Category Archives: Venues

‘Mythos: Ragnarök’ (Music Hall at Assembly Rooms, until AUG 29)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 5*, Assembly Hall, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“A subtle and sophisticated piece of storytelling with the heart of Sleipnir and a pace to match.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Norse mythology is BIG. It’s elemental. It’s soulful, poetic and, above all, exciting. Ed Gamester’s vision is EXACTLY what a little boy would dream of as he avidly read ‘D’aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths’ snug at Gran and Poppy’s house back in the day – and what an aulder chap would try to convey reading the same volume to his own darling wee progeny a year or two dozen later.

Gamester is an EdFringe legend in his own lifetime. He has raised this show from scratch with considerably more time and effort than the All Father needed to raise that wheat which saved the farmer’s son in a Faroese ballad from long ago. From the teeny-tiny Roxy venue to the Asgardian splendour of the Music Hall at Assembly Rooms, our Ed has made magic happen year after year. His show is a crowd-pleaser – and what a crowd – but it is also a subtle and sophisticated piece of storytelling with the heart of Sleipnir and a pace to match.

As Odin, Howard Drake dominates the action with a cosmic gravitas. The premier ring-builder in the UK, Drake literally sets the stage for the drama that unfolds, the perfect foil for Gamester’s fiercesomely soulful and (just) occasionally irreverent Loki. Together, these two titans slam into the narrative like a hot knife slams into butter. The result is a smorgasbord of characterful vignettes and choreographed pandemonium that spills out into the audience with the sudden slugfest urgency of Jörmungandr jumping in and out of a wood-fired hot tub.

As Gullveig, Louise Young (of Iron Girders fame) brings an unquiet, unforgettable, unmissable dignity to proceedings. Together with the splendid performance, presence, and physicality of Rhonda Pownall (as Friday’s namesake), Young delivers a counterweight to the overwheening ambition of the menfolk. It’s a stratospheric performance that could dwarf an ice giant. 

Countermatching Young’s steely (only just) restraint is Miles Ley’s babyface Thor. The Bristol Old Vic alum is utterly sensational; it is simply outrageous that anyone should get paid for having so much fun on stage. And here is what makes Gamester’s vision so successful, this exacting balance of comedy and tragedy, majesty and mayhem forged deep into the metal of a riveting piece of stage traffic by a producer demonstrating skills equivalent to Völundr skillfully smithing a sgian dubh to be worn in Beowulf’s sock. The scale is actually small on an MGM TV scale, but it’s off the charts in terms of dramatic thrust and impact.

The not-so-secret MEGASTARS of this production are Melanie Watson’s costumes, which make everything and everyone on stage seem incredibly real. From Loki’s trousers to Fin McCarthy’s Fenrir, Watson’s creations are bold and inspired, a reenactor’s wet dream. Complimented by Gamester’s BIG recent spend on lighting. This is LIVE theatre on a Cecil B. DeMille scale, and it works. It really, Really, REALLY works.

Come for the Sam Gardiner-sized bouts of pure dead brilliance. Stay for Beau Charles’ pecs. Get your valshamrs on and go see this!

 

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‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (Lime Studio, Greenside @ George Street, until AUG 29 – not 16 or 23)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 5*, Dance, Greenside, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“A balletic psychodrama, energetically blurring the boundary between Jane’s life of confinement and the spectral surreality of her imagination.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

This is a vividly dramatic version of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story, adapted for the stage as lively piece of dance theatre by sisters Caitlin and Megan Ort: with Caitlin the director and choreographer, whilst Megan doubles as associate director/choreographer and performs the central role of protagonist Jane.

The original story, often anthologised in collections of classic horror stories, is also a milestone in feminist literature due to its portrayal of patriarchal attitudes towards the physical and mental health of women in the late nineteenth century. Gilman’s story focuses on Jane, the wife of John, a doctor who has brought her to a rented country house for a “rest cure” – the standard treatment of isolation and inactivity of the era, prescribed for postpartum depression and what was then called “female hysteria”. Via John and Jane’s relationship, this adaptation highlights themes such as the medical profession’s attempts to silence and subdue women via enforced domestication. The wallpaper of the title symbolises Jane’s descent into madness as she imagines figures behind the peeling wallcovering in her bedroom.

