Art is outshining a ticket scandal, reports Senay Boztas in Edinburgh.

A WELCOME sun beamed out over the Edinburgh Festival the past week, but there were plenty of storm clouds brewing.

The city's Fringe Festival dominates goings-on in the Scottish capital, encompassing 31,000 performances and 18,000 "artists", with their varying degrees of artistry. In this year's program, there is everything from face painting to the sucked and plucked American comedian, Joan Rivers. Around 350 acts are free as the wind (and there's plenty of that in Edinburgh). Meanwhile, Rivers' A Work in Progress by a Life In Progress costs £35 ($A75) for a seat including a goody bag and meet and greet.

Edinburgh has more nationalities than a UN conference, from Indian Idol contestant Anshul Tomer singing Bollywood numbers to the stunning, six-packed Capoeira Knights, performing a Brazilian part-martial art, part-dance act, which is all good for female members of the audience. And, even the Fringe director admits, it would all fall apart without the hordes of Australians, performing on the stage, issuing tickets at the venues, and hoisting their backpacks up to Scotland to take in the shows.

"Australia practically runs the Fringe," director Jon Morgan conceded at an Aussie showcase event last week. "There isn't a venue that doesn't have an Australian employee, and half of my Fringe staff are Australians … Without them, I don't think the Fringe could possibly happen."

But behind the smiley successes, there are backstage storms. Morgan could lose his job because of the large-scale failure of a new Fringe ticketing system, which caused tens of thousands of tickets to be delayed or double-booked.

Meanwhile, the four largest venues (Assembly, Pleasance, Underbelly and the Gilded Balloon) launched a joint program, their own comedy festival, and sold 426,452 tickets via their independent box office. Outraged, Tommy Sheppard, director of The Stand comedy clubs, said he'd stand for election to the board at the Fringe AGM tomorrow: "The four venues are acting as a cartel and trying to monopolise the Fringe and sponsorship," he fumed.

Still, once people had got their tickets, punters did the usual and joined an audience of eight people and a dog, or stood in the snaking queue for the latest sell-out show.

Australian Frank Woodley's show Possessed has had rave five-star reviews. Kate Copstick of The Scotsman fell in love at first sight. "Woodley is an extraordinary, spellbinding performer; it is quite simply impossible to take your eyes off him," she wrote. "Part clown, part acrobat, part character actor, part comic, he performs on a huge set that fills the stage of Assembly's Music Hall." He could well be a contender for the if.comedy (formerly Perrier) awards, announced next week. Australian talent was behind some of the weirder shows this year too. After success in Adelaide and Melbourne, Alison Pollard-Mansergh brought over Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience, where audiences get dinner and a "13th episode" of classic British sitcom Fawlty Towers screamed around them. Meanwhile, Vanessa B. Baylen was inspired by a "chocoholic" tour of Melbourne to create Death by Chocolate, an interactive murder mystery that consumes 324 bars of luxury chocolate and 2700 truffles in its run. Circus Oz are back at the Fringe for the first time in 20 years with its 30th Birthday Bash , while Australian choreographer and dancer Janis Claxton decided it would be fun to lock dancers in a cage at Edinburgh Zoo (Enclosure 44 — Humans) from 10am until 5pm every day with only a zookeeper, mime and improvised dance to stop them going mad.

There are, of course, the struggling festival "virgins" too. Robert Yule performed at the Australian showcase and spends five hours a day in a pneumatic stewardess fat suit, plugging his vaudeville show, Beautiful people (don't travel economy). "I will end in a financial hole," he admits. "People have said they can't come because my show is sold out, when it isn't. Still, I've had 80% occupancy and I'm enjoying it even if I didn't understand customs, had to pay $1700 to send over my luggage and had no props for the first four days. It's the experience and the exposure."

There are celebrities aplenty: former British television host Michael Barrymore as Spike Milligan in the play, Surviving Spike and former Bond girl Britt Ekland has a popular one-woman show. Meanwhile, Scotland's new writing theatre, The Traverse, hosts five-star drama, from the weird American play, Architecting, to Deep Cut, about the violent deaths of recruits at a British army barracks.

Once again, the Fringe is just like the Scottish weather, with cold, tropical storms and the odd, exultant ray of sunshine.

The Edinburgh Fringe continues until August 25.

www.edfringe.com