Edinburgh Festival Arts Diary: Macarena crowdfunding, ambitious daily improv, and dynamic pricing

In our latest report from the festival front lines you’ll find an Australian comic dancing for dollars, a British comic performing an entirely new show every day, and some thoughts on dynamic pricing.

Bewildering as it might seem to a normal person such as you or me, £8 million has simply not been enough to turn a perfectly nice old school into whatever the Fringe Society and its many mini mandarins fondly imagines is worthy of them. They are now demanding further millions from anyone who might have them tucked away.

Perhaps those who will dwell in those marble halls of Infirmary Street might take a leaf – probably an entire tree will be needed - out of Conk's book. This Aussie comic has been fund-raising for his Edinburgh expenses through the seldom utilised medium of macarena. Live on Instagram. Every $1 donation gets a single macarena. To be brutally honest, it is an Australian dollar and even I think a whole macarena is worth more than that. So far he has raised over $2820. Now that is how you fund-raise Fringe style. Just saying.

The Free Fringe Lives

Today's Fringe experience is a long way from what it was set up to be. Comedy, and its industry, has most of the blame for that. But a 'Fringe' is still here and will continue to be as long as Peter Buckley Hill, his Free Fringers, and those who came in his wake survive.

Here you can watch and wonder at such creative craziness as Kate Smurthwaite writing and performing an entirely new one hour show every day, based on audience suggestions from the previous day. Oh yes. Of course you can pay over any imaginable odds to join 3000 others watching Daniel Sloss perform a show that you may already have paid to see him perform last year when he brought it up as 'work in progress'.

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The fight for press attention is quasi-gladiatorial in August. Those who have created an online fanbase garner their own attention, which is excellent, but the increasing numbers of AI generated press releases that clog inboxes, from June onwards, head straight to my bin. As is only right.

It is a function of the Fringe being seen as a mere stepping stone to TV, and so hot salt tears have been shed over the BBC having announced the cancellation of Live At The Apollo, for years the acknowledged 'next step' for stand-ups. Currently there is much last-minute reworking of standard sets to include some 'BBC-acceptable craziness' in the hope of being picked up for Taskmaster.

Reincarnated Fringe Success

It has been almost impossible to avoid promotion of 11 1/2 Angry Men. With a starry cast, and being the reincarnation of an already established Fringe success, that is not surprising. I wrote one of the pieces myself. But the only truly engaging thing I have seen on the production is a post online by Guy Masterson – some footage of him, on his knees, hammer in hand, getting down to some carpentry duty on the set, with the caption “back to my roots”.

Now that would get me along to see the show, if only to check out how the big table stands up to Joe Pasquale's tapdancing.

Dynamic Pricing: Yay or Nay?

I feel I have to stand up a little for the Underbelly Boys, Ed and Charlie, who are getting a lot of flack for dabbling with 'dynamic pricing'. Correct me if I am wrong (hint : I am not) but have a look across the Fringe brochure and pretty much all the big venues are charging more at weekends than they do mid-week. That is dynamic pricing.

Accommodation in August? Dynamic pricing. Train tickets? Dynamic pricing. At least Ed and Charlie are open about it. And it is fairer than the Fringe Society's imposition of a mandatory booking fee.

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