Churches and toilets do well as venues

By TIM WATKIN

Edinburgh's Fringe Festival has fended off the decline in world tourism and ticket sales that have hurt London's West End. When it ends on Monday it will have broken its own records yet again, confirming its place as the Olympics of Arts Festivals.

By the halfway point, last year's record of a million tickets sold was broken and organisers were expecting they could top 1.3 million. The Fringe box office has taken £2.3 million ($6.2 million), with venues estimated to have taken triple that.

As an indication of just how mainstream the Fringe has become, there was even a "fringe fringe" this year, launched by unions after a Socialist MP called the Fringe "elitist and commercial". But the performers aren't complaining about their popularity, and extra performances are being laid on.

Ladies and Gents, the play performed in a public toilet, has extended its run twice.

St Cut's, the nicknamed St Cuthbert's church, crams more than 40 people into a 10m x 3m chapel every morning with an unoriginal line-up that includes wrinkly magician Paul Daniels, who has a waiting list, and a cheesy, two-man murder-mystery spoof play.

Edinburgh's churches are doing well as venues. St George's even has Julian Clary on its bill with his new 100% Sex Therapy show.

It prompted one of the best lines of the Fringe when St George's minister Rev Peter Macdonald rebuked Christians appalled that such a show could be held in a church.

"[It] provides an opportunity to show that not all Christians are narrow-minded, puritanical and judgmental. Some of us can get our knickers off rather than in a twist."

While theatre is making a comeback this year, comedy is the mainstream at the festival. No longer fringe and rather big business, the top comics come to make about £20,000 ($54,308) for a few weeks' work.

At the top of the charts are the comedians, such as Bill Bailey (sold out well before opening day), Geordie Ross Noble and local hope Danny Bhoy.

Bhoy offered the better show. For all Noble's red-hot reputation and courage in being one of the few genuine improvisers in town, he was having a slow night when we went. When the ideas dried up half way through the show it was obvious he had no plan B.

Bhoy was more laid-back and better prepared and offered a routine that was unusually gentle for a stand-up comic.

The leading themes for comedy and comment are the war in Iraq and the unusually hot weather, and Australians are getting some attention. Noble added them to his war comment and described them as "barbecuing in the warzone", even though no one was aware they had sent soldiers.

But at a festival where anyone who can get a venue can perform, there will always be the less successful. At the bottom is poor old Voxpop Puella, a music and film show arranged by 40 year-old ex-punk Helen Reddington.

It was the only show not to receive bookings before opening. "It's heart-breaking, but I'm not giving up," she was reported as saying. The word is getting out, slowly.