Old hands given BBC funds for ‘debutants’

IT WAS trumpeted as a “unique new initiative for first-time playwrights” to have their work performed at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Yet the list of “first-timers” earmarked for the Debut scheme run by the BBC and Avalon, a management firm, will have a distinctly familiar ring.

They are Frank Skinner, the comedian, Katherine Parkinson, star of The IT Crowd and Beryl Richards, billed on her own website as the “multi-award winning director/writer”.

The announcement immediately prompted criticism. Suzette Coon, who founded her own theatre production company, said: “There were so many others who could have made use of this opportunity. This seems unfair.”

Tilly Lunken, a director and playwright, said: “The BBC constantly say they have no money to engage with new writing and writers and yet they find commission money to pay people established in the industry to write plays.”

Skinner’s play, Nina’s Got News, and Parkinson’s Sitting, received poor reviews at the Fringe. The Evening Standard called Skinner’s play “jarringly unreal” and “flimsy”. The i paper said it was a “featherweight three-hander”.

In The Stage, Andrzej Lukowski, a theatre critic, said the Debut scheme was the “worst idea of the 2018 Fringe” – the plays were “actively bad” and the scheme had become a “catastrophe”.

Skinner had said: “This is a brilliant initiative. Thirty years in comedy and I never knew I was only one encouraging phone call away from writing a play.”

Parkinson said: “I would never have thought to try and write a play unless asked to do so.” Jon Thoday, of Avalon, said it was “too early to tell whether the plays had worked” but the shows were selling well and had received “up to five-star reviews”.

A BBC spokesman said: “The scheme is for emerging directors and those who have not written for the stage before. New writers are well catered for elsewhere on the BBC.”