Ali Woods: At the Moment, at Underbelly Bristo Square
Well, every Fringe is different, I suppose, and the overall number of reviewers, according to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, was up on last year. It felt that way – the Society issues accredited media with lanyards and badges which we are expected to wear around our necks when reviewing Fringe productions. I saw more fellow reviewers out and about than in previous years. The Fringe overall seemed quieter in terms of number of punters: there were times when getting to venues was frustratingly slow, but it was never hugely problematic. My own theory is that the Olympic Games were on in Paris, so punters have spent time and money (and travel, and accommodation, and so on) going there this year. Much as I despise the Olympics, it’s not on every year and it’s certainly not a train ride away very often.
This year was the first time I stayed at the same hotel twice – this was my fifth Fringe (or sixth if you count my first flying visit, in which I didn’t stay anywhere, flew in, saw five shows, took the night bus back to the airport, kipped there for a bit, and flew back to Gatwick). Previously I stayed at Darroch Court, Sugarhouse Close and KM Hotel – names which won’t mean much to anyone really, except the first two were university accommodation, available for rent during the summer months, and the third is owned and operated by the University of Edinburgh, a year-round hotel. For 2023 and 2024 I stayed at the Ibis Hotel on South Bridge, which was affordable and very, very centrally located. Their 2025 prices, however, are far too steep, to the point where I could pay a little bit more to stay in one of those overly posh Victorian hotels in the city centre instead (well, I couldn’t actually, because I can’t afford those either). Even a private room at Edinburgh Safestay, a hostel, is currently coming in at £3,001 for my usual 13 nights. Premier Inn and the other hotel chains apparently don’t open booking until October, but I shuddered at their prices in 2018 so I will probably be just as dismissive, if not more so, if I do happen to see what their charges are for Fringe 2025.
For now, I’ve booked into something called the Regent House Hotel, a twenty-four minute walk from the Fringe hubbub that is Pleasance Courtyard. I may cancel free of charge up to five days before arrival. It’s £1,589 all in and some of the reviews are very telling: one woman said it was ‘unsafe’, and another says, “One of the most frustrating issues was the bathroom light, which would turn off every 3-4 minutes while I was in the shower. To reactivate the motion sensor, I had to open the shower door or wave my hand, which was incredibly inconvenient. The TV in my room turned on by itself in the middle of each night, like something out of a horror movie.” A third review points out, “The hotel has no lifts so if you have a lot of luggage be prepared to lug it all the way to whichever floor your room is at.” Uh oh. But then there’s Anna, who stayed in the ‘Single Room’, which is the one I’ve reserved. “The single room was comfortable and perfect location for my work commitments. I would stay again.” Hmmm.
Possibly the best Fringe freebie I've ever received.
Mind you, this year I had a very quiet room, and it was only on the last couple of nights that there was anything approaching a minor disturbance – someone in an adjoining room seemed to like to get their 10,000 steps a day done in the room. In previous Fringes I had stayed in places where there was little that could be done about street noise, and with no air con (why on earth would you need air con in Scotland?) the only way to regulate the temperature would be to open a window. That didn’t bother me much, because I almost always had a backlog of reviews to write, so I’d keep plugging away into the early hours because of all that noise. At the top floor of the Ibis, the windows didn’t open at all, and there was air con, so it was quiet. The good thing, of course, was that I got a good night’s sleep every night and came back to London relatively refreshed. The bad thing was that I was way behind on reviews, and while I technically filed the last one before the Fringe closed, it was on the very last day (and after I’d come back home).
It was also helpful to be able to have a buffet breakfast every morning, and I’d also make a couple of sandwiches for later in the day and take some fruit from the buffet away from me too. I won’t get that at Regent House Hotel (there’s not even a reception there, let alone a restaurant), but that doesn’t matter. It’s a city. I’ve had a poke around on Google Maps. There’s a Tesco Express around the block. I’ve never done Airbnb, ever, and there are too many nightmare stories about Airbnb rentals that I would rather not go to the Fringe than pop my Airbnb cherry – I’m aware of some reviewers (and producers, and publicists, and punters) who have stopped going. I can see myself staying up in Leith, or even Glasgow.