Megan Ort is a highly expressive actor, whose first-person narration as Jane directly engages the audience, with her emotional state enhanced by bursts of vivid movement and dance. Morgan Blanchard portrays her doctor husband John as a loving spouse with sinister undertones as he administers the drugs to subjugate his wife; in this he is assisted by his sister Jennie, portrayed as a darkly smouldering femme fatale by Paloma D’Auria.

The choreographic element of this production does much to bring the supernatural and psychological aspects of the story to life; what would otherwise be mere narration is transformed into a balletic psychodrama, energetically blurring the boundary between Jane’s life of confinement and the spectral surreality of her imagination. The ghostly figures behind the wallpaper and the pent-up emotions in the room are physically brought to life by a trio of dancers: Maya Musial, Annie Sherman, and Claire van Bever. Their viscerally expressive movement is hypnotic as, by turns, they claustrophobically surround and haunt Jane, then express her frustration with wide-eyed writhing and terpsichorean leaps.

This is a feminist horror story like you’ve never seen before. This American troupe brought the audience to their feet for a standing ovation at the end of an action-packed hour in the Lime Studio, Greenside @ George Street. The show runs for the whole of the Fringe, but this medium-sized auditorium has a limited number of seats, so secure your tickets soon.

 

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‘How to Poop in an Outhouse at -58°C’ (Greenside @ George Street: Ivy Studio, until AUG 29)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 5*, Greenside, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“This is the story of a young woman empowering herself by doing six impossible things everyday before breakfast, and empowering others in the process.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Kona Morris is my own great discovery of Edinburgh Fringe ‘26. If Theodore Roosevelt – the unstoppable, seriously try and stop him, literary outdoorsman, the death-defying explorer and naturalist – if TR was recast as a Disney princess, the result might look and feel a lot like our Kona and with the same capacity to hold a capacity crowd at the edge of their seats.

We enter to find a stage bare of bears and salmons and whirlpools and tiny log cabins in the middle of somebody’s somewhere but a long way from everywhere else’s creature comforts. Flicking back on my phone to the photo I took on entering, I am shocked at how, from the minimalist, ultra-Fringey compactness of Greenside’s Ivy Studio on George Street, such a massive story, still writ large across the mind’s eye, could have emerged. Morris achieves levels of total immersion storytelling that make it possible to believe that Alfred really did sing to the Vikings before Edington and Wedmore without them St Edmonding and burying him.

Walking softly but carrying a BIG stick, not THE big stick I am happy to learn later, Morris shares her lived experience of falling in love with a native Alaskan man, moving to his village and becoming part of his world. There’s a final twist in the tale and a post-credits vignette that are the icing and cherry on this gargantuan-scale cupcake. This is the story of a young woman empowering herself by doing six impossible things everyday before breakfast, and empowering others in the process. If the Victorian Edwardian adventures of Roosevelt’s day were in possession of an iota of Morris’ capacity for regard, reverence, and reflection for pre-Columbian roots, perhaps the world would be less beset with toxic cultural tumbleweed. Maybe.

Much of America (it seems to this horrible Auldworld nationalist) is yet to make the rigorous intellectual and spiritual journey undertaken in many parts of His Majesty’s Commonwealth towards recognising the value, the versatility, and the vision of First Peoples as well as the priceless inheritance their relationships with the world around them have nurtured down the centuries and millennia.

Kona Morris is an exceptional exception to this rule, an Arctic sunrise of hope that, with openness of mind, a bigness of heart, and a depth of soul beyond the ordinary, we can all learn more and better about what makes a successful community, a thriving society, and a valuable culture – and when it’s time to call it a day and live one’s own authentic life.

This is a story and a storytelling I hope my own girls will encounter on their journey to vigorous womanhood and the rough riding that the strenuous life inevitably throws at those whose faces are marred by dust and sweat and mud – the doers of deeds who are just trying to catch the California flight to a cousin’s wedding in this age having come off a long river journey seemingly from another time.

Come for the Disney princess telling the Alaskan wilderness like it is. Stay for the geometric storytelling that explodes the small arithmetics of a tiny venue. Get your two-sizes-too-big purple coats on and go see this!

