Shouts and Murmurs - November 5, 2024
Shouts and Murmurs - November 5, 2024
The sad and stressful situation at Summerhall, Dr Strangelove, Anne-Marie Duff, the second episode of my podcast about the history of Scottish theatre, and much more.
Hello, and welcome back to Shouts And Murmurs, a weekly email for paid supporters of The Crush Bar, written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Every week, I round up the best theatre writing elsewhere - reviews, interviews, opinion, long-reads - plus any other interesting or inspiring theatre stuff I find. At the moment, you can only read the top section for free, but you have to pay me £5/month or £50/year - or just email me, if that seems a bit steep - if you want to read the good stuff on the other side of the paywall.
This week: a bit from me about the sad fate of Summerhall; review round-ups of Dr Strangelove, Barcelona, and other shows; links to interviews with Anne-Marie Duff, Steve Coogan, and more; and some other bits and bobs about theatre worth reading.
Thanks for reading The Crush Bar, as always. If you want to do me one more favour, then you can share this newsletter far and wide and encourage others to subscribe via the button below.
Previously in The Crush Bar:
In late August, I was stood in the courtyard at Summerhall. I remember it as sunny, though it probably wasn’t.
I had filed my last review of another Edinburgh Fringe. I had a plastic pint of cider in my hand. I was surrounded by chatty crowds of theatre people involved in the dozens of imaginative shows that were still being performed in the sprawling complex surrounding me. For the umpteenth time in the decade or so I had been seeing shows at former veterinary school, I was struck by how bloody brilliant it all was.
How bleak, then, that little more than two months later, not only does it seem likely that we will never get to experience the explosive creativity of Summerhall during the Fringe again, but that the entire enterprise might have been built on sand all along. Worse still, the enthusiasm of those chatty crowds of theatre people has been replaced with anxiety that they might not get the money they are owed for their work.
There are two separate stories here. Firstly, there is the sale of Summerhall. Oesselmann Estates Ltd, the Isle of Man-based family trust that owns the site, decided to sell up in May. MPs and MSPs were contacted. A petition reached 15000 signatures. A fundraising campaign was launched. A few days ago, though, many people’s worst fears were confirmed when “luxury property developer” AMA Homes was revealed as the preferred bidder for the site. The firm has pledged to continue arts provision at Summerhall in some form, but we have all heard that promise before. Tellingly, AMA Homes boasts about a £3.1 million penthouse it put up for sale nearby.
Secondly, the company that operates Summerhall on behalf of its owners, Summerhall Management Ltd, is currently being pursued by HMRC for £500,000 of unpaid corporation tax. Summerhall has gone to court to defend itself. While it does so, its accounts have been frozen, forcing it to cancel events and lay off staff. Those accounts also have thousands of pounds of box office income inside – box office income that Summerhall owes to artists that performed there during the festival in August.
There is more. Multiple box offices operate at the Fringe, and the main one run by the Fringe Society currently has another, bigger chunk of money owed to artists that performed at Summerhall – hundreds of thousands of pounds – inside. Usually, the Fringe Society would pay Summerhall, who would pay artists – but Summerhall’s accounts are frozen. What happens to all this money if Summerhall gets wound up? Does it go to artists? Or does it go to HMRC? This is at the heart of artists’ anxiety: might their hard-earned income get swallowed up by the treasury? One anonymous artist, owed over £10,000, told me that they were living in “a hellish limbo.”
Questions abound. Did Summerhall know it was about to get served a winding-up petition in August and not tell artists? Could the Fringe Society circumvent Summerhall and pay artists directly? Or would that place it in a financial and legal battle of its own? Should that matter? Could an emergency fund be set up to help artists in dire need of financial assistance? Could someone please prioritise the artists that are owed hundreds of thousands of pounds? What about the artists those artists owe money to? And what about the future? Who will trust Summerhall next year, should the venue even survive? Come to think of it, who will trust the entire festival? The financial risk involved in performing at the Fringe is already an enormous barrier to participation. Stuff like this only exacerbates that.
What a mess. What a tragedy. Fingers crossed common sense prevails. There is such a thing as a hierarchy of creditors when a company is liquidated, an order in which people owed money get paid. It seems obvious to me that artists should be first in line. The whole house of cards was built on the back of their work after all. But who knows what will happen? Perhaps AMA Homes will let Summerhall survive as an arts centre. Perhaps HMRC might be wrong. Perhaps artists will be paid the money they are owed. It is all infuriatingly up in the air at the moment. Only one thing seems increasingly likely: that we have all had our last plastic pint of cider in the sunshine.
In other frustrating news: the government largely forgot about the arts again; West London’s Beck Theatre and Musselburgh’s Brunton Theatre are closing; new musical Why Am I So Single? is closing early; Andrew Lloyd Webber announced a new show.
It wasn’t all bad: The Almeida Theatre production of The Years is transferring to the West End next year; Barons Court Theatre has raised enough money to make essential repairs and avoid closure; Rob Icke has written a play about Raoul Moat for the Royal Court, whose new season also includes a remarkable remount of 4.48 Psychosis.