Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 in 22 Shows

This year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe was as sprawling and invigorating as ever, and expectedly sharp in some of its preoccupations: questions of identity, memory, political urgency, and the responsibilities of performance itself surfaced again and again across genres. What follows is a look back at some of the buzziest and standout shows I witnessed over the festival’s final week, including solo pieces, ensemble dramas, musicals, experimental performances, comedy sets, and dance. Inevitably, I had to miss some remarkable works, but these 22 sparked thought, provoked laughter, fuelled arguments, and left me frequently exhilarated.

Eat the Rich (but maybe not me mates x) (Pleasance Courtyard) offers a crackling start. Liverpudlian writer and performer Jade Franks turns her first term at Cambridge into a funny, fierce story of class and code-switching. Dyslexia, fraught friendships, and a blunt reckoning with privilege all surface, but what carries this solo piece is her voice: she inhabits others’ accents with verve and gives every encounter theatrical fizz. Many of her insights as a working-class student among elites are familiar, but Franks has a startling posture that feels freshly defiant. Even as the ending slides into a slightly didactic rush, the hour as a whole has undeniable charm, leaving me hoping for a future version with more room to breathe. For now, it’s her charisma that lodges in the memory: the sense of a storyteller discovering her stage muscle in real time.

From one autobiographical voice to another, Nowhere (Traverse Theatre) deepens the theme of personal experience colliding with social history. Glasgow-born writer and actor Khalid Abdalla’s “anti-biography” resists chronology, moving between fragments of life, family photos, live projections, and moments of unexpected dance. Directed with supple lightness by Omar Elerian, the show never feels schematic; instead, its disjointedness mirrors the truths Abdalla insists upon: the personal is always political; histories layer over one another; and generations can converge in a single breath. His voice alone can hold the room, but his willingness to experiment with intention—to sketch a blind self-portrait, to break into movement, to let didacticism erupt only when earned—makes the piece deeply affecting. What might sound like self-indulgence in lesser hands becomes here a consummate meditation on collective struggle and fragile peace in the Middle East and beyond.

Khalid Abdalla in Nowhere. Photo courtesy of Helen Murray.

Another solo piece, Ordinary Decent Criminal (Summerhall) channels its rage into prison cells. Ed Edwards’s drama takes us to the aftermath of the Strangeways Prison riot of 1990, when Frankie, a Mancunian drug dealer, finds himself imprisoned and thrown into a web of violence and scheming. Mark Thomas propels the piece with magnetic intensity, sweating and spitting through every turn as he shapeshifts into a cast of fellow inmates. The problem lies in the play’s structure: the non-linear, episodic leaps soon tire, and a solo show of this length begins to buckle under its frenetic rhythm. With its smart use of lighting and sound, Charlotte Bennett’s direction offers clarity, but cannot prevent the occasional sag. Still, the performance itself becomes the thing: Thomas’s sheer physicality and fierce commitment give us a show that feels thrillingly immediate.

Alright Sunshine (Pleasance Dome) locates a similar kind of rage in the figure of Nicky, an Edinburgh constable whose devotion to her job undergoes a crisis when she herself becomes a victim. Isla Cowan’s one-woman play, directed by Debbie Hannan, places uniform and gender under scrutiny: what does it mean for professional identity to stick to the skin of the officer, especially a female one? Molly Geddes throws herself into the role with high-octane vigor, but the monologue stretches thin, relying on exposition where drama should be. A story of vengeance and professional strain emerges, but at length the momentum falters. The themes of policing, sexism, and gender-based violence remain urgent, even as the hour suggests that a shorter, sharper piece might have hit harder.

Written and directed by Dan Colley, Lost Lear (Traverse Theatre) revolves around an elderly actress with dementia who believes she must rehearse King Lear. Played with moving elasticity by 34-year-old Venetia Bowe (eventually juxtaposed with a life-size puppet of the character), Joy clings to theatre as her past and her shield. Key scenes from Lear echo and refract against her estranged son’s attempts to reconnect with his mother. The second half grows stylistically bold, using projections and a non-linear form, but feels curiously shortchanged in narrative substance; repetition seeps in, perhaps intentionally, but also tediously. Still, the conceit resonates: theatre as avoidance, theatre as balm, theatre as the last fragile tether to memory. The cast’s strength and the production’s inventive devices mean that the play lingers with poignant questions about performance, family, and the porous line between art and life.

