Spending a day or two at the Fringe can get pretty expensive, but there are several ways to make your ticket budget go farther. One of our favorites is the Half Price Hut, which is open daily from the first Wednesday of the Fringe, 10am to 9pm.
Shows that are looking to fill seats can send a number of tickets to the Half Price Hut to be sold (unsurprisingly) at half price. At the hut you can only buy same-day tickets and tickets for morning shows the following day. These half-price tickets can only be bought in person at the hut, which is on the Mound, just off of Princes Street. Queues can get longish mid-morning and into the early afternoon, so budget for a bit of a wait when working out your daily schedule. In general, the better the weather, the longer the queue.
You can only buy these half-price tickets at the Half Price Hut, but you can see the list of what’s available on the Fringe website and on the official app (these lists are only populated during the hut’s opening hours). Many of the same shows show up day after day, especially towards the end of the month. For those of you heading to Edinburgh for the last weekend of the 2014 Fringe, here are some shows that you might find on half price that we recommend (we recommend them even if they’re not at half price, but we’ve seen them on the list recently):
Japan Marvelous Drummers
Katsura Sunshine
Funny for a Grrrl
Outings
Fall Girl
Titty Bar Ha Ha
If we’ve got free time on any given day at the Fringe, we’ll usually start the morning with a browse through the Half Price Hut listings to see if anything piques our interest that’s at a time we can do (the listings are conveniently done by time, so it’s easy to figure out what fits into our schedule). It’s fun to pick out shows that we might not have ordinarily chosen – when tickets are at a discount we tend to get a bit more adventurous. You can also just head to the Half Price Hut area and let performers pitch their shows to you in person – usually several acts are around flyering for their half-price-listed shows.
There’s a huge variety of shows that appear at the Half Price Hut – big venues, small venues, comedy, theater, circus, and everything else. No matter what you’re interested in seeing, there’s probably something here for you. We wouldn’t recommend limiting yourself completely to what appears at the hut (for one thing, there are lots of free shows that don’t get listed here), but it’s a great resource for anyone looking to see some Fringe shows on a budget.