Fest top theatre pick
Elaine C. Smith returns to the Fringe after 26 years — a sharp-tongued widow confronting family secrets. The Traverse is the home of Punch-style new writing.
Just added
Drama & New Writing
Gameplay
Booked
Critics' pick (Natasha Tripney)
Doc-drama about Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet officer who refused to fire nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
2026 ART Award winner
Psychological thriller: a Scottish researcher meets a religious cult controlling a remote British Overseas Territory. Wicker Man atmosphere.
Produced by Matthew Lillard & Adam McKay
Darkly comic play about a real school shooting — hard-hitting in the Punch vein.
Bristol Old Vic / Theatre Royal Plymouth co-production
A modern folk tale about a podcaster who digs up something sinister, with live music by Jakabol.
Fest & Skinny pick
Grid Iron's site-specific adaptation of Andrew O'Hagan's novel, performed in a former Leith metalworks.
A Trial – after An Enemy of the People
7–10 Aug only
Maybe
EIF headliner
Wagner Moura in a courtroom reimagining of Ibsen — the audience sits as the jury.
5★ Binge Fringe Binge Fringe 5★
East Belfast, a football pitch resurfaced for GAA, and a border poll on the horizon — three teenagers argue out territory, culture and national identity in fast, funny dialogue. The politics is the drama, not decoration on it.
4★ The Stage; WhatsOnStage: "a devastating, deeply reflective piece of theatre" The Stage 4★ · WhatsOnStage
Hard-hitting new drama in the Punch mould — a non-linear two-hander on the aftermath of a coercive choirmaster, from Fringe First winner Tom Brennan. "Terrifically tightly wound performances" wrestling with "prickly, profound questions"; opens comic and direct-address, builds to a shocking close. No sentimentality anywhere near it.
5★ The Arts Review · 5★ BroadwayWorld · 4★ The Guardian · Irish Times rave The Arts Review 5★ · The Irish Times
Eva O'Connor two-hander for Fishamble (four-time Fringe First winners) — two friends, one Scottish, one Irish, reckoning with addiction, motherhood and the worst thing they ever did. "Funny, bruising and brilliantly written and acted" (Irish Times): the wit and the damage in the same line, which is the Traverse doing what Punch did.
4★ The Scotsman (Joyce McMillan) · 5★ The Stage (Pitlochry staging) · CATS Best New Play 2026 The Stage 5★ · The Arts Desk
Milly Sweeney's multi-award-winning debut: Esme, stalled on her Glasgow School of Art MA, meets Harris, a chef with a tidy job and a life shifting under him, once on a bridge over the Clyde — then the play follows them separately for months as they never meet again. Poetic and bracingly vernacular in the same breath, mulling life and death without a shred of uplift; the Traverse doing what Punch did. McMillan: "a vital dispatch from the front line of the mental health crisis among young people... and a memorable strand of pure poetry".
4★ The Stage (Lyn Gardner) · 4★ All Edinburgh Theatre · WhatsOnStage: "subtle, slow-burning power" The Stage 4★ · All Edinburgh Theatre 4★ · WhatsOnStage
Zinnie Harris writes and directs a modern Cassandra: Sally falls down a hole, comes up able to see what is coming, and nobody believes her. Greek myth used as an argument about belief, evidence and a society's willed blindness to injustice — the ideas are the drama, not decoration on it, and Harris plays it dark and comic rather than earnest. Gardner: "quietly effective and deftly done".
4★ The Stage (Fergus Morgan) The Stage 4★
Emma Howlett's world premiere reopens the Gunpowder Plot as a fight over who gets to write the story — courtroom drama, backstage comedy and Shakespeare folded into one 70-minute argument about spin, myth-making and who controls history. The Stage calls it a "slippery, shifting study" and "thrillingly smart riff on conspiracy, spin and Shakespeare", signing off "Remember, remember the name Emma Howlett. She is going places." The ideas are the drama, not decoration on it — the Arcadia signal, done with wit rather than earnestness.
4★ The Stage (Fergus Morgan) The Stage 4★
John Dinneen's world premiere two-hander: boyhood friends Alan and Amir in East London, and the pub of the title turning into a mosque. The argument about who a shared space belongs to is the play, not a backdrop to it — belonging, faith and a changing city fought out between two people who love each other. The Stage calls it an "engrossing two-hander", "deft, propulsive, detailed and funny": the hard-hitting new drama register of Punch, with the wit kept in.
