British Theatre Guide Blog

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!

It’s started - the usual moral outrage about something at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it doesn’t officially open till the weekend!

There is an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website, calling upon the Prime Minister to “condemn this tasteless portrayal of terrorism and its victims” in the form of the show Jihad the Musical.  Quite how the mover of the petition knows that it is tasteless is not clear but the show’s producers have been quick to defend themselves: “We have no intention of causing offence or insult with this show,” said producer James Lawler.

Why not?  The only way to avoid giving offence to someone is to produce theatre that is so bland that it says nothing - but you’ll then offend others - especially me! - by making theatre boring.

As Nick Hytner said some months ago - no one has the right not to be offended.

But the searching for offence brigade find rich pickings at the Fringe.  One show, Prodigal Daughter at C Chambers Street, has fallen foul of the censor morons, as D H Laurence called them, because of its poster.  Shockingly the poster shows a cartoonish pencil drawing of a naked woman (coloured a rather unbecoming and very unnatural pink)!  I’ve seen it and was horrified to realise that you can actually see a small scribble which represents pubic hair!  I mean, I didn’t realise such things existed!

And who is protesting?  Well, director Asa Gim Palomera says some of the shops have refused to take the poster but the main ban has come from - wait for it! - C Chambers Street.  That’s right: the venue at which the play is being performed.

They do children’s shows, you see, so they think the poster is “inappropriate”.  I’ve spent many an hour in C and I can tell you that their walls are so plastered with posters that you have to really focus to make one out from another - and I’ve never seen any children looking at them: they’re far to busy doing childreny things.

If the Edinburgh Fringe is to have any value, it has to have artistic freedom at its heart, and that means in its advertising materials as well as its performances.  OK, any advertising much comply with the law, I understand that, but when a central part of the Fringe starts setting itself up as a guardian of morality, that’s a political correction too far!

The Scotsman online gives its readers the opportunity to respond the news stories by uploading their comments.  It’s just been carrying the story of Fringe venue managers Understairs Arts and the effect its liquidation has had on the companies booked into the venues.  Among the comments are two by people who could well be in the running for the title Right Pillock of the Year.

One said:

Who does this really affect?

Some rich, work-shy Oxford and Cambridge students on a summer jolly to Edinburgh.

They really don’t deserve any sympathy.

This will give them the opportunity to do some real work this summer for a change - but I suspect that they’ll just spend August in mummy and daddy’s Tuscan villa!

There will be plenty of other crappy shows on offer for all the tourists who have somehow been duped into believing that there are some Fringe shows that are actually worth seeing!

I merely point this out: it isn’t worth commenting upon.

However there is another comment - “good.. stop wasting money on fringe… do some goodthings with that” - on which I will comment, for it reveals a monumental ignorance which should not be ignored.

The last I heard, Edinburgh City Council gives £60,000 to the Fringe.  In return, last year the Fringe sold over one million tickets.  At an estimated average price of £7, this brings in £7m, much of which will go straight into the local economy.

Then there’s the money spent by companies, audiences, promoters and journalists in the hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, cafes, pubs, shops, buses, taxis and so on and so on and so on.  That will run into millions.  Let’s say that altogether the Fringe brings in £10m to the Edinburgh economy.  Not a bad return for a £60,000 investment.  I wish I could find an investment which would give me that sort of return in just four weeks!

It is very tempting to those of us who are determined to defend freedom of speech to blame the pastor and members of the Apostolic Church, who withdrew from their agreement with Understairs Arts, for the demise of the new Fringe venue management company.  After all, it was their actions (including their desire to censor what was shown at the venue) which, according to Understairs, led directly to the company going into liquidation.

It’s very tempting but it would be very wrong.  I am, as I have forcefully said on many occasions, totally opposed to censorship in theatre, but here we have a situation in which a church has decided that something should not be shown in its building.  We might disagree with their reasoning (and, to be honest, it is weak) but it is their building and they have the absolute right to decide what can and cannot be performed there.

From what one can gather, Upstairs had agreed that they could have sight of scripts in advance, which to me - and, I suspect, to most people - meant that they had de facto script approval.  Either Understairs should not have agreed to this (which would probably have meant they wouldn’t have had the use of the building in the first place) or they should have agreed to the church’s demands and, perhaps, swapped the show in question with another, less contentious one from one of their other two venues. It would have been awkward, perhaps even embarrassing in their dealings with the theatre company, but it was the only way out.

In any case, they brought the problems on themselves and cannot blame the church.  We may think that the church was being very narrow minded - after all, from what we know of the play, what the church objected to was shown as being wrong anyway - but it has a perfect right both in law and morally to decide to what use its premises can be put.

I never thought that I would find myself defending censorship but here we have a case of two rights conflicting and we must apppy the principle that your freedom to swing your fist stops where my nose begins.  If the church had withdrawn because of something Upstairs was presenting in one of the other venues, that would have been censorship and deserving of condemnation, but when it claims the right to decide what happens on premises it owns, then we must defend that right.  Who knows? we might want to claim the same right at some time!