A more overt excavation of family ghosts comes with Consumed (Traverse Theatre), Karis Kelly’s Women’s Prize-winning play about four generations of Northern Irish women gathering for a matriarch’s 90th birthday. What begins as a familiar kitchen-sink drama soon fractures into something stranger: secrets spill, traumas resurface, and Lily Arnold’s set design shifts from naturalism into lyric expressiveness. Katie Posner’s neat direction ensures that the transitions feel organic, while Julia Dearden and Andrea Irvine lead a formidable cast of four women. Where Lost Lear looks at memory’s frailty, Consumed demonstrates its persistence, how buried pain refuses to be erased. The writing balances charged banter with poetic flights, and the shifts in tone keep us alert. At heart, it’s about the seepage of intergenerational trauma into everyday life, the impossibility of any true celebration when historical violence lurks unacknowledged.

The cast of Consumed. Photo courtesy of Pamela Raith.

Tom at the Farm (Pleasance at the EICC) confronts repression head-on, too. Armando Babaioff’s Brazilian adaptation of Michel Marc Bouchard’s play plunges us into mud, milk, and spit, as Tom arrives at his recently deceased male lover’s family farm and meets Francis, the brother who forces him into silence. Homophobia, desire, and violence collide in an often breathtaking choreography of fear and seduction. Rodrigo Portella’s staging is intensely grimy and physical, with bodies drenched and boundaries perpetually crossed. Performances aptly alternate between taut and explosive, especially by Babaioff and Iano Salomão. The influence of Pinter and Shepard on the script is evident, though the directorial style, with echoes of Ivo van Hove, makes it feel distinctly contemporary. At over two hours without an interval, the production sees its tempo dip on occasion, but its pull remains magnetic on the whole.

At the other end of the tonal spectrum, Brainsluts (Pleasance Dome) revels in sharp comedy. Early-career playwright Dan Bishop sets his play during a five-week clinical drugs trial, where four oddballs gather to swallow pills and wait for side effects. The group—consisting of a nepo-baby, a hippie, an anti-work activist, and a confused loner—bicker and bond, while the doctor in charge wearily fends off professional condescension. Bishop’s writing sparkles with wit, balancing fun with darker undercurrents, while Noah Geelan’s direction keeps the rhythm mostly crisp. The ensemble, up-and-comers all, handle the tonal shifts with panache, giving us a sense of a new generation flexing their dramatic range. This is a clever comedy with quietly emotional twists, echoing Annie Baker’s drama in its attention to small talk and group dynamics, and clearly the work of a promising team with a future beyond the Fringe.

Group dynamics of another kind fuel Paldem (Summerhall), BAFTA Rising Star-winner David Jonsson’s “anti-romantic comedy,” directed by Zi Alikhan. Here, two friends turn to amateur porn, build an online following, and then find intimacy creeping into their lucrative partnership. On paper, it’s a topical premise brimming with possibilities—sexuality, friendship, race, commerce—but the execution falters. Plot detours feel questionable, performances middling (though Tash Cowley stands out), and direction lackluster. The interracial dimension, seemingly intended as climactic weight, remains underdeveloped and leaves the ending flat. Moreover, the friends’ financial stakes are oddly ignored, weakening credibility. The show bills itself as an anti-rom-com but seems uncertain whether to lean into off-kilter comedy or earnest drama. More of the former might have been the thing to elevate it.

Questions of authorship take center stage in Hannah Caplan’s impressive debut play THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME. (Summerhall), directed by Douglas Clarke-Wood. Young playwright Grace is scripting her failed romance with long-time friend Eli while performing it before us, aided by slideshows, puppetry, surtitles, and handmade props. The play toys with romance tropes, exposing how the pen can wound more deeply than the sword. Amaia Naima Aguinaga leads with charm and gives Grace a mix of fragility and sly power. The writing is carefully self-aware, probing questions of truth, responsibility, and narrative control. By the end, it doesn’t quite open up all the structural layers it hints at, but its inherent playfulness keeps it afloat.

The music-infused works at the Fringe, meanwhile, play on different registers. Hot Mess (Pleasance Courtyard) may be among the most inventive out there: Ellie Coote and Jack Godfrey imagine Earth and Humanity as lovers in a rom-com pop musical. Danielle Steers’s Earth and Tobias Turley’s Hu flirt, quarrel, and eventually break up, their arc echoing humanity’s increasing abuse of the planet. Catchy, witty, and delightfully absurd (see, for example, Earth’s rebound threesome with Siri and revived dinosaurs), the show glows under Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting, which throbs perfectly in time with the music. The compelling premise could sustain an even broader canvas; key developments in human history are glossed over, leaving one wanting more. Yet the originality dazzles, and the performances alone would justify a second viewing.