5★ Theatre Weekly Theatre Weekly 5★
Philip Stokes's world-premiere thriller: a body in a Brooklyn house, three identical brothers hauled in for questioning, and Jack Stokes playing every one of them — switching voice and body between interrogations until truth, identity and power come apart. Theatre Weekly calls it "one of the strongest dramas at this year’s Fringe" and Stokes's work "one of the most electrifying performances in Edinburgh this year", with a final act of "terrifying force". Hard-hitting new drama in the Punch register, and the argument about American myth-making is the play rather than its setting.
4★ The Stage — "insightful and uncompromising" The Stage 4★
Alistair Hall's psychodrama on Francis Bacon and George Dyer, built as a triptych to echo Bacon's own form — hard-hitting new drama in the Punch register, unsentimental and formally clever rather than warm.
5★ The Skinny, 4★ The Stage The Skinny 5★ · The Stage 4★
Two women — a pilot and a scientist — trapped on a failing spacecraft, with The Stage praising a script that "skilfully and shrewdly explores themes ranging from misogyny in science to the climate emergency". Ideas-driven two-hander where the argument is the drama, and it ends in darkness rather than reassurance.
5★ The Skinny The Skinny 5★ · The Stage
Farah Ashraf's darkly comic solo play about an eighteen-year-old living a double life — obedient daughter to a Pakistani immigrant mother by day, an online persona by night. Thought-provoking and emotionally raw rather than confessional: it argues about faith against sexual freedom and what digital intimacy does to a self, and the ideas carry the drama. Uncomfortable and funny at once, with nothing cosy in it.
4★ The Stage; Theatre Weekly (12 Aug) The Stage 4★ · Theatre Weekly
Joe Sellman-Leava turns a run of sharp impressions — Miliband, Patrick Stewart — into a meditation on AI, authorship and creeping authoritarianism. The Stage calls it thoughtful and multi-stranded; Theatre Weekly, inventive and thought-provoking. Ideas carried on wit rather than decorated with it: the Arcadia signal.
Visual & Inventive Theatre
From the makers of Fringe hit Space Hippo
Occult mystery told entirely through shadow puppetry — for fans of The Ice Hole's lo-fi invention.
Plexus Polaire, UK premiere Chicago Maroon
Wordless, life-sized-puppetry Dracula told from Lucy's perspective. Extraordinary stagecraft.
5★ The Reviews Hub The Reviews Hub 5★
Box Tale Soup frame four Poe tales inside a lecture by a scholar whose own dark secret unravels him as he speaks — an academic losing control of his own argument, which is a very Arcadia shape. Handcrafted puppets and masks doing murder and madness, commissioned off real archive research at UCLA's Clark Library. Gothic and unsettling, nowhere near twee.
4★ The Stage The Stage 4★
Gregory Nussen's solo piece takes its title from Calvino's ageless narrator in Cosmicomics and its structure from If On a Winter's Night a Traveller — a metatheatrical hour on the politics of storytelling and truth that runs from architecture to improvised jazz to gender to Israel-Palestine, with no fourth wall to hide behind. The Stage calls it "exhilarating, surreal and wildly ambitious"; it won Best Solo Theatre at Hollywood Fringe 2025. The closest thing this week to an Arcadia signal: the ideas are the drama, not decoration on it, and the Calvino frame is doing real structural work rather than being name-checked.
4★ Time Out — "brilliantly accomplished" Time Out 4★
Hotter Project's eco-hijacking of Hamlet: a grief-stricken vegan avenging the death of a pig, who — like the prince — thinks for far too long, blames his mother, and finally takes revenge by putting on a play. Time Out's verdict is the reason it is here rather than the star count: "a dumb Hamlet parody, a clever Hamlet parody, a show about how useless eco theatre is that is also an effective piece of eco theatre", with Shakespeare's own language handled in a "deft, funny way". That triple move — making the argument and undercutting it in the same gesture — is the Arcadia shape done as farce, and the wit and the thesis are inseparable. Mary Higgins and Ell Potter draw on clowning and cabaret, but this is a literary parody with a case to argue, not a clown persona piece.
4★ The Skinny — "a masterclass in storytelling"; WhatsOnStage: "a smart, meta-theatrical triumph" The Skinny 4★ · WhatsOnStage
Sam Ward's sixth YESYESNONO hour: a woman finds humming holes multiplying in her garden and sets out to learn why, and the show turns that into a cerebral inquiry into the mechanics of narrative and our compulsion to be given answers. It opens looking like an on-stage audiobook and mutates into something absurd and Lynchian. The Skinny calls it "another surprising tour de force"; WhatsOnStage puts the company "at the absolute vanguard of experimental fringe theatre". Ideas doing the dramatic work, formally rather than decoratively — the Arcadia signal at the inventive-theatre end, and strange and unsettling rather than warm. Flagging one dissent: Binge Fringe gave it three stars.
