⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Cory Dagg has had the kind of career most actors only dream about. He spent years in Hollywood, appearing in The X‑Files and The Commish, and sharing scenes with Robert De Niro in We’re No Angels. There were other films too — Wrongfully Accused among them — the sort of steady, recognisable work that quietly builds a life in the industry. But here, at the Fringe, he stands alone onstage with nothing more than a slide projector and a story he promised he would “tell, and tell right.”
The show centres on a chance meeting that changed him: an evening spent with Mae Axton, the American songwriter, teacher, publicist and part‑time radio DJ whose fingerprints are all over the early career of Elvis Presley. Cory recalls being introduced to her by her son, Hoyt Axton, and from there the night unfolded into one of those encounters that stays with you. Onstage, he lets Mae speak again — through her words, her work, and the images he projects behind him.
What emerges is a portrait of a woman who was far more than the co‑writer of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Cory explains how Mae and Tommy Durden shaped the song from a bleak newspaper clipping into something sharper, stranger, and unforgettable. He describes how she handed Elvis the demo, how he recorded it, and how it became his first million‑selling RCA single. More importantly, he shows how Mae championed Elvis long before Colonel Parker took over — interviewing him on her radio show, pushing for him, believing in him.
The slides, the voiceover, the quiet pacing — they all serve the same purpose: to honour Mae Axton as the “queen mother of Nashville,” a pioneer who wrote more than 200 songs and worked with Willie Nelson, Tanya Tucker, Mel Tillis, Reba McEntire and so many others. Cory’s pact with her — to tell the story properly — gives the show its heart. It’s respectful, insightful and gently illuminating, the kind of Fringe hour that sends you away wanting to know more.
For anyone curious about the early, fragile years of Elvis Presley, or about the woman who helped steer him towards history, this is a thoughtful and affectionate tribute.
★★★★★ Lucy Best arrives at the Edinburgh Fringe with a suitcase full of stories and the kind of presence that immediately warms a room. Although she’s a familiar face at festivals across Australia — from Fringe World Perth to Melbourne Fringe and Adelaide Fringe — this is her first time stepping onto the Edinburgh stage with Lucy Best: Unbelievable , a solo show that feels less like a performance and more like being invited into her home for an hour.
The venue’s intimate setup suits her perfectly. Lucy thrives in close quarters, where she can talk directly to the audience, tease them a little, and pull them into her orbit. There’s an easy conversational flow to the show; people laugh, gasp, and occasionally sit in quiet attention as she shares the kinds of personal stories that only come from a life lived at full tilt. Her reflections on gender, identity, mishaps, adventures and small triumphs are delivered with a sincerity that never feels forced.
One of the more delightfully absurd truths she reveals is that she has travelled all the way from Melbourne with a step ladder in tow — a detail that sums up her resourceful, slightly chaotic, always‑prepared nature. Lucy is, at heart, a hustler and a survivor: a photographer, an environmental advocate, a social justice campaigner, and someone who seems to collect experiences the way others collect postcards.
There’s a moment in the show when she speaks about a baby dolphin, and it catches her off guard. A tear slips out, and she doesn’t hide it or apologise for it. That openness is what makes her so compelling. Lucy doesn’t present a curated version of herself; she offers the whole thing — the humour, the grit, the vulnerability, the conviction. It’s refreshing, and it’s deeply engaging.
Unbelievable is charming, captivating, and consistently entertaining. It’s the kind of Fringe show that sneaks up on you, leaving you unexpectedly moved and thoroughly entertained. A genuine standout — and absolutely one not to miss.
Lucy is also appearing in other shows across the Fringe, and her creative life stretches far beyond this production. Under the burlesque persona Lucy Lastic, she performs with Maison Burlesque — Australia’s largest burlesque academy — and has taken part in their Cherry Poppers Solo Showcase, choreographed by multi‑award‑winning performer Domino de Jour. The next Cherry Poppers Showcase takes place on 11 October 2026 in Melbourne, promising a glittering flurry of feathers and rhinestones.
Some Fringe shows try to recreate an era with props and posture. Paris in a Jazz Age does it with mood. From the moment Airlie Scott steps into the light as Eloise DeFleur, you feel the room tilt gently toward 1920s Paris and on — that heady mix of smoke, swing, and possibility. It’s not a history lecture. It’s a feeling. And the show gets that feeling right.
Airlie has an easy command of the space. She doesn’t force the character; she lets Eloise arrive naturally, as if she’s been living in the wings for decades and has finally decided to wander out and talk. There’s a warmth to her storytelling, a softness in the way she lets memories unfold. Nothing rushed. Nothing over‑played. Just a woman looking back at the city that shaped her.
