Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Edinburgh International Festival was established to champion the civilising power of European high culture in a spirit of postwar healing. But its lustre and mission have now been largely eclipsed by the viral spread of its anarchic bastard offspring, the Fringe. In competition with the latter’s potty-mouthed stand-ups and numberless student hopefuls, the dignified old Festival proper struggles to make much mark on the hordes who descend on the city in August, inflating prices and infuriating the residents. Perhaps the kids will love it, but if this is the future of ballet, then count me out Nicola Benedetti, a splendid woman and a wonderful violinist, is now in her third

Edinburgh seems underpopulated this year. The whisky bars are half full and the throngs of tourists who usually crowd the roadways haven’t materialised. There’s a sharp chill in the air too. Anoraks and hats are worn all day, and anyone eating outdoors in the evening is dressed for base camp. Perhaps tourists don’t want to travel because they’re too depressed. That’s the specialism of Dr Benji Waterhouse, an NHS shrink, who writes and performs comedy about his patients. Dr Benji is an attractive presence on stage with his crumpled Oxfam clothes and his dreamy, half-shaven look. He could be the guy who tunes up U2’s guitars. His act is very

Make It Happen is a portrait of a bullying control freak, Fred Goodwin, who turned RBS into the largest bank in the world until it came crashing down in 2008. Fred the Shred’s character makes him a tough subject for a drama. His morning meetings were called ‘morning beatings’ by terrified staff. He ordered executives to pitch him an idea in the time it took him to eat a banana. Inciting arguments between staff amused him and he once sacked an employee for saying ‘I tried’ instead of ‘I succeeded’. He was obsessed with colours and fabrics and he personally oversaw the design of the carpets and even the handwash

Every day my inbox fills with stories of panic, madness and despair. The Edinburgh Fringe is upon us and the publicists are firing off emails begging critics to cover their shows. If the festival is a national X-ray, this year’s image is shadowed by emotional frailty and a distinct sense of humour failure. The brochure is full of performers advertising their mental disorders (ADHD, OCD, PTSD, and so on), as if they were badges of achievement. The chair and chief executive of the Fringe say that the festival means ‘giving yourself over to the (safe) hands of our performers allowing yourself to be swept away by their creativity’. The word

Sherlock Holmes fans will be delighted to know that there is a new play featuring the great man. In it Holmes, 72, bored silly by retirement and bee-keeping in the Sussex Downs, is back living at his old haunt of 221B Baker Street and  reunited with the widowed Watson. The case that lands in Holmes’s lap concerns a reported outbreak of fairies in the Bradford area. Thus we are plunged into the Cottingley saga, a mystery that fascinated the public in the 1920s. The play is by Fiona Maher, a fairy-lore expert, organiser of the Legendary Llangollen Faery Festival (she’s known as Tink) and author of a very well-researched book