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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2000 Diary (1)Saturday 5th August, 2000 The Living Room, a pub next door to the Gilded Balloon on Cowgate, served excellent cheap food last year, so I headed off there. It hadn't changed, so, fortified by sausage, egg and chips and a half-pint of 80/- (Eighty Shilling, a particularly strong beer), I started my tour of the press offices. First stop the Fringe Press Office. It's moved again, so I had to go into the Fringe shop on High Street to ask for directions. It turned out to be just across the road and down one of the many closes (little alleyways) you find all over the old town. Big surprise! Martin Reynolds, one of the press officers, greeted me by name. I'd only met him twice last year so I was most impressed. There are hundreds of accredited journalists here - my press pass is no. 321 - so Martin obviously has a pretty good memory! High Street was choked with traffic, and that seemed strange because during the Fringe it is closed to traffic from early in the morning to 9.30 at night and is packed with tourists, street entertainers, theatre companies and others handing out flyers. But the Fringe doesn't officially start till tomorrow, so today it's just an ordinary Edinburgh street, i.e. a big traffic jam! Collected my pass, handed in my list of shows for which I wanted tickets, and headed off down High Street and along South Bridge towards the Pleasance. Four of the major venues - Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Traverse - don't provide press tickets through the main Fringe office, so you have to visit each in turn to order tickets. Five minutes in the Pleasance, then back up onto South Bridge, across North Bridge, along Princes Street and up Hanover Street to George Street and the Assembly. They've moved their press office too: now it's in the same place it was in 1998. Still, at least it's in the same building. Just five minutes there: show the press card, hand over the list, and off. I was just leaving the Assembly when the mobile rang. It was the Pleasance: I'd asked for tickets for The Donkey Show, a disco version of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the performance on the night I wanted had been cancelled. Would I like a ticket for tonight at 7.40? I agreed and they suggested I pick up the ticket at seven. Checked my watch: another half hour and I can get into the digs, so I strolled back down to Waverley Station to pick up my luggage. £8 for four hours! The digs are ten minutes easy walk from the station, but much of it is uphill so I decided that, given the fact that my case now felt as though it contained not just the kitchen sink but a concert grand too, I'd get a taxi. Since Edinburgh is just one big traffic jam, it took as long as it would if I'd walked, but at least I wasn't exhausted. Ten minutes later I was! The digs are on the fourth floor - 70 steps, and that's not counting the steps from the street to the front door. I can see my fitness improving this Fringe - or I'll have a heart-attack. Still, Gilli, whose home the flat is, was sympathetic and offered a very welcome cup of tea. Drank that, unpacked and relaxed for an hour, and then back to the Pleasance, where I picked up my ticket and discovered it was at a new Pleasance venue, Club Pleasance@Potterrow, which is a ten minute walk away. The Pleasance is really expanding: there are now fourteen performance spaces. In the main building there's Pleasance One and Pleasance Two, Pleasance Above and Pleasance Below, Pleasance Upstairs, Pleasance Attic, Pleasance Cavern, Pleasance Cabaret Bar and Pleasance Courtyard Tent. Just across the road and a couple of streets up there's Pleasance Over the Road One and Two, and parked next to it is the Pleasance Buzz Bus. Then, about ten minutes walk away in Potterrow, there's Club Pleasance and the Chaplaincy Studio. These fourteen venues put on over 140 performances every day during the festival, an incredible feat of organisation. So I headed off to Club Pleasance, which is actually part of the University and the Studio is actually a large room, seating 128 people, in the University Chaplaincy block. Anyway, I was a little early, so I wandered around a bit to familiarise myself with a, to me, new part of Edinburgh and then went to enjoy the show. Out at 9.30 feeling hungry. I knew that this is one of the most difficult times to find space in a restaurant, so I decided to head to the Assembly - just two minutes out of my way - to try Soba, their new Sushi and Noodle Bar in the glassed-in lane next to the main building. Pad Thai for just over £5 (plus a half of 80/-, of course) and, given the price, it was pretty good. Got talking to other people sharing the table for an hour and a half (!), then off to bed. Next - - Fringe Coverage Index |
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