Edinburgh Festival Insider - Venue of the year 2009

With 100s of venues across the city - from the 'big three' of the Assembly, Pleasance and Gilded Balloon to the likes of private residences and restaurants - there's almost as wide a choice of places to see shows as there are performances to enjoy.

The nominations for the Edinburgh Festival Insider Venue of the Year Award 2009 are:

• C Venues. Particularly the multi-levelled labyrinth in Chambers Street, culminating in the wonderful Urban Garden. A great place to hang out and mingle with performers who keep the spirit of the Fringe alive.
• Venue 150 at the EICC. With its air-conditioning, ample legroom and modern decor, this feels far removed from many of the hot, cramped and crumbling venues elsewhere.
• St George's West. Few things can compare to witnessing some world-class music being performed in front of St George's beautiful stained-glass rose window.
• Spaces venues. Played host to some small first-time groups on a budget and therefore brought some interesting - and in the case of productions like Stitches, exceptional - new talent to the Fringe
  
• New Town Theatre / Universal Arts. A wonderfully diverse programme in the grand and only slightly spooky Masonic Hall on George Street.

And the winner is...

Venue 150 at the EICC

Although the EICC has been used as a Fringe venue in the past, this year it featured a far wider and more adventurous programme than ever. With close ties to Universal Arts and The World Festival, it saw two amazing world music shows, the wonderful Sambor Dudzinksi and his Time(less) Machine, Fred MacAulay's daily breakfast show, Fringe Select, a great cafe and more.
Besides its aforementioned comfort, its willingness to take a little bit of a risk results in it being my favourite venue this year - especially as its success during the Fringe could see more and more shows of a similar ilk being featured there outwith the Festival season.

For a resident like me, the chance of that is enough for me to give Venue 150 the:

Review: Brocante Sonore: The Mechanicians *****

The stage resembles Leonardo Da Vinci's workshop, with an assembly of pipes, gears, clocks, tubes and cluttered desks filling the space in what appears to be a chaotic and haphazard fashion.

Then, the nine 'rude mechanicals' of Brocante Sonore emerge, clad in blue overalls, and take positions amongst the clutter. And then? Well, then an hour of complete magic happens, as the talented French troupe use everything they can get their hands on to create music and percussion, filling the auditorium with sounds and melodies that you wouldn't normally think pots, pans, saws and drills were capable of producing.

There is a rough plot holding things together, as the mechanicians struggle to repair a broken clock at the back of the stage. In the course of doing so, they work and play, such as in a highlight routine of a game of musical chairs, where each successive loser takes his seat and transforms it into a wind or percussive instrument. By the end of their game, their is a small orchestra of chairs being played before you and the effect is both humourous and musically excellent.

The visual style is first class, with the steampunk mood and eccentric nature of the performers shining through to create something quite unique. As the finale is reached in a crescendo of noise, sparks and explosions, you realise the mechanicians have not only repaired their clock, but also managed to make their hour long set speed by in what seemed like 5 minutes.

Brocante Sonore: The Mechanicals runs until 31st August at C. £11.50 (£10.50 concession)

Highlight #7 - The Grind Show

In a way, The Grind Show was born here. Founder members of the TBA Collaborative, filled with a desire to create original, compelling drama, visited the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007. They left, inspired by what they had seen and went home to work on creating The Grind Show, a startling and innovative piece of contemporary physical theatre which receives its world premiere at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

Featuring a driven and motivated ensemble of current and postgraduate students from the University of Washington, The Grind Show takes place on the peripherary of a strange, freakish circus, amongst its constantly 'grinding' sideshow acts. An innocent child adrift finds himself in the midst of this surreal, nightmarish troupe and is forced to make a decision that will impact the rest of his life.

Physical and visually arresting, The Grind Show takes its cues from a variety of commendable inpirational sources, with the spirits of Tim Burton, David Lynch and Neil Gaiman watching from the ringside. However, it is to TBA Collaborative's credit that their show looks unmistakably their own and promises to be a uniquely memorable experience that encapsulates the true feeling of Fringe theatre.

