The most common complaints about the
Edinburgh Fringe are that is too large and unwieldy, and that Comedy dominates
it to the detriment of other artforms. This is quite possibly undeniable. But
how did it get to be so? Let me have a look, possibly unscientifically but
hopefully objectively, at some of the steps along the way that have led to the
Edinburgh Fringe as we find it today.
1947 – Fringe and Festival start.
The
word ‘Fringe’ however, hasn’t been coined yet.
1948 – The term ‘Fringe’ is coined
The term ‘Fringe’ is coined thus by Robert
Kemp in the Edinburgh Evening News: “Round the fringe of official Festival
drama there seems to be more private enterprise than before.” This term goes on
to develop the meaning of Alternative Theatre. Fringe Theatre is then exported
from Edinburgh to London, and to the rest of the world, by the likes of Joan
Littlewood who brings a company up in 1949.
1958 – First Free Fringe
Yehudi Menuhin creates the Free Fringe. Or
tries to. Menuhin hires the Embassy Cinema in Pilton and wants to make
admission free. A legal technicality prevents this, meaning the one-off
performance was staged at a shilling per ticket, still well below the price of
the Kings, the Lyceum, or the Playhouse. The place was packed, and he knew he’d
succeeded in reaching non-Festival punters when "to Menuhin's delight, they
clapped in all the wrong places."
1960 – Beyond The Fringe.
Part of the official Festival, as we all know,
but establishing the implicit link between Fringe and comedy forever more. The
Cambridge Footlights, The Oxford Revue and other University groups had been
coming to Edinburgh with their amateur shows from the start. It was in the
1960s that Edinburgh began to be a showcase for their talents.
1966 – David Frost comes to town.
You can blame David Frost for many things,
and bringing together of Edinburgh comedians and the telly is one of them. He
had come up as a Cambridge Footlighter in the early 60s, and used many Oxbridge
talents on his shows. Now a major TV celebrity, he started staging late night
chat shows and cabarets at Edinburgh and attracting national press coverage. In
a talk to the Fringe Club, there was a call by John Calder (creator of the
forerunner of the Edinburgh Book Festival) for "two Fringes, professional
and amateur", suggesting that "the Fringe had taken over drama from
the official Festival."
1970s – Fringe officially “too big”.
We know it’s too big, because everyone
keeps saying so. In 1976, Cordelia Oliver writes in The Guardian, “The Edinburgh Fringe grows grosser every year like a fat old cat going to seed and
not giving a damn. The official Fringe programme lists at least two hundred
companies…” Two. Hundred. Companies. By 1979 that had grown to over 359
companies, in 2016 the total is listed as 3269 shows. In 1977 the retiring
Festival director bemoans the TV coverage, revolving around a Russell Harty
hosted chat show, saying “ it was principally the Fringe and every allusion
to 'serious' programmes was carefully avoided.” The Fringe, and by the sound of
it comedy, was taking over.
1978 – The multi-tenanted venue.
When William Burdett-Coutts hired The
Assembly Rooms and divided it up into smaller performances spaces, then curated
a programme of events to take place there, he single-handedly created the
template for much of The Fringe from then on. A multiplex of entertainment,
only possible with such a sitting-duck audience pool to draw on as was to be
found in Edinburgh in August. Other venues working on a similar principle were
The Wireworks (1978 – 92) on the Royal Mile – built by comedians, Rowan
Atkinson drove the JCB to lay the foundations – and The Circuit (82 – 86) in a
marquee on the crater of a demolished building which would go on to become the
new Traverse Theatre at the back of the Usher Hall. Those two venues were short-lived, but they
were soon joined by two with a longer lifespan.
1981 – The Perrier Award.
Won initially by The Cambridge Footlights,
whose revue was given a TV version as a result, making overnight stars of Fry,
Laurie, Slattery and Thompson, this publicity-hungry award went on to become
the centrepiece of Edinburgh’s annual month of comedy promotion.
1980s – The Alternative Comedy Boom.
The Pleasance began life as a curated
multi-tenanted venue in 1984, the Gilded Balloon joining it in 1986. With the
Assembly completing The Big Three, they
were home to a lot of comedy. There’d been a boom in TV comedy, largely led by
the newly born Channel 4, whose Head Of Comedy Seamus Cassidy made Edinburgh an
annual fishing trip for talent. At this time two big agencies – Off The Kerb
and Avalon – came into being, and made Edinburgh and the contest for the
Perrier Award, the hub of their comedy-to-TV promotion game.
1989 – Edinburgh Nights.
