Every August thousands of people arrive in Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city, to sample the delights of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Edinburgh Festival is the largest arts festival in the world and takes places from the beginning of August until the end of August. The Festival incorporates comedy shows, theatre productions, music, and dance. Alongside the Fringe Festival, there are also book festivals and international film festivals and this all makes for a wonderful jamboree of entertainment.
Indeed, one of the biggest challenges that faces the festival goer is how to choose the shows to see. The choice can be so huge that it becomes intimidating. Faced with this conundrum, there are several approaches that can be taken. These include:
Filter by type of show:
Fans of physical dance may decide to ignore the comedy, plays, and music, and narrow down their choice to dance shows. However, with there being so many comedy and theatre shows, this approach is only a starting point if you like those artistic genres.
Read the reviews:
Sometimes reading a review can provide a good feel for whether a show is good and whether the content is likely to be up your street. However, a word of caution needs to be expressed, namely that reviews are very subjective and I have often seen shows that have been mediocre at best that have got five star reviews, and shows that were great that subsequently were panned by the critics. Nevertheless, plumping for a show that has been feted in this way may reduce the randomness of picking picking the first show that you see advertised. The List magazine and the Scotsman newspaper are a couple of good sources for reviews and may be more likely to give a fair representation of the shows than the review cut-outs that the show's promoters put up outside their venues.
In this modern Internet age, you can also read what other members of the public have thought of shows. A good site for this is the Edinburgh Fringe website, www.edfringe.com. I've also been in a very good pizza place in the Grassmarket area, called Mamma's, that had a blackboard on which people had stated whether they had liked or disliked shows!
Choose based on location and time:
Every year, I get together with some friends from a soccer team for our annual Festival show. With a fairly large group of people, it's difficult to do all the planning in advance, so we agree to meet at a particular time at a particular venue. The venue is the Pleasance Courtyard and it's one of the main venues having multiple shows running throughout the evening. We then see what shows are on (and aren't sold out) and make a snap choice on what to see. The downside to this approach is that you can end up with a poor show but we've also seen some really excellent shows, including Reginald D. Hunter who got a Perrier nomination for his show.
The comedy shows have become increasingly popular in recent years and features some of the biggest and best names in world comedy, such as Rich Hall, Bill Bailey, Jason Byrne, and Phil Kay. However, if you do come through to Edinburgh on the strength of the comedic talent, then it's worth also checking out some of the comedy sketch shows that often herald the next generation of great comedy talent. Indeed, the likes of Stephem Fry, Hugh Lawrie, and Emma Thompson made their breakthrough as part of the Cambridge Footlights sketch show ensemble in 1981.
It's also worth checking out some of the great theatre shows, which can vary greatly from adaptations of Shakespeare classics, to the latest plays from the best new playwrights. And then there's the dance and music shows.
One of the challenges is not going overboard with the number of shows that you see, as this can start to hurt your bank balance. There have been concerns that the current recession might see a reduction in the number of shows on offer and the number of sales but it looks as if comedy may prove fairly resistant to the current economic malaise. However, it's always worth being frugal in your spending so look out for special offers and remember that there is plenty of street entertainment as well, including jugglers and musicians.
The Edinburgh Festival started in 1947 and its creators must have been amazed at its constant growth. There were over 2000 shows to choose from in 2008 and it attracted artists from all over the world. Of course, Edinburgh is also an incredibly beautiful city and attracts large numbers of tourists throughout the year. Coinciding your Scottish trip to take in the Festival will mean that the streets are more crowded than at other times but it will be a perfect opportunity to see great shows and enjoy the sense of camaraderie that the Festival produces.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Fringe#Review s_and_awards