The end of this year�s Fringe has proved to be as suitably dramatic as any play staged in its four-week run in the capital.
PHIL MILLER and BRIAN DONNELLY
The end of this year's Fringe has proved to be as suitably dramatic as any play staged in its four-week run in the capital.
Only days after revealing that ticket sales for this year's festival were 10% down on last year's total, the director of the Fringe, Jon Morgan, has announced he is resigning from the role.
His resignation comes only three days after he said that, despite a fall of 160,000 tickets sold, he was "pleased" with the box office take.
One of the key issues at the Fringe this year had been problems with its own box office system, and Mr Morgan has instigated an independent review into the affair which will report in November.
The man in charge of organising that review, Tim Hawkins - who has been involved with the Fringe for 25 years - will now run the Fringe in the new role of general manager until a new director is found.
In his departing statement, Mr Morgan insisted he had been considering the move for "some time" and that his decision had nothing to do with this year's box office difficulties.
The director said: "I feel privileged to have worked for the Fringe. However, the role of Fringe director has taken me away from my first love of producing and presenting exciting performances to audiences and my intention is to return to that more direct relationship with artists and audiences."
Bill Burdett Coutts, director of the Assembly Theatre, one of the "big four" venues that led the so-called "breakaway" Edinburgh Comedy Festival, said: "He has done the honourable thing in my view. I don't think he has had a lot of choice."
He added: "The Fringe board are going through a review process so I think they have to decide which direction they are going to go."
Jonathan Mills, Edinburgh International Festival director, said: "Jon Morgan has been a wonderful festival friend and colleague and we have enjoyed working with him. All of us at the Edinburgh International Festival wish him well, and every success for the future."
Edinburgh City Council festival and events champion Steve Cardownie said: "We welcome Jon Morgan's intention to continue to contribute towards the review into the Fringe and we look forward to seeing the results.
"The Fringe is still a healthy organisation and a new director will inherit a festival with a bright future in Edinburgh.
"On behalf of the council, I would like to wish Jon all the best for the future."
Baroness Smith, chair of the Fringe Society Board, said: "The board is very grateful to Jon for his significant contribution to the Fringe at a challenging time of great change and in the short time he has been in post he has dealt with an unprecedented range of challenges."
Mr Morgan's departure may be seen by some as inevitable: the combination of the tortuous box office problems and the fall in ticket sales may have created an atmosphere which made his position untenable.
On Monday, he told The Herald he thought some of the criticism of the festival this summer had been "over the top".
Despite a 10% drop, the Fringe still sold more than 1.5 million tickets (down from 1.7 million.
Three weeks ago, on the day he announced an independent review into the box office debacle, Mr Morgan said: "I feel confident that I have made the right decisions in the situation I was in, the range of options I have. I don't feel I have anything to fear from the review."
That review will surely find out exactly how much Mr Morgan was involved in the purchase of the £300,000 box office system, which failed on its first day in operation.
Comment:
Resignation not a surprise to many
KEITH BRUCE
When the news came that Jon Morgan had fallen on his cutlass yesterday morning, it was not a surprise to many of his colleagues at the Fringe. After the event's final day, Monday, Morgan had been out of contact and most assumed it was only a matter of time before his resignation was announced. Even before that, many believed that he was only seeing the event to its conclusion before stepping aside. You would not have known it from his public face, however. When he officiated at the presentation of the Fringe-administrated Allen Wright Award to young journalists on Friday afternoon, he was his usual affable self, self-deprecating and appreciative of the work the young reviewers and feature writers had done.
In a sense, however, the venue for that event indicated Morgan's misjudgment. Although the difficulties with the box office system this year will be seen as the primary reason for his brief tenure as Fringe director, his apparent misreading of the delicate political balance of the Fringe was a more serious failing.
The Allen Wright Award announcement took place in the Assembly Rooms club bar, that notorious members-only hang-out of drunk comics and visiting celebrities, which personifies the "us and them" problem on the Fringe. In every previous year it has happened at a more neutral venue.
Although it might seem that the criticism of Morgan has come from the mouths of those running the big four venues, in fact he is seen by many involved in the event to have been too cosy with the directors of Assembly, Pleasance, Gilded Balloon and Underbelly, instead of championing the smaller concerns that rely on the Fringe administration for support. Whatever the truth of that, any of his predecessors could have told him that creating that impression would always prove fatal.