BBC TV had given sporadic coverage to the
Edinburgh Festival and Fringe since the 1960s,
but from 1989 it became an extension of Newsnight’s Later arts
programme, under the name Edinburgh Nights. Presented by Mark Lamarr from the
mid-90s it reached great heights of popularity and publicised the Edinburgh
Fringe as never before.
1990s – Comedy Is The New Rock & Roll.
Baddiel and Newman off the telly sold out
Wembley Stadium and the revolving door between stand up comedy and Edinburgh
and TV success seemed firmly established.
The list of Perrier Newcomers alone is a roll call of names that remain
giants of TV comedy today, from Tim Vine & Harry Hill to The Mighty Boosh
and The League Of Gentlemen. In 1999 600
companies give 15,000 performances at The Fringe (these not-quite-the-same
figures make comparisons hard. We do know, though, that the total number of
performances in 2016 was 50,266. So, by some measure or other, the Fringe grows
by over 200% in a little over 15 years).
1996 – Bridget Jones Diary.
In Helen Fielding’s novel, her eponymous
hero and her London friends go to the Edinburgh Fringe for the weekend, setting
into cultural concrete, more firmly than a decade of Edinburgh Nights had done,
The Fringe as a thing one did if one was one of the fashionable crowd. A slice of their experience: "Arthur
Smith's Hamlet is completely booked up, so we could go to the Coen brothers
instead at five, but that means we'll be too late for Richard Herring. So shall
we not go to Jenny Eclair ... - chuh! I frankly I don't know why she still
bothers - and do Lanark, then try to get into Harry Hill or Bondages and Julian
Clary. Hang on, I'll try the Gilded Balloon. No, Harry Hill's booked up, so
shall we skip the Coen brothers?"
In
the same way that was happening to Glastonbury, gentrification was coming to
Edinburgh. With it, ever-increasing prices.
2000s – Explosion (and burning down) of venues.
2000 – C Venues, 2002 – Underbelly, 2007 –
Udderbelly, and from then on we have Zoo venues, Space Venues, Greenside,
Southside, and every side inbetween. The
multi-tenanted venue, devised by Assembly in 1978, became the repeated model
across Edinburgh seeing an expansion which, thankfully, redressed the balance
away from the domination of stand up comedy, but greatly increased the number
of performers and shows competing for a finite audience. My own venue, The
Gilded Balloon, survived burning down, and being sponsored by a tobacco
company. In so many ways, we weren’t in the 1980s any more.
2001 - I start bringing shows up to Edinburgh
This doesn't make much of a dent on Edinburgh Fringe's history, but it helps to explain my obsession with it. In 2001, having been performing stand up for a few years, compering The Comedy Box in Bristol and schlepping round the circuit, I had devised the stage show The Sitcom Trials, which was proving quite popular in London and Bristol. Miranda Hart had been performing The Orange Girls with Charity Trimm at the Gilded Balloon in previous years and had an offer for a slot but couldn't take it. Since Miranda was appearing in my regular London shows, I took the opportunity to seize that slot and take myself and a cast of four - Miranda, Charity, Gez Foster, and Dan Clegg - up to Edinburgh. We performed The Sitcom Trials at The Gilded Balloon's venue on Blair St to such success that I returned in 2002 and 2004.
2006 – Free Fringe Returns
Free Fringe, Free Festival, and later
Heroes and others, developed new ways of funding shows, taking performers away
for the Pay-To-Play Fringe model by now established in the curated venues, and
again increasing the number of shows on offer. Now more was free than ever
before and, ten years on from Bridget Jones, everything from food to tickets to
accommodation cost twice as much as it ever had.
2007 - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre debuts
Again, not something that's troubled the bigger picture, but it was in 2007 that I realised that, rather than splitting the money five ways, I could keep it all myself by performing a one man show. Or rather a two sock show. The Socks made their debut at the Gilded Balloon in 2007 and returned in 2008 (Return Of..), 2009 (..Goes To Hollywood), 2010 (..On The Telly), 2012 (Boo Lingerie), 2013 (...In Space), 2014 (And So Am I), 2015 (Minging Detectives), 2016 (Shakespeare), 2018 (Superheroes), 2019 (Roll Up!), and 2022 (Eurovision Sock Contest).
2012 – The Olympic Year.
Feeling almost like the bubble had burst,
the Olympics in London coinciding with the Edinburgh Fringe had a devastating effect. As Richard Herring put it, the
Olympics “sucked the punters out of Edinburgh like someone opening the door on
a spaceship.” We all recovered and came back the next year.
