Edinburgh Fringe | Counter Culture

Posts Tagged Edinburgh Fringe

Culture Vulture 1–7 August 2026

August 1, 2026 at 10:26 am · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews, Radio, Streaming, TV Shows ·Tagged Culture Vulture, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, film, film review, TV reviews, TVGuide

August arrives with culture in abundance. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe opens its doors for another extraordinary month of creativity, the streaming services unveil everything from Jedi adventures to foul-mouthed animated felines, while television ranges from the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the splendour of ancient Rome. Add in Tony Bennett, Frida Kahlo, the Trojan War, the Baltic resistance to Soviet occupation and a clutch of classic films, and there’s scarcely a spare evening left.

Three highlights particularly stand out this week. Tony Bennett Night on BBC Four celebrates one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century. Netflix’s irreverent animated comedy Alley Cats looks set to become an unexpected cult favourite. And, of course, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe gets under way, with Counter Culture once again covering the world’s biggest arts festival.

Saturday 1 August

10.05am – BBC Two – On the Waterfront (1954)

Marlon Brando doesn’t just act in On the Waterfront—he inhabits it. Every gesture, every pause, feels like it’s drawn from the marrow of a man torn between conscience and survival. Elia Kazan’s camera catches that tension like lightning in a bottle, framing the New York docks as both battleground and confessional. The film breathes with the grit of postwar America, where loyalty can be a curse and silence a crime.

Seventy years later, it still hits like a gut punch. Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” isn’t just a line—it’s a lament for every soul who’s ever traded integrity for comfort. The rhythm of the dialogue, the sweat on the faces, the moral weight pressing down—it all feels alive, urgent, human. On the Waterfront endures because it’s not just about corruption; it’s about the fragile courage it takes to stand up when the world tells you to stay down.

That’s cinema at its most raw and righteous—where truth isn’t polished, it’s fought for.

1.50pm – BBC Two – Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Meet Me in St. Louis floats along with that unmistakable MGM glow, but Judy Garland gives it its heartbeat. She doesn’t just shine—she warms the whole frame, as if Minnelli built the film around the way she could turn a simple melody into something that feels like memory itself. There’s a looseness to the storytelling, a gentle drift through seasons and family rituals, yet every scene lands with emotional precision.

Sky Arts showing it on a quiet afternoon feels right. The film moves at the pace of a lived‑in home: laughter in one room, longing in another, and outside, an America shifting under everyone’s feet. Garland anchors it with wit, vulnerability, and that voice—clear as a bell, aching without ever collapsing into sentimentality.

It’s one of MGM’s crown jewels because it understands that nostalgia isn’t soft; it’s sharp, bittersweet, and sometimes brave. A film about family that never pretends families are simple, and a musical that knows songs can carry truths spoken nowhere else.

3.00pm – Sky Arts – The African Queen (1951)

Bogart and Hepburn spark off each other with the kind of chemistry you can’t fake, the sort that feels lived‑in from the first prickly exchange. The African Queen moves with that gentle, old‑Hollywood confidence—John Huston letting the river, the heat, and the sheer absurdity of wartime adventure shape the rhythm of the story. Bogart, all rough edges and weary charm, earns that Oscar not through grandstanding but through the small, human beats: the wry grin, the stubborn grit, the flicker of vulnerability when he realises he’s no longer drifting alone.

Hepburn, sharp as a tack and radiating moral steel, matches him stride for stride. Together they turn a ramshackle boat journey into something tender, funny, and quietly heroic. The film still feels fresh because it understands that courage isn’t always loud—sometimes it’s two mismatched souls deciding to push forward, inch by inch, against a world gone mad.

6.10pm – Film4 – The Martian (2015)

Ridley Scott’s The Martian is that rare blockbuster that makes science feel like poetry. Matt Damon’s stranded astronaut doesn’t just survive—he improvises, jokes, calculates, and refuses to surrender to the void. There’s a rhythm to his resilience, a kind of jazz born of isolation and intellect. Scott directs with a steady hand, balancing the grandeur of space with the intimacy of human ingenuity.

Every frame hums with purpose: the red dust of Mars against the sterile hum of NASA’s control rooms, the heartbeat of hope pulsing through data and duct tape. Damon’s charm keeps the film buoyant, never letting the technical precision drown out the humanity.

It’s not just a survival story—it’s a hymn to problem-solving, to the stubborn spark that refuses to go out. The Martian reminds us that even millions of miles from home, courage and curiosity can still feel like gravity.

8.00pm – Channel 4 – Hitler’s Games: Berlin 1936 in Colour

Using restored colour footage, this documentary revisits the Berlin Olympics but, unfortunately maintains the myths that have grown around them. Those aware of Jesse Owens’ own recollections, particularly regarding race in America and his interactions with Hitler, provide a useful reminder that history is often more nuanced than popular memory and documentary makers allows. Most people are, perhaps, unaware that Germany topped the medal table at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, finishing first overall with 101 medals, including 38 golds — the highest total of any nation at those Games.

9.00pm – Sky History – Troy Story (Episodes 1 & 2)

Archaeologists, historians and classicists investigate one of antiquity’s greatest mysteries: was there really a Trojan War, and if so, where was Troy?

9.15pm – ITV4 – The Long Good Friday (1980)

The Long Good Friday hits like a clenched fist on a pub table—sudden, uncompromising, impossible to ignore. Bob Hoskins doesn’t just play Harold Shand; he detonates him. There’s a volatility in his performance, a swagger that keeps slipping to reveal fear, ambition, and that brittle pride of a man who thinks he’s about to step onto the world stage only to find the floor shifting beneath him.

Watching it now, the film still feels electric. John Mackenzie shoots London as a city on the cusp—old loyalties fraying, new money circling like sharks, the future arriving whether anyone’s ready or not. Hoskins carries all of that in his shoulders, in the way he stalks through rooms, in those sudden bursts of charm that feel like weapons as much as warmth.

