Gnomon’s Land, Staged Theatre Productions. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.
By Liz Nicholls,
Fringe Unforgettable goes into its final weekend with news as sunny as the weather’s supposed to be. Mid-week, the 45th annual edition of our mighty summer theatre bash had sold 4,500 more tickets to its 209 indoor shows than at the same point in the festivities last year — more than 130,000 so far, with a full weekend of fringing still to come. By closing night Sunday, when the the festival exits its 38 stages, the Fringe Unforgettable ticket tally will almost certainly surpass last summer’s 140,000-plus.
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Meanwhile there are still lots of theatrical experiences awaiting you for your last weekend at the continent’s oldest and largest fringe.fringing. What to see? Have a gander at the reviews collected under the heading Fringe 2026. And consider this handful of suggestions for your weekend’s grand finale menu.
Ramneek Singh, creator and star of The Butter Chicken Odyssey, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.
A memoir that turns into a true story with a heartwarming arc. In The Butter Chicken Odyssey, valiant food writer Ramneet Singh tells us of his epic quest through 50 of Edmonton’s butter chicken establishments to find the best. What he re-discovers in the course of this X-treme culinary (and digestive) challenge, are his Punjabi family roots, his culture, his sense of self. And what we discover at the Fringe is a an engaging and funny storyteller and a great theatre performer. Read the review here.
No need to send in the clowns. They’re here. They come in all shapes and sizes (red noses optional) at the Fringe. They go grocery shopping (Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS) or arrive as corporate recruiters (Gerald). My favourites are the four playful clowns of Gnomon’s Land, who create characters to populate, with great precision, situations like bars or kids’ birthday parties, in a cleverly produced show (directed by Grace Fitzgerald). And there’s an audacious, and infinitely touching, finale moment of actors playing clown characters who find themselves watching themselves — as real live humans, growing up in a scrapbook of time.
A mysterious two-hander: In Being Norwegian, a little gem by the Scottish playwriting star David Greig, two solitary strangers —both somehow off the human grid, both carrying unpacked baggage of secrets — reach out, tentatively, in an apartment above a nighttime city. Exceptional performances from Cody Porter and Clarice Eckford. Read the review here.
Cody Porter and Clarice Eckford in Being Norwegian, Trunk Theatre. Photo supplied.
Who would even think of this? part 1. The irresistibly bonkers premise of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ROBOCOP The Musical is a deluxe case. And it’s on a scale rarely seen at the Fringe: big sound, big song-and-dance numbers, lush songs from the sacred R&H canon with re-jigged lyrics, “how do you solve a problem like the crime rate?” Somehow a story kind of takes shape: yup, cops are nuns. And Andrew Boyd, one of the co-creators with Lauren Brady, bursts into song with one of those big lustrous voices that knocks you back in your seat. Crack cocaine for musical theatre junkies. Read the review here.
Who would even think of this? part 2. Go local or .. oh wait, it’s already home. Beach to the Future: The Accidental Beach End Game, is the lunatic grand finale to Grindstone’s trilogy of original musicals inspired by Edmonton’s wacky come-and-go possibly toxic riverside Riviera and written by a team of the company’s musical theatre-soaked improv artists. It’s hilariously unsparing about the absurdities of Our Town. And catchy original songs, by Simon Abbott and Erik Mortimer, an impressive assortment of rock, pop, and rap pastiches, transcend the river sludge that’s turned a generation into lizards. Whaat? With comic performances that have a crazy go-for-the-gusto to match. Read the review here.
Reimagining musicals, part 1. The Fringe is fertile ground for this. Don’t miss this rare chance to see Ghost Quartet, Dave Malloy’s haunting ‘musical’ of ghostly songs and dances, ghost stories that seem to float by, in and out of the past, without ending. And Jim Guedo’s production, with four actors who sing, and pick up a wild assortment of instruments to play, invites us into a beautifully atmospheric lamp-lit bar in a venue, the airy brick and wood vault of the ArtsHub Ortona, that’s part of the show. A return to the original site-specific inspiration of the Fringe BYOV (bring-your-own-venue). Read the review here.
