Fantasy Fringe

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Fantasy Fringe 〰️

We’re excited about the Edinburgh Fringe, but it’s clear it needs to change. A lot of people have a lot of ideas, but nothing has really happened yet. So we decided to ask the comedians themselves: in your fantasy, what would the Fringe look like? It might have been a mistake.

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Priya Hall has solved all the main problems - accommodation, cost, attention span, pressure - by just reducing the age and size of the performers.

The year is 2023 and welcome to the first ever Junior Fringe! That’s right, following the success of shows such as Junior Masterchef (Gordon’s so good with the kids, maybe he’s not so bad) and The Junior Apprentice (it’s so fun to hate baby Tories) the Fringe has announced that the festival is taking a turn this year and that only kids aged 5 and under will be permitted to perform.

Some people may see this as a rogue move, but you forget that the Fringe is up against all sorts of problems that can be solved by replacing these rotted old clowns with new blood.

The housing crisis? Solved. You can fit so many 3-year-olds in a Wendy House and you can fit literally thousands of Wendy Houses on the Meadows. Are the Wendy Houses water resistant? No. But are any houses, really?

Too many acts, not enough venues? Sorted. All shows are now 7 minutes or under to accommodate the attention span of a 5-year-old. That’s a lot of turnover in those venues. The Pleasance will be host to a literal million shows this year as a result. Audiences have fed back that it works out perfectly, because an hour was a bit of a slog really and actually if we can condense these shows down to 3 minutes and under so they can fit in their entirety into a TikTok, that would be even better.

Is the pressure cooker environment fostered by the intense scrutiny, reviews and awards too much for a 5-year-old? Absolutely not! You see, if no one has learned to count yet, then a 2 star review is just as good as a 5 star review. That’s just maths, or the lack thereof. As for the awards, you can’t hand a big glass monolith over to a child, so we’ll be replacing it with a Ty Beanie Baby of Steve Bennet which will take some of the prestige, and thus the pressure, out of it.

And what about the rampant inequality that has plagued the Fringe for so many years? Is it not unethical to put that onto a 5-year-old? No! Thanks for asking. You see, the thing about toddlers is none of them have money. You can’t have inequality if no one has a bank account. And yes, maybe some of the five year olds have parents who are producers, or others who have come from landed gentry, but we can’t hold that against them. They’re 5! They’re putting the baby in Nepo Baby and you can’t be mean to a baby.

Priya Hall: Grandmother’s Daughter is at Monkey Barrel (MB2) from July 31st-August 27th, 4:30pm. Tickets here

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