[theatre_ted]

Following this morning's news of Jon Morgan's resignation (http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=2...=E8821219920018), what are your views of this year's fringe festival? Was it a failure compared to previous years or just a victim of unfortunate circumstances (poor weather, box office mess-up etc...)

[Haz]

The weather is the lamest excuse possible.

1) Edinburgh isn't exactly on the equator. People don't go there expecting to come home tanned.
2) People plan trips to Edinburgh long before the weather forecasts are around.
3) Once there, bad weather is surely MORE inclined to make people buy tickets as they will want to do indoor activities, rather than outdoor ones.

Complete crap to blame the rain for it all going belly up.

I do find it amazing that Edinburgh hasn't yet got one, centralised booking system for ticketing. The ticketing screw up was fairly monumental but I'm not sure if that can be blamed on one person.

I think a lot of it will have to do with people not spending money at the moment. Edinburgh is expensive to visit at any time, let alone in August. If next year is poor also (comparatively - 1.5m ticket sales is still one hell of a number!), even under different leadership, people will tend to blame the economic climate... if, however, numbers fly up again next year, I think Mr Morgan will find himself bearing the brunt of the blame. I think he probably was a little too quick to resign but it'll be interesting to see who they replace him with.