Edinburgh in Fringe Season
As you can imagine, the city is heaving with tourists and performers which makes it difficult to get around on foot. Walking up and down the Royal Mile, Edinburgh's High Street, involves squeezing past street artists, people handing out flyers and holidaying families, which can be infuriating if you're rushing to catch a performance. Some areas are surprisingly quiet, for example the University of Edinburgh campus which houses some of the main venues can be strolled through without bumping into people, and Princes Street (the main shopping street) doesn't feel any more crowded than usual. Public transport runs as normal and we got a seat on every bus that we took and every eatery that we visited, so it wasn't quite as crazy as I'd anticipated.
Getting tickets for the shows we wanted turned out to be the biggest source of stress. We planned to book online before we went to Edinburgh but ended up heading to the box office at the University when we arrived in the city with a list of half a dozen shows that we wanted to see, and the helpful girl on the desk told us apologetically that she could only provide us with tickets for one out of the six. She advised us to go to the venues and check the box offices there, which is how we spent our next hour. Luckily we ended up with tickets to four out of six (of the other two; one was sold out and the other was cancelled for the day, but we're going to see it on our next visit) and visiting the venue box offices gave us a better idea of where to go when it was time for the show. After this debacle we wrote out our wishlist for our return trip and bought tickets for everything we wanted to see before we left Edinburgh, so now we're prepared for next time! If you're planning on going to the Fringe I'd recommend you book online or via their app to avoid disappointment!
The Shows
We attended four Fringe events over the two days that we were there:
Film on the Old College Quad: Heathers ★★★★★
This event killed two birds with one stone for us: I've always wanted to attend an outdoor cinema event, and Heathers is my favourite movie of all-time which I'd just recommended to my friend a few days before we realised they were showing it. The Old College Quad is an area I've walked past so many times but never seen the inside of - it's one of the Edinburgh University buildings with an entrance on South Bridge and it's a gorgeous old building, as you can see from the above Instagram shot. The grassy quad was set up with deckchairs (we were in the front row) with mats available for those who wanted to lie in the grass to watch the movie. They showed a whole lot of films over last weekend, including my other favourite The Lost Boys which sadly was on the night before we arrived, and recent Oscar winner The Theory Of Everything which we almost stayed for but decided that it had gotten too cold to sit outside for another couple of hours.
I've seen Heathers more times than I can count but never in a group setting like this so it was interesting to see which parts got the biggest laughs - it was the gay jokes, in case you were wondering. Sitting in the quad surrounding by the beautiful architecture made the area feel secluded, like you weren't in the city centre, but the occasional helicopter or siren in the distance were reminders I could have done without. Aside from that I loved the experience and I hope they do more screenings in future, just as long as the sun shines!
Romeo & Juliet ★★
This was a school production of Shakespeare's classic set in the 60s in which the Montague clan were Mods and the Capulets were Rockers. My friend is a big Shakespeare fan and I've never seen a production of this play, but both of us were intrigued by the sound of this adaptation. While it was very faithful to the original script, we were disappointed that they hadn't done more with their theme - the only 60s elements were the costumes, a dining set which was just about the only prop, and snippets of rock'n'roll songs in between scenes. Even then, the costumes were very inauthentic, as if the cast had just thrown something together from their own wardrobes rather than searched out true period pieces (the Mod suits were ill-fitting and the Rockers all wore very modern Primark style leather jackets). We expected a modernised version of the play (think of the way that Clueless interpreted Jane Austen) but the dialogue was still Shakespearean and they still used the Montague and Capulet names where we would have preferred something that matched up with their appearance. The show was performed at The Space on Niddry Street (part of the Radisson Blu hotel) in a room where the audience was seated around all four walls and the play unfolded in the middle, which meant that the actors all delivered their lines in different directions, I'm not sure this staging was successful. The acting wasn't bad and the delivery of the Shakespearean prose was good, but the idea which made it interesting was half-baked.