4★ The Stage; rave notice in The Scotsman The Scotsman · The Stage 4★
Hannah Maxwell’s one-woman investigation into how digital society has been weaponised against us — surveillance capitalism, the rise of Big Tech, her own phone addiction and bid for a life in analogue, and a spell in Strategic Communications in the Baltics countering Kremlin-backed disinformation. She stages all of it as semi-interactive sketch comedy: pass the parcel, Give Us a Clue, a drunken singsong in a Baltic karaoke bar, costume changes throughout. The Scotsman calls it “very funny, fast and audience-interactive in the most enjoyable and least threatening way possible” and “the perfect way to cut through the endless scroll”, noting that the argument lands with “no small amount of hope, laughter and human connection”. Real ideas carried by real wit — the Arcadia shape in interactive-theatre form, political rather than cosy. She describes it herself as “a town hall meeting at the end of the world”. Run dates were not readable from the listing; check before booking.
5★ Theatre Weekly (12 Aug) Theatre Weekly 5★
Fishing4Chips put the audience inside the Trojan Horse as the rank and file, waiting on orders from Odysseus while Ajax, Acamus and the carpenter Epeius — trapped in there by accident, not being a fighter — work through heroic egos, class clashes and sword supply issues. Theatre Weekly’s 5★ calls it “completely reimagines the Trojan horse in an entirely original and hilarious way”, with a cast of “incredible chemistry” who “seamlessly integrate the audience into the show”. Absurd comedy played straight off a classical text, in the round, with real audience participation — the weird end of their taste with something to chew on, and no whimsy in the register.
Comedy & Storytelling
5★ Telegraph · 4★ Guardian · 4★ Sunday Times
Your past favourite — theatrical show about love, riffing on Vertigo, Apollo 13 and Pagliacci.
Kirsty Mann: Corpse
Maybe
Adelaide Fringe award winner The List
Comedian and working doctor tells a real-life ghost story — the Adam Kay slot.
Insider must-see pick Exeunt (New York run)
The former Blue's Clues host on parasocial fame and internet mythology.
Ahir Shah: Golden
Maybe
2023 Edinburgh Comedy Award winner
Cerebral, moving stand-up — storytelling with real substance.
Much buzzed-about debut
Yes, that Amanda Knox — stand-up about her wrongful imprisonment.
Fest pick Broadway Baby
Four decades of political storytelling — as close to spoken word as stand-up gets.
Simon Amstell: I Love It Here
8–9 Aug only
Maybe
Rare Fringe appearance Chortle
In town for two nights only.
Mr Chonkers: Work in Chonkers
10 Aug only
Booked
Your past favourite
John Norris work-in-progress — one late-night one-off.
5★ Midlothian View · 5★ Counter Culture Midlothian View 5★
His first new show in four years: surreal wordplay and absurdist stand-up turned on his own health scares and mortality — an endoscopy at 11am on Remembrance Sunday. Weird comedy with real substance underneath.
Celia Pacquola: Gift Horse
8–14 Aug only
Booked
5★ Chortle; Most Outstanding Show, Melbourne Comedy Festival 2026 Chortle 5★
Steve Bennett calls it the Rolls-Royce of stand-up — a gag every couple of lines, craftsmanship hidden under what sounds like conversation. Fast, dense, warm but never soft: the Gilmore Girls signal in stand-up form.
4.5★ Chortle Chortle 4.5★
A show about three deaths that refuses to be maudlin — Steve Bennett notes every moment of sentimentality gets knocked back with a gag, for "hard, life-affirming laughs from a place of real heart". Storytelling with substance in the Adam Kay line, and the impishness keeps it well clear of twee.
4★ Chortle, 4★ Fest, 4★ Snack Chortle 4★ · Fest 4★ · Snack 4★
The vapid-Jersey-girl persona is a disguise for perceptive commentary on gender expectations — why women apologise for everything and men for nothing — and the hour darkens as it goes. Sharp, confident and unsentimental: the Katherine Ryan signal almost exactly.
4★ Fest — "a brilliant Fringe debut" Fest 4★
A surreal storyteller doing 2000s Britain — New Labour optimism to the crash — and Fest singles out a bit built on 1940s film dialogue: fast, allusive, warm underneath, which is the Gilmore Girls signal. Brazen and high-status rather than charming-and-nothing-else; Katherine Ryan has flagged her too.