The music is where the show really breathes. The Hot Jazz Vagabonds are the real thing — proper hot‑club swing, the kind of nimble, conversational playing that makes you sit up a little straighter. Alan Gibson’s bass keeps everything steady; David Ahmed and Andy Ruiz Palma’s guitars dance around each other with that unmistakable Django shimmer; Pete Watson’s accordion folds the whole sound in Parisian colour. It’s a band that knows exactly what it’s doing.
One of the highlights for me was “Blue Skies”, a Josephine Baker song from 1937. It’s one of my favourite vocal jazz numbers anyway, but Airlie gives it a lovely lift — bright, hopeful, almost conspiratorial. You can hear the optimism of early‑20s Paris in the way she phrases it, that sense of a city opening its arms to anyone bold enough to step inside.
The show also touches on songs that speak directly to the city itself — pieces like “I Love Paris”, which fits the tone perfectly. It’s one of those numbers that carries the whole sweep of the place in a few bars: the romance, the melancholy, the sense that the city is always slightly larger than your own life. Hearing it in this context feels right. It’s not just a standard; it’s a love letter folded into the set.
The rest of the repertoire moves through the music that defined the era: gypsy jazz standards, early swing, touches of French chanson, and those American Songbook classics that drifted across the Atlantic and settled into the clubs. Airlie has spoken about building the show around songs she loves from those traditions, and you can feel that affection. Nothing feels like filler. Every number earns its place.
What gives the show its shape is the memoir framing — Eloise arriving in Paris in 1920, finding her voice, losing people she loved, watching the city change under Occupation, and carrying on because that’s what Paris demanded. It’s lightly handled, never heavy, but it gives the music emotional weight. A song isn’t just a song; it’s a chapter.
There’s a moment, late in the show, where Airlie shifts from glamour to something quieter. It’s subtle, but it lands. You realise you’ve been listening not just to a performer but to a woman who has lived through joy and uncertainty and still finds reasons to sing. That’s the heart of the piece.
By the end, you feel you’ve spent an hour in Paris — not the postcard version, but the one built from late‑night cafés, warm laughter, and songs that stay with you. It’s a lovely thing to walk out of Surgeons’ Hall with.
★★★★★ Celtic Tales is one of those Fringe shows that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel — it just sits you down, plays you good music, tells you a few stories, and lets you enjoy yourself. And honestly, there’s something refreshing about that.
Elsa and Gary have a lovely, easy chemistry on stage. The husband‑and‑wife banter is funny without ever tipping into performance shtick; it’s just them, teasing each other the way couples do, and the audience laps it up. It breaks up the music and the folklore nicely, giving the whole thing a relaxed, fireside feel.
The music is the backbone of the show. Elsa’s fiddle work is bright and confident, and when she starts layering sounds with the loop pedal, the room warms up immediately. Gary’s accompaniment keeps everything grounded. Even if you walked in knowing nothing about Celtic myths, you’d still enjoy the tunes.
The stories themselves are a mixed bag in the best way — some eerie, some gentle, all delivered with a light touch. I especially liked the tale of the Blue Men of the Minch, those storm‑calling sea spirits who challenge ship captains with riddles. It’s a cracking bit of folklore, and the riddle element gives it a playful tension that Elsa leans into. You can feel the room lean forward, waiting to hear whether the captain gets it right.
Then there’s the Ghillie Dhu, the shy little forest elf who guides a lost child home. It’s a softer story, almost tender, and it balances the darker sea‑myth nicely. Kids would love this one — it’s got that storybook quality that sticks.
And that’s worth saying plainly: this is a genuinely good show for children. The myths are vivid, the music lively, and the humour gentle. Nothing drags, nothing gets too heavy, and at around 45 minutes it’s exactly the right length for younger attention spans.
Not everything lands perfectly. The background graphics could do with a bit of work — they’re functional, but they don’t match the richness of the music or the atmosphere of the stories. A more imaginative visual design would lift the whole thing. The scripting, too, could be tighter. A few transitions feel a little loose.
Celtic Tales is warm, friendly, and full of heart. It’s the kind of Fringe show you can take the whole family to without worrying about content or pacing. You get good music, a handful of myths, a bit of laughter, and a couple on stage who clearly enjoy performing together. Sometimes that’s all you need.
★★★★★ To a background of constant shelling noises, we meet Patrick Michael Wolfe, a corporal in the 15th Bantam Battalion of the Notts and Derby Regiment of the British Army. Patrick wasn’t conscripted; he volunteered – at first in his hometown of Dublin, and then in England – but rejected as he didn’t meet the minimum 5ft 3in height requirement.
