Assembly at 30

Memories and Expectations

Assembly is now second only to the Traverse as the longest running Fringe venue. What we are has been made by all those that take part, whether friends, performers, press, members of the public or staff. If you would like to add to our story wall please do write a memory, whether it is a paragraph or more and send it to memories@assemblyfestival.com. Assembly has also grown over the years as part of the festival and if you have any views on what you think we should do in future we would also welcome your opinions.

William Burdett-Coutts
Artistic Director, Assembly Theatre

Wall of Memories

On a cold, dark, wet Wednesday night, in August 1985, I had just spent my first hour in the city of Edinburgh and resolved that it should be my last. This fanciful, festival thingie that I had been persuaded to visit was nowhere to be seen or felt, not here in a cramped, over-priced room in the George Hotel (what, then, did I know of the perennial joys of renting flats?) where no fewer than THREE friends had failed to fetch up, as promised, and show me around (what, then, did I know of the infinite flexibility of a festival "arrangement"?) and where a snotty receptionist had just told me no, no trains back to London tonight, before nodding me over the road to some place called the Assembly Rooms where I might as well pass a wee while (what, then, did I know of serendipity?)

Huffing, I stropped across the street, shook off the bone-chilling rain and walked into - this is no exaggeration - my life. Like some lavish surprise party, there were people from old schools, from university, ex-colleagues, past lovers, and not a damn one of them even surprised to see me. Later I would learn that nobody ever is; nobody says hello or goodbye, either. You are either in the moment or you aren't. So I grabbed a stinking, full ashtray, snatched a wobbly chair and just.moved in. I live there, still.

For Fringe veterans, the Assembly Rooms - 30 years old this summer - is the heart of their festival. There are other excellent venues; c'mon, let's be generous: happy 25th birthday to baby sister Gilded Balloon and 26th to the enduringly rumbustious Pleasance, salut to the brain-teasing Travers, give it up for the arriviste Underbelly and cheers, always, to the rest. But Assembly remains the cut above so, please - welcome to my bias:
I'm not even going to attempt to mention nearly 30 years of shows. Can't, won't, shouldn't; to pick out five is to overlook thousands and besides, balance decrees you'd also have to single out the turkeys (well, of course there bloody have been). Suffice to say I've seen most of my best and some of my worst in this shabby-chic building that defies itself to produce them - you try a tense moment in an Edinburgh Suite play when there's a stomp moment on stage in the Ballroom above. Every room is morphed into theatre space regardless of aptitude; we used to joke they'd be performing in store cupboards and toilets soon, until two years ago, when the store cupboard actually happened. Then, last year, the toilets.

Still, we forgive. That its base is in George Street places it smack in the meaningful middle of the city; that we cannot afford to shop there, or in Rose Street behind it, doesn't mean we can't breathe the air. See the castle, smell the fireworks, sod the bagpipes. Sit in Assembly long enough and the whole festival comes to you; indeed, every incarnation of my own has been fed within its walls. As, first, a television producer, there was limitless talent to scout. In the late 1980s, as the Guardian's first designated comedy critic, the top-name victims were mostly under that one roof. I have produced shows there for money (hah!) and for charity (mercifully, those turned profit) and spent a few years sitting in the bar, for the Observer, reaping printable gossip (the best, tragically, was always unprintable, as in, overheard: "Does anyone know who shagged the ventriloquist in my flat and left her knickers in the stairwell?")

When a nice man from Private Eye phoned with a view to my doing an anonymous column, I had to say no; not out of piety but out of an unwritten sense that what happens in Assembly stays in Assembly. Lee Evans, taking a swing at a man who deserved it; Nick Revell holding him back, "No, man! You're too talented!" Improbable proximities: Nicholas Parsons on one side, Phil Mitchell from EastEnders on the other. Strange encounters: Richard O'Brien meeting likely lad Rodney Bewes - chalk and cheese, you say? No, in the leveller that is Assembly, just two more pros, wickedly, mutually-respectfully funny, who bounced off each other. Ill matches: taking golden girl Bea Arthur to see Lily Savage and Bea, slightly deaf, saying loudly, "Can't understand a fucking word it says". Friendships are made and held, suspended, until you walk into the bar next time and the same faces pick up the same conversations right where they left off a year ago: Guy Masterson, David Benson, Dillie Keane, Hattie Hayridge, John Hegley, Owen O'Neill, Liz Smith, from the press office upstairs, John Pinder, from Sydney, Australia - what's yours again? Red wine, was it? Even the grandest of stars tend to take their refreshment in the same creaky old building that is their workplace, so you can be struck dumb with admiration for a performance and have to find your voice again, ten minutes later, to say so to the actress who is now drinking tea beside you. Christian Slater, quite unknown to me, was too polite to move my forgotten heap of newspapers from the coffee table between us, so he carefully laid out his packed lunch on top of them and ate it. Then apologised for intruding. Happy days. This year, as last, I have rented a flat directly opposite Assembly's front door (for some silly reason, they still won't let me cut to the chase and put a bed right in there). And this year, as last, there are dreadful rumours that it might soon be all over; that there are plans afoot to take the building from us and turn it into a shopping mall, instead. Look, I'm just a Sassenach interloper; I don't get the local politics. But if that happened, the loss to the Fringe - and, by extension, to the city of Edinburgh - would be incalculable. So William, old son, if you'll allow me to paraphrase: whatever it takes, don't let the buggers close you down.

--- Carol Sarler