4½★ Chortle, 5★ ArtsHub Chortle 4½★ · ArtsHub 5★
A breakup show with the sentiment burned off — Dehnert bills it as a third play, a third stand-up, a third rave, and Chortle calls it "relentlessly fast", swinging from fury to silly in a beat. Rage about being left, played as force rather than fragility: the Katherine Ryan register, and about as far from twee as the Fringe gets.
4½★ Chortle — "thrillingly ambitious", 4★ Fest Chortle 4½★ · Fest 4★
An hour built out from the three Delphic maxims into a genuine argument about what it is to exist — a withering routine on atheists, a Buddhist parable acted out, people sorted into free-spirited "naked babies" and clothed ones. Chortle calls it thought-provoking and hilarious in the same breath, which is the Arcadia shape in stand-up form. Ricote describes herself as a clown, but this is philosophising at speed, not a clown persona piece — flagged rather than dropped.
4★ Fest Fest 4★
Alt-comedy's great eccentric builds an hour out of niche statistics into an actual argument — that our appetite for cruelty, not scarcity, is what keeps the socio-economic future bleak — with his Jewish grandmother's suitcase from her escape from Nazi Germany at its centre. Absurdism doing the work of a thesis rather than decorating one, which is the Arcadia signal in stand-up form; Fest calls it "unexpectedly rousing". Weird and acerbic, nowhere near twee.
4★ Fest Fest 4★
An hour so densely packed the reviewer reckons an average comedian could stretch it into three shows — chaotic, tangential, fast, with a sixth sense for the right sound and face. The dense-allusive-dialogue signal, in stand-up form.
4★ Fest Fest 4★
Debut hour on parasocial obsession that Fest calls bold, anarchic and deeply incisive — stand-up braided with performance art, shame and attraction dissected rather than cuddled. Sharp and unsentimental, the Katherine Ryan register.
4★ Time Out, 4★ The Guardian, 4★ The Scotsman Time Out 4★
A slasher-movie pastiche in which a critic who gave Doherty three stars is hunted through a Lovecraftian town — Time Out calls it an ebullient, horror-tinged celebration of being a hater, the Guardian the finest horror pastiche on the Fringe since Garth Marenghi. Fast, allusive, gleefully petty: bite rather than warmth, and not a trace of twee.
4★ Fest · 4★ Chortle · 4★ The Scotsman · Melbourne Comedy Festival Director's Choice winner 2026 Fest 4★ · Chortle 4★
Absurdist stand-up at full tilt — a gazillion accents, dance breaks, a silicone fish helmet — but Fest notes the gear change at 45 minutes that puts a real emotional throughline under the chaos: “a madcap hour which impressively balances chaotic vibes with a strong emotional throughline”. Chortle says her performance “screams star quality”, the Scotsman “irrepressibly funny”. Weird-and-absurd comedy done with craft, chaotic rather than cosy. It borrows physical technique, but this is stand-up, not a clown persona piece.
4★ Fest Fest 4★
Debut character hour: a gallery of modern grotesques — influencer-bros, corporate stooges — taken past cliché to farcical limits. Fest praises the “comedic peacocking” and the men “cucked by their own emotional insecurities”: satire of masculinity with the knife out and no warmth offered as consolation. Sharp and unsentimental, the Katherine Ryan register.
4★ Fest (Evan Beswick) Fest 4★
Two overconfident American theatremakers set out to liberate the masses through the power of theatre and undermine themselves at every turn — a mock-heroic demolition of revolutionary art, political posturing and the form itself. Fest calls the Hamilton parody "the single funniest thing I’ve ever seen" and credits "superior comedic writing" behind the chaos, signing off "Vive THE MOVEMENT". Weird, absurd and satirical with real bite, nothing gentle about it. Flagged: the company tags itself Clown/Alternative Comedy, but the show is a written two-hander satire rather than a red-nose persona piece, so it stays in per the no-clowns rule.
4★ Fest (Si Hawkins) Fest 4★
An impressionist hour that is really an argument about accents — how a voice decides whether we trust a politician — with the impressions carrying the thesis rather than decorating it. Fest, openly sceptical going in, came out praising “whip-smart storytelling, savvy observations and caustic gags”. Caustic and idea-led rather than warm: the Katherine Ryan register with something to say.
4★ Fest (Evan Beswick) Fest 4★
Songs, sketches, one-liners and audience interaction welded onto a bit about selling out for money — controlled chaos held together by, in Fest’s words, “super sharp comebacks” and a performer confident enough to run genuinely risky material. Weird, fast and deliciously silly, with the wit doing the work rather than charm.