Helen Mirren matches him with cool precision, giving the film its moral intelligence. Together they redefine what British crime cinema could be: sharp, political, stylish without ever losing its grit. By the time Hoskins reaches that legendary final scene, every twitch of his face tells a story of a man realising the world has outgrown him. It’s magnificent.

11.45pm – Film4 – Babylon (2022)

Babylon doesn’t tiptoe into Hollywood’s silent era—it charges in, brass blaring, champagne spilling, the whole thing vibrating with Damien Chazelle’s feverish love for the chaos that built the movies. It’s a film that refuses moderation. Every scene feels like it’s been dialled up past the point of good sense, and that’s exactly why it lingers. Chazelle isn’t interested in reverence; he’s interested in the delirium, the sweat, the ambition that made early Hollywood both monstrous and magnetic.

Watching it late at night, it hits differently. The excess becomes hypnotic. Margot Robbie’s wild‑eyed ascent, Diego Calva’s quiet heartbreak, Brad Pitt’s fading‑star melancholy—they all move with different rhythms, clashing and harmonising like a jazz band on the brink of collapse. The film swings between grotesque comedy and aching beauty, sometimes in the same breath.

It’s ambitious to the point of madness, but that’s the point. Babylon is a love letter written in spilled ink and cigarette smoke, a reminder that the birth of cinema was never clean or polite. It was loud, unruly, and utterly unforgettable.

Sunday 2 August

8.00pm – ITV1 – Van der Valk

Van der Valk moves with that cool, unhurried confidence ITV leans on for its primetime crime drama, but Marc Warren gives it the spark. His Amsterdam detective isn’t cut from the usual cloth—there’s a slyness to him, a slightly off‑centre rhythm that keeps you leaning in. He’s sharp, but never showy; weary, but never defeated. Warren plays him like a man who’s seen too much of the city’s underbelly yet still finds something worth fighting for in its canals and backstreets.

A feature‑length case suits the show. It lets the investigation breathe, lets the city become a character in its own right—sleek modern angles rubbing up against old‑world melancholy. The tone is stylish without tipping into gloss, grounded without losing its edge. You feel the pulse of Amsterdam in the way the story unfolds: measured, moody, quietly tense.

It’s the kind of crime drama that doesn’t shout. It trusts atmosphere, character, and Warren’s ability to carry a mystery with a raised eyebrow and a half‑smile.

8.00pm – Channel 4 – Richard E. Grant’s Very Modern Odyssey

Channel 4, he takes Homer’s epic—this ancient, sea‑sprayed cornerstone of storytelling—and treats it not as something to be revered from a distance, but as a living, breathing map of how we still think about journeys, heroism and home.

Grant’s curiosity gives the whole thing its pulse. He wanders through the myth with wide‑eyed enthusiasm, connecting ancient wanderers to modern ones, finding echoes of Odysseus in places you wouldn’t expect. There’s a warmth to his delivery, a sense that he’s inviting you along rather than lecturing from a podium. The show becomes part travelogue, part cultural excavation, part love letter to the stories that refuse to die.

9.00pm – BBC Four – Great Violinists at the Proms

A showcase of remarkable performances from some of the greatest violinists ever to appear at the Proms.

9.00pm – Sky Documentaries – Groomed: The Truth Behind the Lie

A thought-provoking documentary examining one of the most contentious public debates of recent years.

10.05pm – Channel 4 – Erin Brockovich (2000)

Julia Roberts is irresistible here—not just charismatic, but sharp, funny, and utterly relentless. She plays Erin like someone who’s been underestimated her whole life and has finally decided she’s done with that. Every scene carries that crackle of determination, the sense of a woman pushing back against a system that expects her to stay quiet.

Steven Soderbergh keeps the film grounded, letting the real‑life stakes speak for themselves. The small California towns, the legal offices, the kitchen‑table conversations—they all build a world where corporate power feels enormous and personal suffering feels intimate. Roberts threads those two scales together with real grace. She’s the engine of the film, but never the whole story; she listens, absorbs, fights, and refuses to let anyone’s pain be reduced to paperwork.

A reminder that sometimes the most powerful thing in the room is simply someone who won’t back down.

11.40pm – Film4 – Withnail and I (1987)

Withnail and I drifts into the night like a half‑remembered story told over the last drink in a too‑quiet pub. Bruce Robinson’s cult comedy still feels gloriously out of step with the world—shambolic, razor‑sharp, and stitched together with the kind of quotable lines that lodge themselves in your brain for years.

Richard E. Grant’s Withnail is all flailing elegance and doomed bravado, a man performing his own collapse with theatrical flair. Paul McGann’s “I” steadies the film with a gentler melancholy, the straight man who slowly realises that friendship can be both a refuge and a trap. Together they wander through a Britain that seems permanently waterlogged, chasing dignity, booze, and some vague notion of escape.

What catches you off guard, even now, is the poignancy beneath the chaos. The humour is wild, eccentric, often absurd—but the sadness is real, creeping in around the edges until that final speech lands with unexpected weight. It’s a comedy that knows how fragile people can be, and how ridiculous they often are in trying to hide it.

Monday 3 August

8.55pm – PBS America – The Anti-Soviet Fighters
The remarkable story of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian resistance movements that continued fighting Soviet occupation long after the Second World War ended.

10.20pm – BBC Four – Becoming Frida Kahlo

Becoming Frida Kahlo on BBC Four is a richly crafted portrait of an artist whose life refuses to be reduced to myth. The series traces Kahlo’s experiences—her physical pain, her political convictions, her turbulent relationships—and shows how each thread wove itself into the fierce, intimate visual language that made her one of the most recognisable artists of the 20th century. It’s reflective, beautifully paced, and attentive to the emotional and political landscapes she moved through.

