Matt Hutchinson’s Fantasy Fringe: At home, fun and not entirely uphill

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?

Matt Hutchinson has some wild dreams about the Edinburgh Fringe being fun, affordable and not exhausting? We’ve had a Space Fringe and a Medieval Fringe but this may actually be the most unreasonable scenario yet…

Waking up, I’m not in some drab student accommodation – but instead comfortable, familiar surroundings. What better way to set yourself up for another day performing a show that can quickly feel like a feat of endurance across the month?

My wife is next to me – and I can hear my daughter stirring in the next room. Surprise – we’re at home in London. I am by no means the first person to make this point – but 1000s of disproportionately London based comedians decamping 400 miles north for the month, in the hope that the almost entirely London based “industry” will take notice of them at world’s biggest arts festival (trade fair) feels absurd. Surely it’s possible to tempt people to come and see these shows down here in London?

Before the foam at the mouths of certain readers becomes too thick, I’m aware there are comedians playing world class clubs outside of London – I’m just not sure dragging them to spend a month in another city they can’t afford is really levelling the playing field. Perhaps in this bizarro world scenario, comedy TV producers and commissioners could also be coaxed to the North of England, Wales and beyond to see shows.

We’d definitely all be taking the whole thing a lot less seriously. Before I started, if you’d told me how little of doing a month of comedy is actually a laugh, I’d scarcely have believed you. With costs now being what they are, and there being almost as many comedians as punters, the pressure to have the perfect show is immense. It’s not enough to spend the month of August fretting over your art and abandoning your family, but the calendar for the preceding 6 months or more is pockmarked with work in progress shows. Duties and social life are exchanged for trips up and down the country to road test your all-too millennial material to confused retirees in regional arts centres and pub function rooms.

There would be reliable, affordable childcare for performers. I’ve already said doing the Fringe has resulted in shirking some home responsibilities, in the run up and during the festival, regardless of intention. If there were the option of having my daughter looked after for the 3 hour window around my show, it would allow my wife to call my bluff when I say I’d love to spend August with her – and she’d pack her off to Scotland with me. Currently, as much as I love comedy, each show is capped by the question “would I rather be home not missing things” – and the answer is always yes.

Assuming we’re not in London, If we are truly being given the powers of the gods in this scenario, why not go further and tweak the notorious weather and geography of the city. Edinburgh has been described as being all uphill, regardless of which direction you’re walking. The weather is also impossible to dress for, 4 seasons in an hour type of stuff at times – and part of me wants to spare flyerers from my rain soaked fate of previous years. Then again, perhaps I’m reaching the part of early middle age where I want younger generations to suffer through whatever I have (character building) – and that any call for progress is just whingeing.

This wishlist may make it sound like I hate the Fringe – and I don’t, some parts of me even love it. If not, would I be risking my next year’s financial stability to come here? (Perhaps, this could all be the result of continually doubling down on the pipe dream that is comedy).

I do just think it wouldn’t take a great deal to make the whole experience nicer for everyone — except perhaps for the weather stuff.

Matt Hutchinson: Hostile runs at Assembly George Square Studios from August 2nd-27th, 2:30pm. Tickets here