A crowing flash-in-the-pan PM and Jimmy Carr’s life lessons from the Oompa Loompas
fringe enters its opening week. Nica Burns is a West End producer and the impresario behind the Edinburgh comedy awards. The fringe launches each year with her state-of-the-comedy-nation address, which this year hymned the art form’s ongoing dominance of the festival. Fair enough: it needs the exposure. “I love this festival,” says Burns, because “there is nowhere else for comedians, but also comedy as genre, to get the full spotlight on them”.
An Edinburgh comedy award may not be forthcoming – but another gripping Netflix serial about heckles, harassment and a woman’s psychological breakdown? Who would bet against it?Everywhere, posters. Everywhere, a show. The Edinburgh fringe is a topsy-turvy world , where instead of art being a break from life, it’s the other way around. Between dawn and dusk, I’m more often in a show than not. And when I’m not, I’m assailed with images of shows, shows on the street, flyers for shows.
Audience participation – or “interactive performance” – is hipper than ever, but it’s starting to feel as if someone has had a word with its practitioners. Because you don’t get manhandled on stage any more. You get asked politely. OK, so the antic Aussie comic Garry Starr wants someone to get naked with him on stage. But if you don’t want to – oh, glory be! – you don’t have to.
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