The Edinburgh Fringe 2026 offers a diverse mix of performances, from a supreme being experiencing life as a woman to Taiwanese steampunk dance and a golden retriever mayor. Here are 13 quick-fire reviews of shows at this year's festival.
Comedy and Character Pieces
In Anna Leong Brophy: Born Sexy Yesterday, Brophy plays a supreme being implanted into a grown woman's body to experience life for the first time. Presenting like a sci-fi sex robot with the soul of a naive child, she marries a man on the front row and settles into domestic drudgery, until she discovers other settings and brands of femininity. The hour is potent, not always hilarious but undeniably persuasive, protesting against the strictly circumscribed roles women are allowed to play, particularly in movies. The supreme-being conceit dilutes a bit, but Brophy's righteous indignation and strong performing chops make this a compelling hour.
Rosalie Minnitt: Clementine 2 follows the Regency-era alter ego Clementine as she makes for the big city to get caught up in a revolution with a distinctly French flavour. This follow-up is an absolute blizzard of character-comedy that confirms Minnitt as a writer/performer in the vanguard. While it may lack the satirical bite of the original and has a plot bordering on incomprehensible, the adventure in self-realisation for this bumptious, puppyish heroine makes up for that in chaos, silliness, smarts and full-pelt comic performance.
Ahir Shah: Golden finds the comedian 35 and married, so overworked and anxious about money that he develops a severe allergic reaction to his own life. Piling on depression, autism, a fire in his parents' house and a pessimistic view of midlife stasis, the show offers decent jokes but not quite enough to jollify the hour. What's left is a man grappling with his own mordant worldview, towards a sunnier conclusion and probably a better balance between dark humour and despondency.
Dance and Circus Highlights
Taiwan Season: Under Mask features Mailantia Dance Company, led by choreographer Lai Yun-Chi. The quartet of dancers in steampunk-style masks and painted faces moves with swagger and mystery, inspired by Taiwanese temple rituals. Drawing on martial arts, hip-hop and contemporary dance, with hints of Indian classical dance and even flamenco, the piece has a feel of something ancient, mythical or spiritual. Huang Hsiao-Wen stands out for her incredible flow and compelling presence.
The Palestinian Circus: Step and a Half opens with the words, “Hope is a daily choice. As long as the heart continues to beat, we keep on moving.” The collective, running for 20 years and teaching children across the region, offers great work on trapeze, straps and silks, with a street performer feel including fire poi and a demon on the diabolo. Enveloped in a folky, celebratory atmosphere with traditional dabke dancing, the show is easy to feel warm towards.
New Plays and Satire
Big Dog, written by Izzy Radford, is an exuberant satire about a group of true-crime podcasters. Directed by Zoë Templeman-Young, Radford stars alongside Lauryn Jenkins and Tumba Katanda, with Eleanor Cross as a disgruntled listener. The performances are energetic but the show verges on chaotic, overstuffed with ideas and wavering between true-crime parody and dark comedy in the vein of Severance, with observations on white-collar tyranny and conformist office behaviour. It's great fun even if underdeveloped.
Crush, Hadsan Mohamud's debut play longlisted for the 2025 Tony Craze award, is a meet-cute in a mental health clinic for people with eating disorders where two British Somali teenagers become friends. Najma finds Zak pretentious, but they are drawn closer in Alena Sahota's production. Full of painful truths and culture-specific reflections, it plays out haltingly and statically, but captures the insidious nature of eating disorders, leaving us fearing for these teenagers' rocky journeys towards healing.
More Fringe Offerings
Fanny Bleach: The Nearly Naked Show, from geordie clown Emma Crowley-Bennett, is an irreverent cabaret “freak show” with a skulking performer emerging from an overflowing bin. With high energy and inventively grotesque costumes and characters, including Ms One-Tit and a Prawn Star, what might work as a subversive short slot is dragged out with not enough dramatic muscle.
Meet Mayor Max tells the true story of Max, a golden retriever who becomes mayor of the California town of Idyllwild. When the first Max dies, a second and then a third are installed, with Maximus Mighty-Dog Mueller III currently serving a lifetime term. Alex Robins is an engaging performer with a messianic edge, but the play leaves too many unanswered questions, and the ending needs a sharper bite.
Birds, House of Oz's apocalyptic two-hander created by Alex Hines and Sarah Stafford, opens with two beehived ladies of leisure on deckchairs beneath a punishing sun. As they watch the birds above, the flights of fancy build in terrible rage until a rat-a-tat finale. It can feel like a cheeky camp spin on Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone, though a little over-extended.
Burger and a Pint: Treats for the Soul, the debut fringe show from sketch duo James Trickey and Ted Milligan, promises to explore “expectations of masculinity” but delivers a conventional and fairly slapdash offering. There's better stuff elsewhere, including a choice Mastermind sketch, but even allowing for tech difficulties, it all feels a little underworked.
Jonathan Oldfield: Exquisite Corpse derives from the kids' doodling game in which legs, torso and head are united to create unlikely bodies. Oldfield plays it with his audience and feeds the results into a gallery of eccentric creations, including an allotment gardener with a sideline in erotic dancing and a Blockbuster video clerk. The linking narrative about breaking his arm seven times can feel tenuous, but this is a captivating hour on corporeal fragmentation and reassembly.
Rosco McClelland: The Bones settles on “pathological demand avoidance” as a frame for several club-comedy routines strung together. McClelland lands a few comic haymakers, including material about Scotland's World Cup and a shaggy-dog story about a cyborg nemesis, with an argument about a Facebook picture ending in a satisfying punchline.
