Stuck on Shakespeare

Edinburgh or bust: Shakespeare remains fringe number one

By BBC Scotland Arts Correspondent Pauline McLean

With 500 shows to choose from on the fringe, it's hard to win over an audience. But you're off to a head start if you've got one writer on your side - even if he has been dead for the best part of 400 years.

Even if you regard yourself as cutting edge, interpret your ideas in modern dance or perform everything in the nude, chances are you'll still rely on Shakespeare. There are 53 variations of his plays on the fringe - some straight, some musical, some downright weird.

Frantic Redhead Productions give their Macbeth an extra chill by taking it into the graveyards of Edinburgh. It's one way of making sure your performance moves along but you have to be careful not to lose your audience en route.

"We stick them with little day-glo stickers so we don't lose them in the crowds and we haven't lost anyone yet as far as I know," says the company's artistic director Ginger Perkins. "What happens with us is we pick up a lot of people along the way."

The Thane of Cawdor may have fallen out of favour with the Scottish curriculum, but he's going down a storm at this year's festival. Scottish Opera are singing his praises in the Verdi version while Dannii Minogue is doing her devilish best over at the Botanical Gardens. And she's not the only celebrity getting in on the act.

Dannii Minogue: Getting in on the act

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline are the latest Hollywood celebrities to strut their stuff, this time in the film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It's a well worn trail already trodden by Mel Gibson, Leonardo di Caprio and Al Pacino.

So what's the big attraction. James Brining is director of the Glasgow based theatre company TAG.

"From one extreme you could stage it authentically as they do at the Globe in London with costumes and music," he says. "At the other extreme, you can completely rip it apart and have no text of almost no recognisable characters.

"There's almost no limit to what can do with Shakespeare plays, partly because some of them are so familiar to people that you don't need to obey the normal dramatic rules of character and plot."

High-speed

Shakespeare 4 Kidz agree. Their Romeo and Juliet is a high-speed musical version which should shake off the dust from the textbooks.

Their director Julian Chenery says: "We do for Shakespeare what Oliver did for Charles Dickens."

So 400 years down the line, Shakespeare is still a hit at the box office. There's certainly no sign of being bored of the bard yet.