It was Fringe by name, and Fringe by nature this year at Edinburgh’s International Arts Festival. With more artistic haircuts, woolly cardigans and chunky glasses than Babylove’s wildest dreams, the Royal Mile was a haven for all those culturally inclined for the entirety of August. A little pretension never hurt anyone, but there certainly would have been some major casualties in Scotland’s capital if it did.
Amidst the frantic flyering and self-promotion from the endless roll-call of performers desperate for their X Factor-style big break, the University of Oxford and its thespian darlings were clawing their way to the front. With five a cappella groups warbling away in the key of Glee, the Imps and Revue flying the flag for comedy and the inaugural Bookstacks project piled high with serious theatre, Oxford didn’t disappoint in terms of quantity.
Quality wise, the Oxford drama scene’s offerings at the Fringe were uniformly impressive, ranging from the musical (Out of the Blue’s annual Fringe extravaganza) to the magical (Keble’s Simon Kempner psychologically gripping show SIL3NC3), and plays including Awful Pie Theatre’s Ubu, and ONEOHONE Theatre Company’s series of interactive experiences that push conventional theatre boundaries.
Exhausting as it may be, the Fringe is a genuinely unique and exciting experience for anyone at all interested in the dramatic arts. A fixed smile for the all-too-often excruciatingly awkward comedy shows is a must though, as is an appetite for the occasional deep fried Mars bar. The vibrant atmosphere in the streets conjures the Festival’s real magic: the street performers; the Scottish weather; the dauntless enthusiasm of bright young things crying out ‘five star show’ up and down the Mile; more comedy than even Bob Hope could feign enthusiasm for in introduction; and more than a healthy trifle of pretension, all taken with a generous pinch of salt, make for a summer that’s really something.
As you take your seat you will first notice a cat in tight black furs playing a violin and swinging on the bars of a cage. A Soviet-style placard will boast the name of the capital where the action takes place: MOCKBA (Moscow).
The setting is 1930s USSR in the arrogant age of atheism. But with the arrival of the Devil and the recent ‘publication’ of a work on Pontius Pilate, the Soviet characters of the play are thrown into the dark and twisted world of the religious and the magical.
The whole design of the play is clever and sexy, with ostentatious make-up and costumes against a minimalist backdrop. A great performance of Margarita by Cassie Barraclough conveys the stifling atmosphere of this bureaucratic nation; she is a woman struck down by love for her Master, a severe hero character played by Ollo Clark. The fated lovers must have dealings with the ominous crowd of the Underworld in order to at last regain their freedom.
The plot is slightly unhinged by the rapidity of the story-telling, and the jumps between dialogue and musical farce are disorientating, but none of these criticisms weaken the play as a whole. The play is not in real-time and may be deemed complicated, but my advice to the viewer would be to leave rationale behind at the box office to become submerged in this world of madness and beauty.
My Edinburgh was dominated by two activities: rehearsing, and handing out flyers. Rehearsals are straightforward, flyering a little more hit and miss.
August in Edinburgh is not that cold, especially not if you’re running between endless venues with a packed must-see schedule. Posing outside for several hours in a row, whilst wearing very little, is more of an endurance test. That’s perhaps the best way to describe flyering. For just how long can you withstand the cold? How long can you bear to be blanked by hundreds of passers by? Saying the same thing so often that even when you aren’t meant to, you get the urge to hand out flyers in the street. We are just a few of hundreds walking about the city trying to sell ourselves.
We tried to be subtle: no walking up to members of the public with a transfixed zombie stare, no singing and dancing. Instead, the actors form a sort of vignette. Byron and his five prostitutes all tarted up against the door of a church. An eye-catching background with eye catching – er – costumes. In sunshine and in rain.
There is probably no magical formula to succeed in this rather mundane activity. It’s almost luck if one of hundreds passing through the main streets comes to the play. Reams and reams of what we give out is probably not read, blending in with a crumpled pocketful of being just too polite to say no. So we cross our fingers, grit our teeth against the biting wind, lamenting that student theatre is not as easy to sell as Charlie and Lola the play, or just how much we took the Drama Officer Bulletins for granted.