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‘Mandy: Prince of Darkness’ (Ivy Studio at Greenside @ George Street, until AUG 29)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 5*, Greenside, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Richard Stirling takes to the stage much as we are told Jeeves shimmers into any given room.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Nae Bad)

For four decades, he was the omnipresent, supposedly omnipotent king of spin. And then suddenly he wasn’t. Peter Mandelson’s political career spanned the sudden shift from the ultra-curated analogue print and broadcast age to a more open-access knowledge economy. Before the numberless influencers of digital media emerged, Mandelson was the guy who knew, the guy to know. But was he?

Unlike a pharaonic-scale engineer – a Brunel or an Eiffel – there are no great works dotted through the landscape to look upon and despair – the crashing crassness of the Millennium Dome aside. This supposed supremo – a rather anaemic English edition of Hanna, Atwater, or Carville – made his presence felt on the Westminster political stage, but was there ever any substance to his misty-mystery – or were we all imbibing the post hoc ergo propter hoc like it’s Oktoberfest? Labour won a landslide in ‘97 after Mandelson had been peacocking across the quarterdeck for years; therefore, because of?

RADA’s own Richard Stirling takes to the stage much as we are told Jeeves shimmers into any given room. We are about to watch a powerhouse deliver a masterclass in acting up close and personal, and I am thanking my lucky stars that the ultra-Fringey compactness of Greenside’s Ivy Studio on George Street gives me a front row seat, knee to knee with someone doing something so marvellous. Here is a deep study in shallowness as the clock Marks 8:36.

Stirling (forever THE Boko Fittleworth in THE definitive Wodehouse adaptation) is the celebrated author of Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography as well as the playwright who penned A Princess Undone – the no holds barred account of one night in 1993 in the life of Princess Margaret. On reflection, Mandy seems like a rather appropriate addition to Stirling’s collection of biographical trophies – mounted on a bit too much tech, but stuffed with fine details that make this an authentic, lively, and blisteringly warts and all piece of theatrical portraiture – more genteel unflinching Gerald Scarfe than grotesque unrepentant James Gilray.

The format is largely linear, and it has to be to carry the weight of career detail, rival personalities and, of course, the sordid horror of the horrible revelations about Mandelson’s relationship with a convicted child rapist. Stirling, the actor, shifts seamlessly in the blink of an eye from his Dark Prince charmless to the affably unBrownian “call me Tony” of pre-Iraq days. Although the archival video footage projected behind is occasionally clunky, the use of actual newspaper front-page splashes from the dawn to the dusk of Mandelson’s public stage strutting amplifies the underlying message that the media ground beneath Mandelson’s feet was utterly transformed during the strange career of the self-styled Third Man – the camp TV Michael Reenie version, not the Orson Welles spiv monster who profited by doctoring children’s medicine.

A ton of research has gone into this magpie’s nest of a show. So has the honed and practised craft of an actor whose obvious natural talent has been sharpened into a sabre, one wielded with the precision of a scalpel from walk to full gallop. When the final penultimate chapter of Mandelson, and perhaps of the party he once mismanaged, has been written in the ballots of our next general election, I suspect that this script and its performance will have predicted much.

Come for the acting out of a political life that cannot help but be of interest to historians of the modern era (surely new error). Stay for the sake of one of our finest character actors doing his thang bloody chuffing well. DON’T get your donkey jackets on but do come see this!

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‘Crooked Shadows’ (Greenside @ George Street: Jade Studio, until AUG 29)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 3*, Greenside, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“A GRANDMOTHER’S BRAVE SPIRIT; A GRANDDAUGHTER’S BOLD VOICE”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

This one-woman show, written and performed by New Jersey-based Shawneen Rowe, first saw the light of day three years ago in New York. Using a poignant mixture of live action, video imagery, and projected family photos, Rowe tells the often heartbreaking story of an Italian-American upbringing focused around her Grandma Rosa: one of those great matriarchal figures who battle to hold homes and families together with graceful and righteous strength, whatever life throws at them.

