Edinburgh Fringe
David Kettle
Ten Ways to Die Happy, Underbelly, Bristo Square ★★★★A live gameshow about life and death? Yes indeed, and host Perla Ambrosini proves the ideal guide, leading a panel of audience members through forks in their lives’ paths, throwing obstacles in their ways, and even offering unexpected rewards and punishments for altruism, selfishness or many other decisions and swerves in direction.Ten Ways to Die Happy is a neat concept, first explored by the Fondazione Teatri di Reggio Emilia and dramatists Emanuele Aldrovandi and Jacopo Giacomoni, and getting its first international outing at the Fringe Read more ...
David Kettle
Barely contained in one of the bunkers tucked alongside the Pleasance’s main Courtyard, a first-time production from three young mates blazes with more energy and dazzles with more insight than many far bigger shows by more established companies at the Fringe. It’s a real discovery, by a trio of actors/dancers/writers who clearly have plenty to say, and the expertise in storytelling and delivery with which to say it – very powerfully, and very movingly too.It no doubt helps, too, that Heart Beats Strong draws so clearly on personal experience: its three chopped-up storylines came from a Read more ...
David Kettle
Take along your dancing shoes for this rousing, roof-raising collaboration between Glasgow’s Wonder Fools theatre company and South Korea’s Theatre SAN: you may well find yourself up on your feet in raucous celebration. But don’t forget a hankie either: to say Tether 인연 is a weepie is a bit of an understatement.But crucially, this newly created show – getting its first performances at this year’s Fringe – is never mawkish or manipulative, but conjures its considerable emotional gut-punch from lovingly drawn characters and intricate but entirely convincing storylines (even if they’re not Read more ...
David Kettle
Dracula: Lucy's Dream, Pleasance at EICC ★★★★If something’s scary, it’s usually because you know it’s a threat, and that it might cause you harm. If something’s creepy, however, things are far worse: something apparently innocuous, even reassuringly pleasant, might actually have it in for you after all. Dracula: Lucy’s Dream – from Franco-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire and its artistic director Yngvild Aspeli – falls firmly into the second category. It’s a seductive and often very beautiful show, but also one that on occasion snarls with bloodied teeth to show you what it really has in mind Read more ...
David Kettle
QFWFQ, Summerhall ★★★★At first glance, an iconic post-modern novel (or, perhaps more accurately, "novel") by Italo Calvino might not seem like the most obvious starting point for a searing condemnation of Zionism and Israeli atrocities in Gaza. But Los Angeles-based performance artist and writer Gregory Nussen finds a convincing if perhaps unlikely path between the two in the slippery, witty solo show QFWFQ (named after the protagonist in another of Calvino’s works, The Cosmicomics).And if you don’t know Calvino’s 1979 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, then it probably suffices to say that Read more ...
David Kettle
Up: Violin vs Football, French Institute in Scotland ★★★★★Is it theatre? Is it music, or maybe dance? Or even some kind of circus, or simply sport? In truth, the impossible-to-categorise Up: Violin vs Football at the French Institute in Scotland (originally put together with Le Phare Centre chorégraphique National du Havre Normandie) is all of those things, and very much its own thing too. Even if its genre is hard to define, two things are certain: first, it’s about as Fringey an experience as you can hope for; and second, it’s extremely good indeed.That’s good in terms of the exceptional Read more ...
David Kettle
If we get lost or confused in the story he’s about to tell us, writer/performer Sam Ward explains, we shouldn’t worry: it all comes together in the end. There’s an implicit warning there, and it proves entirely justified: what Ward goes on to deliver is a breathless, high-velocity dash through an ever more complicated and convoluted narrative that dares us to drop our attention and lose the flow. His tale, however, is a strangely gripping one: a woman finds oddly humming holes in her garden, and her attempts to discover what they mean lead her to a sub-department in her local council Read more ...
David Kettle
Supposing: ★★★★★Sally fell down a hole outside the local theatre. Since then, things have changed. She just… knows things that other people don’t. But rather than being a source of joy, help or hope, her new abilities feel more like a curse.Writer-director Zinnie Harris’s taut, focused two-hander (well, for the most part) turns to ancient Greek myth – and to the chiselled definition of ancient Greek dramatic forms – to address the disintegration of personal freedoms, climate breakdown, rising intolerance, and everything else that’s falling apart around us. It’s an audacious conceit, and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tom Read Wilson ★★★★Gilded Balloon MuseumTom Read Wilson has been plying his trade as an actor and singer for while but reality TV is where he has made his biggest impact – including as runner-up in the 2025 series of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!A-Z of Me is, remarkably, his Edinburgh debut – or deflowerment, as he puts it – which he performed in a limited run in the Scottish capital.He runs through the alphabet, starting with A for, well, alphabet, giving us its etymology. Read Wilson is clearly a man who loves words, and you will go home with one or extra to bank in your vocabulary Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Susie McCabeAssembly George Square ★★★★Glaswegian Susie McCabe has established a loyal following at the Edinburgh Fringe over the past few years, and in Coming of Rage she updates them on the past two years of her life.It’s not been a barrel of laughs. She suffered a heart attack in 2024 (which she talked about her in previous show) and is now divorced from her second wife, but much of this hour is about the death of her father. It is never, however, downbeat as she wrings comedy from really awful life events.McCabe was tasked with organising her dad’s funeral, which meant an unwelcome Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Max Fulham’s Monkey Business ★★★★Gilded Balloon TeviotRarely do I delve into the rich world of children's entertainment at the Edinburgh Fringe, but sometimes a scheduling snafu can pay dividends. I went to Gilded Balloon Teviot expecting to see a comedy play, but it wasn’t on that day. A quick scoot through the brochure revealed this show starting at the same time, so I took a punt, and I’m very glad I did.There’s a particular joy in hearing a room full of children (and their adult minders) squealing with delight over fart gags, physical comedy, daft games, puppetry and ventriloquism, all of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Olga Koch comes bounding on to the stage and tells us she needs a time machine to tell her story, to prevent someone being born – at which point a reference to a certain happening in Nazareth 2026 years ago flashes up on the onstage screens. It’s the first of several neat gags – many of them throwaway – in which she provides the set-up, and the payoff follows on the screens.It’s a catchy addition to what is essentially a good old-fashioned piece of storytelling that’s fast-paced and whipsmart. In Fat Tom Cruise (directed by Jet Vevers) Koch dances along a timeline that skips between present Read more ...