At Fringe, art’s the wild card

It’s a typical August day in Scotland’s capital city. Fire-eaters, sword-swallowers in kilts, living statues painted gold or silver and a man on a unicycle juggling burning daggers line the tourist-magnet Royal Mile section of High Street. Never far away is the skirl of the bagpipes, that archetypal Scottish instrument with its intimidating, dissonant drone. On several street corners, lone pipers play for money.

On the sidewalks, young performers hopefully hand out leaflets and fliers for theatrical shows (offering a polite, surprised “Thank you!” when a passerby takes one).

For one month every year, this ancient, dramatically beautiful city utterly transforms itself. Usually it’s a sober, industrious place -- the center of Scottish politics, law, banking and accountancy -- and its gray stone buildings can make it seem almost forbidding. Then August comes around, and Edinburgh becomes a noisy, colorful, exuberant party town, teeming with people, the vast majority young and casually dressed. The world’s biggest arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, gets underway, and the city’s population of 440,000 is temporarily doubled.

Thousands of performers flood into the city, some intent on becoming famous. But the majority -- an astonishing array of stand-up comedians, musical and theater groups, dance troupes, children’s entertainers and performers of every description -- are here for the sheer fun.

This year the Fringe has attracted 12,940 artists who are giving 21,594 performances of 1,541 shows at 207 venues through Monday. They commandeer as a performance space every usable piece of real estate in Edinburgh: schools, community halls, empty churches, even apartments. Almost certainly the biggest contingent is from the American High School Festival, who appear in several musical events around Edinburgh. “There’s about 1,200 of them,” said Fringe Director Paul Gudgin. The arrival of the performers and audiences makes Edinburgh a carnival city for a month. But there’s a touch of Las Vegas about it too.

Why? Because attending Fringe shows is a gamble. There is a rough democracy about the Fringe. No artists are invited to attend; they are not paid, asked to perform specific work or censored. As long as artists or groups can find a Fringe venue -- and pay for it -- they are welcome to perform. But on the other side of the coin, no one administers quality control.

“There’s a risk element,” says Fiona Stewart of the Edinburgh and Lothian Tourist Board. “You can stumble on something wonderful. Or it may be a particular show is not for you.” Most Fringe shows last only an hour and are cheap -- about $8 and up. Clearly the prospect of a gamble does not deter audiences -- they show up in droves. “Last year, we sold 975,000 tickets,” Gudgin says, “and this year we hope to exceed a million.”

LUCK OF THE DRAW

What draws all these people here? The noise, the fun and party atmosphere play a part. But there’s also the thrill of knowing you might be among the first people to see a show that becomes an international hit. The Fringe has a reputation for breaking shows that go on to global success.

Last year, it was the outrageous “Jerry Springer -- The Opera,” which was staged this year at London’s National Theatre, will soon transfer to the West End and may yet reach Broadway. Already there is the Irish play “Stones in His Pockets,” which first attracted attention in Edinburgh. The dance revue “Tap Dogs” began here in the early 1990s. British playwright Gregory Burke’s “Gagarin’s Way” received rave reviews here in 2001 and is now translated into 18 languages.

The Fringe’s hit-making potential goes back more than 40 years. In 1960, four bright young men from Cambridge University presented a satirical student revue, “Beyond the Fringe.” A huge hit, it quickly transferred to London and made them all stars: Dudley Moore became a Hollywood leading man, Alan Bennett a playwright, Jonathan Miller an opera director and Peter Cook one of Britain’s best-known satirists.

In 1966, Edinburgh was where the young playwright Tom Stoppard was first noticed, after rapturous reviews for his “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.” In 1976, a young undergraduate took time out from his engineering studies to perform skits in Edinburgh for the Oxford Revue. His name? Rowan Atkinson, creator of “Mr. Bean” and “Johnny English.” Five years later, a young woman was discovered in the Cambridge University Footlights Revue; it was future Oscar-winner Emma Thompson.

In recent years, many stand-ups have advanced their careers by competing for Edinburgh’s annual Perrier award; some, like Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans and Dylan Moran, have moved into TV and films.

Of course, these success stories represent a small tip of a huge iceberg. “The phenomenal thing about Edinburgh is that 95% of the acts lose money or just break even,” says David Bates, owner and producer of the Spiegeltent, a leading Fringe venue. “But almost every festival director, scout and theater producer from major cities all around the world is here. This is the place where futures are made. That’s why the artists come and lose money -- or to put it another way, come and invest.”