5★ Time Out; 4★ Guardian Time Out 5★ · British Comedy Guide
Thompson lipsyncs her way through a grotesque, meticulously built persona — Time Out likens her to Queenie from Blackadder, "a posh, slightly eccentric despot" — and turns it on people in power. Absurd, formally restless, politically sharp, and nowhere near cosy: the register is Katherine Ryan's unsentimental bite arriving by a much stranger route. Time Out's five stars call it "phenomenal". Note on the no-clowns rule: the copy calls her an "avant-clown", but this is character and performance-art comedy that draws on clown technique, not a red-nose persona piece — kept deliberately.
The Scotsman — "narrative comedy at its peak" The Scotsman
The Perrier winner's true(ish) robo-bromance about writing a sitcom with ChatGPT — The Scotsman says watching him is "like watching Fred Astaire, at his peak, tapdance", with "tiny verbal callbacks seeded through" beautifully crafted prose. Absurd premise carrying a real argument about technology: ideas and wit in the same breath.
5★ Time Out, 4★ Chortle, 4★ The List; The Scotsman — "cuttingly funny above all else" The Scotsman · Chortle 4★
A dark night of the soul told through Joan of Arc and Hildegard of Bingen — Chortle calls it "an evocative piece of magical realism storytelling" rather than stand-up, and The Scotsman finds it "cuttingly funny above all else". Dense, allusive and unsentimental: the Katherine Ryan edge with the reading behind it.
5★ Chortle (Steve Bennett) Chortle 5★
Character comedy that takes apart the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood — "skewers pretentious male artistry and the women they love to drown", asking why the women are only beautiful once dead while the men stay difficult and alive. Chortle calls it "cuttingly relevant and joyously daft". An argument about art history delivered as jokes: Arcadia-adjacent ideas with a Katherine Ryan edge.
5★ Broadway Baby & EdinburghGuide; 4.5★ Edinburgh Reviews; rave in BroadwayWorld BroadwayWorld · Edinburgh Reviews 4.5★
Fraser takes on the manosphere with a sentient Roomba and Ancient Greek philosophy — "an intellectually rich hour" blending philosophy, social commentary and sharp observational comedy, "cutting-edge" rather than consoling. Ideas that ARE the comedy, done with real craft: the Arcadia signal in stand-up form, and Jason the philosopher gets the Greeks thrown in.
4★ Fest (Megan Wallace, 10 Aug) Fest 4★
A debut about grudges and payback that refuses the easy catharsis of the survivor narrative — Fest calls it "caustic, complicated", and notes she "isn't some people-pleasing comedian trying to win over an audience", taking you instead "through shame, rage and what comes after". Sharp and unsentimental where the material invites sentiment: the Katherine Ryan register exactly.
5★ The Telegraph; 4★ Guardian; 4★ Observer Press ratings (Chortle listing)
Koch tells one story that is not hers, cutting between the present and the 1970s — fraternity hazing, the ACLU, the Hague — to get at fear and gender. Sharp, unsentimental, and genuinely about something: the ideas are the show, not decoration on it. Three notices in three days and not a whiff of the cosy register.
5★ All Edinburgh Theatre All Edinburgh Theatre 5★
A properly researched absurd question — where did the tall old women go? — chased through multimedia, data and family history until it turns into something about difference and inheritance. Dense, fast and driven by curiosity rather than charm; the review calls it 'geeky' and says it leaves you feeling 'intelligent, surprised, positive and giggly'. Investigation as comedy, with no cosiness in it.
4★ Fest (11 Aug); 3.5★ Chortle — 'withering, impudent gags worthy of Joan Rivers' Fest 4★ · Chortle 3.5★
The Katherine Ryan register almost exactly: scathing, zero-fucks, unsentimental. Fest says she archly flirts with the regressive impulse of the post-feminist moment and lands salient diagnoses; Chortle reaches for Joan Rivers. Refuses the self-improvement narrative rather than serving one — bite, not comfort.
4★ Fest Fest 4★
Sharp, unsentimental political stand-up — hate as a subject rather than a mood, personal storytelling welded to social commentary, and an ending about the limits of protest that lands hard. Angry and funny in the same breath, with no cosiness anywhere near it.