In a programme that's increasingly becoming full of big-name comedy acts and easy crowd-pullers, it's reassuring to know that there are groups like TBA Collaborative with a vision and passion that is driven by artistic expression. For that alone, they deserve your attention - the fact they are bringing a work as original and interesting as The Grind Show is almost a bonus.

So - what circus act would you perform for eternity?

The Grind Show runs from 5th to 31st August (not 17th) at the C Venues, Chambers Street, various prices from £7.50.

Review to follow on 14th August.

Edinburgh Fringe must-visit venues

The previous post detailed some new or original venue spaces being used at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. This entry, however, lists venues where you are guaranteed a good time, irrespective of whether you're actually going there to see a show or not.

Let's get the old favourites out of the way first:

• The Assembly Rooms in George Street. For decades, this Georgian-era complex of staterooms and cubby-holes was the hub of the Fringe. To this day, it's still where a lot of the big names appear (Frank Skinner, Clive James, The Soweto Gospel Choir to name but three) and due to its multiple performance spaces, it is constantly swarming with people, members of the public and performers alike. Its bar is a notorious hangout for journos and reviewers, and you are almost guaranteed to see a famous face there (even if you can't quite place who it is).
• The Pleasance. Another stalwart and another collection of venues clustered around the central Pleasance Courtyard. Kind of a Fringe-in-microcosm, the Pleasance is playing host to over 100 shows of all genres and, when the weather is being kind, the Courtyard area is thronged with bodies savouring the atmosphere (and the food and drink).
• The Udderbelly in Bristo Square. I've mentioned this before, but this normally desolate outdoor space in Edinburgh is transformed during the Fringe. Mostly due to the unmistakable purple upside-down cow that is the Udderbelly tented venue. Bristo Square also has several satellite venues dotted around it, such as the Gilded Balloon at Teviot, making it a fantastic space to immerse yourself in the Fringe.

Now on to the perhaps less-known:

• The C venues, in various places, but particularly C (not C Central) in Chambers Street. These venues tend to shy away from the normal big name crowd-pullers and are instead a great showcase for emerging talent. They are usually jam-packed with youthful theatrical groups and avant-garde musicians, and if you venture to the main bar there, you'll be sharing tables with actors applying each others' makeup as well as regular theatre-goers. I always find this place and its rep-like atmosphere keeps the true spirit of the Fringe alive, before the comedy juggernaut promoters muscled in on the act.
• St George's West in Shandwick Place. This church venue has carved out a special niche for itself in the past few years, providing a varied and seldom-disappointing programme of world music performers. This year, its cocktail of Brazilian, African, Cuban and Sri Lankan artists looks set to impress again and, if last year is anything to go by, you'll find that this venue ends up host to the the happiest and most upilfting mood you're likely to find anywhere in the city.

Lastly, a new venue with a reputation to live up to:

• Hullaballo in George Square Gardens. For the past few years, this venue has played host to the (in)famous Spiegelgarden. Due to a magical, pre-war Berlin style atmosphere (and some heavy marketing), it quickly became the place to frequent if you were spending an evening out during Festival time. Last year, it almost became a victim of its own success, with weekends in particular seeing it packed out with the post-office crowd and stag & hen parties. Perhaps fortunately, this year the Famous Spiegeltent is taking a year off for renovation. Instead, a new venue called Hullaballoo is taking its place, with a single circus tent and an Indian-themed ambience. It will be interesting to see if this captures the imagination in the same way as the Spiegelgarden, or whether people play it safer with some of the more established venues listed above.

Whatever venue does it for you, I just hope it stays dry enough for that al fresco experience so beloved of Fringe-goers. Otherwise, I'll see you upstairs at the Assembly Rooms. Mine's a Magners.