In Derby, however, he enlisted in the Bantam Battalion. He didn’t join up for the money. Patrick signed up to get Home Rule for Ireland. His comrade, Belfast Billy, a shipyard man joined up to stop it as he thought Home Rule for Ireland meant Rome Rule. Billy, Patrick recalls, was a brave man, the best sergeant he ever had. Despite their political differences, they forged a true comradeship in the trenches of the Western Front.
Michael Hughes, the writer and performer of this powerful play, unearths the hidden history of the forgotten soldiers of the First World War, men who were from five feet tall to those who were five feet, three inches in height. His character tells the story of how they were treated by friend and foe alike; they were given cast-off Boer War or Post Office blue uniforms, issued with ill-fitting boots, catcalled in the street and mocked and jeered as ‘petit soldat’ by the French.
Patrick brings home the grim reality of life and death in the trenches of the Western Front, constant shelling, German snipers, gas attacks, scouting raids, hand-to-hand combat, and his spell in hospital after suffering a wound where he witnesses men go into the operating theatre with two legs coming out with one, none or not coming out at all. The attrition grinds down the battalion. Of the thousand men who joined, only Patrick is left, so the numbers were replenished by men of regular height as most shorter men were unfit for service.
Patrick felt a keen sense of betrayal when news broke of the ‘rebellion in Dublin two years ago in Easter 1916’ – what we know today as the ‘Easter Rising’ – when ‘rebels with German rifles’ declared a Republic. ‘Why,’ he wanted to know, ‘were’t they here with us?’ Dublin was in flames. ‘Our lads fought the rebels and formed firing squads to shoot the ringleaders.’ Wistfully, he says, ‘I wish I didn’t know that.’
The Last Bantam brings home to a modern audience the brutal reality of trench warfare, the survival skills necessary, and the camaraderie that emerges between the men in the middle of the blood and the mud and the constant shelling. It puts a spotlight on the often-contradictory motivations of the men who served, especially those from Ireland.
History has been kind to the Dublin insurrections of 1916 and the Ulstermen of the 36th (Ulster) Division. Not so, the tens of thousands of Irishmen who served in the British Army in that conflict. Until recently, they were regarded at best as a national embarrassment. This play will help redress the balance. It deserves a wider audience.
Getting into Ten Thousand Hours turned out to be almost its own Fringe experience. The approach to Assembly Hall involved what felt like an endless climb — hundreds of steps, a long queue snaking back on itself, and a half‑hour wait before everyone was sent back down again. It wasn’t ideal, and the crowd’s patience was tested, but once inside, the anticipation was unmistakable. A thousand people gathering for the same show creates its own kind of electricity.
The seating process was a little chaotic too, with staff trying to funnel a huge audience into place, but there was also a sense of shared excitement — that familiar Fringe feeling of “we’re all in this together.” And once the lights dropped, the atmosphere shifted immediately. Gravity & Other Myths know how to command a room, and the Main Hall is a big one.
What followed was a display of acrobatic skill that borders on the unbelievable. The performers move with a confidence and precision that makes you forget, for a moment, how dangerous their work actually is. They build human towers, flip through the air, and balance on each other in ways that seem to defy physics. Their timing is immaculate; their strength and stamina are extraordinary. Every sequence is met with a collective intake of breath from the audience — that delicious tension where you wonder if they’ll make the landing, and of course, they do.
There’s a rawness to their work that feels refreshing. It’s not polished in a circus‑gloss way; it’s human, muscular, and honest. You can see the trust between the performers, the tiny adjustments, the shared focus. It’s thrilling to watch.
The show does run long, and some sections begin to repeat the same patterns. A tighter edit would sharpen the impact and keep the momentum at its highest. But even with that, the sheer scale of what they achieve is remarkable. There are moments where you genuinely feel you’re watching something beyond ordinary human capability — a kind of physical storytelling that pushes the limits of what bodies can do.
Despite the logistical hiccups and the slightly extended running time, Ten Thousand Hours is a powerful, exhilarating piece of acrobatic theatre. It’s the sort of show that reminds you why companies like Gravity & Other Myths have earned their reputation worldwide. When they’re at full tilt, they’re breathtaking.
★★★★★ I Made You a Mixtape doesn’t warm up or ease you in — it drops you straight into a full‑tilt 90s dorm blowout. The Triplex is a large room, and Response Theatre Company fills every inch of it with noise, colour and movement. The atmosphere is deliberately chaotic: loud music, bodies in motion, a kind of giddy, high‑energy buzz that feels like the last night before everyone goes their separate ways.