In The Pink Acapella Presents Tuniversity Challenge ★★★
This was the one show that we managed to get tickets for and we almost missed it due to an ill-timed trip round Primark! We sped from Princes Street to Surgeon's Hall and arrived five minutes late and found to our relief that nobody had been let in to the auditorium yet, so luckily we were able to see the performance as planned. In The Pink is one of numerous acapella groups who are performing at this year's Fringe and we were drawn to their University Challenge theme, wondering how they would combine the two. We expected at least that they would have the iconic desks and quiz format and were surprised to see the group standing on an empty stage with two teams separated by host 'Jemima Paxman'. The girls did a delightful rendition of the University Challenge theme music before launching into a set which included renditions of Beyoncé, The Temper Trap and the White Stripes alongside medleys of Disney classics and Taylor Swift hits. This was my first aca-experience and I smiled all the way through, even though some of the songs were more suited to the girls than others - there were only 7 in the company and they would have benefited from more voices at times. My highlights were their closing medley of all my favourite Taylor Swift songs and their shameless advertisement for their CD, adapted from the tune of Mr Sandman. If we can find the time next week I'd love to attend another acapella show, I was worried that I would get bored during this one but the time flew by!
Grease ★★★★
Grease is one of my favourite musicals of all time but I've never been able to see it performed on stage, so when I spotted it in the Fringe programme I knew the time had come. This was another youth production, although I think they were closer to my age this time, and as we arrived we were greeted by a fabulous dame playing the role of the Rydell High teacher Ms Lynch. The show itself began conventionally with 'Grease' and 'Summer Nights' and a lovely performance of 'Those Magic Changes' which is performed in the movie by the band at the dance rather than the cast, but after that things started to get a little bit more bizarre. As we were in a small venue without stage exits, Kenickie's car had to be carried up and down the aisle onto the stage, and its Greased Lightning number plate kept falling off. Once we got to the dance scene things became chaotic, with the characters of Ms Lynch, Jan and Cha Cha all being played by males. I don't know if it was a decision by this cast or from the original stage musical, but the absence of Sandy at the dance seemed particularly strange as we didn't really see her and Danny's relationship grow so it didn't make sense for them to get together at the end in the same way that it does in the movie. Despite these moments of confusion the show was a lot of fun, I have to commend the overacting in the Cha Cha role which was laugh-out-loud hilarious, as was the staging of the 'Beauty School Drop-Out' scene. The actress who played Rizzo was also fantastic, delivering a flawless performance of 'There Are Worse Things I Could Do'. Grease was definitely my favourite of the three shows I watched on Monday; even though it was a bit of a trainwreck in places it never became difficult to watch and if you're in Edinburgh I'd recommend you check it out!
The Food/Shopping
It kind of felt like we never stopped eating on this trip, since Edinburgh has so much to offer at this time of year. We stopped off at chains Subway and Nando's and were pleasantly surprised to find that neither was busy in the afternoons, possibly because we went to the Nando's in the Omni Centre rather than the more central Chambers Street restaurant - my tips for a less hectic dining experience are to eat in the afternoon rather than in the evening, and go somewhere a little further from the main Fringe venues like the Omni Centre (which is still only five minutes walk from the Royal Mile) which are much calmer. We also visited Black Medicine Coffee Company on South Bridge which was very busy but makes excellent coffee and cakes, and a crepe stand at the Grassmarket for a street food favourite; sadly I've forgotten the name of the company but they were situated down the bottom of the street and a huge queue formed after us, I heard the two cooks tell each other they'd lost the will to live but the constant stream of irritating tourists would have left me feeling the same way if I'd had to spend much longer in the area!
We hit up a few shops on our trip and found out which places to avoid on our next visit. Blackwell's Bookshop on South Bridge was surprisingly quiet and has a brilliant selection of books, my friend went a little wild in there! We also visited Armstrong's Vintage Emporium at both its Clerk Street and Grassmarket locations - the Grassmarket shop is the biggest but both have a great selection and both were full of people (our thinking was to go to the Clerk Street shop in hope that it would be quiet but no such luck). Another place which is busy is Primark on Princes Street but amazingly it's not any worse than any other time of year, probably because customers are rude in that place all year round. Our final stop on Monday evening was at a stall near the Meadows which was selling DVDs, CDs, old books and vinyl, and I picked up a copy of the Cocteau Twins' 'Treasure' LP which had been on my wishlist for a while. They had a lot of cool stuff and the stallholder told me a sad story about how he had a high school girlfriend who loved the Cocteau Twins and he couldn't listen to them after they broke up, so check that place out if you can find it.
We're heading back to Edinburgh from the 25th until the 27th to catch another round of shows and visit some more cool shops and cafés, so if you have any recommendations for us please leave a comment and let me know!
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