EDINBURGH 2013 - Fringe Benefits

It was with a weary sigh that I read Rupert Christiansen's Telegraph piece on "Why I won't be going anywhere near the Edinburgh Festival", complaining about the Dionysian mayhem that the Edinburgh Festival Fringe brings to the city every August. He has form on this, having complained in a rather similar fashion in the Telegraph in 2008. After all, so many people are interested in the world's biggest arts festival during August, it's an easy way of getting page views.

Like Christiansen, I have been a regular visitor to Edinburgh in the summer, having first been lured there by a rare Fringe production of a favourite show at the age of fourteen. In the summers since, I've delighted in spending August crammed into makeshift theatre buildings for every sort of performance imaginable. Growing up in rural Scotland, the idea of being able to see more quality theatre in a week than in the other fifty-one combined was astounding, and the thrill never disappeared after I moved to Edinburgh.

One thing I love about the Fringe is its accessibility. Its open access for performers is well touted. Anyone can head to the Scottish capital with a show, from the biggest names in comedy to small foreign theatre companies working on a shoestring.

Yes, this does result in some of the offerings being poorly executed nonsense that may well have no business charging audience members to suffer through, but that's the nature of a theatrical democracy.

And since it is a democracy, if people don't like it, it won't get an audience, while the shows that inspire and amaze will - it's as simple as that. There is no snooty festival director deciding what is and isn't arty enough to allow to perform, or only inviting established suitably high-brow companies to present work. The Fringe allows fresh, exciting new work that challenges expectations and breaks through boundaries to find its feet, find an audience, and perhaps find a life beyond the Fringe, as the slew of successful acts that got their big break here can attest.

It's not merely accessibility for performers that makes me love it though. For all Christiansen speaks of "hordes of drunk youths", that is categorically not my experience of the Fringe. Just in the last few days, I've witnessed the huge popularity of the Kidszone at the Pleasance Courtyard, been asked to recommend shows by blue rinse Edinburgh matrons, helped a mother and teenage son excited for their first Fringe to find their venue and introduced a friend who "doesn't do theatre" to shows that have got him raving to his macho arts-sceptic friends. The Fringe is so vast and varied that it truly offers something for everyone, and every sort of person answers its siren call.

There is a fantastic feeling of community during the Fringe. Great opportunities for performers to network aside, there is a real sense that everyone is going through a unique experience together. Shows often live or die on word of mouth, but that's not limited to your own group of friends. You end up chatting to complete strangers in queues or sharing a table in a crowded café, recommending shows to each other and laughing over the craziest sights of your day. It's liberating, friendly and fun.

As to the idea that Edinburgh goes temporarily mad during August and is otherwise sensible, austere and dignified, it's worth remembering that the Traverse Theatre, the home of new writing in Scotland, was founded to keep the spirit of the Fringe going throughout the other eleven months of the year. It's now celebrating fifty successful and critically acclaimed years of doing exactly that with annual programmes of exciting new theatre. Those London-based types who speak of "doing Edinburgh" are often quick to forget that this is a bustling cosmopolitan city, home to exciting events and other festivals all year round. I delight in the fact that the Fringe makes Edinburgh the cultural centre of the UK for a month, but that there is plenty to occupy me for the rest of the year.

Christiansen expresses a preference for one of these other events, the Edinburgh International Festival, and speaks of its struggles to attract new audiences. Indeed, despite being "serious about the arts", it has never managed to entice me, and I have only once ventured to the EIF in the last thirteen years, when a couple of friends were eager to see Alan Cumming in David Greig's NTS-produced version of "The Bacchae". The show itself was alright, not quite measuring up to the likes of "Fuerzabruta" that I saw on the Fringe that year. "The Bacchae" tells the story of King Pentheus of Thebes, who tries to ban the anarchic and hedonistic worship of Dionysus in the city. Perhaps it would be worth Christiansen's time to note that the story tells us that irresistible Dionysian mayhem always wins out in the end.

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