Frenzy at the Edinburgh Fringe

With about 1500 shows and films on offer in six weeks, the Edinburgh Festival is not for the indecisive, writes BRONWYN SELL.

It seems fitting that you could spend a week at this year's Edinburgh Festival and see nothing but different interpretations of Macbeth. Macbeth set in London's violent underground, Macbeth the puppet version, Macbeth in the streets of the city's old town, the two-minute Macbeth (not recommended for people with heart ailments or English degrees, the sign says), or Broads with Swords - "Superheroine Tara Loft and six tooled-up babes battle power-crazed Lady Macbeth".

How about a musical or 40? Annie, West Side Story, Little Shop of Horrors, Hamlet the Musical, Cows: The Musical "an all-singing, all-dancing meat odyssey; the story of a group of cows that dare to challenge the oppression of mankind".

Or you could spend the week trying to understand Russia's Upside Down dance act. "Neo-Frankensteinian terrible mixed dance parodying Soviet insane asylums. Weird, farcical experiments and grotesque, macabre ghosts cause creator-created, executioner-victim divisions to evaporate in mad, medical, role-reversing revelry". With about 1500 different shows and films in six weeks, the festival is a buff's buffet, and an indecisive person's hell.

The festival, actually six festivals rolled into an annual frenzy, turns one of the world's most beautiful cities into one big creative blur.

It starts off quietly enough this week, with the Jazz and Blues Festival lulling the famously good-natured city into an even better mood in preparation for the bigger action.

The mainstream Edinburgh International Festival - the original festival - is the centrepiece, showing famous plays by renowned theatre companies (Chekhov's The Seagull by the Vienna Burgtheater is this year's showcase), and hosting the world's best ballet and opera talent.

However, its class has long been eclipsed by the colour and sheer size of the Fringe Festival.

The Fringe started when eight theatre acts gatecrashed the original festival in 1947. It is now the single biggest arts festival in the world - and it keeps breaking its own records. This year the programme is 176 pages long.

It's an open-mike festival. No performances are vetted which means it attracts some downright weird acts, but there are mainstream attractions.

One of the biggest names this year is a certain Neil Finn of Te Awamutu, and Supergrass and Powderfinger will also perform.

Each year the Fringe produces a new star, which is why so many performers bust their bank accounts to be there (including this year, a group of New Zealand comedians - "The New Zealand Brat Pack" - doing their Pulp Comedy routines).

Maybe they'll get lucky. Emma Thompson and Rowan Atkinson were first noticed at the festival, and more recently Jamie Bell, of Billy Elliott fame.

But the Film Festival is the place to spot the real stars. Mick Jagger is rumoured to be attending the premiere of Enigma, the movie he produced, which stars Kate Winslet.

Trainspotting director Danny Boyle is promoting his new movie, Vacuuming Completely Nude, and the Coen brothers' new movie, The Man Who Wasn't There, gets its British premiere.

There's also a 90-minute talk with Sean Penn, but you have to wonder if he agreed to turn up only if they promoted him as "undoubtedly the best American movie actor of his generation".

Even the Edinburgh Book Festival, held under a marquee in Charlotte Square, is star studded - Gore Vidal, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje.

For the kilt-and-bagpipe inclined, the traditional Military Tattoo, a separate event, runs through most of the month at Edinburgh Castle.

There's also a Science Festival, which rounds it all off in the first week of September.

It's a running joke in Edinburgh around festival time that it's easier to find a venue to perform in than a place to sleep. More than a million people descend at festival time each year. Fringe Festival director Paul Gudgin said the city had a remarkable capacity for throwing up space for the events.

The same can't be said for accommodation - every B&B or hostel for 80km is usually full during the summer. Canny locals flee to the beach for August, and rent out their houses for exorbitant rates.

The advice is to book accommodation and tickets now. Most of the half-decent events sell out quickly, especially if they get a good review.

You can still turn up with a suitcase on the day, but you might end up sleeping in a $200 a night cupboard, spending your days on the Organ Crawl through the churches, and the nights scrounging for back row tickets for "Moby's Dick", dancer Duncan Holt's "emotionally moving text in movement documenting his life in art".



Contact: www.edinburghfestivals.co.uk or www.holiday.scotland.net