Edinburgh Festival

Usually avoid public bathrooms? Here's one you won't want to miss! This award-winning new musical follows four unlikely strangers who find themselves trapped together in a gender-neutral public toilet. With an hour to kill until maintenance arrives, the group navigates unexpected challenges, pungent opinions and some seriously sticky conversations. Created by queer-led theatre collective Stroud & Notes, Public – The Musical explores stories of identity, connection and compassion, alongside an electrifying pop/rock score. This will be a trip to the bathroom you'll never forget!

IMA (Pray) is an immersive circus experience. In the installation space reminiscent of sacred places, we participate in a unique ritual guided by the performer, who becomes a 21st-century shaman taking the audience into the unknown territories of the human mind. Bence Vági, director-choreographer of IMA worked with his team to create a magical installation inspired by the starry sky stretching over the desert; the place where human beings realise that we are merely tiny points in the infinite vastness of the universe.

The second that Zach Zucker steps on stage for his show, Zach Zucker: Spectacular Industry Showcase, he commands the room. He emerges wearing a sparkly and very unbuttoned shirt and you cannot help but fall a little bit in love with his confidence and talent within minutes.

The Mystery of Dyatlov Pass is a reflective tale of the lives of those who were involved in the Dyatlov Pass incident. The ending leaves the mystery open to interpretation but harshly reminds audiences that there are real human lives behind many conspiracy theories like those surrounding the nine hikers.

Mark Twain was once quoted as saying, “Comedy equals tragedy plus time.” Well, Ed Byrne is here to test his equation in Ed Byrne: Tragedy Plus Time. Having only seen clips of Byrne on shows like Mock the Week, I was looking forward to seeing a full hour of his standup.

When I picked up my listening pack for 1000 Miniature Meadows from Pleasance Courtyard, I was a bit confused. I was simply handed a card, which had a sticker on it that said to open it in the Courtyard. Opening the envelope and taking a look at its contents, I found a card with context and instructions for the “performance” along with a packet of seeds.

Lorna Rose Tree: Skin Pigeon is a great way for Treen to show off her talents as a character actor, seamlessly switching between her cast of ridiculous characters. It takes someone special to be able to imitate a dolphin, an aggressive PE teacher, a cowboy with guns for hands, a ghost, and others within an hour, but Treen makes it look effortless.

Drag Queen of Scots and RuPaul's Drag Race UK winner Lawrence Chaney presents a mix of stand-up and lip syncs in her Fringe debut extravaganza exploring what it truly means to be 'plus-sized'. Her stand-up delivers, her lip syncs less so.

Overall Alphabet Soup is entertaining, if a little inconsistent, and it’s certainly a lively way to spend an afternoon. The hosts have done well to put together a show of exclusively LGBTQIA+ performers which is something the comedy scene globally needs more of.

The world is going to end in 80 years and two couples are deciding whether it’s still a good idea to have children. And then one of the women falls for the other couple’s surrogate. Certain Death and Other Considerations has a stand-out premise, exploring the very real issue of eco-anxiety through a fun, apocalypse romantic drama. The execution of this premise, however, falls a little short.

The Edinburgh Revue mark a grand return to the Edinburgh Fringe.

Sooz Kempner provides a solid hour of stand up.

Dizney in Drag: Once Upon a Parody is a self-confessed ‘ridiculous show’. And if that’s what you are after, you will absolutely love it because this cabaret serves up the sort of toilet humour that sits somewhere between an amused eye-roll and an ‘oh-no-they-didn’t’ guffaw. 

The WTF moments come thick and fast in Colin Cloud’s EdFringe show After Dark, which ran until 21 August at glorious McEwan Hall. 

The Oxford Revue, one of the most prestigious and well known student comedy groups in the UK, arguably rivaled only by The Cambridge Footlights when it comes to the alumni that has came from their hallowed halls, with the likes of Rowan Atkinson, Stewart Lee, Maggie Smith, Armando Iannucci and members of Monty Python being past members of the troupe. With such big boots to fill, one would expect an hour of tightly packed sketch comedy and laughs a-plenty. Unfortunately, audiences don't recieve much of either.

It is rare that a show makes me laugh so hard I struggle to breathe. It is even rarer that a show brings me to tears with laughter. It is unheard of for these types of laughs to be a constant for a show. But, somehow, Karp manages to achieve one of the funniest shows at the Fringe with just a PowerPoint presentation and a Cats costume of his own.

What do you do when you achieve your dream and then, less than a year after, lose everything you’d worked for? That’s what Josh Weller takes a look at in his Fringe show, Josh Weller: Age Against the Machine.

I went into NewsRevue with high expectations, having read reviews of previous runs and being a fan of satirical musical shows. Looking back, I should not have gone in with these expectations, as they left me even more disappointed than if I had gone in blind.

From the moment she steps onto the stage, Klein is here to show the audience that she is a star. She emerges wearing a bright pink dress and struts on the stage, holding herself confidently as she greets the audience. Her opening song, in which she sings about the star being “Totally me,” is an absolute bop and immediately had me hooked.

Walking into C Cubed, you are greeted by Babs Romance MP, who thanks you for coming as you take a seat. You are at her press conference in order to witness her reflect on her political career as she announces her new party - The Preservatives. A projection on the screen shows the logo of the party, a green tree on fire.

As someone whose favourite musical is Les Misérables, as soon as I saw the poster for Les Millénniables, the classic drawing of Cosette inside of an avocado, I knew that I had to check this show out. Les Millénniables takes the characters of the musical and puts them into the 21st century in situations reflecting what they faced in the 19th century

Dusk: A Bite-Size Love Story is a loving parody of the Twilight series, taking the iconic vampire story and changing names, throwing in some more jokes, and adding a few songs. The musical is made for fans of the show with hundreds of references to the work it parodies.

If you’ve been on TikTok, you’ve probably seen at least one of Laura Ramoso’s characters.You have her strict German mother, her dramatic Italian Dad, or girls coming back from trips to Europe. Laura Ramoso: Frances gives Ramoso the opportunity to jump from the screen to the stage, going from minute-long sketches to an hour of comedy.

From the minute she walks on stage, Alexandra Haddow makes herself approachable. She chats with the audience like that cool friend we all have who is always telling crazy stories about their life and a feeling of trust is built between her and the audience.

Did you know that Boris III, King of Bulgaria, wasn’t even Bulgarian? It’s true, along with many other strange things that happened during his lifetime that are explored in The Brief Life and Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria.