Wednesday, August 8. Day One.
Today, auspiciously for my arrival, is “black Wednesday”. This is the day when shows will statistically report their lowest audience figures. It’s the first serious day of the festival, after shows have been offering two-for-one deals and press previews; cast members are getting serious, punters are just arriving and getting their bearings. Black Wednesday is the bottom of the mountain. If you can make it today, you can make it all the way – but a bad audience today will be very bad for morale. Black Wednesday, it is said, separates the men from the boys.
At the 2012 Edinburgh festival fringe, there are more than 257 performance spaces in the city, some of them grand old theatres, some of them tiny rooms above pubs or prefabricated huts in car parks, hosting more than 2700 shows or acts every day. During the festival the entire city – already one of the world’s most beautiful, its ancient tenements crammed together in the lee of Arthur’s Seat or in the shadow of the castle on its dramatic bluff – has an indescribable buzz about it. Excitement pours through its streets like honey. The Royal Mile is crammed with performers making their pitches to the innumerable groundling throng who seethe the cobbled streets.
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The Festival is dominated by four big companies that each run clusters of theatres, bars and performance spaces. These are Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly. Pleasance, for example, takes over the University of Edinburgh Students’ Union buildings and runs a total of 214 shows in 21 venues ranging from the 750-seat Pleasance Grand to the 46-seat Pleasance Hut
It’s nearly ten when I step off the train, but before bed I pop out to check out some of my old haunts. My favourite place to hang out, and my first port of call, used to be the outdoor bar at the fifth of the so-called “big four”, C Venues. C is commonly thought of as a little smaller and less slick than the big four, a little less polished, and I have always found it to be a lot more fun. It is also more willing than the big four to take a chance on unknown or student companies or unusual concepts. “C venues,” a friend said to me unkindly, “will take anything.” His show is at the Pleasance, and there is certainly a pecking-order, though some individual companies transcend it.
C also had a lovely outdoor bar area called SoCo; but I am in for a shock. The area it used to occupy, on Cowgate, in the centre of the old town, is now a building site. Doors I used to go through are shut, and the building has a forlorn, empty look. The upstairs bar at C is still buzzing, but it’s unusually hot for Edinburgh in August, and I want to be outside, so my next port of call is the Udderbelly, an outdoor garden and stage run by Underbelly venues that has been available London’s South Bank.
There, at the exclusive and exquisitely-decorated Abattoir bar, I have a nightcap and ask around for show recommendations before turning in. Tomorrow, for me, the festival begins.