Writers Magazine 2009

At the Edinburgh Book Festival 2009

No laughing matter?

The Edinburgh Fringe is recognised as the premier showcase for comedy. Success can breed success but it can also lead to complacency.

Many of the famous names from the UK comedy circuit were there for the season. The established professionals were performing in big spaces which they could sell out every night, and the ones that I saw gave entertaining and professional performances. But none sent me out with my mind reeling and I would now be hard put to recall the topics and certainly there were no memorable one-liners.

Perhaps it is the exposure that these top performers get on television which has led me to expect such a high standard with shows such as ‘Live at the Apollo’. This has set the bar rather high and calls for the current crop of stars to work very hard on new material, knowing that their audience have seen their routine. It would have been nice to see them perhaps doing a little bit more experimentation. But nevertheless the £10 or so it costs to see them perform for an hour was money well spent.

However, beyond the named performers who dominate the large venues such as the Pleasance, its formulaic nature has rather degraded the genre of fringe comedy. Much of the club comedy has degenerated into little more than crowd manipulation with the compere, bursting with enthusiasm, telling them just how brilliant the next person is going to be.

They can’t all be the funniest person ever in the entire universe, but I must have been told that 20 times about different acts, even when they were on the same bill. The host of the show can keep the introduction going for many minutes, asking you to ‘give it up’ or ‘now let's hear it for…’ to pad out almost a third of the show with hollow introductions.

Too much of the humour took a sideways glance at some trivial event and, after a ramble which tried to engage the audience, the story either reached a tame conclusion or the man with the mike lost the plot and drifted on to discussing some other public humiliation.

Some venues are run by production companies who have moved in and run very efficient marketing, ticketing and catering operations around perhaps a dozen established venues in Edinburgh. Management-led comedy does not have the edge of the angst-ridden, edgy acts.

I was there towards the end of the Edinburgh Festival so perhaps fatigue and was setting in and the prizes had already been shared out. I strongly suspect that other factors, among them alcohol, were also influencing the quality of performance.

They were still pleasing a noisy minority but, casting my eyes around, the audience seemed generally disappointed. I looked more closely and began to identify the cheerleaders who filled in at the back of the shows. It may be a successful business format but it is not very funny.

I was not lucky enough to get to see any of the nominated shows and allowed myself to be persuaded by the hustlers at the venues, so I will be more selective next time.

Less might be more. There is too much masquerading as comedy. Half of it is not worth the ticket price.

My advice would be to focus on the free comedy events where you have a chance to make your financial contribution at the end if you feel you have been entertained. Performance pay is something that needs to be rediscovered to sharpen the cutting edge of Fringe comedy.

 © Chas Jones 2009

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