2017 – Lots of moaning. So, business as
usual.
Which brings us to the present day (when this post was originally written). 2017
was a year when I read more negativity than I can remember reading before. From
the chair of the Cockburn Association (me neither) saying the Fringe is “choking the city” and urging some restraint or changes,
to Tommy Shepard of the Stand continuing to suggest the Fringe should move to
earlier in the summer so as to minimize the clash with the Festival and Tattoo,
and to coincide more with the Scottish school holidays. More observations
collected below.
2020 - The Plague Year
I and many other artists had big plans for our shows in 2020, none of which came to fruition. There was a fun Facebook group called A group where we all pretend that Edinburgh Fringe 2020 was never cancelled which gave some of us the buzz of it happening in advance. I, personally, enjoyed performing Zoom shows, one of which earned me a 4 star review from The Scotsman. But it was small consolation.
2021 saw an odd year where most shows weren't confident enough in advance to be able to plan to come to Edinburgh, lockdowns and emergency regulations were still happening right through the spring, so come August Edinburgh saw a Fringe with a fraction of its usual number of shows, a much higher proportion of them being by local performers, and almost all of them making a killing.
When I returned in 2022 it seemed to be business as usual, and I got more reviews during my shortest ever run (just 10 days) than I'd had in any of my previous month-long sojourns. I then found myself unable to afford to return in 2023 or 2024 (at time of writing this update I am missing it like crazy), and I'm making plans to return in 2025.
As for how the bigger picture has changed, you'd better ask someone who's up there. Accommodation has become even more cripplingly expensive. But has that deterred the number of people taking shows up? There are 3317 shows in the 2024 Edfringe programme. (Up from 2023's 3013, but not quite back to 2019's record 3800 shows)
Expect this blog to be updated again in the future. I am addicted to the Edinburgh Fringe and I can't see that changing in a hurry.
Kev F Sutherland 2017, 2024
My Books and where to get them:
Richard The Third - Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Paperback
Space Elain - Amazon - Lulu - iBooks - Barnes & Noble
Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories - Amazon
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon
UPDATE 2022 - See author Kev F's (aka The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre) at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe from Aug 3 - 13 in Scottish Falsetto Socks: Eurovision Sock Contest
The Award Winning* Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th 2018 - ON SALE NOW!
*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018
*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018
(From original blog post 2017: The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do a tiny bit more Shakespeare in Halifax (Oct 26), Wolverhampton (Oct 28), Nottingham (Nov 4), and Goole (Nov 17) this autumn, returning with a brand new show in 2018. Stay tuned.)
EDINBURGH TALES - Online reports from 2017
Big Four Venues (Gilded Balloon, Assembly, Underbelly, Pleasance) announce record-breaking ticket sales across the festival, with 1,520,435 tickets sold, an increase of 15% on Fringe 2016.
EDINBURGH TALES - Online reports from 2017
Big Four Venues (Gilded Balloon, Assembly, Underbelly, Pleasance) announce record-breaking ticket sales across the festival, with 1,520,435 tickets sold, an increase of 15% on Fringe 2016.
"2,696,884 tickets issued" - The Edinburgh Fringe's record-breaking stats
The Pleasance's record-breaking 2017 stats
Underbelly's record-breaking 2017 stats
All the 2017 Award winners, from Fringe Firsts to Comedy Awards to Significant Contribution To Sustainable Practice (there are a lot of awards these days)
Lyn Gardner on whether free tickets mean a critic must review your show
Gender Bias across Fringe reviews, from Howl Sanctuary
"Everyone's posters were the same size and you could put them up wherever you wanted for free" - Rosie Wilby on ten years' change on the Fringe
Lucy aka I Am Nincompoop on a dispiriting first Fringe
"You definitely become more aware of your existence in the sea of white heads" - Producer Tiata Fahodzi on black artists' experience at the Fringe
"You definitely become more aware of your existence in the sea of white heads" - Producer Tiata Fahodzi on black artists' experience at the Fringe
"You can't expect too much for a thousand pounds a week, right?" - Richard Herring ends the Fringe on a positive note.
Hits & Shits as seen by West End Producer #Dear
"I watched the same play 22 times" - Author Anne Penketh's first time on the Fringe
Hits & Shits as seen by West End Producer #Dear
"I watched the same play 22 times" - Author Anne Penketh's first time on the Fringe
A festival to me is a celebration and not a competition" - Douglas Deans on his one man show at Zoo
Full financial breakdown of Andy Quirk's Free Fringe shows
Comedians on the physical effects of the Fringe, a week later
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