In this issue, you can read coverage of
the National Theatre’s Watch This Space festival and the Riverside
Studios’ Tête À Tête opera festival, but LIFT’s
Molten festival doesn’t appear to have received any coverage, and
events on the Camden Fringe have been digested within the issue as a
whole; next issue, Grimeborn at the Arcola, then BAC’s Scratch
festival… Are we in danger of becoming festivalled out? Not
really, because the word “festival” is in danger of becoming
meaningless in theatre programming. Any themed season simply
sounds more exciting and dynamic when you call it a “Festival”.
This, in turn, devalues those programmes of work which do qualify for
the term, stretching across organisations and venues, such as Molten
and Camden.
Tangle
And with so many festivals around, what need of so much coverage even
of the biggest arts festival in the world? Yes, once again the
Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe received less media
attention this year than last, despite being bigger and more
successful. (Ah, but we’ll come to that point later…) Once
again, Lyn Gardner of the
Guardian and
I were the only national reviewers
in
situ for pretty much the duration, and I think each of us had
less space; I certainly did in the
Financial
Times. Even the
Scotsman,
hitherto considered the Festivalgoer’s journalistic bible, was
publishing noticeably less review coverage from a far smaller team of
reviewers.
Conversely, to cater for a Festivalgoing population of tens, even
hundreds of thousands of people seeking guidance among over 2000 shows,
the Festival freesheets and latterly web sites have become more and
more influential… filling the vacuum, as it were. But do they
fill it? They often rely on eager students or “civilians” to
provide copy, but lack any real sense of identity or weight in
themselves. The effect has been to buck the overall trend in
online arts coverage: just as the sector in general begins to shake
down with an increasing awareness of which sites are more reliable and
authoritative, Edinburgh review coverage is not so much a labyrinth as
a great big tangle. Any show that can’t extract a five-star
review, or at least a couple of fours, from this plethora of competing
voices (because it’s just the star ratings that get plastered on
posters, not – heavens forfend – actual words), really isn’t trying.
Falling
away
Yet the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe did more business this year than
ever. At the end of the season, the Fringe Society reported 7%
more tickets sold overall this year than in the previous record year of
2007. (A not very discreet veil is drawn across 2008, when the
Fringe’s new ticketing software collapsed, causing hundreds of
thousands of pounds in lost business by their own estimate.) When
I arrived in the city this year, three days before the official
beginning of the Fringe, I was astounded by crowds such as I had never
seen so early in the season.
Indeed. Here’s an interesting thing: ticket sales were up 7% over
the entire Fringe season, but at the end of the first of the three
weeks they had been up by a massive 42%... yes, even on that 2007
record. One venue complex alone (albeit the biggest), the
Pleasance, reported having taken over £750,000 in box office by
that point. In other words, that healthy overall picture breaks
down into a phenomenal start to the season, followed by a massive
falling away of business. One experienced producer told me that
he would normally rate the four weekends of the Fringe as follows in
terms of business: 3, 4, 2, 1 in descending order. This year, he
said, it was 1,2,3,4.
Snark
There is, I think, a logical explanation. In this year of
recession, Edinburgh had fewer visitors from overseas; more of its
business was domestic, and in particular from Scots who had decided to
holiday at home this year (that horrible neologism,
“staycationers”). But the United Kingdom’s calendars are not all
that united. The Fringe runs for the three weeks immediately
prior to the late August Bank Holiday (which, confusingly, is a holiday
in England & Wales only, not in Scotland). This year, that
holiday fell on the last day on which it could, August 31st.
However, the term calendar of Scottish schools runs along different
lines. They would normally begin the new school year in the
middle of the third week of the Fringe, but this year the late Bank
Holiday and consequently the late Fringe dates meant that Scottish
children were back at school – and Scottish parents also back to their
term-time routines – in Fringe Week 2. The principal market in
this unusual Fringe year, as in
The
Hunting Of The Snark, softly and silently vanished away.
They took with them much of the morale in the performing and producing
community. Shows which would in normal years have sold out
presented those onstage with disconcerting, disheartening, “gappy”
audiences. Fringe performers, crews, publicists… even
journalists… always grow exhausted and eager to leave towards the end,
but this year it was an exhaustion born not of frenzy but of lassitude.
The
moral is…
All of which is simply to say that when I see reports of West End
business being up in early summer, I have serious doubts as to whether
that trend will be sustained. We shall see.
Written for Theatre Record.