Toga party: a scene from L'Orfeo by Monteverdi performed at Edinburgh last week. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Natasha Tripney blogged a bit earlier on, and very eloquently too, about her mixed feelings concerning Edinburgh - that, a week or so in to the Fringe, she's already feeling a bit queasy. She was particularly worried about the squillions of words we and others like us devote to the festivals, and that they make her feel (as I suspect they make others feel) a bit like the kid who didn't get invited to the party. She's had enough Edinburgh for one year, in other words. And there are still two weeks to go. And she's not even here.
I do know how what she's saying, and not just because the Royal Mile is knee-deep in runoff and I've just been forced to decamp from a very nice-looking café in favour of a damp, dingy Starbucks with the vague sense I should check my email (feel the unfocused liberal angst eating into my soul! Feel it!).
I know what she's saying because, for a long time, I felt it too. At least when viewed from outside, the whole Edinburgh experience looks exclusive. Why this should be so for the kind of festival where almost anyone can pitch up and perform - and I know it can be expensive these days, but that's where the Free Fringe comes in - I'm not entirely sure. But it does. As a student, I stayed away because I was snobbish about amateurishness (don't ask) and because I couldn't face the in-crowd thesps who asked me if I was "doing Edinburgh". When I left college, I couldn't face seeing a city I love overrun in August, and also because I was sceptical of the hype. The first time I came up for the festival, in fact, was when I had to, because it was suddenly part of my job description.
Maybe this is what Natasha's getting at, maybe not. But it is easy to be cynical about Edinburgh, particularly when arts journalists and industry insiders descend on the city en masse despite, one suspects, never venturing this far north the other 11 twelfths of the year. Is being plastered with flyers on the Royal Mile - or getting plastered in the Underbelly - really what it's all about, this culture stuff we love?
Yes, but no. No, but yes. Lyn Gardner wrote very persuasively a few weeks back that Edinburgh really does still matter. "What makes Edinburgh unique is the sheer range of activity and its scope," she wrote. "Some call it an unholy mishmash; I call it heaven." I reckon she has a point, and not simply because she's seen about 16 times as many shows as me (though that, as it happens, is quite true: the other day she owned up to a six-a-day habit, and I suspect she kept the number down so as not to humiliate the rest of us).
Edinburgh is still the place where those of us who don't normally have the time, or strength of purpose, to visit tiny fringe venues can catch up. It's where we can experience the real deal: the biggest, most ambitious theatre alongside the tiny puppet shows, the headline art exhibitions jumbled up with portakabin comedy. The sheer range of stuff here is incredible, and the way it's arranged means that it is genuinely possible to leave everything else behind for a few days - eating, sleeping, even (sometimes) checking email.
Most of all, and on a personal level, it's one of the few times in the year that I get to debunk the shallow preconceptions that masquerade as my views. A sample of what I've discovered over the last few days: I don't much like stand-up, except when I fall head-over-heels for its eloquence (Paul Sinha) or its quirky bonhomie (Josie Long). I don't have much time for historical reconstructions of opera, except when they're as lucidly and generously designed as Jordi Savall's Orfeo. I'm bored by Andy Warhol, except when I actually see the work face-to-face rather than, you know, reading about it in glossy magazines. And I can't stand boiled-down Shakespeare performed in the rain, except when it's done with such breathtaking bravura that I forget my feet are sodden and leave feeling more entranced, more thoughtful, more persuaded by the possibilities of theatre, than I have done for months.
In other words: coming to Edinburgh means that I don't have a clue what I'm thinking any more, and it's utterly, utterly thrilling. If some of that comes through in our coverage - and I really hope it does - I suspect we'll have done our job.