I am spending three nights (four days) at the Fringe this year.  I’ll arrive at about 10.30am on Monday 6th August and will leave at 9pm on Thursday 9th.  That is the least time I will ever have spent at the Fringe.  Last year it was a full week: in previous years I’ve done ten days to a fortnight.  So why the change?

Apart from the fact I’m getting older - this will be my 11th Fringe as a reviewer - we’ve got more reviewers, which means that more reviews have to be edited and put online.  Each review needs to be checked for mistakes (in the limited time for writing available, errors can easily creep in), and then dropped into a template page.  We put three reviews on a page and, with each new review added, the index must be updated.  Pages (including the index and the site’s front page) must then be uploaded as quickly as possible, checked online to make sure that there’s nothing wrong, and then I have to email the various press offices with the URLs of each review so that the companies can be informed.

Last year eleven reviewers produced 245 reviews.  Then there were reviews from the International Festival and the Book Festival, together with the inevitable news stories and interviews.  So over 90 Edinburgh-related pages went online during the three weeks, in addition to the usual BTG updates.

This year there will be fourteen reviewers, so I decided that I am more needed in the editor’s chair than dashing around Edinburgh. 

And to be honest, I found last year very tiring.  I’ve got wonderful digs in Edinburgh with a landlady who could not be more helpful.  They’re just yards from High Street (for Rebus fans, I could look straight down Fleshmarket Close while having my breakfast!) and within reasonably easy walking distance of most venues.  But nonetheless I found it exhausting.  I’m the oldest of our Edinburgh reviewers by about twenty years so I decided it is time to take a back seat.  Let younger brains - and, more importantly, younger legs - do the work!

I even considered not going at all, but the Fringe is addictive and I knew I would miss it, so my three days enable me to dip my toes in the water and feel part of it.  And I would miss meals at Creelers and the Jasmine Chinese restaurant whose monkfish in chilli and honey sauce gives a hint of what heaven must be like!

Here is where it starts!

The 2007 Edinburgh Fringe programme arrived this morning.  To be accurate, four copies of the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe programme arrived this morning because, for some reason, they’ve sent me copies for three of our reviewers as well as my own.

And, as I said, this is where it starts.  Here’s what’s going to happen:

All 14 BTG reviewers are going to start poring through the 288 page book - that’s what it is: 288 A4 pages listing everything that’s going to happen between 5th and 27th August: children’s shows, comedy, dance and physical theatre, events, exhibitions, music, music theatre and straight theatre, together with a full guide to all 380 venues.

Each of us will be marking the shows we want to see and, at my request, dividing them into Must See, Would Like to See, Would Be Willing to See.  Then they’ll send these lists to me and it will be my job to allocate shows to reviewers, being as fair as I can be and trying to ensure that each reviewer gets as many of their Must See shows as possible.

14 reviewers and 2000+ shows - it is going to be a nightmare!  But it has to be done because each publication is allowed just one press ticket per show.  I will create a massive spreadsheet in which everyone’s wishes will be entered and then the fun part begins: I go through it, trying to allocate shows to reviewers.

Once that’s done - and it takes weeks! - I send the spreadsheet to everyone and wait for the inevitable moans and requests.  If I’ve made mistakes - and I defy anyone not to in this situation - I’ll correct them and send out the final copy.

Then it’s up to each reviewer to book their tickets through the press offices.  But before they do that, they have to plan their own diaries.  With shows startng as early a ten in the morning and some running in the early hours of the morning and with a huge range of starting times in between, careful planning is essential.  And, of course, one of the things you have to take into consideration is the distance between venues.  It’s OK choosing to see a show which finishes at, say, 7pm followed by another which starts at 7.15 if they are in the same or adjacent venues, but if the venues are on opposite sides of the city…

 And those were the right words - press offices, for, although most venues distribute press tickets through the Fringe Press Office, the bigger venues don’t.  For them, you have to book through their own offices.  In some cases they even have to get clearance from a show’s producers.

Most of us will see between four and seven shows a day, each averaging an hour in length.  But, of course, you also have to allow for mundane things like travelling from venue to venue, eating, and even just catching your breath.  And then there is the necessity to write the reviews.  There’s no point leaving it till the end of your visit: by that time you’ll be so punchdrunk that they’ll all have merged into one, so the reviewer has to work time for writing into the day - and for accessing email so that reviews can be sent to me on a regular basis, preferably daily.

Fortunately there are computers with Net access available in the Fringe Press Office and even some venues which have wi-fi.  Landladies are usually good, too, about allowing reviewers to plug their laptops or PDAs into their phone lines - and, failing all else, there are Internet Cafes.

Is it any wonder that most reviewers return home from Edinburgh desperately needing a holiday!