One year ago I was about to embark on my 28th consecutive Edinburgh Fringe (with the exception of Covid20, of course, which doesn’t count). Given the explosion of accommodation prices among other things - which felt like some kind of crazy blackmail given that we’d signed up for the Fringe before we knew about the spiralling costs - I was furious. In fact I truly believed that year’s festival to be my last, and said as much in a controversial Scotsman interview with Kate Copstick.

I put a few noses out of joint, but I was reacting to the well publicised “grossflation” from a performer’s perspective which I felt needed to be heard. Over the following weeks I received many messages of thanks for expressing these frustrations out loud in an arena where so many big opinions were flying about but with seemingly very little constructive communication. The general feeling in town was that the Fringe was close to bursting open like an angry boil. We creatives all just got on with the job of putting on shows, resigned to losing a lot more money than normal.

The cliché "Never Say Never" now rings truer for me than ever because I am indeed returning for my 29th Fringe to present four wonderful shows (I say modestly) at Assembly Festival. But the strange thing about this year is that I will not be in the Burgh in person until half-way through, because I am in the Big Apple about to re-open our 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Hit about the making of Jaws, The Shark is Broken, written by and starring Ian Shaw (son of Robert) on Broadway.

Guy Masterson outside New York's Golden Theatre, where The Shark is Broken is opening in August 2023.

How does that work? When we eventually opened the show, mid-Covid, in the West End back in October 2021 I could spot the occasional flicker of Broadway lights flashing into my dreams, but equally quickly extinguished them as I never truly believed it would - or could - happen. My father was a New Yorker violinist who played for ten years at Carnegie Hall. My uncle Richard (Burton) won three Tonys on Broadway. But me, a soon to be 62-year-old a Broadway Baby? Unthinkable!

Yet here we are, opening this extraordinary three actor play at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway following on from Suzie Miller’s Olivier and Tony Award winning triumph, Prima Facie, starring the wunderkind Jodie Comer. I mention Suzie Miller because I was the first producer/director of her work in the UK with Reasonable Doubt at the Assembly Rooms in 2008, and I am utterly over the moon at her "overnight success" 15 years later.

Even though Prima Facie did not premiere in Edinburgh, it could have - and if there were an opportunity to have produced it I am sorry I missed it - but it proves yet again that there is a route for young unknown creatives to make their mark at the Edinburgh Fringe and reach the pinnacle of this crazy business of making theatre. And no, I’m not talking about comedians. Their route “to the top”, though no less an achievement, is aided by a universal thirst for laughter and far more opportunities to get on TV. It’s much harder for actors, writers and directors to carve out their own opportunities in theatre.

I have now presented over 150 plays in my 28 prior Edinburgh Fringes, predominantly at Assembly (145), three at the Traverse, and two at the Pleasance. With few exceptions they have lost more money than they have made, yet despite the costs and the ever increasing risk, the Fringe remains the one place on Earth where you can get more producing bang for your buck. If we were to have premiered The Shark in London, it would have cost us at least three times more and likely lost us a leg as well as an arm and with less prospect of nudging our shark heads above the waterline.

I have been lucky enough to have presented many of the Fringe’s most notable theatre hits and introduced a host of incredible creatives onto the scene over the years, many of whom have won loads of Edinburgh awards and have gone on to great things, and I am thankful my own reputation has benefited by proxy, but this record has taught me one key thing… that any success in our business has to be founded on quality, of writing, directing, performance and a modicum of sensible producing. Don’t come to the Fringe with weak work. If you want to make a mark, make sure the work is top notch. Even if you don’t have a big budget, make what you do have really count. Understand why you are doing it and accept in advance the losses you will inevitably make. If your work is good and you launch it well in Edinburgh, you may strike gold. It has happened several times.

This year, I was going to co-direct a big shiny new musical at Assembly Festival which was offered to me last Fringe in the Assembly Club Bar – the font of many a good idea over the years – but due to The Shark on Broadway this will have to wait until 2024 which will be my 30th… perhaps a good number to stop at? So 2023 is a bijoux Fringe for me in magnitude, but magnificent in quality, and talent… four unmissably brilliant solo shows. Please trust me. I’d hope my track record justifies it.

This year Guy Masterson presents: Picasso: Le Monstre Sacre, Assembly Roxy, 12.45pm, until 28 August; Manifest Destiny’s Child, Assembly Rooms Drawing Room, 2.25pm, until 27 August; Kravitz, Cohen, Bernstein & Me, Assembly Rooms Drawing Room, 7pm, until 27 August; and The Devil’s Passion, Assembly George Square Studio One, 1.20pm, until 27 August.

Award-winning Fringe producer Guy Masterson is back with four solo shows