And right now, London is giving Kahlo the kind of major platform she hasn’t had in decades. Tate Modern is hosting Frida: The Making of an Icon, a landmark exhibition running 25 June 2026 – 3 January 2027. It’s a substantial show: more than 30 works by Kahlo, alongside photographs, garments, jewellery, personal artefacts, and over 200 pieces by contemporaries and later artists influenced by her.

It’s the first UK exhibition in over twenty years to present Kahlo at this scale, exploring not just her paintings but the construction of her identity, her political commitments, and the global phenomenon of “Fridamania.” If you’re watching the BBC Four documentary and want to see that story unfold in person, Tate Modern is where London is currently telling it.

10.45pm – BBC One – The Mist (2007)

The Mist settles over you slowly, the way real fear does. Frank Darabont takes Stephen King’s tight, unnerving novella and stretches it just enough to let the dread breathe. What begins as a simple supermarket lockdown becomes a pressure cooker—fog outside, panic inside, and that awful realisation that the monsters in the mist aren’t always the ones you should be most afraid of.

Darabont understands group psychology better than most filmmakers. You watch the crowd fracture, cling to false prophets, lash out, and crumble. The film’s rhythm shifts from quiet unease to full‑blown hysteria, and every beat feels horribly plausible. Thomas Jane gives the story its emotional spine, but it’s the ensemble—the terrified, the righteous, the broken—that makes the whole thing feel like a study in how quickly civilisation can thin.

And then there’s that ending. Still one of the most devastating choices in modern horror, not because it’s shocking, but because it’s inevitable in a way you don’t see coming. Late‑night BBC One is the perfect slot for it: a film that leaves you staring at the screen long after the credits roll, wondering what fear does to people when the world stops making sense.

11.05pm – BBC Two – Sing Sing (2023)

Sing Sing is one of those films that doesn’t just move you—it quietly shifts something inside you. At 11.05pm on BBC Two, it arrives with the emotional clarity that late‑night cinema is made for. Colman Domingo leads an extraordinary ensemble, but what makes the film remarkable is how little it relies on conventional sentiment. Instead, it trusts the raw, unvarnished power of creativity—men in a maximum‑security prison discovering that performance can be liberation, connection, even redemption.

Domingo gives a performance that feels lived‑in, patient, and deeply humane. Around him, the cast—many of them formerly incarcerated—bring a truthfulness you simply can’t manufacture. The film’s rhythm is gentle but insistent, building toward moments that feel almost miraculous in their simplicity. It’s one of the most moving pieces of recent American cinema because it never begs for sympathy; it shows transformation happening in real time, through art, trust, and the fragile courage to try.

It’s a film about the possibility of change, and the way creativity can carve out space for dignity even in the harshest of environments.

Tuesday 4 August

9.00pm – Channel 5 – The Victorians with Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman (Catch up via 5 Streaming)

The Victorians with Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman has that lively, hands‑on energy Channel 5 does well when it leans into practical history. Rinder brings sharp curiosity and a knack for asking the questions viewers are already thinking, while Ruth Goodman—always a joy in any historical setting—grounds everything in lived experience. She doesn’t just explain Victorian life; she shows it, tries it, tests it, and makes the era feel tactile rather than distant.

Together they explore a Britain in the midst of transformation: industry reshaping cities, new social rules emerging, domestic life shifting under the weight of progress. The tone is warm, engaging, and full of those small, fascinating details that make the period come alive. Catching up via 5 Streaming suits it perfectly—it’s the kind of programme you dip into and come away knowing something genuinely interesting about how people worked, ate, travelled, and thought during one of the most restless centuries in British history.

9.00pm – U&Gold – Joe and David’s Magical Sitcom Tour (Catch up via NOW)
A nostalgic and affectionate celebration of Britain’s sitcom heritage.

9.00pm – Sky Documentaries – The Salisbury Poisonings: The Spy Next Door (Catch up via NOW)
A compelling account of one of the most audacious espionage operations ever carried out on British soil.

LONDON, UK. March 12, 2019: Olivia Atwood arriving for the TRIC Awards 2019 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London. Picture: Steve Vas/Featureflash

9.00pm – ITV2 – Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection

Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection is sharp, timely television—an unflinching look at the beauty industry’s collision with social media and the relentless pressure to curate perfection. At 9.00pm on ITV2, it’s not just another celebrity documentary; it’s a mirror held up to a culture obsessed with filters, fillers and validation.

Attwood approaches the subject with disarming honesty, using her own experiences to probe the contradictions of modern beauty—how empowerment and insecurity often coexist in the same selfie. The film moves between clinics, influencers and candid conversations, exposing the emotional toll behind the glossy façade.

What makes it compelling is its refusal to sneer or sensationalise. Instead, it asks difficult questions about choice, identity and the price we pay—financially and psychologically—for chasing an ideal that keeps shifting. It’s provocative, empathetic and very much of its moment: a documentary that understands the performance of perfection is never just skin‑deep.

11.05pm – BBC Two – The Last Bus (2021)

The Last Bus is a quiet film, but it carries a weight that creeps up on you. Timothy Spall gives one of his most delicate, inward performances as Tom, a widower travelling the length of Britain with nothing but a bus pass, a small suitcase and a promise he refuses to break. Spall plays him with a kind of worn gentleness—no grand speeches, no theatrics, just a man moving steadily through grief, memory and the landscapes that shaped a life shared with someone he loved.

The road‑movie structure suits the story perfectly. Each stop offers a small human moment: kindness, curiosity, the occasional misunderstanding. These encounters accumulate into something quietly profound, showing how even the simplest journey can become an act of devotion. The film never pushes too hard; it trusts Spall’s face, his silences, and the fragile determination that keeps him moving north.

It’s gentle, deeply moving, and exactly the sort of late‑night BBC Two offering that stays with you long after the credits roll.

