For three weeks in August, Edinburgh becomes the largest arts event on earth. Understanding what is actually happening is the first step to enjoying it, because “the Festival” is at least six separate things running at once.
What is on
The Edinburgh International Festival was founded in 1947 as a deliberate act of postwar reconstruction — an attempt to reunite European culture after the war, staged in a city that had escaped bombing. It is curated and invitation-only: opera, orchestral music, theatre and dance at international level, in the Usher Hall, the Festival Theatre and the King’s.
The Festival Fringe began the same year, when eight theatre companies who had not been invited turned up and performed anyway. It has no selection process whatsoever — anyone who registers and finds a venue is in — and it has grown to well over 3,000 shows across some 300 venues.
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo runs nightly on the castle esplanade, with massed pipes and drums. It is a separate organisation from both festivals and sells out months in advance.
The Book Festival, the Art Festival and the Film Festival run alongside, though the Film Festival has moved dates repeatedly in recent years.
How the Fringe actually works
Shows are almost all one hour, starting on the hour, in rooms that hold between 30 and 300 people. The day runs from about ten in the morning until two the next.
The big venue operators — Pleasance, Assembly, Underbelly, Gilded Balloon, Summerhall — programme most of the professional work and publish their own brochures. Summerhall, in a former veterinary school, has the most interesting theatre; the Pleasance Courtyard is where comedy careers are made.
The Free Fringe (PBH’s Free Fringe and Laughing Horse) takes a bucket collection at the door rather than a ticket. The quality is genuinely comparable, and it is how a lot of performers start.
Choosing what to see
You cannot read the programme. It is a phone book.
What works: pick two or three shows a day, not five. Leave real gaps. Use the Half Price Hut on the Mound for same-day tickets. Read reviews as they appear — the festival’s ecosystem of critics turns them around within a day. And take recommendations from people in queues, which sounds glib and is genuinely the main mechanism by which good shows find audiences.
What does not work: booking a full schedule in advance from the brochure. You will be exhausted by day three and you will have missed the show everyone is talking about, because it did not exist as a reputation when you booked.
Practical August
Accommodation roughly doubles in price and should be booked months ahead — by January is not too early.
Restaurants need reserving, which is not true of Edinburgh at any other time.
The Royal Mile becomes impassable in the afternoons with flyering and street performance. Locals develop parallel routes; you should too — Cowgate underneath, or the New Town side.
Transport runs normally but is busier. Walking is faster than a bus on Princes Street.
Whether to come in August at all
If you want the festival, come in August and accept that you will not see Edinburgh properly. If you want Edinburgh, come in May, June or September, when it is a manageable and rather beautiful city, and the queue for the castle is twenty minutes rather than an hour.
Doing both in one visit is the common mistake.
Reviews and how to read them
The festival has its own ecosystem of critics — The Scotsman, The List, Fest, Broadway Baby, Chortle for comedy — turning reviews around within a day of a show opening. Star ratings appear on posters within hours.
Treat five-star quotes on flyers with the scepticism you would apply to any advertisement, and read the actual review instead. A four-star notice from a critic you have read before is worth more than five stars from a publication you have never heard of, several of which exist largely to generate quotable ratings.
The awards
The Edinburgh Comedy Awards, still widely called the Perriers, are announced in the final week and have launched a very large proportion of British comedy careers. Nominated shows sell out within hours of the shortlist appearing.
The Fringe First awards, from The Scotsman, go to new writing and are the better guide if theatre rather than comedy is what you are after.
Behaving well
Performers flyer because it works and because most of them are losing money — the average Fringe show does not break even, and many performers are personally in debt for the privilege of being there. Taking a flyer costs you nothing.
If you walk out of a show in a 40-seat room, the performer will see you do it. Sit near the back if you are unsure.