‘Not Another Quiz Night’ (Debating Hall at Gilded Balloon Teviot, until AUG 30)

“This show does audience participation like a solar eclipse does hurty eyes.”

A year ago at EdFringe25 I wrote that, “after careful consideration, I can confidently say this is the best show I have seen at any EdFringe.” In retrospect, I am filled with remorse at having written something so opaque. I worry that I was not fulsome enough, not clear enough, not sufficiently on the nose – like a Château Haut-Brion 2025 or a tap from Tyson Fury is on the nose – in expressing to you, savage reader, just how chuffing superb this entire production is. Subtlety is a curse. Fortunately ‘subtlety’ is not a malediction that affects Jake Bhardwaj and the crew. They’re BACK. They’re BIGGER. They’re EVEN MORE INVENTIVE and, who’d have thunked it, they are more, More, MORE of everything than last year.

Popadom Frisbee (Queensbury Rules) has been replaced with Slap That Bap. There’s a celebrity guest appearance by Andy Murray instead of Liam and/or Noel Gallagher. Baywatch Beach Parade has been replaced by shirt OR vest BUT biggest crisp is still in the lineup. There’s a lot more lighting, a lot more sound effects, a lot more glittery explosions, and a capacity crowd in the comparatively massiver Teviot Debating Hall. The venue seems to bulge at the seams like a Fat Cupid in a too-small loincloth as the crowd goes utterly wild from start to finish.

Bhardwaj is the greatest ringmaster and showcaser showman of our time. He plays us like a jacked up Bert in ‘Mary Poppins’ would play his one-man-band if it were replaced by ALL the instruments of the London Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic combined. The pace is out of this world. The night speeds by like a perp in a Yangwang U9 during a police chase and the border only 80 short clicks away.

Come for one of the two most insanely BIG and beautiful shows of this or any EdFringe. Stay for the skill and the craft of serious levels of silly done silly levels of serious. Get whatever coats, gladrags, hats, and assorted clobber you and yours can quickly club together on and go see this!