The Festival begins late this year. Technically its first day is
today (Friday, I'm publishing this so late at night that I have entered
tomorrow, like a cider-fuelled Dr. Who) but in reality the Wednesday and
Thursday beforehand are full of 'preview' shows.
Nevertheless
the insanity starts even earlier for those of us who live here. Last
weekend I was out dancing until 5am, an unusual situation because : I
was dancing, I was out on a weekend (a grim thought for anyone who does
not work Mon-Fri and so doesn't actually HAVE to do that every week like
ritual flagellation) and the club I was in was open until 5am. The
latter is one of the advantages of living here - the clubs get their
August late-licence at least a few days before the Festival hordes
arrive. I think this is an attempt to placate the young and drive the
old so far into despair that they are beyond complaining.
As
always happens with the Festival Edinburgh's cultural gravitational
pull becomes unstoppable and one or another of my old friends will be
dragged in. In this case my friends who got married at the start of last
year, though as the female half of the coupling only stayed a few days
they have decided to celebrate their one year anniversary by spending a
month apart. If only all marriages were conducted at such a sensible
distance.
Disaster struck, though, when the
Powers-That-Be on his production went insane and threw his wife out onto
the street. How fortunate that myself and The Moose have forsaked
bohemian convention and do have a sofa and not just a string of
bean-bags - she found safe haven with us. This is indicitive of another
thing that always happens at the Festival - minor crises. I guarantee
that almost every show you see will have a crisis somewhere behind the
scenes. Maybe a major player is suffering from a bout of flu so bad they
might succumb to zombification at any moment, maybe someone is in the
middle of a crisis of faith while performing a show about how
great/awful God is, maybe - as is happening to a show on euthanasia -
Edinburgh City Council have taken an unreasonable dislike and are trying
to censor it. Whatever the case may be, at least 50% of the shows you
see have as much drama off the stage as they do on it. Maybe more in the
case of particularly bad but particularly chaotic actors.
Visiting
friends dispatched into the ether and embracing the chaos of the
Festival, The Moose and I went to see John Hannah in 'Titanic
Orchestra'. I can tell you that it is a wonderful show, while not
wanting to give away too much it is as though Godot turns up in 'Waiting
for Godot'. John Hannah also does some magic tricks, including a
magical ability to make an American accent sound Scottish. Or maybe the
opposite. Accents abound, in fact, in this highly entertaining piece of
knowing Fringe theatre. Also, when and where else are you going to get
to see a genuine A-list star pretend to be a drunk Harry Houdini?
Nowhere, obviously. This is what the Fringe is for and what it does it
does exceedingly well.
This post has, of necessity,
been frenetic. Leaping from drunken dancing to friends in crisis to
Holywood stars pulling eggs from their mouth (yes, yes he does). That is
what the start of the Fringe is like for those who live within its
maelstrom. From the outside, especially those outside Edinburgh, it
purrs and sputters into life like a motorbike. For us it flashes
intensely like a nuclear bomb and before you know it you're reduced to
ash. Ash and witty one-liners. This is the spirit of the Fringe, a
burning sacrifice of sanity made every year in some sort of Dionysian
fervor. I wouldn't have it any other way. I couldn't have it any other
way. I'm not allowed to have it any other way.
