On the train to Edinburgh where I am about to spend a week. At the Fringe? No. At the Festival? No. The Book Festival? Not that either. With the family. I might be able to get an afternoon or evening off, but it's unlikely. Besides my experience and expectations of the Festival in all its guises are not that great. The really good productions on the Festival, are usually sold out long before my dates are confirmed. The best productions on the Fringe require word of mouth, a willingness to spend hours in queues or online and the luck of finding a few seats still available. Plus the fact the Fringe in recent years has become saturated with stand-up comedians, who are pretty much all the same - predictable and therefore unfunny.
Worst are those who can't perform without four-letter words. I don't have a problem with swearing as such - a day seldom passes in which I don't find myself expleting a shit or fuck - but repeated use of four-letter words demonstrates a lack of intelligence and imagination. If you keep coming back to the same vocabulary to express yourself, then you either don't have much to say or you don't know how to say it.
The last time I saw a performance at the Festival was two years ago when three of bought tickets for a troupe offering a comic look at Scotland's history. What we got was fifty long minutes of embarrassingly amateurish, childish and unfunny performances.
But hope lingers, even in this aged breast, and I have seen good, serious theatre on the Fringe and I may do so again. Family obligations permitting, I will dip my toe in those waters again this year. Besides, at the back of my mind is the crazy idea that I might bring my one-man shows to the Fringe next year and I should remind myself what goes on, if only to stop myself doing it...
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