Every year the Edinburgh Fringe gets bigger. This year there are over 3,000 shows in the Official Fringe Programme, plus perhaps another thousand free shows. But as the number of shows goes inexorably upwards, the number of reviewers has failed to keep pace. Quite simply Edinburgh Fringe has got too big to review.
Lyn Gardner recently wrote about feeling alone as the only Broadsheet reviewer left at Edinburgh Fringe and how that the Nationals had deserted the Fringe, choosing to focus instead on the much smaller and easier to handle International Festival. This has left the fringe coverage to the festival press and (mainly students) writing online for websites or theatre blogs.
But the festival press and online reviewers can in no way provide the huge number of reviews demanded by the shows performing at this year’s fringe. If there are say, 4,000 shows and each show would like four reviews, that’s a total of 16,000 reviews needed. Who will provide them ? The result is that many shows this year have struggled to get any sort of review at all.
As ever, it seems that performing at Edinburgh Fringe is a considerably more attractive proposition than reviewing it.
Submitted by Phil Jacobs
