What's gone wrong with the Fringe. And how to fix it

Like Ben & Jerry’s, which began with two mates hand-churning delicious ice cream in a renovated Vermont gas station in 1978 and has, in recent years, seen its founders involved in deepening clashes with their corporate owners over the ideological direction of the company, Edinburgh's Fringe is now far from almost everything it started as and set out to be.

Any meaningful attempt to put that right would, sadly, be very much a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, won the Grand National, been put out to stud and sired a string of Ascot winners. Too many people are making too much money in too many ways. Unfortunately, not, in general, the performers, once the driving force.

It must be admitted that comedy is responsible for many of the Fringe's current faults, stretching its parameters this year to encompass paying up to £31.50 to be one of over 1,000 people watching Sara Pascoe talk for an hour at McEwan Hall (one night only, ‘cos she’s been on TV, you know).

Might it not be time to make things a bit more Fringe again? Or are the bones of the Fringe simply buried under the commercial weight of Big Venues, Big Management, Big Producers, Big Agents and the ever expanding miasma of the now apparently mandatory PR representation?

According to Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus, Fringe means “Non-mainstream or unconventional” and refers to “ideas on the radical edge of a movement”. Ah, those were the days. But even the most elastic definitions of a successful “Fringe” festival surely cannot allow for Daniel Sloss arriving at the Playhouse like a metaphorical blue whale devouring 3,059 Fringe-going krill at a time.

Luckily for other comics at the Fringe, Daniel can only squeeze two nights (and one matinee) into his busy schedule, but the banning of hit-and-run big names like this epitomises the first item on my – call it a manifesto if you like – wish list for a better Fringe.

1. Size Matters

A venue like the Playhouse, the largest theatre in Scotland, has absolutely no place in a Fringe festival. The EICC, The King's, even the lovely Usher Hall: none of them should be in the Fringe programme. It would be so simple, and so fair – albeit undoubtedly unpopular – to cap the capacity of an acceptable Fringe venue. What is good enough for Off Broadway should surely be good enough for the Fringe. I would say 500, but you may disagree.

2. Ridiculous Rents and how to stop them

Of course, the main challenge to the Fringe is the sheer cost of putting on a show here – making of the much vaunted term “free access” a very bad joke – the result of (frequently) exorbitant venue charges and (always) obscene accommodation costs. So, next on my wish list would be a mandatory cap on the amount of rate increase permissible for hotels, AirBnBs etc during the month of August. A 25-30 percent increase in prices would seem fair.

If, for the rest of the year, you let out your Morningside attic for £200 a week, you get to charge £250 to £260 in August. So accommodation costs will come down radically. Hotels and hostels will all do the same. Big steaming pie in an overpriced August sky, I know, but this is simply a wish list.

3. Control Crippling Venue Charges

As to venues, obviously PBH's Free Fringe is peerless in its treatment of its performers (who pay nothing to use performance spaces while venues make money via bar sales) but not everyone could aspire to that. Well, they could, but they wouldn’t. Without getting into too much detail, and with information provided by performers, surely 40 per cent of any show's gross takings is simply unfair. Especially against an £8,000 box-office guarantee in a 90-seater venue for three weeks. Meaning once you take £8,000 the venue takes 40 per cent of the rest, and if you don’t take £8,000, the venue gets it all. Even some of the “smaller" organisations are demanding £980 for six days in a 21-seater venue, or a £1,000 flat fee for a 50-seater space. And that is on top of the Fringe registration fee. And five percent (plus VAT) on the mandatory 25 per cent of any show's tickets sold at the Fringe Box Office. These costs need to be capped.

4. Offer incentives to new, smaller Fringe venues

While the Fringe has ever boasted its unique “free access” model, in reality, every single show in every single venue (unless they can find a venue of their own) has to pass through a gate kept by the organisation that runs the venues. And in the case of The Big Four, as well as the ever-expanding Comedy Corps, these are massive, heavily manned gates. Soon there will be no individuals in Edinburgh in August. And then the Fringe will be dead.

So I wish that Edinburgh City Council would offer incentives to owners of bars, clubs, restaurants – anywhere that could cope with a performance – to open up the city to a more interesting and individual Fringe, instead of making it as difficult as possible.

Can the Edinburgh Fringe ever regain anything of its heart? The name alone carries kudos but is being bandied around like “organic” or “handmade”. Perhaps it is time for another breaking away – just as the original Fringe broke away from the then-Festival, and for similar reasons. But this is a move for the brave. Edinburgh needs a Fringe. And what it has right now is not that. Time to start again. I wish.

Enjoying The Scotsman's coverage of the Edinburgh festivals? For just £2 a month you can get unlimited access to scotsman.com plus 2-for-1 Fringe tickets. For details visit www.scotsman.com/subscriptions

The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today

Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source

Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here