Is there any relevance and vitality to Edinburgh’s mad jamboree, or has it become the preserve of limp satirists, parodists, and Perrier winners from 2006?
It is happening again.
Culture-vultures and comedians alike have decamped from London, and for the next month, Edinburgh is now Surrey with a Fringe on top. (Don’t all clap at once.)
The atmosphere has been building; truth be told, it’s increasingly hard to deny the ferment and crackle of anticipation which underlines our streets. The crowds have begun to grow. Trying to pick your way through Waverley station is like wading backwards through treacle (and don’t even think about trying to get down South Bridge in the day unless you have exceptionally pointy elbows). Bagpipes and beer-gardens are springing up like daisies. The ominous scaffolded cocoons of George Street and Square have sprouted tents and stages. Even the sun has deigned to poke its nose through its cape of cloud. Yes, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has returned, with all its baggage, its marquees, signs, flyers, and its ultimately unsuccessful mediation of art and capital (or a successful one, depending on whether you’re an artist or a capitalist).
All the familiar faces are back, a sort of Reading & Leeds for people you’ve seen on Dave: Dara Ó Briain, Sue Perkins, Sara Pascoe, Nish Kumar et al. In this analogy, Gerry Cinnamon is perennial Perrier-nominee Mark Watson, newly awakened from his annual cryonic slumber in a facility beneath Cowgate to deliver yet another standup slot about cheating on his wife. What unites all these figures, though, is that they’re bringing ‘work-in-progress’ shows to the city. How egalitarian, that less well-known comedians who’ve strived to produce a complete show to little fanfare, end up playing second fiddle to larger names who are still honing theirs (and charging you quite a bit more for your guinea-pig privileges.)
Of course, the Big Four (that’s Pleasance, Assembly, Gilded Balloon, and Underbelly has historically been anchored by ‘big beasts’, like the table at a Tudor monarch’s banquet. But last year’s Fringe saw the table tilt decisively towards established figures keen to muscle in on any post-covid revival. It’s hard to see things swinging the other way any time soon, so in the meantime I’ll be in the More4 tent, for Cats Does Countdown Does Fringe, sipping on an ice-cold Coors for the princely sum of £7.30.
All of this leads to a few questions. ‘Fringe?’ Fringe of what, say? ‘Underbelly’ of what? As I’ve said, this proliferation of known acts is understandable enough — I don’t need to explain to you why people would very happily pay to see Miriam Margolyes perform Dickens — but might it all have got a teensy bit out of hand?
For example, does one of Tony Blair’s political advisers really need a show here? Matt Forde already had one last year, with enough billboards for seven; and now his image is once again constellated throughout Old Town, the Big Dipper of Starmerite satirists. This reputation appears to be largely unearned considering that, until now, Forde’s most significant contribution to comedy was his 2019 Britbox remake of ‘Spitting Image’, a horrific misstep akin to a hideous act of amateur taxidermy performed by your nan on her tabby. One standout, woefully sexist moment saw a puppet of Jess Phillips exclaim “You wanna suck some f***ing milk from my big Labour tits?” (Another pricelessly poorly-aged gag had a foam-and-cloth Tory party identify the only virgin in their midst as being, wait for it… Matt Hancock.) In terms of laughs-a-minute, it made Kes look like Airplane!.
I could rip into Forde all day (and the notion does hold appeal), but there’s a wider point to be made here about the ubiquity of performers with prior credits, at a time when entry to the arts is increasingly funnelled through a limited, privileged social strata, generating a morass of middle-class artists generally uncritical of the status quo. The ‘Fringe’ is supposed to resist the status quo (that’s why it’s called the Fringe).
Many can’t afford to perform here: what is, statistically, already the UK’s most expensive city for students somehow finds the drive within itself to become even pricier when August arrives. But even as those who can are put through the traditional rigours of self-promotion — and students are pressed into flyering platoons — there’s something truly hollow about watching the performers jostle for coins, pleading for more money at end of their pay-what-you-can shows just to barely cover overheads and leafleteers. When every show gets four stars, how do you get the exposure?
Sure, there are the old formulas to fall back on: gimmicks (Shakespeare But Drunk, Austen But Improvised, Wilde But With A “Twist”), identikit posters that betray the general gist of the whole show, standups’ tendency to bring their shows to a preachy moral usually revealed around the 40-minute mark, etc.
And, sometimes, real wit; sometimes, actual pathos; sometimes something truly vital and real, or escapist and flighty, sometimes something that makes you laugh until you cough up bits of diaphragm.
But it’s harder to cut through than ever before.
Edinburgh is no stranger to class difficulties. This is a place of startling income disparity and clashing fortunes. It’s always been this way: when toffs took objection to the tenements of the Old Town, they constructed a gleaming Georgian New Town. Those coming up from England’s capital to Scotland’s for the whole mad jamboree will step out into the space between the two, Edinburgh’s real Underbelly, a foetid, sewage-ridden swamp drained for the enterprising purposes of the North British Railway. They’ll step out into the frontier between two worlds.
Such a place as this should be a meaningful crucible, not a procession for Perrier Award winners from the mid-2000s. It should be more and is every year less. So, forgive my cynicism. Like Jarvis Cocker sang: if you want me, I’ll be sleeping in throughout these glory days.
