Excellent Fest, poor review (Edinburgh International Festival in general)

Member Name: pert_abacus

Product:	Edinburgh International Festival in general
Date:	08/09/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free Entertainment, variety, culture, occasional nudity

Disadvantages: So much choice it's overwhelming

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival dates back to 1997 when local barbers from Dunfermline rose up in disgust that the capital city was being over-run by artisans, musicians and men who blow really large bubbles. Led by a barbershop quartet from David Gray Salons they stormed into Edinburgh ready to cut the hair of the long haired hippy types and bring back some degree of sanity.

However, when they arrived on the golden mile they were distracted by a couple of students balancing precariously on ladders whilst juggling and decided instead to join in the fun....

Or perhaps it didn't start like that but what the hell it's fun anyway.

With hundreds of performances ranging from the brilliant to the sublime, teh ridiculous to the staid and from the good to the bad the Edinburgh Fringe is well worth a visit.

Throughout the month of August hundreds of venues (theatres, pubs, buses, museums and even houses) host a ridiculous variety of shows. Every single day there are hundreds of shows to choose from.

This year we only went into the city a handful of times as we had the nipper with us but here's a rundown of what we saw:

First thing we saw after we'd parked the car was a couple of street performers balancing on ladders with the aid of petrified passers by, moving on we watched an African Troop perfoming traditional music from their homeland, a youth choir murdering their favourite songs from the musicals, a very funny mime artist and men dressed as crabs dancing around. All this in the first half hour.

The shows we took in were an excellent production of the Magic Porrige Pot, a truly brilliant ballet of Snow White & the 7 Dwarves and a musical version of popular childrens book Room on the Broom.

Whilst I took in a coffee / sleep break with the bairn (she slept, I drank the coffee) my wife took in a 'feminist show' which comprised of 4 women standing topless on stage talking about breasts. The audience was apparently 7 parts women, 2 parts boyfriends / husbands and 1 part Dirty Mac Brigade who bought the tickets purely cos there was the promise of seeing some birds withtheir waps out. My wife reports that the show was very good & quite moving.

With the bairn awake once again we took in more street theatre before heading back to the car to battle through the busy streets, made all the more confusing due to the ongoing tram works and diversions.

It's worth noting that if my daughter wasn't disabled & therefore we have a disabled parking badge I don't think we would have tried driving into, and parking in the centre of Edinburgh during the festival. If you're going up next year I'd recommend using the excellent bus service or else you'll find yourself having to miss shows because of having to keep moving your car every few hours and sitting in traffic.

Anyway on with the festival, on our other trips in we mainly watched the free shows on the golden mile, chatted to the millions of folk handing out flyers and trying to get the punters in, and took in a few of Edinburghs gems that aren't part of the festival. The toy museum is free (bar a donation) and is excellent, the castle is always worth a visit and going underground into the old city is brilliant unless you're claustrophobic.

This year there was a brilliant play bus for the kids and we also took our little girl to a monkey music session - this was nothing taht she couldn't have done at home but it's a bit unfair on a toddler to keep dragging her around the city.

Anyway, this was just a very brief sample of what we did at the festival, my friend Monkey Peter will be posting his more in depth (& depths plumbing) review in a day or 2.

Summary: Next year Go!