Edinburgh Festival Comes To An End For Another Year

The huge fireworks display on Sunday night marked the end of another Edinburgh Festival, a time of nostalgia but also one of relief as the city returned to its more manageable self. Some have claimed that this year’s festivities haven’t lived up to the reputation built from previous years with only a handful of questionably brilliant performances. Regardless of whether or not you felt that Edinburgh’s August 2010 was a let down, it cannot be denied that Edinburgh remains the world’s biggest Arts Festival and a vibrant place to view a collection of performances where celebrities and outsiders can perform side by side.

Lots of hype and drama have surrounded this year’s festival, in particular the Foster’s Comedy Award where newcomer and favourite Bo Burnham (who turned twenty during August) lost out to Russell Kane for the Best Comedy award. It was also coincidently the first time that two women have been nominated for the award with Josie Long and Sarah Millican also losing out to Kane. In the Best Newcomer award it was the first time that one of the Laughing Horse’s Free Fringe shows has been nominated for an award with ‘An Audience with Imran Yusuf’ losing out to Roisin Conaty.

In Theatre, Daniel Kitson’s latest story show ‘It’s Always Right Now Until It’s Later’ has created quite a stir as has Frantic Assembly’s ‘Beautiful Burnout’ whilst ‘Gospel at Colonus’ received rave reviews at the International Festival.

All in all it has been a highly successful Festival with sales at the box office exceeding £2.67 million, 3 percent higher than last year with almost 1.95 million tickets sold for over 40,000 performances. As the Festival continues to grow, we as an audience sit twiddling our thumbs for 11 months of the year as we eagerly await what the following year will through at us.