ANGER over the Fringe's box-office problems flared again yesterday after 20 people, including weeping youngsters, were turned away from a children's show.
The show, at C Venues, had apparently been oversold for three performances – and yesterday was oversold by 20 tickets.
The comedian Michael McIntyre, who had planned to see The Gruffalo with his three-year-old son and baby, joked that the festiva
l was being run like a low-budget airline.
Toby Mitchell, the show's co-director, said yesterday: "It was not a very pleasant scene at all, and it's a bit of a mystery to us. As far as we can make out, the Fringe have been overselling tickets to our show. There were a lot of disappointed people today. Obviously adults understand, but children don't."
His co-director, Olivia Jacobs, added: "For the last few days we have had this problem, anywhere between 180-200 tickets sold for a 150-seater.
"As far as we know there have been problems with the box office system between our venue and the Fringe office. Somehow they have exceeded the allocation between them and we are ending up being the consequences of that."
After repeated problems with its ticketing computer system, the Fringe has claimed that only 20 performances of more than 30,000 at the festival were oversold.
Fringe director Jon Morgan and leaders of the big venues have stressed that the ticketing problems are "over" and sales are running high. But last night Fringe staff and box-office managers were forced to call an emergency meeting.
Some Fringe comedians have found the Fringe's box-office troubles to be good material for their jokes. "They are building the tickets into their act," said the Assembly director, William Burdett-Coutts.
McIntyre said: "We went to go to The Gruffalo. They had to come out and tell the children there was no show. Everyone is crying and screaming. They've been overselling tickets. It's like a budget airline flight.
"Today was the first day I used the Edinburgh festival as a punter. This has been a bit of a disaster."
The Fringe spokesman said 20 tickets were oversold and "we are trying to get to the bottom of it. We are working with C Venues. They (customers] were either offered a refund, or were able to go and book to see another performance of the show.
"I think it's just the scale of the Fringe. Being such a large event with so many performances, there are problems with ticketing."
The central Fringe box office sells on average about a third of Fringe tickets, while the others are handled by the venues themselves.
There were complaints on the Fringe website yesterday that the Pleasance venue was not handling Friends of the Fringe (FoF) bookings, for people booking two-for-one and other deals through the Fringe's paying membership scheme.
Pleasance director Anthony Alderson said: "The FoF two-for-one tickets are always done through the Fringe box office.
"We just didn't know we were meant to (take bookings]. They hadn't told us that they wanted us to handle them, because in the past all Friends of the Fringe tickets were done through the Fringe office.
"They didn't know that they wanted our box office to handle it," he added. "It was just a miscommunication."
