Is it the sight of the Castle Rock or the skirl of the busking bagpiper on Princes Street (Mike Wade writes)? Whatever the allure of the Edinburgh Fringe, it has brought a host of famous names to join the thousands of unknowns performing this year.
Ruby Wax and Sue Perkins, Alexei Sayle and Clive Anderson are among the standout names on the 70th anniversary line-up. Fleabag, the play that launched Phoebe Waller-Bridge on the road to a Bafta, returns, as does Sylvester McCoy, a past Dr Who, and Monica Dolan, another Bafta winner who has written her own show, The B*easts.
“Why am I getting up on stage again,” Anderson pondered yesterday? “Probably deep down I crave the excitement, the attention or something. But it all seems very reasonable and sensible when you discuss it with people.”
For Sayle, who has performed in the city over four decades, it is the spirit of the fringe that draws him back.
“You go not to enhance your career,” he said. “Stand-up is a wonderful experience. You get an amazingly sharp audience.”
Advertisement
Shona McCarthy, the fringe director, said that the sense of celebration around the anniversary was a key factor in bringing so many big names back to the city.
“Collectively, across the festivals in Edinburgh, it seemed a moment with all of this madness going on in the wider landscape to remember why these festivals started in the first place as a means of reunifying people after war,” she said. “Some of the venues invited back some of the amazing people who had come up through their places.”
The bill is called “The Alliance of Defiance”, in honour of the first fringe in 1947 when performers were denied access to the “official” festival.
Ms McCarthy said the programme was a “reflection of the times we live in”, with shows about the refugee crisis, Scottish independence, mental health and gender. She said that the 62 countries represented across 3,398 shows was the result of a determined effort to keep Edinburgh at the centre of an international fringe movement in the arts.