Grabbing a Cheap Ticket
Sometimes you can grab cheap comedy tickets in the Fringe because there are lots of two-for-one offers on. All that genuinely means is that if you take advantage of a two-for-the-price-of-one promotion, it sets you back the same price to see a performance as it does under normal circumstances, due to the fact that at the Festival all the entry fees increase two times.
I will take open-mic evening at my neighborhood stand-up place any day.
Most folk are of the opinion the perfect occasion on which to go and see stand up comedy in Edinburgh is during the Fringe each summer. I am one of those who disagree with that logic.
Enjoy the fringe if you get the chance, but expand your horizons. Often the support acts somewhere else would be more entertaining.
Which are the reasons which people offer to support their statement that the ideal time to see comedy in Edinburgh is in the Fringe? One reason is the number of performances that are happening. Rather than the normal few comedy performances, there are thousands in the Festival.
But my argument is that volume doesn't necessarily mean quality. Over the years I've been to tons of stand up comedy gigs during the Festival, and well over half of them were dreadful.
I have walked out of a number of performances after sitting for more than half an hour without even feeling the temptation to grin, never mind guffaw. Simply due to the fact that a stand-up gig is part of the Fringe doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be entertaining. I see countless stand-up gigs in all seasons, and from my standpoint there are much fewer really terrible performances on at other times of the year.
A principal reason that people offer for going to the Fringe is that you can see the most renowned comedians, and get to see the next big things in comedy make their names.
My own experience begs to differ.
The most renowned stand ups' gigs inevitably sell out in advance of the stage where you've even found out they're happening, so you're no more likely to see them perform as opposed to months other than August. In addition the argument that you can get to catch the next big things as they're discovered: in all honesty, I suppose it's feasible, however you're more likely to watch a comedian that has ten minutes of pretty comical material, and 30 mins of rubbish. However, they got a fantastic write-up since the journalist just had long enough to watch the first ten minutes.