Fringe shows and teenagers - by Dea Birkett

My teenager has adopted a hotel lobby. For the cost of a cappuccino, she sits in the soft cushioned comfort of the Radisson on the Royal Mile, just a few steps away from our hostel, perusing the Fringe programme.

The Radisson is also a venue. Once, Fringe venues were leaky church halls down in the Leith docks. Now they’re unused business conference rooms if five star hotels in the centre of town. Whether that says more about the Fringe or the state of the hospitality economy, I’m not sure. But it means there’s a little more comfort for a Fringe goer these days, as the venue is likely to be warmer and the seats softer.

For a teenager to be interested in a play it has to be about themselves. So my seventeen year old opted for Clinical Lies, which isn’t only about a teenager but written by and performed by one, 19-year-old Eva O’Connor. Clinical Lies was promoted as, ‘an emotionally charged exploration of the turmoil of youth. A fragile 19-year-old girl offers a frank, witty and harrowing insight into teenage life, as she battles against her mother and her circumstances.’ I decided my own battling teenager could go and see that one on her own. Predictably, she loved it. She’s even reviewing it on her own blog - teentheatre.livejournal.com.

I failed miserably to find a show we could enjoy together. I tried Shakespeare’ Mothers. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, but that only bored both of us. I tried My Hamlet, a one-woman show about a Danish prince with puppets. That left us totally confused. So I abandoned her to go to her own stuff, while I saunter off with the nine-year-old twins.

I wonder - is leaving her to see shows on her own being a negligent mother, like letting her sit all night before an unmonitored computer screen? Should I be paraded as an example of poor parenting for allowing her to be exposed to dramatic material, the content of which is a complete mystery to me? I don’t think so. But what’s so different about drama? Why do I allow her see and hear (the language is uniformly shocking) things on stage I never would on the web?

It’s odd, because I could easily stop her seeing shows when monitoring her internet use is far trickier. But I don’t want to censor her Fringe viewing. I think it’s fantastic for her to witness terrible tragedies and traumas on stage. Meanwhile, I’ll go to see James Campbell’s Comedy and Songs for Kids (‘suitable for age 6 plus’) with the twins.

www.edfringe.com