Wednesday 5 August

12.55pm – Film4 – Monkey Business (1952)

Monkey Business is pure, unfiltered Marx Brothers mayhem—Howard Hawks giving Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo an ocean liner to run riot on, and then wisely getting out of their way. The plot barely exists, and that’s part of the charm. It’s simply a loose frame on which they hang a relentless barrage of visual gags, verbal acrobatics and beautifully deranged set‑pieces.

Groucho fires off one‑liners with that sly, sideways swagger; Harpo turns the ship into his personal playground of silent chaos; Chico bends language until it squeaks; and Zeppo, as ever, keeps the whole thing just this side of coherent. Hawks directs with a light touch, letting the brothers’ comic instincts dictate the rhythm—fast, silly, and gloriously anarchic.

It’s the kind of film that reminds you how timeless true comic invention is. The jokes don’t date because they’re built on instinct, mischief and sheer audacity. If you need proof that genius survives every era, Monkey Business delivers it with a grin and a horn blast.

4.35pm – Film4 – Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is one of John Huston’s quiet triumphs—a wartime drama that refuses bombast and instead finds its power in restraint, character, and the fragile bond between two people caught in an impossible situation. Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum are superb together, their performances shaped by understatement rather than melodrama. Kerr’s Sister Angela is composed, principled, and gently humorous; Mitchum’s Allison is rough‑edged, loyal, and unexpectedly tender.

Stranded on a Pacific island as war closes in around them, the pair navigate danger with a relationship built not on romance but on mutual respect. Huston lets their connection grow in small gestures, shared silences, and the quiet recognition of each other’s strength. The film’s emotional pull comes from what isn’t said—the dignity of two people holding fast to who they are, even as the world around them collapses.

6.40pm – Film4 – Steel Magnolias (1989)

Steal Magnolias is one of those films that earns its reputation the honest way: through character, warmth and the kind of emotional truth that sneaks up on you. Set largely in Truvy’s Louisiana beauty salon, Dolly Parton presides with that effortless blend of wit and kindness, creating a space where friendship feels like a form of shelter. It’s the hub of the story, a place where lives intersect, jokes fly, and the women who gather there reveal themselves in ways they never could anywhere else.

The ensemble is enviable. Sally Field’s fierce tenderness, Julia Roberts’ luminous charm, Shirley MacLaine’s gloriously sharp humour, Olympia Dukakis’ steel‑backed grace and Daryl Hannah’s gentle vulnerability all mesh into a portrait of Southern womanhood that feels lived‑in rather than stylised. The humour is rich, rooted in character rather than caricature, and the film’s emotional turns land because they’re built on genuine connection.

It balances laughter with heartbreak in a way few films manage. The joy is real, the sorrow earned, and by the time the credits roll you feel as though you’ve spent time with people who matter.

8.00pm – Sky Arts – Voices of the Valleys (Catch up via NOW)
This celebration of the musical traditions of the South Wales Valleys explores the communities, choirs and performers who have helped shape one of Britain’s richest cultural landscapes. Blending performance with personal stories, it is a reminder that music has long been at the heart of Welsh identity and community life.

8.00pm – BBC Four – The Treasures of Ancient Rome: Pomp and Perversion
Mary Beard explores how Roman attitudes towards sex, power and violence found expression in the empire’s extraordinary art. Characteristically, she brings both scholarship and accessibility to a subject often reduced to cliché.

8.55pm – BBC Four – Mary Beard Remembers: Ultimate Rome – Empire Without Limits
A short retrospective in which Mary Beard reflects on her acclaimed 2016 series, discussing what has changed in our understanding of ancient Rome and why it continues to fascinate.

9.00pm – Film4 – Speed (1994)

Speed remains one of the defining action films of the 1990s—lean, muscular, and utterly confident in what it’s doing. At 9pm on Film4, it still feels exhilarating. Keanu Reeves plays Jack Traven with stripped‑back intensity, all focus and forward motion, while Sandra Bullock brings warmth, wit and a grounded charm that makes their pairing instantly likeable. They’re thrown together on a Los Angeles bus rigged with a bomb that will detonate if its speed drops below 50 miles an hour, and the film never lets that tension slacken.

Jan de Bont directs with a precision that keeps everything tight: no flab, no filler, just a series of escalating challenges that push the characters—and the audience—right to the edge. From the opening elevator sequence to the final stretch, it’s paced with such clarity and momentum that you barely have time to breathe. The stunts are practical, the stakes feel real, and the whole thing moves with the kind of clean, propulsive energy modern blockbusters often forget.

9.10pm – BBC Four – Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limits
Beard examines the myths, revolutions and contradictions that shaped the Roman Empire at the height of its power. Rather than presenting Rome as a monolithic civilisation, she reveals a dynamic and often deeply contested world whose influence still reaches into modern politics, law and culture.

10.00pm – BBC Two – The Funeral Home Horror: The Big Cases (Catch up via BBC iPlayer)
One of the year’s most shocking criminal cases comes under the microscope in this concise and sensitively handled documentary. It examines how Hull funeral director Robert Bush was able to deceive grieving families over many years, pleading guilty to 67 offences that included hoarding bodies, selling fraudulent funeral plans and providing relatives with the ashes of strangers instead of their loved ones. The programme gives deserved prominence to the families whose determination has transformed personal tragedy into a campaign for tighter regulation of the funeral industry. Bush’s recent 20-year prison sentence brings a measure of justice, but the wider questions about oversight and public trust remain every bit as important.

10.10pm – BBC Four – I, Claudius (Two Episodes)
The evening concludes with two episodes of one of the BBC’s greatest dramas. Adapted from Robert Graves’ novels, I, Claudius transformed Roman history into gripping television, boasting unforgettable performances from Derek Jacobi, Siân Phillips, John Hurt and Brian Blessed. Nearly half a century later it has scarcely dated.