Via the bold voice of her granddaughter, the tale of her grandmother’s relentlessly brave spirit is told in a series of vignettes recalling the tears and the laughter of life in a lively Italian household. In piecing together the life of a woman who survived abuse and the sudden disappearance of her father, we are drawn in to relish in the triumph of Rosa’s spirit as she passes her story down to her granddaughter.

Despite the perhaps sinister-sounding title, this is ultimately an uplifting story: the telling and re-telling of sometimes dark family secrets can drag them into the light to illuminate our histories and unite generations by confronting the mysterious past. The struggles of our ancestors can give shape and bring deeper understanding to our own lives.

Rowe is a seasoned actress and theatre-maker who looks the audience squarely in the eye and tells her story simply, with a single suitcase of props and costume to enable shifts between the roles of narrator, grandmother and daughter, as well as a houseful of male and female Italian relatives.

The only downside of the performance I saw was a ridiculously loud fan in the black box auditorium of the Jade Studio. The recent heatwaves have necessitated air conditioning of some sort in theatres, but this racket made some of the quieter moments in Rowe’s monologue inaudible. This show is well worth seeing, but keep your fingers crossed for cooler evenings, a little more projection from Ms Rowe, or a drop of oil for that fan.

 

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‘Of Mice and Men’ (Assembly Rooms, Drawing Room, until AUG 30)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 4*, Assembly Hall, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“…the way they interact at times resembles a physically reversed Laurel and Hardy, with an oversized Stan causing chaos, as a frustrated, diminutive Ollie gives exasperated double-takes to the audience”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

In a Fringe that, with every year, seems more dominated by stand-up comedy, it’s always a pleasure to see a recognisable title in the theatre listings. Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men is an evergreen classic which in recent decades has become a familiar feature in the UK’s literary landscape due to its perennial suitability as an English Literature text for schools. It’s become all the more popular due to the influence of a number of star-studded film, TV, and stage adaptations over the years.

The economics of a Fringe production preclude the large ensemble cast that would be required for a full representation of the story, so writer Nigel Miles-Thomas has wisely and effectively adapted this production to focus on George and Lennie, the pair of itinerant workers striving to survive in Depression-era California. Whilst those who know the story well may miss seeing other characters such as Curley’s wife, Slim, or Candy, spotlighting the central duo offers a more intense take on their complex relationship.

Miles-Thomas also plays Lennie Small, the great, lumbering man-child who doesn’t know his own strength. Familiar to regular Fringe-goers in recent years as a cadaverous Sherlock Holmes, Miles-Thomas captures both the childlike innocence of Lennie, along with the dark undercurrent of uncontrolled physical strength that lurks beneath. George Milton, the wise-guy leader of the pair is entertainingly portrayed by Michael Roy Andrew, forever trying to temper his anger at Lennie’s incompetence with tenderly protective understanding. Indeed, as a two-hander, the show is able to highlight the funnier side of this tragicomedy: the way they interact at times resembles a physically reversed Laurel and Hardy, with an oversized Stan causing chaos, as a frustrated, diminutive Ollie gives exasperated double-takes to the audience. Such lighter moments make an engaging contrast to the inevitable tragic darkness of the end.

The show worked well in the Drawing Room auditorium at the Assembly Rooms on George Street; I suspect because the largely middle-aged audience knew the work well. Those less familiar with the story may perhaps struggle a little to follow some of the one-sided dialogues with unseen offstage characters – but this is nonetheless an engaging piece of theatre that is largely successful in bringing this classic to a Fringe stage.

 

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‘Jess Carrivick: For Your Consideration’ (Nook at Gilded Balloon Teviot until AUG 30)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 5*, Comedy, Gilded Balloon, Potterrow & Teviot, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“With many rapid costume changes and lively use of props, this is a highly theatrical show that goes way beyond the limits of mere stand-up comedy.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Two years ago, I saw a one-woman show at the 2024 Fringe by a young lady called Jess Carrivick. Entitled Attention Seeker and listed as a ‘Work in Progress’, I thought it a masterclass in how to stage a solo piece of comic theatre. This year she’s back with For Your Consideration, a madcap whirlwind of character-based solo sketch comedy, directed by Elf Lyons and produced in association with Rosie Nicholls and Avalon.

