Edinburgh festival fringe 2011: Come to the cabaret

A bumper crop of cabaret acts will take to the stage this year in the largest Edinburgh festival fringe ever announced The comedians, actors and street performers who dominate the Edinburgh fringe have a brash new competitor: cabaret shows featuring feminist burlesque, ukeleles, acrobats and mind-reading psychics. As the world’s largest arts festival gets even bigger – even though the number of venues is reduced – the fringe has opted to give cabaret its own space in the programme for the first time. The 65 cabaret events will feature a damsel slaying “inner dragons”, a rabbit-hating magician, nostalgic celebrations of jazz, swing and Judy Garland, a DJ playing “disco bingo” and somewhat saucier revues, many of which will carry an adults-only warning. But they will be competing for audiences with attractions such as a John Malkovich-directed celebration of playwright Harold Pinter (featuring Julian Sands), and the Soft Cell singer Marc Almond, who will appear at the Traverse theatre . There will also be shows by Diana Quick and Art Malik , and established comedians Sarah Millican , Al Murray , Mark Thomas and Phill Jupitus .The British Council has funded new shows from Brazil and South Korea, while the “international sex symbol” Paul Daniels will present a show with the lovely Debbie McGee. The actor and director Steven Berkoff, meanwhile, directs an acclaimed reinterpretation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus , with an ensemble cast. The fringe has again broken its own record for the number of shows, with a near 4% increase in the overall number of shows to hit 2,542, with more than 21,000 performers expected to perform more than 41,000 shows, including more than 930 comedy shows and 760 theatre productions. Audiences will, for the first time, be able to buy tickets using smartphone apps from early August. Kath Mainland, the fringe’s chief executive, said she was delighted with the scale of this year’s event. A recent economic impact report found the fringe, the world’s largest arts festival, was worth £141m to Edinburgh and the Scottish economy. “The fringe, over its 65-year history, has matured into an enormous, enormously important, world-class festival and arts market,” she said. The rise in cabaret “mirrors the fact that cabaret across the world is something of an art form in itself, is good and high quality, and not just a second cousin. We’ve been wanting to give cabaret its own space on the fringe for a number of years.” Despite the record number of shows, up from 2088 in 2008, there is growing criticism of the shrinking number of venues in Edinburgh and the increasing concentration of events around the Royal Mile and several sprawling sites south of the Old Town, dominated by the large venues. Tommy Sheppard, owner of the Stand Comedy club, said that the Fringe Society (the event’s governing body) and the city council needed to find more venues in other neighbourhoods. “The concentration of venues in one small part of the city is bad for the city and it’s also bad for visitors, because they get squeezed into one small [area] and don’t leave it.” Pip Utton, deputy chair of the Fringe Society, said these large sites at Bristo Square, George Square and the Royal Mile added to the intensity of the event, and that many venues in other areas were only a few hundred metres walk away. “I can understand the misgivings [but] it’s difficult to avoid the intensity; it’s just the nature of the beast. That energy is driven quite often by the performers and the visitors,” he said. • Tickets for the Edinburgh festival fringe 2011 go on sale on Friday 10 June at edfringe.com . Edinburgh festival Comedy Circus Burlesque Theatre Festivals Edinburgh Edinburgh Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 9, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.