5★ The Telegraph
Riches — who did Jimmy Connors as a sold-out hour in 2024 — now inhabits Captain Matthew Webb, the Victorian who first swam the Channel and then died chasing the next impossible thing. Storytelling with real substance and a proper historical argument under it, played as an intense character study that is screamingly funny in stretches, with the audience pulled in. The Telegraph: "solo shows are ten a penny at the Edinburgh Fringe, but this feels like one in a million." Obsession and hubris, not whimsy.
5★ The Reviews Hub The Reviews Hub 5★
Nicole Gulasekharam spent ten years on the front desk of an Australian commercial gym and has turned it into a workplace mockumentary with teeth: a pathological people-pleaser made the face of her employer's International Women's Day campaign while management and members grind her down. The review calls it biting, eloquent about how customer-facing labour is exploited, and sparkling in its wit — satire with a real argument in it rather than a fond workplace romp. Character comedy with light, non-scary audience participation.
5★ Fest Fest 5★
Morpurgo's first new hour in nine years, built out of a 1970s American high-school yearbook and the imagined life of one David Moon. Fest calls it "a comedy masterclass" and "one of the leanest and tightly crafted hours you're likely to see all Fringe" — "a quick-fire, precisely rehearsed hour that is as singular as it is silly", where the sight gags, slideshows and audience participation all serve the structure rather than scatter it, and the character shifts are "totally commanding but also strangely moving". Dense, allusive, formally ingenious absurdism with an architecture under it: the Fringe comic closest to an ideas play. Limited run, and it does not start until 20 Aug.
Ania Magliano: Peach Fuzz
Book ahead — selling out
5★ The Telegraph; 4★ The Times, Evening Standard, Time Out, The Guardian Time Out 4★ · The List · Chortle
The SNL UK writer-performer back at the Fringe with an hour about English repression and coming to terms with her own body — confessional material delivered as gossip rather than as confession, which is the trick that makes it work. Time Out (4★, reviewed yesterday) calls it "another delicious set of gossipy soul-baring", praising her gift for reeling off what would be sensitive admissions "as if they were a choice bit of goss"; the Telegraph gave the same show five stars on tour for "a gift for observational comedy and weaving beautifully crafted routines". The List reaches for Simon Amstell as the comparison, and since his hour is already on this list that is the useful calibration: dry, self-aware, intelligent wit rather than the acerbic Katherine Ryan register. Flagging the risk plainly — The List also reads her as warm and conversational rather than sharp-edged, so if you want bite this is the gentler end of what qualifies.
5★ Chortle (Steve Bennett, 12 Aug) Chortle 5★
Sam Eley plays a lonely, Reform-voting old man through a grotesque papier-mâché head — Vic Reeves surrealism crossed with The League of Gentlemen and Partridge's lack of self-awareness. Chortle's Steve Bennett calls it "a monumental triumph", exquisitely written, a firehose of offbeat ideas. Acerbic and unsentimental rather than cosy: the weird-and-absurd end of their taste, and satire with teeth. Character comedy behind a mask, not a clown piece.
Music, Musicals & Cabaret
Sh!t Theatre: Evita Too
Booked
4★ Time Out Time Out 4★
"Hilarious, shambolic" song-driven show about Isabel Perón — smart, musical, very Fringe.
Fest cabaret pick
Acclaimed cabaret storyteller splicing Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea with Anne Frank's diary.
Skinny theatre highlight
Scottish-Korean co-production spanning three generations through folk songs, love letters and war stories.
Scotsman pick The Skinny · FringeReview
A fully improvised musical from an audience-shouted title. Reliably joyous.
The Galloping Cure
9–12 Aug only
Scottish Opera co-production, world premiere
New opera about the opioid crisis — the Punch end of the spectrum, set to music.
Fest cabaret pick Theatre Weekly · Fest
Weimar punk cabaret with sword-swallowing and fire-breathing. Raucous, not clowny — front rows get teased.
One Man Musical
Booked
Guardian's No.1 comedy show of 2024 · Chortle Best Show 2024 Chortle
Flo & Joan's gleeful spoof musical about a certain musical-theatre impresario, starring Edward Easton with the sisters playing live — "better than Cats".
5★ The Reviews Hub The Reviews Hub 5★
Craig Manson's murderous aspiring starlet, told through Broadway parodies and a tonal pivot from bright opener to outright horror — a satire on the brutality of making it in the arts, from the man whose Instagram eviscerates arts-organisation nonsense. High camp, but sardonic rather than cosy: unsentimental bite in the Katherine Ryan register, with none of the twee. Cabaret character piece, not a clown persona show.
