Underbelly takes over McEwan Hall

Underbelly, E4's comedy road tour, is set to take to the grand stage of McEwan Hall for the Edinburgh Festival 2010.

The thousand-seat venue is best known year-round as a concert hall and home to graduation ceremonies for Edinburgh University.

Tickets for the comedy shows of Danny Bhoy, John Bishop and Jim Jefferies, performing at McEwan Hall, went on sale this month. This comes before the usual June announcement for ticket sales. Underbelly director Charlie Wood told The Journal:

“If the Festival is going to continue to grow, it has to do what all the other festivals are doing.”

An Underbelly spokesperson said: “It can only benefit people if there is a longer lead time for selling tickets. If there are shows that can go on sale in advance, I don’t see why they should not.”

The inclusion of McEwan Hall as a Fringe venue adds to the recent concentration of festival venues in Bristo Square over the last few years.

However, not all are welcoming this move. Tommy Sheppard, director of the Stand Comedy Club has argued that the move will be bad for smaller venues, arguing that this will “suck 70,000 people out of the available audience”.

"If people keep doing that, we are going to end up with fewer shows, fewer performers, less diversity, less experimentation,” said Mr Sheppard.

Richard Dennis, of callthatashow.com, said: “I don’t see that selling a few stand up tickets early will impact on the age old problem of getting Fringe theatre tickets out to the masses.”

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival will take place from 6 - 30 August.