It's been two weeks since I returned from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and now that I've had some time to reflect I feel I ought to share my verdict of it.
First off, I must say that it was insane; that is, in the best possible way. It's one thing reading that there's three thousand or more shows going on, but it's another to be on the Royal Mile when everybody's out and flyering as if there's a flyer shortage. Literally every taste is catered for; comedy, theatre, spoken word, cabaret, the list is comprehensively endless. The shows I saw were certainly indicative of the variety on display.
One such show, Janis Joplin: Full Tilt was a musical detailing in the space of an hour the life and death of the famous singer. It blended some of Joplin's hits together with acted segments and archived recordings of Joplin to produce a fantastic show with no fault in the musical department. Especially impressive was how Angela Darcy's voice was identical to Joplin's, so that it was almost impossible to spot the difference. I didn't know anything about Janis Joplin before, so this show actually proved educational for me. For that alone, I think it was brilliant.
Kevin P. Gilday is the Man Who Loved Beer was a completely different affair. This was the first time I'd seen spoken word in action outside university, and my verdict is somewhat conflicted. It detailed Gilday's relationship with beer and the effects it had on his everyday life. Compared to what I've seen of spoken word in the past, it was skilfully done and Gilday's Glaswegian tones definitely added to it. However, I feel that most spoken word artists tend to use the same pace and tone of delivery when reciting their poems. Gilday was no exception, although in this case I think it was suited to the material.
The other show I ended up seeing was a performance by Out of the Blue. This a-cappella group is made up of Oxford undergraduates, and appeared on that TV talent contest that everybody seems to love back in 2011. They performed a selection of songs, including their cover of a Shakira song that went viral, and they were better singers than I was expecting. They even managed a bit of improvisation with a member of the audience during a couple of songs. The hilarious enthusiasm with which they carried the performance made them an act worth seeing twice - which unfortunately I didn't.
To say that these shows represent the tip of the iceberg is devaluing icebergs. The whole of Edinburgh is packed to the brim with shows during the Fringe, each one of them vying for an audience and a review or two. Some have questioned the quality of the Fringe in recent years, but if the shows I saw are anything to go by, then the question of quality is somewhat irrelevant. The Fringe is designed to enable artists to try new things, and all of these shows were great in their own right.
I must also mention my visits to a few other places in Edinburgh. I took a tour of HMY Britannia, which is hardly your average cruise ship. I had expected the Britannia to be fifteen hundred tons of wealth on water, but it was much less ostentatious than that. It reminded me of my grandmother's house, albeit with narwhal tusks and whale ribs in the main dining room. The overall feel was of a ship designed to act as a floating country house, which was apparently the Queen's original intention.
The other place I visited was Edinburgh Zoo. The zoo is famous for its giant pandas, but I didn't see them because the female, Tian Tian, was pregnant and the enclosure had been closed as a result. I did see several other animals though, including a pair of jaguars roaring at each other, rhinos enjoying their lunch and penguins sunbathing just before a thunderstorm arrived. The zoo seems good enough, with decent and spacious enclosures for the animals to run around in. However , judging by the way one of the jaguars was calling for food, and the bare pen the tigers sleep in, it still has some small room for improvement.
When I look back on my visit to Edinburgh, the city seems like one of the better places I've visited; that's to say it's one of the few places I've visited in recent years. The place is brimming with culture, vibrancy and warmth, and nowhere is this more apparent than during the Fringe. I highly recommend that if you must go to one of the Edinburgh festivals, surely it must be this one.
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