Thursday 6 August

Talking Pictures TV – The History of Mr. Polly (1948)

The History of Mr. Polly is one of those British classics that feels like it’s been quietly waiting for people to rediscover it. Anthony Pelissier’s 1948 adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel gives John Mills one of his most engaging roles: Alfred Polly, a draper stuck in a life of small disappointments and quiet frustration, who finally decides—after a string of comic mishaps—that he’s had enough. His solution isn’t heroic in the traditional sense; it’s simply the stubborn, hopeful act of reinventing himself.

Mills plays Polly with a wonderfully light touch, blending humour, melancholy and a kind of gentle bewilderment at the world. Pelissier keeps the tone nimble, shifting between satire, poignancy and outright farce without losing the thread of Wells’ affection for ordinary people yearning for something better. The film’s charm lies in its humanity: it understands how small lives can contain big dreams, and how reinvention often begins with a single, slightly ridiculous leap.

It deserves to be better known—a warm, witty slice of post‑war British cinema that still feels fresh in its empathy and its comic spirit.

9.30am – BBC Radio 4 – The Guitar Story

Bob Dylan’s decision to plug in an electric guitar at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966 remains one of rock history’s defining moments, but this series asks a much broader question: why has the guitar become such a potent cultural symbol? Presenter John Wilson explores the instrument’s musical, political and social significance, drawing on contributions from some of the world’s leading guitarists. Insightful, entertaining and rich with musical examples, it promises to strike the right chord with musicians and music lovers alike.

6.45pm – Film4 – The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is a gently dazzling piece of cinema, and at 6.45pm on Film4 it’s exactly the sort of story that rewards settling in and letting its eccentricities wash over you. Benedict Cumberbatch brings warmth, vulnerability and a wonderfully off‑kilter charm to Louis Wain, the Victorian illustrator whose cat paintings—wide‑eyed, colourful, increasingly fantastical—became a cultural sensation. He plays Wain not as a caricature of genius, but as a man whose creativity is inseparable from his emotional fragility, his curiosity and his deep, aching need to make sense of the world.

Claire Foy provides superb support as Emily, his wife and anchor, giving the film its emotional centre. Their relationship is tender without sentimentality, and the film’s most affecting moments come from the quiet devotion between them. Beneath the whimsical visuals and playful tone lies a thoughtful portrait of love, mental health and the ways imagination can both illuminate and overwhelm a life.

It’s visually rich, emotionally generous and quietly haunting—a biographical drama that understands that the line between delight and sorrow is often thinner than we think.

9.00pm – BBC One – Who Do You Think You Are? (Catch up via BBC iPlayer)

Olympic heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson explores her family history, travelling from Liverpool to the Bahamas and Miami, where her father Ricardo was born. As ever, the series combines meticulous genealogical research with powerful personal stories, revealing how individual family histories are often shaped by much broader currents of migration, hardship and resilience.

9.00pm & 10.00pm – Sky Atlantic – Possession (Catch up via NOW)

Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Claudia, a woman of dual heritage whose own identity becomes inseparable from the mystery she has been asked to investigate. Her search takes her from Britain to Hope Hill, a Jamaican plantation inherited following the death of a British aristocrat, where buried family secrets and the enduring legacy of empire begin to emerge. Rich in atmosphere and historical resonance, it promises to combine a compelling mystery with thoughtful exploration of memory, inheritance and identity.

11.05pm – BBC Two – Women Talking (2022)

Women Talking is a film that proves conversation can be as gripping as any physical drama. Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel unfolds almost entirely through dialogue—women in an isolated religious community gathering to decide their future after a profound betrayal. Yet the stillness is charged; every exchange carries weight, urgency and moral complexity.

The ensemble is remarkable. Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy and Frances McDormand each bring a distinct emotional register, creating a chorus of voices wrestling with faith, justice, forgiveness and survival. Polley’s direction is clear‑eyed and compassionate, allowing the women’s arguments, doubts and hopes to shape the film’s momentum.

It’s demanding in the best way—intellectually rigorous, emotionally piercing, and unafraid of silence. But it’s also richly rewarding, a rare film that treats thought, debate and collective decision‑making as acts of courage.

11.40pm – Film4 – Dance with a Stranger (1985)

Dance with a Stranger is a stark, absorbing piece of British cinema, and at 11.40pm on Film4 it lands with the quiet force it’s always had. Miranda Richardson is outstanding as Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain—a performance that’s brittle, magnetic and painfully human. She never plays Ellis as a symbol or a headline; she plays her as a woman caught in a destructive relationship and a society unwilling to see the full truth of her circumstances.

Mike Newell directs with restraint, refusing sensationalism. Instead, he shapes a tragic portrait of obsession, domestic abuse and a justice system on the brink of change. The film’s power lies in its understatement: the violence is never lurid, the emotions never overstated, and the political implications emerge naturally from the story rather than being imposed on it.

It’s a sombre, compelling drama that lingers, not because it shouts, but because it understands how tragedy often unfolds quietly—one bad decision, one cruel moment, one system failing to recognise the complexity of a life.

Friday 7 August

6.40pm – Film4 – Ad Astra (2019)

Ad Astra is James Gray working on an epic canvas while telling a story that’s almost disarmingly intimate. At 6.40pm on Film4, it plays like a slow, steady pulse in deep space. Brad Pitt gives one of his most restrained and quietly affecting performances as Roy McBride, an astronaut whose outward calm masks a lifetime of emotional isolation. His mission—to track down his father at the edge of the solar system—becomes less a sci‑fi quest than a reckoning with absence, abandonment and the cost of holding yourself too tightly together.

Gray treats space not as spectacle but as a vast, echoing metaphor. The film is visually magnificent—lunar chases, drifting debris fields, the cold beauty of Neptune—but every image serves the emotional journey rather than overwhelming it. Pitt anchors the film with a stillness that draws you in, and Tommy Lee Jones, as the father he’s chasing, gives the story its aching centre.

