EDINBURGH Festival Fringe organisers are considering mounting legal action over the troubled box office system as they brace themselves for a major inquiry into the debacle.
The Scottish Government, the Scottish Arts Council and Edinburgh City Council will all be involved in an independent investigation into a string of system failures in the run-up to this year's Festival. Venues are expected to demand more power in the
running of the Fringe as part of a separate review into how the Festival is administrated and funded.
There may also be pressure for the Festival to scrap Fringe Sunday, the popular free showcase staged annually on the Meadows, and narrow its focus to concentrate on running a central box office and co-ordinating marketing efforts.
The Fringe has pledged to look into individual claims for compensation from venues which have suffered major losses this year – if they can prove to have been caused by the box office problems. But Fringe director Jon Morgan has resisted calls for his resignation and the Fringe board failed to offer an official apology for the box office failure at its AGM on Saturday.
Two separate inquiries are to be held into the Fringe's box office woes. The first, which will look at what went wrong, will involve external consultants being brought in, and is not due for completion until November.
Meanwhile, October will see the completion of a study recommending how the Fringe's box office should run next year.
But one computer expert, Timothy Nathan, who is also promoting a show at this year's Fringe, said it would be a "major mistake" to bring in another new box office system next year.
He told The Scotsman: "The Fringe was well warned about bringing in an untested system. If they're talking about trying to get a new system up and running after October, it's far too late.
"The Fringe needs to adopt an existing box office system that is successfully in use elsewhere."
However, Mr Morgan, who has called in lawyers to look at whether the Fringe could be compensated itself, said: "This is the most comprehensive and transparent review process into how we sell Fringe tickets that has ever been undertaken.
"We'll feed the findings of the inquiry and IT review into the wider debate on the fundamental role and operation of the Fringe Society."
A spokesman for the Fringe was unable to say how much the three reviews would cost. Each of the four external organisations are expected to provide some funding and be asked to nominate a member of staff to play a formal part in the inquiry, which will have an independent chair.
The Fringe Society is facing a major overhaul which is expected to see changes made to the way the board is elected and how the Fringe itself is run.
William Burdett-Coutts, artistic director of Assembly Theatre, said: "Everyone on the Fringe needs to work much better together and the Fringe Society needs to concentrate on getting back to basics.
"Perhaps it shouldn't be getting involved in events like Fringe Sunday, which ties up a huge amount of time and resources. There has been no real change in how the Fringe is marketed for several years now; that desperately needs to change."
Tommy Sheppard, director of the Stand Comedy Club, said: "The Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, but is currently run on rules and regulations drawn up in the 1950s. It's very quaint but has to change.
"There needs to be a root and branch review so that the Fringe becomes much more representative of the actual venues and gives them a proper voice, which just isn't happening at the moment. I think the Fringe Society should become more like a federation of venues, each with one vote within the organisation.
"There has already been some talk about having an extraordinary general meeting in the winter and I think a one-day conference into the future of the Fringe would also be worthwhile.
"There should be associate membership available to the likes of performers and it's also important that stakeholders like the city council and the Scottish Government are given a say."
Peter Buckley Hill, promoter of the Free Fringe, said: "There is a general malaise which has afflicted the Fringe Society and at the moment it really lacks credibility with a lot of people.
"It needs to be much more responsive to the needs of artists and performers and concentrate on how it can help them more than it does at present."
A mess, whatever you call it THE Fringe has announced its independent inquiry into the box office shenanigans this summer, to report in the early autumn. It would be churlish to suggest that this has the happy consequence of kicking the whole horrible mess into touch, or at least until the enraged venue managers have left town for another year, but the pressing question is what to call it.
On the heels of the urgently named Thundering Hooves report, driven by the supposed competition Edinburgh faced from other scenic festival cities like Manchester, how about the Smoke and Mirrors report?
Alternatively, with a dual, broader inquiry into the overall running of the Fringe Society, what about Beyond the Fringe?
Underbelly co-director Charlie Wood, and the equally outspoken Stand comedy club director Tommy Sheppard (pictured), both won election to the Fringe board with an impressive 42 and 43 votes respectively. In the old days, an old Fringe hand reports, it cost just £1 to get Society membership, so that packing in mates for a board vote was dirt cheap.
Nowadays membership has gone up to £10. But we know it was all down to the power of their eloquence.