Danielle Steers and Tobias Turley in Hot Mess. Photo courtesy of Mark Senior.

Where Hot Mess concerns itself with the world at large, Ohio (Assembly Roxy) turns inward to autobiography, as real-life couple Abigail and Shaun Bengson transform Shaun’s tinnitus and crisis of faith into a folk-musical ritual. Loops, overlays, and gentle audience participation create the feel of a gathering, almost churchlike, but warmly secular. The Bengsons invite us not merely to watch but to share in the soundscape, layering our voices into theirs. The duo’s soulful music celebrates sound itself, even as hearing fails. Humor punctuates grief, paving the way to a profoundly moving climax. This is an exquisite piece, at once deeply personal and communal, and a triumphant act of resilience through music and retrospective self-narration.

The jukebox turn comes with Club NVRLND (Assembly Checkpoint), Jack Holden and Steven Kunis’s loose adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan as an early-2000s nightclub musical. Think Britney, Rihanna, and Timberlake, sung and danced among a standing audience shuffled between podiums. The immersive staging is effective, if a little exhausting (trying to dance with backpacks on isn’t ideal), but the energy in the space is undeniable. The story itself is flimsy, more scaffolding for the songs than fleshed-out arc, and performances vary in quality, with Martha Kirby and Matthew Gent standing out. Still, the campy nostalgia somehow works: it’s knowingly juvenile, merrily indulgent, and fun as a night out in theatre form. Its future may depend on a rethink of the relationship between book and music, but the glittery, chaotic atmosphere captures exactly the Fringe’s own spirit of unruly play.

A variant of that spirit comes to the fore in Thanks for Being Here (ZOO Southside), acclaimed Belgian company Ontroerend Goed’s affectionate ode to the audience. Four performers guide us through live footage of ourselves in our seats, interviews with and comments by past spectators, and quirky replays of our arrival at the auditorium. At first slow, the piece builds into a surprisingly thought-provoking meditation on spectatorship: the audience as co-creator, as subject, as the very point. Humorous fragments and canny asides combine, making us reconsider what “being here” means. If Club NVRLND was about immersion through nostalgia, Thanks for Being Here immerses by turning the lens directly upon us. It’s a show that reminds us why and how spectatorial presence can be both fragile and uniquely powerful.

Karolien De Bleser and Charlotte De Bruyne in Thanks for Being Here. Photo courtesy of Ontroerend Goed.

By contrast, the analytical lens turns upon the performers themselves in The Ego (ZOO Playground), where Anemone Valcke and Verona Verbakel collate their stories of rehearsal rooms, humiliations, and #MeToo encounters into an experimental patchwork. Ostensibly about “the ego,” the piece gradually veers into neighboring terrains: power abuses, transgression, survival. Direct audience address mixes with live reenactments and prerecorded footage; one anecdote involves an awards speech fantasy, another a farcical director-muse story. The structure is willfully scattershot, ending with an arguably too-clear empowerment message. Yet its strength lies in whimsy: two confident performers laying themselves bare, wry and playful, even amid the heaviness of what they have endured in their careers.

Creative indecision generates its own method in BABYFLEAREINDEERBAG (Summerhall), Hannah Maxwell’s deliciously self-referential work-in-progress with a knowingly allusive title. We’re positioned as a focus group here, asked to choose between extracts from potential Fringe hits: a father story, a romance, a spy thriller. Post-it notes, group discussions, and Maxwell’s commentary make the performance half-workshop, half-pastiche. It’s warm, witty, and deceptively simple, genuinely interrogating what qualifies as an outstanding Fringe show. The pay-off feels slight, though: the ending turns inward, somewhat too self-concerned, and the fragments don’t cohere into more than the sum of their parts. Still, the idea of testing formulas on us is clever, and the humor keeps us with her.

That meta-fringe vein bleeds into comedy proper, too. Sad Gay AIDS Play (Pleasance Dome) finds comedian Andrew Doherty parodying his own attempt to “move on” from comedy by writing an earnest AIDS drama, only to discover that Arts Council England’s funding hoops are the real villain. Enacted scenes lampoon tired tropes of “sad gay plays,” rendered hilariously naff, while Doherty’s own oddball persona interrupts with bite. The satire at times repeats itself, and the parody could be sharper, but the critique of funding criteria—their depoliticized box-ticking—is duly pointed. By the finale, ACE staff appear as surreal, satanic gatekeepers of art. Following Maxwell’s show about the anatomy of Fringe hits, Doherty offers a parallel: a comic vivisection of what institutions demand of the art they seem to support.

