Fringe defies Oasis turmoil to deliver something fresh

From a royal gay love story to a lively defence of Britpop, Alice Saville finds much to enjoy at the Edinburgh Festival

- 

“It’s a middling sort of year,” a few people warned me en route to the Edinburgh Fringe - as though reports of show cancellations due to Storm Floris, and audience-deterring road closures around the city's massive Oasis gig hadn't been ill portents enough. So I went in with a spirit of defiance. Perhaps I wasn't going to unearth the talent of the century. Perhaps the streets wouldn't be packed with quite as many buzzing theatregoers. But I did want to find the shows that were fighting their way out of despondency and shaking off mediocrity to serve up something fresh - and 2025's embattled arts festival more than delivered.

This year, I found artists that were rebelling against the pressure to serve up traumatic narratives to eager audiences - and were critiquing the festival's tough capitalist landscape, too. This was a festival in conversation with itself, with artists offering direct or oblique commentaries on the pressures they, and audiences, face in a tough commercial climate.

At a time when the Gallagher brothers' ill-scheduled gig has made them their fair share of theatrical enemies, it was both surprising and refreshing to begin with Irish playwright Gina Donnelly's Anthem of Dissatisfaction at Summerhall, which issues a passionate defence of Britpop. For two siblings growing up in poverty, Oasis means everything: a chant of working-class solidarity loud enough to drown out the scornful mockery of TV's Benefits Street or Little Britain's Vicky Pollard. Simon Sweeney and Emily Lamey burst and fizz with energy as these teenagers, capturing the way that music lends glamour and meaning to confined city childhoods. But there's a sting in the tail of this story. They want to go to Bruce Springsteen as a family, but like many working-class culture fans, they're priced out. So they eat stadium-style snacks on the carpet, staying loyal to the heroes who've forgotten them.