Nine female performers inhabit this imagined college dorm, and the show plays out like a final celebration before adulthood arrives and ruins the fun. They dance, they play games, they tease each other, and they throw themselves into a dance‑off that becomes the heartbeat of the piece. The choreography is genuinely impressive — fast, sharp, and relentless — and the two live musicians give the whole thing a driving pulse that keeps the energy high.
There’s no spoken word at all. Instead, the performers communicate through movement, gesture and rhythm. Occasionally a flip chart appears, offering short written glimpses into what each dancer is dealing with in her life. These little fragments act like diary entries or confessions, grounding the exuberance with hints of real emotional weight.
The Response Theatre Company is led by Christie Lee Manning and based in the UK. They promote and work with female performers to develop “the first Meisner‑based movement theatre practice.” In simple terms, that means the performers aren’t acting in a presentational way — they’re responding to each other truthfully, moment‑to‑moment, using movement instead of dialogue. It’s rooted in instinct, emotional honesty and real‑time reaction, so the choreography feels lived rather than performed.
If you’re someone who prefers quiet theatre, this won’t be your cup of tea. It’s loud, it’s fast, and it’s unapologetically physical. But if you enjoy watching dancers move at speed and don’t mind being swept up in a wave of high‑octane energy, it’s fifty minutes that leaves you buzzing.
★★★★★ There’s something compelling about a performer who can hold a room entirely on his own, and Gay Masseur’s Guide to Happy Endings manages that with a quiet confidence. The American actor
Austin Jennings Boykin is at its centre — athletic, assured, and comfortable with the physical demands of the role — carries the story with a steady, grounded presence. The nudity, when it appears, is handled with a kind of straightforward honesty that suits the subject matter; it never feels like a gimmick, just part of the world he’s creating.
The story itself is interesting, and the format gives it a certain intimacy. A single voice, a single perspective, can draw you in differently from a multi‑character piece. It becomes almost confessional, a guided walk through someone’s experience rather than a dramatic clash of viewpoints. That’s a strength in its own way. You’re not watching characters bounce off each other; you’re watching one person open a door and let you look in.
The room at Greenside was, unfortunately, working against the show — poorly ventilated, uncomfortably hot — and that’s no fault of the performer. In better conditions, I suspect the hour would have felt lighter, more fluid. Even so, he kept the audience with him, which says something about the quality of the performance.
If anything, the piece might benefit from being slightly shorter. Forty‑five minutes could give it a tighter shape, but even at an hour it remains thoughtful and well‑crafted. The writing is good — genuinely good — and while the single‑perspective format naturally limits the kind of dynamism you get from dialogue, it still offers a clear, engaging narrative.
One thing that stood out was the audience: overwhelmingly male. Perhaps the title nudges it that way, but there’s nothing in the material that should restrict its appeal. Women would find plenty here to connect with — the vulnerability, the unusual framing, the personal nature of the story. It’s absolutely something I’d recommend more widely.
It’s a strong, intriguing piece of solo theatre. Well performed, well written, and worth seeing.
★★★★★ Puttana is an intimate, one‑woman interrogation of a life lived at the intersection of desire, commerce and shame. The performance follows a single protagonist — a woman whose public persona and private interiority are braided together — as she moves through a series of encounters, memories and imagined conversattions. The show is structured as a sequence of short, sharp scenes and interior monologues rather than a conventional linear narrative: one moment you’re with her in a room negotiating a transaction, the next you’re inside her head as competing voices argue about agency, guilt and survival.
Technically the piece is built around an immersive headphone score that fractures the action into overlapping layers: external interlocutors, inner voices, and a kind of running commentary that sometimes addresses the audience directly. Beatrice Elena Festi slips between roles — client, confidante, accuser, child of memory — so the plot feels less like a story being told and more like a life being unpeeled. Key beats include confrontations about power and money, flashbacks that reveal how the protagonist learned to commodify herself, and moments of stark vulnerability where nudity and silence are used as ethical provocation rather than spectacle.
Puttana, as performed by Beatrice Elena Festi, doesn’t just ask you to watch — it asks you to account for yourself. The headphones and layered soundscape collapse the distance between performer and spectator, turning what might have been a passive evening into an interrogation of attention: whose voice are you listening to, whose body are you complicit in consuming, and where does empathy end and spectacle begin. Psychologically, that collapse is brilliant; it forces a kind of cognitive dissonance where your instinct to look away meets the theatrical demand to stay present, and that tension is where the piece does its work.
