at the end of the month and guarantees both a profile boost and a cheque for £10,000 (€11,480).
Last year’s winner, Russell Kane, and the best newcomer recipient, Roisin Conaty, have both returned, as have past winners David O’Doherty, Phil Nichol and Tim Key. The hottest of the fringe tickets though is for Stewart Lee’s Flickwerk 2011: Work in Progress, the complete run of which sold out weeks ago.
You don’t have to have your own late-night BBC show to attract an audience, however. There was standing room only on Saturday as two festival debutantes in kimonos calling themselves the Silky Pair performed comic songs about jealousy in the backroom of a puddle-free bar.
“It’s a bit intimate in here,” says one of the girls, turning away the rest of the plastic-poncho-wearing crowd. “But we’re here again at the same time tomorrow.”