Image courtesy of Underbelly General, provided to The Student as press material.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
Opinion: ‘Fringe’? Fringe of what? This sounds more like the mainstream
Is there any relevance and vitality to Edinburgh’s mad jamboree, or has it become the preserve of limp satirists, parodists, and Perrier winners from 2006?
It is happening again.
Culture-vultures and comedians alike have decamped from London, and for the next month, Edinburgh is now Surrey with a Fringe on top. (Don’t all clap at once.)
The atmosphere has been building; truth be told, it’s increasingly hard to deny the ferment and crackle of anticipation which underlines our streets. The crowds have begun to grow. Trying to pick your way through Waverley station is like wading backwards through treacle (and don’t even think about trying to get down South Bridge in the day unless you have exceptionally pointy elbows). Bagpipes and beer-gardens are springing up like daisies. The ominous scaffolded cocoons of George Street and Square have sprouted tents and stages. Even the sun has deigned to poke its nose through its cape of cloud. Yes, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has returned, with all its baggage, its marquees, signs, flyers, and its ultimately unsuccessful mediation of art and capital (or a successful one, depending on whether you’re an artist or a capitalist).
All the familiar faces are back, a sort of Reading & Leeds for people you’ve seen on Dave: Dara Ó Briain, Sue Perkins, Sara Pascoe, Nish Kumar et al. In this analogy, Gerry Cinnamon is perennial Perrier-nominee Mark Watson, newly awakened from his annual cryonic slumber in a facility beneath Cowgate to deliver yet another standup slot about cheating on his wife. What unites all these figures, though, is that they’re bringing ‘work-in-progress’ shows to the city. How egalitarian, that less well-known comedians who’ve strived to produce a complete show to little fanfare, end up playing second fiddle to larger names who are still honing theirs (and charging you quite a bit more for your guinea-pig privileges.)
Of course, the Big Four (that’s Pleasance, Assembly, Gilded Balloon, and Underbelly has historically been anchored by ‘big beasts’, like the table at a Tudor monarch’s banquet. But last year’s Fringe saw the table tilt decisively towards established figures keen to muscle in on any post-covid revival. It’s hard to see things swinging the other way any time soon, so in the meantime I’ll be in the More4 tent, for Cats Does Countdown Does Fringe, sipping on an ice-cold Coors for the princely sum of £7.30.
All of this leads to a few questions. ‘Fringe?’ Fringe of what, say? ‘Underbelly’ of what? As I’ve said, this proliferation of known acts is understandable enough — I don’t need to explain to you why people would very happily pay to see Miriam Margolyes perform Dickens — but might it all have got a teensy bit out of hand?
For example, does one of Tony Blair’s political advisers really need a show here? Matt Forde already had one last year, with enough billboards for seven; and now his image is once again constellated throughout Old Town, the Big Dipper of Starmerite satirists. This reputation appears to be largely unearned considering that, until now, Forde’s most significant contribution to comedy was his 2019 Britbox remake of ‘Spitting Image’, a horrific misstep akin to a hideous act of amateur taxidermy performed by your nan on her tabby. One standout, woefully sexist moment saw a puppet of Jess Phillips exclaim “You wanna suck some f***ing milk from my big Labour tits?” (Another pricelessly poorly-aged gag had a foam-and-cloth Tory party identify the only virgin in their midst as being, wait for it… Matt Hancock.) In terms of laughs-a-minute, it made Kes look like Airplane!.
I could rip into Forde all day (and the notion does hold appeal), but there’s a wider point to be made here about the ubiquity of performers with prior credits, at a time when entry to the arts is increasingly funnelled through a limited, privileged social strata, generating a morass of middle-class artists generally uncritical of the status quo. The ‘Fringe’ is supposed to resist the status quo (that’s why it’s called the Fringe).
Many can’t afford to perform here: what is, statistically, already the UK’s most expensive city for students somehow finds the drive within itself to become even pricier when August arrives. But even as those who can are put through the traditional rigours of self-promotion — and students are pressed into flyering platoons — there’s something truly hollow about watching the performers jostle for coins, pleading for more money at end of their pay-what-you-can shows just to barely cover overheads and leafleteers. When every show gets four stars, how do you get the exposure?
Sure, there are the old formulas to fall back on: gimmicks (Shakespeare But Drunk, Austen But Improvised, Wilde But With A “Twist”), identikit posters that betray the general gist of the whole show, standups’ tendency to bring their shows to a preachy moral usually revealed around the 40-minute mark, etc.
And, sometimes, real wit; sometimes, actual pathos; sometimes something truly vital and real, or escapist and flighty, sometimes something that makes you laugh until you cough up bits of diaphragm.
But it’s harder to cut through than ever before.
Edinburgh is no stranger to class difficulties. This is a place of startling income disparity and clashing fortunes. It’s always been this way: when toffs took objection to the tenements of the Old Town, they constructed a gleaming Georgian New Town. Those coming up from England’s capital to Scotland’s for the whole mad jamboree will step out into the space between the two, Edinburgh’s real Underbelly, a foetid, sewage-ridden swamp drained for the enterprising purposes of the North British Railway. They’ll step out into the frontier between two worlds.
Such a place as this should be a meaningful crucible, not a procession for Perrier Award winners from the mid-2000s. It should be more and is every year less. So, forgive my cynicism. Like Jarvis Cocker sang: if you want me, I’ll be sleeping in throughout these glory days.
Image courtesy of Underbelly General, provided to The Student as press material.
Share this:
Like this:
Related