Philosophically, the show stages a conversation about agency and commodification. By foregrounding nudity and explicit power dynamics, Festi reframes vulnerability as a site of political argument rather than mere exposure. The nudity is not gratuitous — it’s a deliberate ethical provocation that asks the audience to examine the systems that turn bodies into transactions, and to recognise how easily spectatorship can become endorsement. In that sense the piece is less about shocking for shock’s sake and more about making visible the moral choices we perform in the dark.
On a human level, the experience is intimate and uncomfortable in equal measure, and that’s the point. You leave slightly unsettled because the show has done what good art should: it has altered the angle from which you see yourself and others. It doesn’t hand you answers; it hands you a mirror, a set of headphones, and the responsibility to decide what to do with the reflection.
Today’s Fringe Special Playlist takes its cue from Rockbeth, the gloriously energetic rock musical that’s been shaking the rafters all week. After last year’s sold‑out, head‑banging debut, the show returns louder, darker and even more deliciously chaotic. It’s Macbeth reimagined as a front‑man teetering between prophecy and self‑destruction, backed by a great band.
What makes Rockbeth such a riot is the way it threads Shakespeare’s tragedy through the spine of classic rock. These songs aren’t just background noise — they’re part of the storytelling. Every riff, every drum break, every howl into the mic pushes Macbeth further down his blood‑red path. So we’ve pulled together the tracks that fuel the show’s energy: the anthems, the warnings, the spells, the swagger.
If you’re heading to the Fringe, we strongly recommend catching Rockbeth in person. It’s part live gig, part Shakespearean breakdown, and all killer. Book quickly as it finishes on the 15th! Tickets here
AC/DC – Thunderstruck
If Rockbeth has a spiritual home, it’s right here. Thunderstruck isn’t just a song — it’s an adrenaline shot. Released in 1990, it became one of AC/DC’s defining stadium anthems, built around Angus Young’s machine‑gun opening riff. The band have said the riff came from Angus “messing around” during rehearsal, but it turned into a track that now signals chaos, triumph, and pure rock theatre. No wonder Rockbeth opens with it: the moment those notes hit, the room belongs to them.
Fleetwood Mac – Black Magic Woman
Before Santana made it famous, Peter Green wrote Black Magic Woman as a blues lament wrapped in superstition and desire. Fleetwood Mac’s original has a smoky, prowling quality — perfect for a show steeped in prophecy and temptation. It’s a song about being drawn to something dangerous and irresistible, which fits Macbeth’s arc a little too well.
Blue Öyster Cult – Don’t Fear the Reaper
A track that has lived several lives: a 1976 soft‑rock hit, a cult classic, and later a pop‑culture icon thanks to Saturday Night Live’s “more cowbell” sketch. Beneath the humour, the song is about accepting fate — stepping toward the inevitable with calm defiance. In Rockbeth, that sentiment lands hard. Macbeth doesn’t fear the reaper; he walks straight into him.
Creedence Clearwater Revival – I Put a Spell on You
Originally written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, CCR’s version turns the song into a swampy, hypnotic growl. It’s obsession set to music — the kind of fixation that blinds a man to consequence. For a story driven by prophecy, manipulation and ambition, this track feels like it was waiting for a Fringe rock musical to claim it.
Stevie Wonder – Superstition
One of the most recognisable riffs in music history. Stevie Wonder wrote it after hearing Jeff Beck experiment with a drum pattern, and the rest fell into place with that unmistakable clavinet groove. The opening line — “Very superstitious, writing’s on the wall” — might as well be Macbeth’s personal warning label. It’s funk, prophecy and doom rolled into one.
Guns N’ Roses – Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
Dylan wrote it; Guns N’ Roses turned it into a soaring, arena‑ready lament. Their version is all wailing guitars and emotional sprawl — a song that feels like someone realising too late that the consequences have arrived. In Rockbeth, it’s the sound of a man who’s run out of road.
The Rolling Stones – Paint It Black
A sitar‑driven descent into grief and madness. Released in 1966, it captured a darker edge of the Stones’ sound, and over the decades it’s become shorthand for spiralling despair. Macbeth’s world turns black long before he realises it — this song simply says the quiet part out loud.
Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen (or King)
A snarling, anti‑establishment anthem that shook Britain in 1977. Banned by the BBC, embraced by the punk movement, and still capable of raising eyebrows. Its inclusion in Rockbeth is a cheeky nod to monarchy, rebellion and the collapse of order — themes Shakespeare mined long before Johnny Rotten spat them into a microphone.