If Doherty skewers funding structures, Breaking the Fifth Wall (Monkey Barrel Comedy) skewers comedy itself. Starting from her viral Facebook Marketplace routine, Australian comedian Lou Wall unravels her own career by exposing lies, exaggerations, and fictionalized autobiography. Using slideshows, original songs, GIFs, and apt digressions into murderous Mormon robots, Wall gloriously destabilizes the stand-up form. This ingenious labyrinth of performance and confession with no real exit evokes the deconstructive manoeuvres of Kate Berlant’s Kate. Breaking the Fifth Wall ultimately shows how art warps truth and how stand-up comedy’s purported promise of honesty is its most elaborate fiction. It’s comedy that thinks as it cracks, leaving us both laughing and suspicious of our laughter.

A more straightforwardly joyful set comes with This Must Be Heaven (Pleasance Courtyard), where John Tothill crafts a witty, whip-smart arc from incriminating oysters to a near-fatal appendicitis. The hour is a delight, ranging across cruise-ship anecdotes, the political agenda of Margate’s Crab Museum, Georgian-era thief Edward Dando, and the crucial distinction between greed and gluttony. Tothill’s snappy, affably superior persona makes the indulgence manifesto both funny and oddly moving. The show builds subtly, revealing its shape only in retrospect, and lands as a crafty love letter to the notion of going after one’s heart’s desire. This is charming, intelligent comedy of a high caliber.

Things get political in Ziwe’s America (Pleasance Courtyard), where American comedian Ziwe Fumudoh offers a characteristically deadpan spoof of a campaign event. Supposedly running for US presidency, Ziwe mixes identity politics, Real Housewives gossip, and her own foot-fetish profile into a platform. She grills her audience on Black history, stages debates on outlandish issues (“How much would Ziwe’s toe be worth?”), and never drops her blasé, perfectly manicured persona. The punchlines seem to come almost by accident, materializing out of thin air, but the effect is carefully honed: she’s both polished candidate and irreverent trickster. What’s striking is how well the set lands with an international crowd: rather than feel alienating, her references to US identity politics open windows onto the absurdities of contemporary American culture.

The final strand of my week belonged to dance, where spectacle and ensemble work claimed the spotlight. Circa: Wolf (Underbelly’s Circus Hub) from Australia is a breathtaking fusion of acrobatics and contemporary dance. Ten performers slither, stack, and collide, embodying both the feral brutality and fragile tenderness of pack behavior. Yaron Lifschitz’s direction keeps the focus on trust: bodies catch and carry one another with astonishing assurance, while Ori Lichtik’s thumping score amplifies the visceral rhythm. Gasps and spontaneous applause ripple through the audience as feats push against bodily limits. The choreography oscillates between grotesque contortion and fluid sensuality, a reminder that the human form can be capable of so much more than expected.

Performers of Circa in Wolf. Photo courtesy of Andy Phillipson.

The Genesis (Assembly Hall), from the young Copenhagen Collective, is more raw but equally ambitious. Seventeen dancers clad in black sportswear and skirts create atavistic patterns, stacking and throwing their bodies on top of one another. Even though the energy is palpable and frequently captivating, the eclectic stylistic choices don’t always cohere: moments of audience interaction, for example, jar against the otherwise ritualistic atmosphere. Still, the sheer scale and youthful intensity are impressive, and the collective’s talent is evident. Like Wolf, it emphasizes bodies in trust and collision, but here the effect is more exploratory, less refined. As a debut, it heralds a company that may find its voice very soon.

Looking back, I am struck that what stands out across these 22 shows is not a single set of themes, but a shared urgency to test the relationship between the individual and the collective, between memory and history, and between truth and falsehood. From Jade Franks’s searching self-portrait to Khalid Abdalla’s profound anti-biography, from the Bengsons’ folk ritual to Ontroerend Goed’s ode to the audience, from Tothill’s self-aware gluttony to Circa’s feral athleticism, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe felt alive this year with artists pressing against form in order to ask: who are we, and who are we together, in this room, in this moment? The divergent answers collectively reveal the Fringe at its best.