5★ The Stage — 'genuine musical treat' The Stage 5★ · British Theatre Guide · WhatsOnStage
A fairy tale taken apart rather than served up warm: four over-educated sisters let out of their tower, a razor-sharp book about the price of perfection, and a pop-rock score with actual bite. The biggest new musical of the Fringe, and subversive where it could have been sweet.
4★ Fest (Xuanlin Tham) Fest 4★
Minyoung Kim plays the geomungo — the ancient Korean zither — against electronics and jeongga poetry-song, with psychedelic projection, building an argument about climate collapse and cultural inheritance out of the collision of the two. Fest calls it “a startlingly cinematic journey” and comes out the other side calling it cathartic. Gig-theatre with real intellectual weight; austere and strange rather than pretty.
4★ The Stage The Stage 4★
Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper play an entire doomsday sect in Nebraska who believe the apocalypse — 'The Great Sucking' — has left them the last people on earth, with every note and every sound effect made live between the two of them. The Stage calls it "the most simultaneously deranged and unexpectedly joyous musical on the wider festivals landscape", a "phenomenal feat of storytelling" whose songs are "cleverly written and immensely catchy". Filthy, fast and formally clever rather than cosy: absurd comedy with a real structure under it.
5★ The Stage The Stage 5★
Andy Roninson writes a musical about the best friend and bandmate who died in a freak hurricane accident, and the show is the writing of it — a "musical-meets-live concert séance" in which six performers reconstruct a memory that keeps refusing to hold still, the dead man played live by indie songwriter Sean McVerry. The Stage makes it one of its five-star picks, "nuanced, impeccably written musical theatre exploring grief"; the interest is in the reconstruction rather than the loss, which is what keeps it formally sharp. Flagging the risk honestly: other notices land on "warm, deeply moving, undeniably heartfelt", and that is the register you two usually bounce off — the metatheatrical frame is what earns it a place, so drop it if the sincerity outweighs the structure.
Magic, Circus & Spectacle
Ben Hart: The Labyrinth
Maybe
"Edinburgh's superstar magician"
Mind-reading and reality-bending with heavy audience involvement — for fans of the pickpocket show.
Trained by Penn & Teller
Big-gasp, science-flavoured magic — a strong alternative if Ben Hart's timing doesn't fit.
Global hit The Stage
Urban circus: BMX, basketball, breakdancing, beatboxing, drumming. Scratches the Mythos spectacle itch.
Ten Thousand Hours
Maybe
"Breathtaking" — The Scotsman The Scotsman 5★ · Theatre Weekly
Gravity & Other Myths' acrobatic meditation on mastery and the 10,000-hours rule — big-hearted, family-friendly spectacle.
Circa: Wolf
Booked
5★ One4Review · Scotsman critics' best of the 2025 Fringe · reviewed by The Stage One4Review 5★ · The Stage · The Scotsman
Ten Circa acrobats moving as a pack — all instinct and trust — then exploding into gasp-out-loud lifts, jumps and aerials over Ori Lichtik's primal DJ rhythms. The purest hit of the Mythos: Ragnarök spectacle itch at this Fringe.
Spoken Word
Already seen (loved, but done)
Mythos: Ragnarök
Seen it
30+ five-star reviews The Skinny
Norse gods, professional wrestling, hard-rock Viking soundtrack.
Not interested
20 set aside
Man or Bear
Not for us
"Really strong, resonant new writing"
Three women navigating persistent male violence, inspired by the viral debate; directed by Ursula Martinez.
Mohan: A Partition Story
From 18 Aug
Not for us
By Fringe First winner Niall Moorjani
The writer's grandfather's Partition experience, blended with live music.
Susie McCabe: Coming of Rage
Not for us
Fest comedy pick Fest (Fringe 2026) · The Scotsman
Glasgow favourite on the health crisis that hit her at 44.
Blackbox
Not for us
Fest & Skinny pick
Hip-hop theatre about Henry "Box" Brown, who mailed himself out of slavery. Great lunchtime slot.
Kristen Schaal: The Legend of Crystal Shell
Not for us
Insider must-see pick
Comedy play with an original score — Schaal with her Bob's Burgers co-star John Roberts.
Loud Poets
13, 20, 27 Aug only
Not for us
Fringe institution All Edinburgh Theatre
"Fist-thumping, heart-wrenching" spoken word backed by a live band.
Adding Up America: Solving the Race Equation
Not for us
Theatre Weekly pick
Monique DeBose blending live music, storytelling and sharp social insight.
Woodhill
Not for us
Multi-award-winning (Charity Awards; Sheila McKechnie Change Makers Award) The Reviews Hub · Everything Theatre
LUNG's verbatim dance-theatre about suicides at HMP Woodhill, made with bereaved families — the closest thing at this Fringe to Punch's territory.