Declan McKenna at Edinburgh Playhouse
That isn’t the only reason to drastically reduce the number of Fringe shows I may see in future years: I wasn’t able to keep pace with my regular diet of theatre stuff. I now have an expanded role for the theatre website I write for – I won’t bore you with the details, but it involves more time sat in front of a laptop plugging away. In any event I saw 66 shows in 2022, 64 in 2023 and 66 in 2024. I never bothered deleting previous years’ spreadsheets, so the evidence is still in ‘the cloud’. What more is there to prove? I’ve already had (false!) accusations of using artificial intelligence to help me write so many reviews in just under a fortnight. This year I ticked off the last outstanding item on a ‘things to do at the Fringe’ list that only existed in my mind – namely, get myself to an Out of the Blue concert. The a cappella group from Oxford University has been performing at the Fringe for years and were the first to hand me a flyer at my first Fringe in 2017. I only saw them this year. They’re good! I genuinely don’t want to leave it another seven years before seeing them again.
So, here’s the plan for 2025. Grotty hotel (which unlike Airbnb, won’t cancel on me). Venture out for breakfast – there’s a Wetherspoons near Edinburgh Playhouse which I’ve walked past so many times but never sat and had some pub grub in – and explore some other cafes I’ve not bothered with thanks to the Ibis and their buffet breakfasts. Four shows a day, no more. It still means 48 shows in 12 days, and there’s something about committing to that publicly that will hopefully hold me accountable to that rule. I can devote some time to being ‘reviews editor’ – because shows don’t stop happening in London, and I’m not there, so other reviewers (sort of) pick up the slack. I have, believe it or not, a new goal for 2025, which is to pay more attention to various invitations from publicists, venues and producers to go for coffee (or beer) and an in-person catch-up.
I don't do many selfies, evidently. I'm sure everyone else gets keeps their sodding fingers clear of the lens.
Downtime, the older I get, is ever more important, and I realised this when I decided to take up an invitation from Janie Dee, the Olivier Award winning actress, to a community centre in the suburbs of Edinburgh called ‘The Heart of Newhaven’. Audiences to the London Climate Change Festival talks there were quite small, I suspect mostly because people are used to walking from venue to venue at the Fringe, and the thought of taking a bus or a tram to attend a free event is quite an alien concept. I’m glad I went, though, even though (again, because I kept having a good night’s sleep every night) I was four days behind on reviews. It was an opportunity to go on the tram, head up to Newhaven Harbour, and spend a brief period on the Scottish coastline – and Newhaven proved a very appropriate place to hear a talk by Luke Douglas-Home, a chartered environmentalist who works with schools and local governments to reduce non-recyclable waste – and indeed recyclable waste – with a particular emphasis on the consequences of plastic waste on seas and oceans.
Janie was so delighted I had come along that I was invited for a post-talk drink with her production team (she was at the Fringe to perform her ‘Beautiful World’ cabaret hour) and the dance legend Wayne Sleep, together with some Newhaven locals, including the lady who had put Janie’s team up for the Fringe. As it became clear I was also being invited to dinner, I insisted on selfies with Janie and Wayne, just in case I needed to prove to someone I really was with theatre royalty that evening, as I was going to be a no-show at a Fringe show I’d booked to see. It was a wonderful night; Janie refused any and all offers of contributing to the dinner bill (including one from Wayne Sleep) – but there was more, even after we were effectively chucked out of the restaurant at closing time. Invited back to Janie’s team’s digs, I found myself enjoying yet more booze and entertainment. And so it was that Janie Dee herself called a taxi for me to head back safely to my hotel at goodness knows what time of the night.
As ever, there was a wide variety of shows at the Fringe, from the sublime A History of Paper, winning multiple awards and favourable reviews, to the downright bizarre ‘Comedy Standup Hour’ from ‘Jack Tucker’ (Zach Zucker) which was an act, really, but one so diabolical it was a bit like ‘Springtime for Hitler’ in The Producers: something so terrible it was strangely watchable.
This was hilarious, end of.
It is true there were a lot of shows themed around ‘trauma’, although I would prefer to class them as ‘triumph over adversity’ shows – after all, they all made it to the Fringe to tell their tales, whether it was being injured at sea and having very unsympathetic colleagues and bosses who wouldn’t deviate from their planned course and itinerary (Trawled – When Adventure Becomes Survival), breaking away from an abusive relationship (James Barr: Sorry I Hurt Your Son (Said My Ex To My Mum)), suffering discrimination for being brown and Muslim (Duck) or being a woman (Stefani Licari: Trust Me, I’m A Comedian).
It’s also true there’s a need for the ridiculous amongst the deep level stuff, which is where the likes of I Wish You Well, a musical about the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial, and A Jaffa Cake Musical, an hour-long show devoted entirely to resolving the question as to whether Jaffa Cakes are indeed cakes or should really be classified as biscuits for tax purposes, come in. As ever when it comes to the Fringe, I regret nothing. Even the self-confessed ‘bad stuff’ in Stuffed, a ridiculous show that involved clowning and faffing about – in the context of ever-increasing demand for food banks.
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