Carrivick has been either shortlisted or a finalist for more comedy awards than you can blow a raspberry at, and her undoubted talent has been praised by respected figures in the industry as “gearing up to conquer”. Her charismatic natural wit and flair for creating outlandishly funny characters is reminiscent of the late, great Peter Sellers (if he’d been female and looked a bit like the young Glynis Johns). Carrivick’s highly expressive face and her evocative talent for vocal impersonation combine to create a fast-paced succession of mercilessly parodic character-based vignettes, poking fun at day-to-day types ranging from pushy school mums to psychopathic cinema usherettes. One of Carrivick’s particularly memorable showbiz characters is Cassandra Della Treebourne, an elegantly wasted diva jazz chanteuse whose cigarette-raddled voice has more vocal fry than your local chippy – imagine a godforsaken, ageing lovechild of Judy Garland and Keith Richards.

With many rapid costume changes and lively use of props, this is a highly theatrical show that goes way beyond the limits of mere stand-up comedy. Use of projected Carrivick family videos as a framing device also bestows a certain cinematic quality. But the solid gold heart of this show is the sheer visual physicality of the solo performer. Two particular highlights were: a Chaplinesque ballet routine that had the audience – including me – hooting with shrieks of laughter at its surreal absurdity; the other was a mad sea captain-cum-wannabe mermaid who sang the most hilariously filthy sea shanty you’ll ever hear.

The intimate Nook auditorium at the Gilded Balloon Teviot was packed with a highly appreciative audience who left at the end with their sides having been completely split and their ribs thoroughly tickled. Give this woman a TV show, for goodness’ sake – she’s far more innovative than much of the predictable sketch-based comedy we see on the telly.

The tickets are worth every penny – you won’t see a funnier show at the Fringe this year.

 

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‘Lear’s Fool’ (Greenside @ George Street, Lime Studio, until AUG 22)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2026, 4*, EdFestivals, Greenside, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“An engaging tragicomedy in the Stoppardesque spin-off manner, offering stark juxtapositions of comedy and terror, despair and song, political polemic and renaissance stand-up comedy, in a lively romp of a show.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

Way back in 1966, the Edinburgh Fringe saw the premiere of Tom Stoppard’s tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which famously highlights and follows the two eponymous minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, once they disappear from the main action of the play.

Here, in Lear’s Fool, we see similar treatment of the Fool, the court jester from King Lear, who exits and disappears about halfway through Shakespeare’s other great tragedy. This new production of David Henry Wilson’s play is directed by Liz Carruthers. It is an engaging tragicomedy in the Stoppardesque spin-off manner, offering stark juxtapositions of comedy and terror, despair and song, political polemic and renaissance stand-up comedy in a lively romp of a show.

Even if you don’t know Shakespeare’s original work, this production offers an entertaining and often heart-breaking show which can be enjoyed on its own terms. Set in a prison cell near Dover, the Fool’s treatment and interrogation by a jailer and his captain reflect the hierarchical values of a bygone age whilst also offering contemporary takes on the futility of war, the self-interest and corruption of politics, and the stranglehold of the social class system that will ring true to modern ears.

Wilson’s writing reworks well-known Shakespearian quotes from the original play to give fresh and often ironic meaning within the play’s postmodern context. The eponymous Fool, played with aplomb by Jill Riddford (a two-time Scottish Theatre Critics Award nominee), is still the mischievous joker from the parent play, but her excruciating puns mask a soul that is devastated by continuing news of her old master’s madness and downfall as the action of the source drama unfolds offstage.

Shakespearean humour is notoriously dated and hasn’t aged at all well, but Riddiford’s occasional delivery of some lines stand-up style direct to the audience, rather than other characters, made them laugh out loud.

King Lear and Lear’s Fool overlap with each other at the end when Lear (Finlay McLean) and his faithful daughter Cordelia (Kirsty McDuff) make a striking Shakespearian intervention into the postmodern world of the play. Sam Stopford (another Scottish Critics Award nominee) is an engagingly cynical and mercenary jailer, whilst John Kay Steel’s sinister portrayal of the ruthless Captain surely puts him in the running for casting as a Bond villain once they’ve got a new 007.

