Two Fringes?
In my musings on last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, I suggested that major changes were in prospect which would radically change the event. There was, I said, a widening gap between the “biggies” and the rest, ticket prices were increasing to a level which would mean the average Fringe-goers being forced to reduce the number of shows they see, and a call had been made for the number of shows to be reduced. I also reminded readers that Bill Burdett-Coutts of the Assembly (he who suggested the cut in the number of shows) had some time ago suggested that the Fringe and the EIF should unite.
This year we learn that the “biggies” - Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly - have set up a festival within a festival, the Edinburgh Comedy Festival on the Fringe, which has fuelled concerns over their dominance of the Fringe, to the extent that the City Council is talking about not allowing the two venues which lease council property - the Assembly and the Underbelly - to use them in future if the new development has an adverse affect on the Fringe (and what they call the Fringe “brand”) as a whole.
For some time the Assembly, Gilded Balloon and Pleasance have distanced themselves from the rest of the Fringe by producing their own brochure, and more recently they have been joined by the Underbelly. Now they have produced the Edinburgh Comedy Festival brochure and are marketing it via a dedicated website. Although they don’t actually say so, the implication of the production of a brochure for the Edinburgh Comedy Festival (even though the words “on the Fringe” are added) will have many believing that there is no comedy going on elsewhere. The implications for the smaller venues are frightening.
As a theatre man through and through, I confess to have been worried for a while by the increasingly large proportion of comedy shows (not comedy plays: stand-up, sketch shows and the like) and this year comedy outstrips theatre in the number of shows. Now it seems that effectively (even if they deny this is the intention) the big four are going to corner the Fringe comedy market. This will further marginalise the smaller venues so that some may well become unviable, which will have a knock-on effect on what companies (theatre, musicals and music as well as comedy) which can afford to come to the Fringe.
We need the small venues for the small, emerging, experimental companies - which, let’s face it, are what the Fringe is (or should be!) about- for they can’t afford the charges of the biggies, even if they can get them to consider their shows anyway.
We may not - I hope we will not - lose the smaller venues, but the gap will widen and the joint marketing muscle of the big four will mean the rest will have to work harder and spend more money (which they haven’t got) to attract the punters.
There is aready a big divide. There are Fringe-goers (even some critics) who will not go to any venue other than the big four (unless it be the Traverse, which has always, by its very nature, been slightly separate from the rest). This is totally contrary to the spirit of the Fringe, which, for its sixty-odd years, has been a place for new companies, actors and writers to try out their ideas, hope to be “spotted”, get a post-Edinburgh tour (or at least a London booking) or, at the very least, good reviews for their CVs. No one ever expected to make money: in fact, it costs most companies to perform there.
But now the big four are bringing in more and more commercial shows - especially in the comedy field: does Joan Rivers really need the Fringe? - with higher prices which hase the twin effect of drawing people away from the less commercial, more experimental work and reducing the amount of money visitors have to spend. A double whammy!
Reading the public discussions on Fringe news stories on the Scotsman website - and ignoring those contributors who are patently anti-Fringe (or are well-known for whinging about everything!) - there seems to be something of a backlash developing. Much of it is aimed at the Assembly, mainly because Bill Burdett-Coutts is the most vociferous and, it has to be said, confrontational of the big four bosses.
The Fringe has to change, for what doesn’t change dies, but we seem set for a period of change which is not organic, part of the natural order of things, but rather acrimonious and bitter. My own hope is that the Fringe’s increasing commercialisation will be reversed, but I’m not holding my breath!