Freaks and Cliques

In the two years since a dedicated cabaret section was established in its programme, the Fringe has become the established home to some of the festival's most unconventional and genre-defying performers.

Many of them are comedians—the likes of Phil Kay and Charlie Chuck, whose respective acts involve mercurial improvisation and barking at drum kits—who have found that being marketed as cabaret has a significant impact on their audiences' expectations. By filing themselves alongside existential satirists, The Creative Martyrs, farting maverick Mr Methane and the gloriously bawdy Dusty Limits, they place themselves within a vaudevillian tradition far removed from the preconceived notions attached to standup.

A host of musicians, meanwhile, are offering exciting, thematic and character-driven shows too conceptual or stylised to rub shoulders with those of more traditionally-minded artists. Vicky Arlidge's Mum, Can You Wipe My Bum? may transpire not to be a million miles away from a Chopin recital, but will certainly attract a different audience.

Historically, the term cabaret refers more to the venues in which shows are performed than the nature of acts themselves, but at the Fringe it has become synonymous with edgy and diverse entertainment. The many mixed bills on offer serve as freewheeling rides through high and low art, put on to satisfy audiences that grow with each passing year. This apparent hunger for cabaret can be attributed in part to La Clique, the frequently outrageous circus and variety troupe whose runaway popularity went some way to legitimising the form for Edinburgh audiences.

Masterminded by David Bates, owner and producer of The Famous Spiegeltent, La Clique began life as  a collection of acts chosen to punctuate the venue's vibrant late night clubs in 2002 and 2003. Recruiting from the international cabaret scene, as well as a deluge of travelling street artists, Bates recognised the heady array of performers drawn to the festival but sorely in need of a suitable vehicle for their talents.

“By 2003, I’d seen lots of amazing acts but they had limited places to be seen," he says. "Their material was astonishing but I realised that there would be no better home than The Famous Spiegeltent – a performance environment like no other. I was witnessing a zeitgeist; these acts were all part of the revival of burlesque, the intimate pocket-sized circus, the new cabaret, and what was needed was a context to put them in – a reinvention of ‘variety'.”

Striking a compelling balance between glamour and subversion, the acts became a hit under Bates' auspices and La Clique emerged in 2004 as a ticketed show in its own right. The Spiegeltent provided the misfit performers with a suitable context in which to display their talents and it wasn't long before a sympathetic, like-minded audience began to consolidate itself. Bates believes that many attending these spectacles had never witnessed anything comparable, and this is perhaps the key factor to their success. Audiences were being given what they wanted without having previously desired it, La Clique filling a void that few knew existed. Of course, it helped that “the artists were at the peak of their powers and the best they would ever be,” he says.

Many La Clique regulars would go on to find fame in their own right, their careers developing in tandem with the show. Ali McGregor and Le Gateau Chocolat's personalities were simply too strong to be confined to the brand, while Camille O'Sullivan is now a respected actress and recording artist, renowned for her masterful delivery of narrative lyrics. Both McGregor and Chocolat will be taking their own solo shows to the Fringe this year, but whether or not they'll be returning to the La Clique stage in 2013 remains a mystery.

What we do know is that La Clique shows no sign of stagnation as it approaches its 10 year anniversary. In the decade since its debut, a legion of imitators has emerged, prompting Bates, who tours the globe with The Famous Spiegeltent, to refresh his original format wherever possible. “We’ve been copied around the world—that’s a fact—but we set the bar in the first place, so we constantly have to keep moving forward to raise our game beyond the imitators. I definitely feel a pressure to discover the next crop of artists: the young, the fresh, the creative imaginations, pushing their own envelopes and the genre itself.”