Edinburgh Cringe

A crowd gathers outside the Pleasance Theatre

Ben Dowell reckons that the Edinburgh Fringe must slim down to staunch the flow of second rate shows, and stop the best and most innovative plays getting drowned out.

I’m off to Edinburgh this Saturday, for seven days on the fringe.

The fringe is, whether you like it or not, de rigeur for any self-respecting arts hack. But this year I have cut down my time there to the bare minimum.
The truth is, after ten consecutive years of the place, I really can’t face it any more.

It’s not just those bloody silly jugglers on the Royal Mile, the bright eyed, well-meaning students selling what you know – you just KNOW – will be an irredeemably ordinary three-hander based on D H Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers,  or if not then some piece of hagiography about Jeffrey Archer which the dumb arses who have put the show together claim has the consent of the author. (Both of these aren’t made up by the way – and what could be worse than a personally authorised biopic of Archer?)

No I am used to them.

I think the real reason I’m dreading it is I’ve finally realised that, contrary to the feeling you always get in Edinburgh that during those three weeks in August it is the centre of the known universe…. is, well, it aint.

The warning signs begin in March and April when – thanks to the Fringe Press Office who happily dole out your email address to any of the producers and performers from the 1700 (count ‘em) shows which the Fringe puts on each year – your in-box is inundated with screeds of bovine press releases.
Each one trying to grab attention, a lonely and frequently sub-literate voice trying far too hard to get heard among the competing sounds of – let’s hear that number again – 1700 other shows.

So, they think, as they clog up your email inbox : how do we grab attention?
 Let’s do a one man show about Jesus in which the really clever twist is he’s a Muslim. That will get people talking. Or shouting. We don’t have anything to say, but hopefully some Christian nutters will object and we might make page ten of the Edinburgh Evening News.
Or shall we just perform A Doll's House with dwarves playing the male roles. That’ll be fun. The latter actually is causing a fuss at the moment by the way, it’s all the rage at the Assembly performer’s bar I can tell you -  among the armies of PR’s and hacks who keep the festival going.

But the problem is they don’t really cause a proper, bona fide,  fuss. I know August is the newspaper silly season which means that any piece of inane controversy at least fills up a few column inches in what is always a lean time for the Fleet Street rags.
But when the critics, word of mouth and the Stage newspaper awards for acting excellence have actually filtered the best few shows and performances and they finally come to London – the Soho Theatre being the preferred venue of choice – which shows really make it?

Jerry Springer did well, but I never thought much of it– a brilliant second half marred by a tedious, repetitive and aimless second act. Jesus in a nappy? Yawn. And in any case, it can’t really be described as an Edinburgh show, having started its rather unpleasant life at the Battersea Arts Centre, with Edinburgh just being one stop on the way to the West End.

Or what about last year’s golden boy, the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch. Well, it was a clever show, ably performed. But it didn’t really do much for me.
How many times have we had an anti-war show featuring upturned chairs as armoured personnel carriers?
Compelling as it was, nothing about Black Watch could be said to have broken new ground.

All this could almost make you feel sorry for the people who dutifully load up their camper vans and pour three years worth of summer jobs savings into their shows as they head north in search of fame and fortune.
Were it not, that is, for the fact that the real lesson of Edinburgh is the unspoken truth that a large majority really do want to be famous for being famous’ sake and to get noticed.
These are folk who think that their 3pm hour at the Pleasance downstairs will finally see the calling card to the Adelphi flutter into their laps as they sip warm beer with the crew.
Sounds cynical, but the problem is that so few ‘performers’ who subject us to their Edinburgh shows are anywhere near up to the job.
And the ones that aren’t half bad are rarely even heard of or acknowledged.

I remember in 2004 a friend of mine took two shows which would have shone quite perfectly on the London fringe.
One was about an Aussie boyband, the other a one man show about Byron which starred the bloke who was then in a relationship with Ulrika Jonsson.
So he was famous and everything and they were also playing at the centre of much of the best Edinburgh drama, The Pleasance.
But both shows STILL disappeared.
Didn’t get enough of a buzz at the beginning of the festival meaning that the cast got a bit miffed with playing to houses which were just a fifth full and….well they tailed away and that was that.
You couldn’t fault the energy, the commitment or the talent.

 Some of the writing (always a weak spot with most Edinburgh dramas) was actually very good. In fact the only reason my friend can just about bear to talk about his experience was that it wasn’t his money – it came from a generous £30,000 “donation” put up by a wealthy theatre lover, who half expected to at least recoup some of his money and found he didn’t get anything back. 

Their problem was that they got lost simply because there was so much else around they were drowned out. Hardly anyone reviewed them, and those reviews they did get were not sufficiently stand-out to really grab anyone.
And the failures of literally hundreds of hopes and dreams each year leads us to certain unavoidable conclusions regarding the supposedly showpiece productions.
These are the sure fire hits which stand out from the crowd simply because they are featured on every Sunday newspaper  Edinburgh supplement and attract the big name critics to the first nights.

I’m talking about shows such as Twelve Angry Men or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which were recent main shows at the Assembly Rooms and always had a snaking queue of punters eager to catch the ‘must-see’ and a glimpse of Hollywood star Christian Slater, Bill Bailey or that other guy who used to be a regular on Whose Line is It Anyway?
My suspicion has long been that these shows are usually really very ordinary – Twelve Angry Men was OK, as was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – but stand out only because of the sheer saturated mediocrity which really swamps the festival.
Shows like these are almost willed to succeed in a way there is an expectation that shows like my mates will fail amid the flotsam and jetsam of everything else on offer.

They will never have a problem selling out so it’s not really about the quality. What these shows are are emblems of the fringe. They are the tops. They can’t fail or get slagged off or else the whole Edinburgh edifiice will crumble and people will have to properly examine the black hole of dross which makes up 90% of the repertoire each year.
Like so much at the fringe, these big shows are the theatrical equivalent, I guess, of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

What Edinburgh really needs is to slim down: cut back the number of cellars and upper rooms that keep growing and somehow managing to churn out play after play after play.
It also needs to have a good look in the mirror and develop a real sense of perspective about the quality of what it shows.
Otherwise it will just become an increasingly tiresome three week blip in the arts calendar, a clever ruse by which hacks and luvvies get to piss it up for a short period as the British summer draws to a close.

What it needs to do is lead the world – not just because of its size  (even if its shrinks by 50% it will still be the largest arts festival ever) but by the quality of its output. Hopefully it can.

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