The Norman inquest

AW, BLESS Norman Lebrecht and his pompous, London-centric view of the arts universe. In an opinion piece in the London Evening Standard this week, Lebrecht claimed that "Edinburgh is barely in the league of premier festivals, and falling fast".

He primarily attacked the International Festival (EIF), complaining that, because a couple of the larger productions are about to transfer to London (Dorian Gray and Valery Gergiev's survey of the Prokofiev symphonies), it has "few unique selling points"

But he also took a pop at the Fringe, where he claimed to have found a "paucity of experiment" (except at the Traverse, which he erroneously claimed is "neither official festival nor Fringe"). Poor Norman couldn't even find anything to love in the Art Festival's 43 shows, which had "little to compel my attention". Had it not been for the Book Festival, he wrote, during his stay in Edinburgh "there would have been gaps in my day".

There are so many things wrong with Lebrecht's diatribe it's hard to know where to begin, but let's start with his assertion that Edinburgh is about to drop out of "the league of premier festivals". Was anyone else aware that such a league existed? Who decides who's in and who's out? How are points allocated? Does Norman make it all up? The least he could do is send the EIF's director, Jonathan Mills, a copy of the rulebook before relegating him and his festival to some spurious second division.

Lebrecht also complains that "Nobody… can define what the festival (ie the EIF] is there for or why we should go when so much of its work is available closer to home." In this context, of course, "home" means London and "we" means Londoners. This might come as a shock to Norman, but people travel from places other than London to visit the EIF. It is still one of the best places to see major new work performed for the first time: this year alone there were three world premieres, two European premieres and ten UK premieres. So what if a couple of these shows will now tour to London? The point, surely, is that they came to Edinburgh first, in an intense three-week explosion of creativity that even some of his "premier league" festivals would struggle to match.

At least when Lebrecht writes about the EIF he seems to have a solid grasp of the facts – when he comes to address the Fringe, he comes completely unstuck. As mentioned above, Lebrecht seems to think the Traverse Theatre isn't part of either the EIF or the Fringe. Had he bothered to check, he would have seen it is very much a part of the Fringe – Venue 15 to be precise.

But much more serious is his accusation that this year's Fringe suffered from a "paucity of experiment". Isn't that a bit of a generalisation for a festival consisting of some 2,088 shows? I wonder how many of those Lebrecht bothered to go and see before writing them all off in a single sentence? Personally, I saw around 50. That's less than 2.5 per cent of the total, and I would never dream of generalising about the entire Fringe based on such a miniscule sample.

However, for Norman's benefit, I'd like to give him a brief summary of some of the experimentation I saw in the hope that, when he visits Edinburgh in future years, he will fill some of those "holes in his day" with visits to Fringe shows.

Although their black comedy The Feast of the Ants was far from perfect, I'm sure Lebrecht would have approved of the innovative way Japan's Mugensha Theatre Company attempted to break down the language barrier by designing props that unfolded mid-scene to reveal snippets of English text. I think he might also have enjoyed the way Italian company Teatro Dei Borgia put a fresh spin on Lorca's folk tragedy Yerma by casting a big hairy man in the lead (female) role.

Elsewhere, three-foot tall Australian dancer Emma J Hawkins challenged prejudices about people of small stature by performing spectacular duets with a man twice her height; comedian Stephen Grant warmed up his audience by typing questions and answers on to a giant computer screen from a booth off-stage; the cast of Barbershopera whisked musical theatre off on an exciting new tangent and Tom Roden and Pete Shenton (aka New Art Club) fused comedy and dance in hilariously unexpected ways.

You may not be impressed by any of the above, Norman, but you know what? I don't really care. I do hope it inspires you to get out more next August, though. After all, when a man is tired of Edinburgh, he is tired of life.