"Two to the City Centre, please"
"That'll be £2.00"
I hand over a £10 note. "Sorry I haven't any change."
"Exact fare only," he snarls in an Any-Idiot-Knows-That sort of voice.
So we have a choice. No change or walk.
With the show starting in 20 minutes, we pay £10 for the 2 miles bus ride to Edinburgh City Centre.
Taking the car would have been out of the question. Edinburgh City Council having promised to suspend road works for the duration of the Festival have merely moved them to all the arterial routs. “Road Closed for Festival Event” signs op up at random. There are no Diversion signs. The whole city is in complete gridlock. Parking in Edinburgh is always a nightmare. So, with thousands of extra visitors and cars, the Council puts up hundreds of notices “Parking Suspended for Festival event.” Apparently, no one has thought to arrange some emergency temporary car parks.
Talent for standing still.
Walking isn’t much easier. The pavements are reminiscent of the week before Christmas. Princes Street, usually devoid if buskers, barring the “lone” piper every 100 metres or so, now has an act outside every shop front. Most seem not to have busked before. Actually, many seem not to have tried out their act before. Am I supposed to find juggling with 2 balls impressive? Now, if they substituted tarantulas for the balls, it might be worth watching. Silver painted “statues”? OK, so the guy can stand still for ages at a time but is there anyone out there who hasn’t seen this done in every city in the world. I guess if your only talent is standing still, then livening up your act can be a bit tricky.
We struggle through the crowds to get to the theatre. Not a theatre, in fact, but one of the many make-shift auditoriums that spring up in Edinburgh during Festival Time. Some sport numbers “Festival Venue No 137” – but as it’s nowhere near Nos 136 or 138, they may as well not bother. Ours had a name. And a queue.
Doing something dreadful to an elephant
With shows on back to back, don’t even think about getting into the theatre before it’s your turn. You have to queue outside until the previous act has finished. After 20 minutes, the woman in front of us wilts and sits down on the bright yellow base of a road sign. Beneath her ample behind are printed the words “900 kilos”. We don’t’ think she is quite that big.
So you wait in line and are sitting ducks for hordes of Bright Young Things with Leaflets and Stickers. Julie Garland Singalongasomething; Spanish Guitarists with Ping Pong Balls in their Cheeks; Small Children Doing Something Dreadful to an Elephant. One of the lesser known Festival-related jobs is that of Not-so-Bright-Young-Thing, who follows the Sticker and Leaflet Givers picking up the consequent litter.
That bum numbing feeling
Finally, the queue starts to move. No seat numbers but we hadn’t realised this. In the ensuing mêlée, we missed the seats with any legroom. We perched on the village-hall-type collapsible plastic chairs and realise why the show is only one and a half hours long.
One and a half hours seems to be pretty standard for most Festival shows. At first I thought this was all a bit of a rip off. Now I realise it is reason to be glad. If the numb bum doesn’t drive you mad in this time, then the performance probably will. With many of the best shows sold out months in advance, you have the choice of the bizarre, the nostalgic or worse, the free.
Wannabes in desperate need of an audience are everywhere. The Edinburgh Fringe is the luvvies’ version of vanity publishing, and if you can’t get anyone to pay to see your production, give them free tickets. This then allows you to say on your CV that you Have Performed at The Fringe. At no point are you required to state the revenue derived from your audience.
Free Tickets
I inadvertently became a CV “audience” last weekend having foolishly accepted free tickets from a colleague. Maybe I should have asked her why she wasn’t going herself.
The auditorium was microscopic. Maybe it was supposed to be intimate. Probably it was cheap. The audience was spares. In fact, most looked like stage hands or lighting crew and theatre bar staff. The fact that the lead actress appeared to address all her lines to me personally further heighten4ed my suspicions that I was, in fact, an audience of one. The play was something vaguely Existentialist. When I was 16 and rather fancied myself as an intellectual, I would, no doubt, have lapped this up. As it was, the incomprehensible dialogue failed to keep my mind off the cramp in my lower limbs. I fidgeted; remembered that someone somewhere in the room had given me free tickets; tried to look interested and fidgeted again.
“She said you looked really bored,” I was told next day. My acting skills clearly leave something to be desired. I’m in good company then.