Great festival of disasters in Edinburgh

IT SEEMED like a good idea at the time. Lizzie Francke, director of the Edinburgh Film Festival, organised a glitter-strewn party to celebrate the premiere of glam rock movie Velvet Goldmine.

The next morning Ms Francke went to the optician, her eyes streaming and painful. It was diagnosed that the surface of her eye had been scratched by glitter dust. For the next few days the director of the film festival had to wear a patch over one eye.

The biggest and most spontaneous arts festival in the world always has its share of disasters. There was the year when a stage manager repaired a broken bust of Shakespeare with glue just before curtain up. The curtain rose on a well-restored bust - with the stage manager's hand glued firmly to it.

Or the time when a two-man cast playing God and Satan fell out and an advert was placed for a new Satan - who "has to be able to sing Elvis Presley's `The Wonder Of You'."

One should not look for logic in Edinburgh disasters. Ms Francke's glitter- damaged eye is less embarrassing to explain than the Fringe's T-shirt supplier who rushed to make more T-shirts this year to meet the high demand and set his factory on fire.

Then there are culture differences. The comedy revue Baby Wants Candy from Chicago assumed they would attract critics by handing out free sweets. They didn't get a single reviewer over three weeks. The Assembly Rooms, which is better acquainted with the rigorous standards of British critics, gave every visiting reviewer two free bottles of vodka.

There are also verbal slip-ups. The chairman at the reading by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh left even Mr Welsh gobsmacked when he referred to Bruce Robertson, the foul-mouthed, corrupt policeman in his new novel, as Robert Bruce, a far from corrupt Scottish national hero.

Good performers can improvise when disaster strikes. Former "Likely Lad" Rodney Bewes, presenting his one-man version of the classic Three Men in a Boat at the Assembly Rooms, evoked a sleepy afternoon in a pub just as the show in the next room finished and a racket of scene shifters and chatting punters could be heard. "It was a very noisy pub," he confided to the audience.

But the award for best improvisation goes to Angelic Voices, a family show by the international singer Marie Hayward, her baritone son and her actor husband, Robert Segal. Sadly, Mr Segal died before the production came to Edinburgh. But it is still described as a family affair. His widow uses his voice in the production, from a recording made in rehearsals.