Edinburgh Fringe veteran here. A few thoughts on the new venue for TERF.
Getting onto the Assembly Rooms roster is probably the best thing that could have happened. Assembly are a large, established, well-oiled machine, and their PR team will be able to drive a lot of publicity (as already seen).
Having said that, and with the understanding that TERF had to be shoehorned into a busy roster, there are some handicaps here. For a start, it's being performed at Assembly's flagship venue on George Street in the New Town. It's not a location that will get as much foot traffic as Old Town venues, and I suspect the people more amenable to TERF's message would be more likely to be at the George Square venues (which have lots of people handing out fliers - the classic Fringe promotion strategy).
It effectively has two slots. From 1-7 August it's showing at 1140am. A show like this would never be deliberately programmed so early - that's kid show time, maybe light comedy. It's likely to have very skimpy audiences. However, the first few days of the Fringe are often treated like dress rehearsal; the comedians often give out free tickets (simply to get bums on seats) and tweak their routines. No one will be expecting TERF to sell out.
Between 11-25 August it's at 335pm, which is a much better slot. It's unusual to have a solid 15-day run; many full-Fringe runs will be six days on, one day off. However, given the last-minute scheduling, this is clearly the best that can be done. And the original venue had it at 345pm from 2-12 and 14-25 August, so the new schedule isn't too different. This also means that people who booked with the old venue will be likely to still see the show as it won't require them to make much of a change to their own schedules.
That 80-minute runtime does it no favours. An hour is the Fringe standard unless it's a well-known show or someone off the telly gearing up for their national tour. Given the snippets that have been released, this play seems very talky, and there's only so much of that one can take. The original venue showed it as 70 minutes but maybe the playwright found more tweets to be sarcastic about.
£15 is not a bargain, but it's in line with Assembly pricing, and they can always add tickets to the Fringe's Half Price Hut later in the run.
Will it be a success? Who the hell knows. The Fringe always has surprise breakouts, but most shows do well to break even and get a few good reviews. Being at Assembly means it's more likely than most to get some of the prime review column inches in the broadsheets, rather than just the festival review sites. It will be eligible for a Fringe First award (for new writing) and Assembly picked up a couple of those awards last year.
But if it flops, then of course that will be solely due to TERFs/fascists/the American right wing/JKR herself.