Whilst not actual Shakespeare, this show makes a welcome addition to the small body of the Bard’s works featuring in this year’s Fringe, so it’s well worth a look.

 

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‘Lydia Bennett Works In Finance’ (Ivy Studio in Greenside @ George Street, until AUG 23 – not AUG 10 or 17)

Posted in 5*, Greenside, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“Laugh-out-loud lines such as ‘He couldn’t find my clit if he used a flashlight and a bloodhound!’ are an indicator that this play is not suitable for GCSE revision. “

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Fans of classic fiction will recognise the name of the eponymous heroine of this acerbically funny comedy as the youngest of the five sisters in Jane Austen’s masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. In this sassily updated reinvention, writer and performer Trelawny Kean presents us with a feisty present-day version of Lydia as a high-maintenance drama queen who finds herself homeless and unemployed after walking out on George Wickham.

In the source novel, Lydia is described as “silly, vain, and absolutely uncontrolled” as well as “wild, noisy and fearless”. The modern Lydia presented by Kean is very much in this mould, but don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the book. The pacy style of the show could be described as something along the lines of Jane Austen meets Bridget Jones and is very enjoyable on its own terms as a comic account of the life of a modern girl who always seems to be a footnote in someone else’s love story.

The second half of the show’s title helps to emphasise the production’s contemporary vibe by echoing the song (I’m Looking For A) Man In Finance by Girl On A Couch (Megan Boni) which was a viral TikTok hit in summer 2024. An engaging juxtaposition of past and present is loudly evoked as Lydia in 2024 plays the song on her phone and Kean energetically gyrates to the amplified beat; the modern lyrics reflecting Austen’s 200 year-old concerns about single women who complain about their relationship status whilst having unrealistic expectations of men.

Performed single-handedly with two giant suitcases and their contents as set, props, and costume, Kean makes ideal casting for a one-woman show in the intimate black-box Ivy Studio in Greenside @ George Street. Seen at close quarters, her comically mobile face vividly conveys expressions ranging from manic frustration to Machiavellian cunning as the needy Lydia attempts to manipulate family and friends via her ever-present mobile phone.

There are laughs a-plenty in the dialogue, though it’s worth noting that the age guideline is 16+. Laugh-out-loud lines such as “He couldn’t find my clit if he used a flashlight and a bloodhound!” are an indicator that this play is not suitable for GCSE revision.

This is an absolute gem of a show that will be running for most of this month, but seating in this small studio venue is limited, so book early.

 

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‘The Kids Always Win’ (Venue 24, until AUG 25th)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Gilded Balloon, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Strong stage presences, very funny and excellent with kids”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

We arrived at The Patter House early and I had time to witness a crime against humanity. £6.80 of His Majesty’s Pounds for one of the worst pints of Guinness I’ve ever had in my life served in a plastic cup. This was not the fault of the lads behind ‘The Kids Always Win’. I had to suffer that pint. It is only fair readers understand the things I suffer for my art.

But what of the show? The concept is simple. A game show – spinning around deep audience participation – where, you’ve guessed it, the kids always win.

Tom and Max are strong stage presences, very funny and excellent with kids. Numerous kids get up on stage and they are all made to feel at home.

The games are gleefully funny (I was thrashed by my eight-year old). There are switcheroos, goalposts are shifted and adults are thrown curveball after curveball. There are a nice few running gags throughout. My two are experienced Fringe goers now and they enjoyed this show both commenting on how fun it was and how much they laughed. The show was also about 50 minutes long rather than an hour. This is not a criticism. For kids from 4-8 this is probably the ideal length – other performers who aim their work at children really should know this.

The kids loved the result and I won’t spoil a small surprise every kid will love towards the end. Admittedly, there were a couple of moments that didn’t quite land as well but that is to be expected in any show that relies entirely on audience participation. Overall this was a grand wee show that deserved the full house and deserved to be at a bigger audience. Just the sort of silly, puerile, crackers show that the Fringe needs for kids. No, it isn’t massively deep. No, it doesn’t really have a core message to connect with our core. It was a good old fashioned kids show that had them laughing throughout. And there is nothing wrong with that. Quite the opposite.

Come for the gameshow. Stay for the raucous interaction. Get your coats on and go see this.