Walking around Edinburgh this month, you might have noticed the unusual number of standup comedians performing their shows outdoors. These natural basement-dwellers have been flushed out of their venues by various fire alarms and outages, including a city-wide power cut that caused the partial deflation of the giant purple cow inflatable in George Square. Oh, the humanity.
It would be only too easy to view the inflatable as a metaphor for the bloat of the festival itself, slowly collapsing under its own weight. But, as several performers have told me, their improvised gigs seemed to rekindle a sense of adventure that hasn’t been seen at the fringe in years. Much has been said about the dying spirit of the festival, with the spiralling cost of rent and general corporatisation. Maybe a massive power cut is what it needed after all?