35mm: a musical exhibition, Uniform Theatre at Fringe 2026. Photo by Brianne Jang
Reimagining musicals, part 2. Ghost Quartet’s companion at the ArtsHub Ortona is an original, too. 35mm: A Musical Exhibition is a musical whose “libretto,” so to speak, is a succession of photographs that capture a moment that could be part of an ongoing urban story, or the dénouement, or the prequel. A marriage of a visual image and a song, fascinating and elusive. And the storytelling belongs to you. What kind of musical does that? Read the review of the Uniform Theatre production here.
Reimagining musicals, part 3. With the stunning 650 Light Years Away, which flies off musical theatre shackles, up up and away, Andrea House teams up again with the superb jazz musician/composer Chris Andrew and bassist Rubim de Toledo. And in an entirely original kind of rhymed rap, jazz, blues, rock that turns her witty poetry into song, actor/playwright/singer-songwriter House sings us a personal open-ended story. It ventures into the vast unknown, past and future, but its funny references are particular and local — the sky over Elk Island, the pirate ship at the mall…. It’s enough to make you dizzy. Read the review here.
The Shape of Seamen: a new comic opera, with Nicole Maloney and Michael Watt. Photo supplied
Reimagining musicals, part 4. No one saw this one coming. Jaquelin Walters’ The Shape of Seamen, the love story (and ensuing relationship difficulties) of a sailor and a mermaid, appealing played by Nicole Maloney and Michael Watt, is an original musical entirely in clever, jaunty rhyming couplets à la Gilbert and Sullivan, with live music by two fish. Must be something in the water. Read the review here.
Tell us a story. As always, the Fringe attracts a top international galley of storytellers, including New York’s Martin Dockery, Kentucky’s Paul Strickland, Erika McDonald, Vancouver’s Candy Roberts who have the uncanny ability, as both writers and engaging performers, to turn stories into theatrical experiences. Seanchai, by first-time playwright Gavin Bradley, is a play that’s a story that’s about the telling of stories — the ancient traditional stories that bond generations through time. Susan Sneath makes a welcome return to the stage as the title Irish storyteller, retired, who’s losing her memory, and her purchase on the details. She’s visited by a young aspirant (Mark Guerrero) in search of a mentor. And together, as they re-tell the off-told Irish tales, age and infirmity and the limitations of youth fall away.
Shrute and Tungsta, Dirty Fish Theatre. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied
Go weird or go home. The experimental spirit, whose demise is oft foretold by Fringe seers, isn’t actually dead, my finger friends. It’s just in the bathroom. That’s where Shrute and Tungsta, a somewhat forlorn pair of German performance artistes are hanging out, backstage in a famous Berlin techno club. Harper Oud and Aidan Collins are a study in contrasts, and this very funny duo has had the inspiration of being sexy retro-avantgardistes (is that even a word?), deliberate provokers of the audience, purveyors of sneery non-sequiturs, gross selfie footage, and all. Shrute and Tungsta are career agents provocateurs; don’t tell them, but their show is f-u-n. Read the review here.
Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin in In My Room, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied
Kooky and charming, and unclassifiable. Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin, two rising theatre stars in this theatre town, have paired up on an appealing sort of chamber cabaret where the chamber is Eli’s bed, which he hasn’t left in three weeks. He’s in hiding from a world that’s bad and getting badder all the time. And he’s all alone — except of course for the musical theatre repertoire, a personal assistant who’s a good singer like he is, a personal live-in accompanist, and a microphone. A shameless (and ingenious) excuse for all concerned to stay in pjs all Fringe long. It’s funny too. Read the review here.
Big, blistering performances. The Fringe always has some, and here are a couple: Zachary Parsons-Lozinski in the 30th anniversary revival of The Edmonton Queen. Andrea House as Mae West in Go West, Young Man.
Sarah Ivanco in A Sexy Pigeon Show, The Lighter Touch Art Collective at Fringe 2026. Photo supplied
And guest Fringe reviewer Fawnda Mithrush has some favourites, too, that are running this weekend: check out The Beanstalk Market Crash, Erika MacDonald’s Tea TIME, and A Sexy Pigeon Show.
And, hey, if you’re foiled by Sold Out signs, Fringe Unforgettable continues next week with holdovers, at Fringe Theatre’s Westbury Theatre, the Varscona, and Rapid Fire Theatre. Read about them here. The Grindstone does hold-overs, too. Check out their lineup, in progress so far, here.