Not everyone thinks the investment is worthwhile, either for performers or their paying audiences. Doubts are perennially voiced about the Fringe: Do its artistic standards match the hype? Has it become more mainstream and bland?

Some English critics in particular feel Fringe productions, acceptable to tolerant festival audiences out for a good time, often look thin and underwritten if they succeed in transferring to London. Michael Kennedy, the London Sunday Telegraph’s veteran music critic, says: “The Fringe has been ridiculous for a long time, and now it’s just dull.” Veteran Edinburgh theater producer and gallery owner Richard De Marco agrees: “The Fringe should be about a level of experimentation and risk-taking. And it just isn’t anymore.”

Edinburgh also has a hothouse atmosphere, where excitable word-of-mouth unrealistically inflates artists’ reputations. Much pre-Fringe hype surrounded the French theater troupe Les Spectacles Remy Renoux, performing sketches from Monty Python’s Flying Circus -- in French. (“This is a dead parrot” translates as “C’est un perroquet mort.”) The buzz helped the troupe to sell out the Pleasance, a large Fringe venue. But in performance, though critics and audiences found them charming, the joke quickly wore thin. “No one came away thinking it was the greatest thing they had ever seen,” said Mark Monahan, comedy critic for London’s Daily Telegraph. The show may still play an off-West End theater in London, but expectations are now lower.

Yet word of mouth is crucial in getting audiences into shows. At festival time, complete strangers waiting in lines, hanging out in bars or seated at adjacent cafe tables strike up conversations, asking one another what shows they’ve seen and what they’d recommend. Such nonmanufactured buzz can boost unsung shows.

One beneficiary is “The Pugilist Specialist,” performed by the Riot Group from San Francisco and written by 24-year-old Adriano Shaplin, whose elegant, staccato dialogue recalls David Mamet. The play deals with four U.S. Marine officers planning a clandestine mission to eliminate a Middle East head of state; it is harshly critical of U.S. military attitudes.

Audiences have swelled since its run began Aug. 3, and reviews are favorable. We’ve had several offers from London, and it will definitely play off-West End in the new year,” said Louise Chantal, its Scottish producer. “The thing I find interesting is, these are American kids, none of whom work as professionals in America -- yet they still sell out shows here.”

OTHER FESTIVALS

The Fringe isn’t the only festival in town; it’s simply the biggest. Others include the original, “official” Edinburgh International Festival, established in 1947 as a highbrow program of performing arts -- theater, opera, classical music and dance. (Ironically, the Fringe began the same year as a small-scale reaction against the august, high-culture programming of the International Festival.) There is also a fast-expanding book festival (with John Irving, Doris Lessing and Susan Sontag among this year’s guests) and film and jazz/blues festivals.

Consequently, the dazzling variety of arts attractions makes Edinburgh irresistible. On one day last week, a visitor could have spent an afternoon hour listening to Sontag discuss her work, moved on to a choice of a dozen stand-ups, dined early, attended the avant-garde play “The Last Night of Mankind” by radical Argentine troupe El Periferico de Objetos in the International Festival -- then relaxed over a few late-night beers in the Cafe Royal Fringe Theatre, listening to acoustic musicians.

This convivial atmosphere attracted members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who have enjoyed a second consecutive year in the International Festival, with a weeklong residency comprising three concerts conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and two performances of chamber music.

“It’s a pretty crazy summer for us, so it took a special vote by the orchestra to decide to come here,” said Deborah Borda, the orchestra’s executive director. (The Philharmonic is preparing to move to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in October.) “There’s just such a special feeling about this city.”

There’s also a sense that, especially in Fringe theater, you may see things you wouldn’t see elsewhere. This year, “site-specific” productions in unusual venues have been the rage -- including a disused church vault, painted black and sealed off from all light so that it is totally dark. A remarkable two-act Irish play, “Ladies and Gents,” is being staged in public bathrooms behind one of Edinburgh’s cathedrals; the audience splits into two and sees one act in the men’s room and the other in the women’s.

And several productions are being staged in a cramped steel and aluminum elevator (measuring 7 by 7 feet), standing in the Pleasance courtyard. It holds up to 12 people at a time. One features New York actress Cathy Haase (“Blair Witch 2”), playing a firefighter, describing being trapped in an elevator in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 -- but surviving to tell the tale.

“It’s an extraordinary experience,” Haase said. “I’ve never worked before in a place where you can literally see the whites of the audience’s eyes.” She shook her head wonderingly. “Only in Edinburgh, huh?”