Tuesday 7 October 2008

Edinburgh Fringe: The Big Mac of Arts Festivals

Whenever I think of the Edinburgh Fringe I always bring to mind crime lord Marcellus Wallace’s immortal words to his victim in Pulp Fiction: ‘I’ma get medieval on yo ass’. ‘Cos that’s what doing Edinburgh feels like. It hurrrts And I should know. I’ve taken two shows up to Edinburgh. And the memories still haunt me; handing out flyers in the Royal Mile in the pouring rain and no one taking them; praying for a decent sized audience before curtain up, but resigning yourself to the stage manager’s hateful cue to start the show, and yet again, there are only 5 people in today. But that’s good, because that’s one more than yesterday.

So when I went up for a weekend this year as a mere punter I thought, yeah, what a relief. I can observe the madness from afar. I shall be joyously detached. Dream on, kid. Edinburgh was now getting ‘medieval’ on my friends who were in shows. In short, they were cracking up. That weekend I was a full-time psychiatrist. Sigmund Freud, you had it easy, you never analysed ‘Edinburgh’.
(Names have been changed to protect the innocent and mad)

It’s Friday evening and I meet X at The Courtyard after I’ve seen his show. He’s good, with a deft comic touch that I think is his forte, but I don’t like the show. It’s a hugely self-referential piece about two actors performing in a show by a writer I admire hugely. Anyway, X is visibly agitated and matter of factly tells me he wants to hit someone in the face. Hard. Um, this is not like him at all. He’s a luvvie for gawd’s sake. It transpires he’s having to mediate between warring factions backstage and it’s stretched him thin. He’s visibly twitchy, and I’m quite alarmed when at the end of the night he announces he’s off to a club to let off some steam. I have visions of him starting a fight with a local hard nut. Thankfully I don’t read about a savage attack in a nightclub in the local newspaper the next day, and I receive a text from him day apologisizing for being ‘low’. More like Jekyl and Hyde I mutter to myself. But hey, I say to myself, that’s Edinburgh for ya!

Saturday night and I meet Y after her show, which is about how the travelling people in Stratford, East London have been unceremoniously turfed out of their homes to make way for the Olympics jamboree. It’s a good piece, and an important one – is the Olympics trampling everything underfoot? what will survive once the circus has left town? anything at all? – but irritatingly the writer has placed didactic, stylized scenes taking the piss out of authority figures in what is an essentially naturalistic piece. It’s like dropping Brecht into an episode of Coronation Street.

Y greets me in what appears to be a state of shock and the first thing she says to me is – ‘My career’s over’. I take this with a pinch of salt. I know she’s had problems with the show, but hey, who doesn’t at Edinburgh? I’m intrigued by what she means but we can’t move an inch because the streets are rammed with ‘Tatto’ fans. At last we find a pub with half a seat free and out it all comes. She tells me she got pissed with the cast one night and spritzed abuse at them. It was ‘emotional’. (Uh oh. A golden rule of thesps is when things go wrong you don’t gang up on your fellow actors, no, you take it out on the writer.) Consequently they’ve ganged up on Y & are making sarcastic/snide remarks before she’s about to go on stage. At least that’s what she imagines is going on. In an alarmingly abrupt turnabout she says maybe this isn’t happening and she’s simply going quietly mad. She shows me a text message from a cast member as an example of her ‘victimisation’. It’s actually a nice message hoping everything is okay with her. I say to Y maybe she’s being genuine. Maybe she’s just being friendly. But Y is having none of it. She’s convinced the whole cast has ganged up on her & are intent on destroying her mind. I detect a mounting panic in her and swing immediately into practical mode and advise her to get all the actors together and apologize unreservedly.

Well, things go from weird to worse. She says she knows she’s let me down too. She knows I’m disappointed with her. She can tell from the comments I’ve been saying tonight. They are codes, signs leading her inexorably to the view I am angry and hurt with her for past misdeamours. What the fuck? All I’ve been trying to do tonight is help her. I’ve never seen like this, and frankly, it’s quite worrying. I could say to her, ‘hey, that’s Edinburgh for ya!” but I don’t feel like saying it. This is an extremely talented actress and a lovely person who I’ve worked with many times and never encountered any problems whatsoever.

Sunday morning, at the cavernous Underbelly; my friend Z is directing a slick farce about the origins of pantomime theatre, very silly, but a bit of good fun nevertheless. I’d texted Z before I came up and asked him how the show was going. Apparently there had been some ‘mad moments’. Not ‘alf, as Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman used to say. A cast member had to be removed from the actors accommodation as he had threatened to kill one of the cast. He was discovered on his hands and knees on the kitchen floor mumbling various violent oaths. He demanded alternative accommodation. Funnily enough, he got it. Paid out of the writer’s pocket who was financing the whole production. Then one of the cast went AWOL for a day. And some good news? He did return in time for that night’s performance.

The moral of this story for me is simple; why do we put ourselves through Edinburgh? What on earth do we get out of it except pain? Look at the stats: 2,000 shows, 20,000 performers, 450 venues. You have no chance!!! You are merely cannon fodder for the venue owners. And what on earth do the punters make of it? Just where do you start when there;s 2000 shows on offer and you got a weekend? For the last few years I’ve waited for someone to come out and break the last taboo in Western civilization. Well, looks like no one is, so I’m going to to say it: Edinburgh Fringe is shit! And why? It’s kinda obvious. It’s too friggin’ big! It’s the MacDonalds of arts festivals. And everyone knows it’s not about experimentation or idealism anymore, it’s about E4 finding the latest comedy sensation. O, and I say this as someone who’s had a big hit at Edinburgh. (shameless plug: see the mighty Gob on my website) So no, I ain’t bitter, pal.

Let’s start the ball rolling. Edinburgh sucks, go to the smaller Festivals that are getting a name for themselves; Brighton, Manchester, Dublin. And when they get too big abandon them and search for new festivals. I mean, artists are supposed to think for themselves aren’t they? Don’t be an Edinburgh sheep. Fuck the Festival.

No comments: