Spoiled for choice doesn’t quite cover it when it comes to navigating the Fringe’s theatre programme. Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit of the non-accurately named Sh!t Theatre return to Summerhall for the first time since the pandemic with Or What’s Left Of Us but there’s a new(er) absurdist DIY duo on the block in the form of Xhloe and Natasha who debut A Letter To Lydon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First at theSpace @ Niddry Street alongside a revival of their 2023 hit What If They Ate the Baby?
Gary McNair’s Dear Billy at Assembly Rooms is a crowd-sourced love letter to Sir Billy Connolly, while June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me is Charlene Boyd’s celebration of Johnny Cash’s right hand woman, who wrote the timeless Ring of Fire. If it’s sporting heroes you are looking for, Adam Riches: Jimmy is the award-winning comedian’s tribute to tennis comeback king Jimmy Connors.
Summerhall’s ROUNDABOUT venue is always a good bet for intimate, immersive theatre. The potential picks of this year’s line-up are V.L., another riotous take on Scottish boyhood from the team behind the celebratory Square Go, and Playfight, a new play about three young women on the hunt for love.
Move over We Are Lady Parts, Lynn Faces at Summerhall features a fictional punk band inspired by Alan Partridge’s long-suffering assistant Lynn, while the energy of gig theatre is applied to verbatim stories of life after prison in A Giant on the Bridge by Liam Hurley and musician Jo Mango, playing at Assembly Roxy.
Alison Larkin, comedian, podcaster and Jane Austen audiobook narrator par excellence, returns to the Fringe for the first time in 24 years with her show Grief…A Comedy at Assembly George Square Studios, inspired by finding then losing true love in her fifties (among other things – she’s had an eventful life).
Fans of music and mezcal are advised to get along quicksmart to ZOO Southside for Comala, Comala, a Mexican Day of the Dead-inspired musical and theatrical extravaganza performed in Spanish (with English surtitles) by a seven-piece ensemble using traditional instruments (anyone for a donkey’s jawbone?).
If a shot of mescal doesn’t do it for you, what about a show about an LSD trip? no no no please no god no, nevermind i’m fine at theSpace Triplex is Brooklyn-based actress Sarina Freda’s acid flashback of a Fringe debut, with bonus clowning.
There is also another opportunity to revisit earlier Fringe hits. Ben Target: LORENZO at Pleasance Dome is a beautifully crafted piece of storytelling about Target’s experiences of caring for his octogenarian uncle. Also at Pleasance Dome, Fanboy is a nuanced hour on the intensity of childhood obsessions (especially the Star Wars films). Club Life at theSpace Triplex is a life-affirming collision of theatre and clubbing from DJ-turned-graphic designer Fred Deakin, who reminisces on the clubs he ran in Edinburgh in the nineties before inviting the audience to join him on the dancefloor.