It’s contemplative, atmospheric and quietly powerful, a film that values introspection as much as action and finds its drama in the spaces between people rather than the void between planets.

9.45pm – BBC Four – Tony Bennett Night

Few compliments in popular music carry more weight than Frank Sinatra’s description of Tony Bennett as “the best singer in the business”, and Bennett spent a lifetime justifying it. The evening begins with Tony Bennett at the London Palladium, a 2011 BBC concert featuring effortless performances of classics including The Good Life, alongside memorable duets with Cleo Laine and Leona Lewis.

The celebration continues with all six episodes of Tony Bennett Sings, his 1979 BBC series devoted to the Great American Songbook, before concluding with Tony Bennett’s New York (1996), an affectionate profile reflecting on his remarkable career and lifelong relationship with the city that shaped him. A fitting tribute to one of the twentieth century’s greatest interpreters of popular song.

28 Days Later still hits with the jolt it had in 2002. Danny Boyle took the zombie film—shambling, familiar, a bit creaky by that point—and detonated it. His vision of a deserted, hollowed‑out Britain is as unsettling as ever: empty motorways, silent cities, danger lurking in every shadow. The horror is visceral and fast, driven by the now‑iconic “rage” infected who move with terrifying speed, but the film’s real power comes from its atmosphere of abandonment and unease.

Cillian Murphy’s emergence from a coma into a devastated London remains one of the great opening sequences of modern horror, and Boyle keeps the pace furious without sacrificing thoughtfulness. The film asks what society becomes when its structures collapse, and what people become when survival is the only currency left.

It’s fast, furious and unexpectedly reflective—a defining horror film of the twenty‑first century, and still one of the most influential.

11.05pm – BBC Two – Hoard (2023)

Hoard is an emotionally raw and quietly unsettling debut, the kind of film that doesn’t chase conventional storytelling but instead follows the strange, jagged paths grief can carve through a life. At 11.05pm on BBC Two, it feels exactly right for late‑night viewing: intimate, off‑kilter, and lingering.

The film explores memory, loss and the coping mechanisms people build—sometimes tender, sometimes troubling—to survive what they can’t fully articulate. Its structure is unconventional, shifting between past and present with a dreamlike logic that won’t appeal to everyone, but that very looseness gives it its power. It’s less about plot than about emotional texture, the way trauma embeds itself in objects, habits and relationships.

What stays with you is its honesty. It doesn’t tidy grief into something neat or redemptive; it shows how messy, strange and deeply human it can be.

11.50pm – Film4 – Last Night in Soho (2021)

Last Night in Soho is Edgar Wright at his most visually seductive and tonally unsettling. At 11.50pm on Film4, it’s a perfect late‑night watch: stylish, eerie and steeped in nostalgia that slowly curdles into something darker. Wright blends psychological horror with a time‑slip fantasy that pulls a modern‑day fashion student, played with fragile intensity by Thomasin McKenzie, into the neon‑lit glamour of 1960s Soho.

What begins as a dream of Swinging London becomes a nightmare as she becomes entangled with the life of Anya Taylor‑Joy’s mesmerising singer, whose confidence and allure mask a story of exploitation and fear. Wright recreates the period with loving detail—music, colour, fashion, atmosphere—then twists it, revealing the shadows beneath the shimmer.

It’s melancholy as much as frightening, a thriller driven by mood, memory and the danger of idealising the past. McKenzie and Taylor‑Joy are excellent, anchoring a film that’s as emotionally haunting as it is visually dazzling.

2.10am – Film4 – Sick of Myself (2022)

Sick of Myself is a wickedly funny and deeply uncomfortable satire—one of those films that makes you laugh even as you wince. At 2.10am on Film4, its bite feels even sharper. The Norwegian black comedy follows a young woman so consumed by narcissism and the hunger for attention that she embarks on increasingly extreme, self‑destructive schemes to stay in the spotlight.

The film skewers modern performative culture with fearless abandon. It’s provocative, frequently outrageous, and unafraid to push its protagonist into territory that’s both absurd and painfully recognisable. The humour is razor‑sharp, the social commentary brutal, and the escalation of her behaviour both horrifying and hilarious.

Uncomfortable, provocative and often laugh‑out‑loud funny, it stands as one of the sharpest social comedies of recent years—an audacious portrait of self‑obsession taken to its logical, disastrous conclusion.

Streaming

Prime Video (available now)
Marty Supreme
One of the week’s biggest streaming arrivals, Marty Supreme comes with plenty of anticipation and a cast to match. Whether you’re drawn by the performances or simply curious to see what the buzz is about, it’s likely to dominate conversations over the coming weeks.

Prime Video (available now)
Masters of the Universe
Eternia returns in a new adaptation of one of popular culture’s most enduring fantasy franchises. Sword-and-sorcery spectacle, colourful heroes and larger-than-life villains remain the order of the day, promising nostalgic pleasure for those who grew up with He-Man while introducing the mythology to a new generation.

HBO Max (available now)
President Curtis
The Rick and Morty universe continues to expand with this spin-off centred on the perpetually exasperated President Andre Curtis, once again voiced by Keith David. Faced with mysterious crashes and increasingly bizarre threats, Curtis has to keep the country together while the absurdity around him spirals ever further out of control.

Monday 3 August – Acorn TV
The Chelsea Detective – Series 4 (weekly episodes)
Adrian Scarborough returns as DI Max Arnold, with Vanessa Emme as DS Layla Walsh, for another run of elegant murder mysteries hidden behind Chelsea’s immaculate façades. The opening investigation centres on the death of an undercover journalist looking into a celebrity fashion guru.

Wednesday 5 August – Disney+
Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi (all eight episodes)
One of the most acclaimed entries in Star Wars: Visions expands into a full series as Kara continues her Jedi training under Margrave Juro. A new generation of Jedi sets out to rescue her father while confronting a mysterious Sith leader. It promises the visual flair and imaginative storytelling that made the original such a standout.