The Horse of Jenin
Not for us
Fringe First winner · 5★ Guardian · Rolling Stone Top 10 The Scotsman
Alaa Shehada blends storytelling, mask work and stand-up: a Palestinian boy's resilience, told through a five-metre horse built from debris in Jenin.
Tell Me
Not for us
5★ Pink Prince Theatre · 4★ Guardian
Sadiq Ali Company (The Chosen Haram): Chinese pole and aerial circus-theatre tracing HIV across two eras. "Stunning, soulful, a total triumph."
James Rowland: Team Viking
Not for us
5★ Lisa in the Theatre · returning for its 10th anniversary Lisa in the Theatre 5★ · The Wee Review
A true story about giving his best mate a Viking funeral — a comic ode to death, friendship and the absurdity of life. Pure Adam Kay territory: storytelling with real substance.
My Grandpa Doesn't Follow Me On Instagram
Not for us
5★ Binge Fringe Binge Fringe 5★
Trans storyteller Yoz Mensch retraces a Cornwall-to-Highlands road trip with her grandpa. A trained clown, she uses the craft for character and physicality, not face paint — this is Adam Kay-style storytelling with real substance.
Bog Witch
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4★ The Guardian · 4★ The Stage The Guardian 4★ · Time Out
Bryony Kimmings back at the Fringe after seven years, on uprooting her family to a permaculture homestead. “Haunting and hilarious… a climate reckoning of both cosmic and quotidian proportions” — big-tech visual theatre with Lewis Gibson sound design that makes a storm scene startlingly visceral.
Sam Nicoresti: Baby Doomer
Not for us
5★ The Telegraph · 5★ The List · Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Show 2025 The Guardian round-up · Binge Fringe 5★
Angry, absurd and political stand-up built round a misgendering in a department-store changing room — “uproariously funny, life-affirming, dumb and insightful all at once”. Exactly the weird comedy with substance underneath that they go for.
Frankie McNair: Huge Ass Mindset
Not for us
5★ Chortle, 5★ Glam Adelaide; shortlisted for Most Outstanding Show, Melbourne 2026 Chortle 5★
Defiance, not a trauma dump — Chortle calls it proud, powerful and hilarious, vaulting from harrowing to joyously funny. Unsentimental and absurd in the way they like, with none of the cosiness.
Non Human Animal
Not for us
4★ The Stage (Lyn Gardner, 9 Aug): "fierce and spiked with dark humour" The Stage 4★
Kat Woods' semi-autobiographical Northern Irish drama: a playwright whose father was murdered is asked to meet his killer, while her mother's dementia closes in. An argument play — victim trauma against offender rehabilitation, and what happens when forgiveness does not heal — carried on dark wit rather than uplift, with a heroine who compares herself to Batman and binges Gilmore Girls. Gardner: "Woods speaks up; perhaps it's time we listened?"
Amy Matthews: Definitions of Toast
Not for us
4★ Chortle Chortle 4★
Chortle calls it the hour where everything clicks into place — "smart, clinical wit, emotional vulnerability" from a comic writing about rage she cannot access. The clinical wit is the Katherine Ryan register, sharp rather than consoling.
DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN
Not for us
5★ The Stage ("Breathtaking"), 4★ Theatre Weekly The Stage 5★ · Theatre Weekly 4★
NYC collective Vertical Dreamscape turn pole into serious stagecraft — a dark, cinematic night-shift dreamscape that Theatre Weekly calls physical theatre, dance and visual art at once. Spectacle with an edge, nowhere near twee; the same slot as Circa: Wolf.
Sophie Duker: Hot Beef Injection
Not for us
4★ The Scotsman, The Telegraph, The Times, Fest, The Skinny & Evening Standard The Scotsman 4★ · Fest 4★
Stand-up on sex and privilege — "brilliantly crafted takes on toxic men", with "airtight writing and effortless confidence", and "so neatly crafted and intelligent that every routine serves a purpose". Seven four-star notices from major outlets and not a gentle one among them: this is squarely the sharp, confident, unsentimental Katherine Ryan register.
Krapp's Last Tape
Not for us
4★ Fest Fest 4★
Beckett's man dissected across time — a 69-year-old listening back to the tapes of his younger, hopeful self, and growling at him. Ideas as the drama, not decoration; bleak and exact, with no whimsy anywhere near it. David Westhead's performance is Fest's 'exceptional', and it is Stockard Channing's directorial debut at 82.