A Festival’s Fringe Benefits : The Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland has 571 companies from 30 countries entertaining this year. No act is refused.

MC Rebbe, the rapping rabbi, takes the stage dressed in full Hasidic gear plus a few added flourishes like Ray-Bans, high-tops and a Passover plate that dangles from a chain necklace.

“Shalom (expletive),” he yells to the sellout crowd, as he breaks into a rap liberally peppered with Yiddish and profanity.

Elsewhere around the Scottish capital are three separate shows about Karen and Richard Carpenter, two about Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and a one-man performance titled “The Ghost of John Belushi Flushed My Toilet.”

Word has it there is also a theatrical duo who cram their audience into the back of a ’72 Renault and cruise the city while performing “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

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These shows, along with hundreds of others, are part of the Edinburgh Fringe--the largest and possibly most anarchistic arts festival in the world.

Originally formed as an ad-hoc adjunct to the annual Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe long ago passed the more mainstream arts gathering in size and public attention.

This year’s three-week Fringe, which runs through Saturday, is the largest in its 47-year history, with 571 companies from 30 countries staging 1,235 different shows, including 59 exhibitions, in 165 venues. That translates into a total of 12,176 separate performances, not including the multitude of acts that entertain on the streets.

Pedestrians crossing a city square one afternoon had to negotiate jugglers, singers, drummers, a magician and a huge troupe performing “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

Running concurrently with the official Festival and the Fringe are a book festival, film festival and other events. The combined arts gatherings normally attract more than a half-million visitors to Edinburgh, doubling the city’s population. This year has seen a massive surge in attendance, however, and festival organizers estimate that up to 1 million people will visit the city for some stretch of the festival season.

The result is a city totally consumed by the arts. The evidence is immediately palpable.

Sidewalks are bursting with people making their way to the next show while clutching voluminous programs; strangers ask each other in cafes what they should see next. As they walk, they are showered with leaflets from hopeful arts companies trying to drum up business.

Unlike sprawling Los Angeles, which is currently experiencing its own widespread, albeit much smaller, arts festival, Edinburgh is compact and walkable, so all but a few venues are easily reached by foot or a short bus ride.

Perhaps the key ingredient to keeping the Fringe diverse and edgy is the system by which arts groups are selected to participate.

“The process of deciding who is to be included is the copy deadline of the Fringe program,” says Mhairi Mackenzie-Robinson, administrator of the Fringe for the past eight years. “If you make it, you’re included; if you don’t, you’re not included.”

In other words, the Fringe is open to anyone who wants to be in it.

That policy has made it possible for audiences to see acts such as the Icelandic storyteller who performed in a cave--a cave so tiny, it could only fit an audience of one.

And it allows for innovations such as the show “Sleepers,” hastily concocted several Fringes ago by an impoverished English theater company with no place to stay in Edinburgh. Barred from spending the night in an empty building they’d found, but permitted to use it as a performance space, they created a show which consisted of them dozing off for the night in their sleeping bags. Tickets were said to be cheap.

For performers wishing to be part of the Fringe, there’s a lot more required than just showing up, however. Companies need to find and rent their own venues and, aside from getting listed in the official program, must handle all their own publicity and marketing.

Among the most popular acts this year is the Reduced Shakespeare Company, who performed their “The Complete History of America (Abridged),” which squeezes everything from Columbus to Clinton into 90 minutes.

A one-woman drama called “Revolver,” loosely connected to the Beatles album of the same name, drew rave reviews for actress Emily Woof.

Another one-woman show, “Tonight I’m Entertaining Richard Gere,” written and performed by Cecilia Delatori, drew sell-out crowds to its unusual venue after winning a “Fringe First” critics award. The comedy-fantasy is staged in a recreation center, thereby requiring audiences to file past an aerobics class and a busy gym to reach their seats.

No word so far on critical reaction to the comedy revue “Strictly Bathroom,” or, for that matter, the singing Del Rubio Triplets.

To give overwhelmed festival patrons a taste of the diverse shows available, several venues offer samplings. Every night, under a circus tent pitched on a hill overlooking the city, a half-dozen acts offer abbreviated versions of their shows under the banner “Best of the Fest.” And at a temporary outpost called The Fringe Club, audiences are treated to a variety of free shows.

Festival organizers also held a “Fringe Sunday” on Aug. 22 on the grounds of Queen Elizabeth’s Scottish residence, Holyrood Palace, where scores of acts performed free. The event drew an estimated crowd of 125,000.

While Fringe participants ultimately rise or fall on their own talent and initiative, festival officials do offer some guidance and suggestions. “We take them through, step by step, everything we think they need to know,” says Mackenzie-Robinson. “That’s a year-round process.”

Earlier this year, she and a colleague conducted meetings in New York and Los Angeles to help American performers prepare for the Fringe. They will return next year as well.

American companies comprise just over 7% of the Fringe program this year, a substantial number considering the expense and logistics. U.S. companies also have a particularly hard time getting grants to perform at the Fringe, says Mackenzie-Robinson, because many American funding organizations are often put off by the festival’s philosophy of not screening participants.

With so many shows available, there were certain to be some real losers. And there are.

This year’s most prominent turkey proved to be the graphic comedy and song show “21st Century Scut” from Liverpudlian actress Margi Clarke, who starred in the film “Letter to Breshnev” and hosted a popular British TV series called “The Good Sex Guide.”

Because of her fame in Britain and massive pre-festival publicity, advance tickets sales ensured near-capacity crowds for her show. But many in the audience clearly regretted being there. In fact, sizable chunks of the crowd walked out as Clarke fumbled through an embarrassing and boring mishmash of sex-related humor.

“The history of great Fringe bombs is being hastily rewritten to take account of Margi Clark,” wrote one reviewer.

At the end of her performance one night, Clarke seemed to be apologizing as she called out to her fleeing audience.

“It’s an experimental show,” she said, sounding desperate. “That’s what the Fringe is all about.”