Wednesday 5 August – Prime Video
Sterling Point (all six episodes)
A coming-of-age drama following young adults navigating friendship, ambition and uncertain futures. If it fulfils its promise, this should be a warm, emotionally honest addition to the genre.

Friday 7 August – Netflix
Alley Cats (all six episodes)
Cat lovers have an extra reason to tune in this week. Ricky Gervais is among the creative forces behind this gleefully foul-mouthed adult animation, following cynical Gus, uncouth Fang, disgusting Puke and gloriously dim Olive as they roam the streets causing mayhem while mocking their pampered feline friend Ponts. Everything changes with the arrival of a lost kitten, giving the gang an unexpected shared purpose.

The premise is classic sitcom, but the semi-improvised dialogue feels closer to a wonderfully chaotic comedy podcast, veering into discussions about death, religion and whether honeybees are underachieving. Packed with colourful language and episodes running comfortably under half an hour, this unapologetically adult cartoon could become one of the year’s surprise comedy hits.

Leaving Soon

BBC iPlayer (until Thursday)
Great Expectations (1946)
David Lean’s magnificent adaptation of Dickens remains the definitive screen version. Beautifully photographed, superbly acted and rich in atmosphere, it is well worth revisiting while it’s still available.

Radio

Sunday 2 August

1.30pm – BBC Radio 4 – Britain’s Robot Army
Former Army officer Will Robson examines how drones, autonomous systems, laser weapons and artificial intelligence are transforming the economics of modern warfare. As armed forces around the world rethink the balance between manpower and machines, he asks what tomorrow’s battlefield might look like and what these technological changes could mean for Britain’s defence strategy. Timely, thought-provoking and likely to raise as many questions as it answers.

9.00pm – Boom Radio – Sir Tim Rice’s Legacy Tracks
Who comes to mind when you hear Good Vibrations or Baker Street? The Beach Boys and Gerry Rafferty, naturally—but what about Paul Tanner, whose prototype electro-theremin gave Good Vibrations its otherworldly sound, or Raphael Ravenscroft, whose unforgettable saxophone solo transformed Baker Street into an all-time classic? Sir Tim Rice shines a welcome spotlight on the gifted musicians, arrangers and innovators who so often remain in the shadows. Beautifully assembled, the programme is packed with fascinating stories behind classics including Yesterday, Telstar and even the Doctor Who theme. For anyone who loves the craft behind great records, this is an absolute treat.

Wednesday 5 August

3.30pm – BBC Radio 4 – The Ocean Within Us
A fascinating exploration of one of the most intriguing medical discoveries of recent years. Prompted by the publication of a landmark 2018 scientific paper, this programme examines the interstitium—a fluid-filled network of microscopic spaces surrounding our organs, joints and connective tissues that appears to function as a previously unrecognised organ. Researchers are increasingly linking it to wound healing, regulation of the body’s internal clock and the way cancer spreads between tissues. Complex science is made accessible in what promises to be an absorbing listen for anyone interested in medicine and the frontiers of human biology.

Thursday 6 August

9.30am – BBC Radio 4 – The Guitar Story
Bob Dylan’s decision to plug in an electric guitar at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966 remains one of popular music’s defining moments, but this series asks a much broader question: why has the guitar become such a potent cultural symbol? Presenter John Wilson explores the instrument’s musical, political and social significance, drawing on contributions from some of the world’s leading guitarists. Insightful, entertaining and rich with musical examples, it promises to strike the right chord with musicians and music lovers alike.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe (7–31 August)

The term “Fringe” was coined in 1947 when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the newly created Edinburgh International Festival and staged their own performances on the margins of the official programme. From those gloriously independent beginnings, the Fringe has grown from the city’s alternative sideshow into its cultural crown jewel, while also serving as Britain’s closest equivalent to an off-Broadway proving ground, where new shows are tested, careers are launched and tomorrow’s hits are born.

Here at Counter Culture, we’ve been building up to the festival for weeks with a series of interviews featuring performers from across this year’s programme. Once the Fringe gets under way, we’ll have three reporters on the ground in Edinburgh, bringing you interviews, reviews, features and daily updates throughout the month.

More than 3,600 productions are expected this year, encompassing everything from major comedy names and ambitious new drama to live podcast recordings, music, cabaret, dance and more reimagined Shakespeare than you could shake a bodkin at. Choosing a single highlight from this megalodon of a festival would be impossible, so instead here is a small selection of interviews with performers with productions that have particularly caught my eye.

00:45:00 – Five Walk In. One Walk Out. The Audience Decides.

Kate Butch: Camp, Chaos and Kindness at the Fringe

John‑Luke Roberts: Running, Talking, and Twisting Comedy Into New Shapes

Elton Reimagined: Jess Robinson’s Joyful, Bonkers, Brilliant Tribute

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00:45:00 – Five Walk In. One Walk Out. The Audience Decides.

July 30, 2026 at 9:25 am · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, Theatre ·Tagged 0:45:00, audience participation, Contemporary Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe, experimental theatre, Fringe 2026, immersive theatre, Katie Gaven, TheSpaceUK

Five people walk into a room, and only one will make it out alive. The clock is running, the rules are brutal, and the audience isn’t allowed to sit comfortably in the dark.

This is a real‑time experiment led by a scientist who wants to know whether one person’s life can ever be worth more than another’s — and what happens when ordinary people are pushed to make that decision. It’s a story about spectators who discover they’re participants, about the moment when watching becomes acting, and about the uncomfortable truth that complicity is rarely abstract.

The playwright behind 00:45:00, Katie Gaven, understands that moral pressure isn’t a gimmick — it’s a provocation. Here, she talks about how the idea formed, why she wants audiences to feel implicated, and how the show has transformed on its journey to the Edinburgh Fringe.

