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Friday 5 December 2008

Festival frugalities

Deep Cut
Traverse

Jidariyya
Royal Lyceum

4.48 Psychosis
King’s Theatre

Eco-Friendly Jihad
Underbelly

Please Don’t Feed The Models
Underbelly

Scaramouche Jones
Assembly Rooms

Absolution
Assembly Rooms

Snap! That’s the sound of the credit crunch biting into attendance figures at Edinburgh. This year the Royal Mile teems with unloved luvvies urging discounted tickets on sceptical punters, and the city’s population of cadgers and tramps has fled. Usually they hover like spy planes and swoop on you demanding ‘a poond’. I was approached just once by a hapless ruin humbly tilting for 15 pence. This slump’s getting serious. Even the beggars are going out of business.

There are winners, of course. Previously an internet rumour, the free fringe has achieved lift-off this year with sponsorship and a glossy brochure. Founded ten years ago by Peter Buckley Hill, an academic and self-confessed ‘stuffer of puffins’, the free fringe has blossomed and now offers hundreds of gigs from noon till midnight in pubs all over town. Top comics appear in the hope of fishing customers for their ticketed shows. Details at freefringe.org.uk.

The only sold-out show I saw was Deep Cut. This riveting, harrowing docu-drama examines the events surrounding the death of Cheryl James, a young cadet who ‘committed suicide’ while on guard duty at Deep Cut Barracks in Surrey. With unshowy rigour the script exposes the inefficiencies and bluster of those responsible for the botched investigation. So much theatre is about merely this or merely that. Mere escapism, mere catharsis. This is about real life, about putting the MoD under pressure, about adding volume to the clamour for a public enquiry which will only increase when this play sets off on a national tour. And it’s got the best poster I’ve seen for ages.

More articles from: Lloyd Evans | this section

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