The Irish presence was somewhat slimmer at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where theatre once again proved the great equaliser, writes Brian O'Connell.
It's a dreary Sunday morning in Edinburgh. The kitchen staff at the Traverse Theatre, off Lothian Road, are having to work overtime, churning out bacon and sausage at a ferocious rate. Queues treacle along the corridors, as laminate-wearing festival-goers avail of the free internet access or compare notes on the festival so far. Many are turned away. The staff at the 100-seater Traverse Two clearly hadn't expected such demand for a 20-minute play at this hour of the morning.
Mark Ravenhill is beaming. Even by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe's experimental standards, his decision to churn out 17 new plays over the course of the festival has been a resounding success. The following morning the production transfers to the larger auditorium of Traverse One, and still manages to sell out.
The cutting political discourse helps; the free coffee and bacon butty make it a no-brainer. Only in Edinburgh could a venue offer 300 people new writing with a full breakfast, and only in Edinburgh, perhaps, would sufficient people turn out to avail of the offer.
In recent years, the Edinburgh Fringe has faced criticism for becoming too unwieldy and out of touch with its core audience. Yet, at its centre, the festival is still as relevant and artistically pioneering as it was when it began 60 years ago. For Irish companies and performers, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe remains an important shop window to the theatre producers of the world. Yet the costs involved in bringing a production to Edinburgh, where breaking even is often seen as a bonus, means that only five Culture Ireland/Irish Theatre Institute-supported shows made it to the festival this year.
For those that did make the trip, Culture Ireland CEO Eugene Downes expresses much admiration. "This year we had 14 applications for funding to support productions at Edinburgh, and we made eight offers," he says. "In the end, five companies went ahead with productions. The economics of touring to Edinburgh are a huge challenge - for smaller companies especially, but also for larger ones. Relying on box-office income and trying to attract good houses in probably the biggest and most competitive performing arts festival in the world is hair-raising. I take my hat off to anyone who does it."
The "emerald invasion" of last year was a distant memory as Irish productions and performers struggled to assert themselves among the thousands of international acts this year. Of the five Culture Ireland shows that did make the journey, The Walworth Farcewas an undoubted success, picking up a prestigious Scotsman Fringe First and doing brisk business at the box office. Enda Walsh's farcical and mordant take on Oirishness and past, of leaving home and looking back, had Guardian critic Lyn Gardner waxing lyrical: "If there is a bleaker, funnier or more desperate play in Edinburgh this year, I'll eat my hat," she wrote, during the course of a four-star review. Playgroup's The Art of Swimmingwas also a critical success, while pulling in modest box-office returns during its short early run.
The most underwhelming of the new productions might have been Rough Magic's take on Christian O'Reilly's new play, Is This About Sex?. Following the huge impact Improbable Frequencymade last year, much was expected of the Dublin-based company. While episodes in O'Reilly's chic take on sex and love provided genuine moments of hilarity, it wasn't enough to sustain an altogether slight production.
WITHOUT THE LIKES of Dara O Briain, Dylan Moran or Tommy Tiernan, it was up to the newer crop to fly the stand-up comedy flag this year. David O'Doherty held his own at the Assembly Rooms, where Neil Delamere's Viking Showwas proving a big hit with audiences. Delamere also provided one of the early contenders for heckle response of the festival when he silenced a disapproving audience member with the deft putdown: "You're looking at me like you're a Siamese twin, and I'm a revolving door."
In the media bar afterwards, Delamere was clearly enjoying his second Edinburgh outing. "I have to say it's been good so far, a far cry from the average Edinburgh box office," he said. "You'll always get a base level of Irish people coming to your shows, which is a great help. Coming here a few years ago I would have expected to lose a few grand, but this year I may even break even."
As for reviews, Delamere says he tries not to pay too much attention. "I think you are your own most critical reviewer at the end of the day," he says. "I don't read some of them, others I would. Normally I don't want to know if a reviewer is in the audience. But as the saying goes, nobody ever built a statue to a critic - something that helps me get by in times of bad reviews."
Of the other Irish comedians, Maeve Higgins seemed to step up a gear from last year, while Jarlath Regan might fare better if he dropped the sickly sweet routine and dispensed with some troublesome audiovisuals. Young, Gifted and Green, an annual showcase of new Irish comics, was disappointing, even allowing for the fact that many were cutting their teeth. Making an impact at the Fringe for Free events at the White Horse Inn was young Cork comic Donnchadh O'Conaill, who won the Chortle Student Comedian of the Year in 2006. Jason Byrne remained a big draw, while the best of Irish featured the likes of Caimh McDonnell, Dermot Whelan and Owen O'Neill, and was well received.
Outside of the Irish showings, physical performing space was noticeably at a premium this year, even allowing for the fact that extra venues have been added. Yet that didn't stop some companies putting on shows in the most unlikely settings. Fiona Evans, former press officer for the Assembly Rooms, knows the venue better than most. So when it came to writing her own show, she chose a tiny room off the main entrance as the setting for Scarborough, her funny and wholly credible take on a love affair between a teacher and her pupil. The tightness of space meant that an audience of 20 was all it could take, yet, with a Fringe First under her belt, Evans's days of sending out press releases might be over.
NATIONAL THEATRE OF Scotland director John Tiffany was always going to find it hard to repeat the success and sheer thrill of last year's Black Watch (which gets an outing in New York and LA in October), yet he came close with a dazzling new version of The Bacchae, adapted by David Greig at the King's Theatre as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. In fact, this was very much Greig's year, from the cutting and ironic political comedy Damascus, to Yellow Moon, a specially commissioned show for young people, Greig confirmed his status as the leading Scottish playwright of his generation.
Back at the Traverse, I shared a haggis with Jim Haynes, the man who founded the Traverse and played a big hand in the development of modern fringe theatre in the UK. Now living in Paris, he makes it back every year and says he is proud of the fact that the venue and the festival retain their relevance. Nobody in the venue batted an eyelid at his presence, the staff having long moved on since he sowed the seeds for the venue 50 years earlier in a coffee house on Hanover Street.
As for the venue's artistic foundations, and ideological beginnings, Haynes says its roots lay in more practical impulses. "I started this place as a club for the basic reason that you couldn't get a drink in Edinburgh back then on a Sunday. But as a club you could. It was also a way to avoid stringent censorship laws at the time."
While its beginnings may have been humble, Haynes takes solace in the fact that the festival retains its relevance, and manages to draw an audience from a diverse social range. "One of the joys of this place is that the person sitting next to you could be a performer or a street cleaner," he says.
"It doesn't matter. Theatre is the great equaliser here."
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe runs until Aug 27.
The Edinburgh International Festival runs until Sept 2