When did the premise of five people entering a room and only one leaving stop being a dramatic device and start becoming a moral experiment you wanted to run on an audience?

The dramatic premise came to me pretty quickly once I knew I wanted to write a psychological thriller, and the decision to turn it into a social or moral experiment developed hand in hand with that. I’ve always loved the horror genre, especially psychological horror, and a lot of the material that inspired me was told through digital mediums — Alice in Borderland, Black Mirror, Squid Game.

That made me ask myself: if I’m going to work in this genre, why tell it through live theatre? The thing I love most about theatre is the way it connects people. So it made sense that the experiment should involve the audience directly.

The show asks whether one life can ever be “worth more” than another. Do you see that as a provocation, or as a question we all quietly answer every day without admitting it.

Honestly, I think it can be both. Weighing one life against another is not something we like to think about day to day. Putting people in that spot is tricky — you can lose the trust of an audience if you mishandle it.

But I also believe one of our best human qualities is empathy, the kind that ignites us to fight and advocate for others. That’s what I wanted to experiment with. It’s a question I’ve asked our audiences to think about, and I hope we can all try to make sense of it together.

Immersive theatre often lets audiences hide behind the novelty of participation. You seem to be doing the opposite — forcing them to confront complicity. What made you want to push them into that uncomfortable territory.

It’s a hard balance, and I’m still figuring it out. One of the main things I’m discovering through new drafts and conversations is that there’s actually positivity in acknowledging complicity. When we treat that acknowledgment as a victory — a step in the right direction — it becomes easier to inspire ourselves and others to do more.

Complicity is difficult to reckon with in everyday life. I think it’s good to be reminded of it, prodded to engage with it. It’s something I’m still unpacking within myself.

You explore corruption of power and the temptation to look away from injustice. Were there particular moments — political, personal, global — that made you realise this was the story you needed to tell now.

There are so many things that factored into it. The world feels full of terrifying injustices, and while media can be a tool, it can also be desensitizing. We see horrible acts of violence and political injustice every day, and I often feel horrible but also powerless — unsure how I can personally make a difference.

I consider myself privileged, and I never want that to become an excuse to disengage. I feel desperate to actively engage in these conversations and hold myself accountable. This play is an attempt at searching for that action.

The piece was first produced at UNCSA and is now leaping to the Fringe. How has the show changed as it moved from a university environment to an international stage.

OMG it has changed so. freaking. much. We did our first production at my university in a very controlled environment, got incredibly helpful feedback, and were insanely fortunate to be supported by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and fiscally sponsored by Producer Hub.

The play has gone through new drafts, more audience feedback, and a total transformation thanks to the financial support that allowed us to collaborate with amazing artists — our publicist Rosaline Hodgetts, lighting designer Miles Goldsmith, and many more. I can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on.

You’re a six‑time published playwright with recognition from Scholastics, The Blank Theatre, and California Young Playwrights. Does 00:45:00 feel like a continuation of your earlier work, or a rupture — a new artistic chapter.

This is definitely a new artistic chapter. Believe it or not, I’m mostly known as a comedic writer, so working on this play has been a new and vulnerable experience. I’ve never been so scared or excited for a play before. Experimenting with this genre has taught me so much, and I’m excited to see how it influences me as an actor, writer, and director.

Audience participation can be gimmicky if mishandled. How do you ensure the involvement here isn’t a trick, but a genuine ethical pressure point.

For us, it’s important to keep our end goal in mind. If we believe the audience participation is important and impactful, the audience will believe that too.

We’re specific about what success looks like for each character so we understand how participation affects their journey. Most interaction is between the audience and Dr. Wilison, so establishing her objective from the moment she welcomes the audience is crucial. Every bit of participation gets her closer to her goal, and treating those interactions as integral makes them feel genuine.

The show is supported by the Kenan Institute and fiscally sponsored by Producer Hub. Did that backing give you freedom, or sharpen your sense of responsibility.

It definitely sharpened our sense of responsibility. This has been a huge learning experience in balancing collaboration, and I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity.

There’s no way we could’ve done this without the financial support and collaboration from the Kenan Institute and Producer Hub. Getting new work onto the stage is a huge challenge, and for most young playwrights it would be impossible without this kind of help. We feel unbelievably lucky and are doing everything we can to make them proud.

Your cast comes from varied backgrounds — film, theatre, dance, visual art. How did those different artistic languages shape the tension inside the room.

It helps that we all come from the same training program, so we share the same acting vocabulary. I’m an actress first and then a writer, so connecting with the cast as a director through familiar techniques has been great.

At the same time, being multifaceted artists helps us collaborate. Each person brings unique skills. Our best days are when we embrace our different approaches and use them intentionally to build a cohesive world.

Fringe audiences are famously game for risk, but they’re also saturated with choice. What do you hope they walk out carrying — adrenaline, discomfort, clarity, or simply a question they can’t un‑ask.

Absolutely a question they can’t un‑ask. I want this to spark conversation. I don’t know the answers to the questions I’m asking — I want to learn through others.

I also hope to inspire actionable activism instead of passivity. I wrote this play because I’m still unsure how to create change, but I believe the first step is recognizing you want to get involved and engaging in conversations to figure out how.

We hope people interested in those discussions will come see us at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — August 17–22 at thespaceUK @ Surgeon’s Hall (Stephenson Theatre) and August 24–28 at thespaceUK @ Venue 45. Join us for an experiment you won’t forget.

Buy tickets here

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Kate Butch: Camp, Chaos and Kindness at the Fringe

July 27, 2026 at 6:33 pm · Filed under Comedy, Drag, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged A Kate in the Hand is Worth Two in the Butch, Comedy 2026, Drag Comedy, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Kate Butch, LGBTQ+ Comedy, Pleasance King Dome

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Kate Butch doesn’t just do drag — she weaponises wordplay. Her Fringe show titles are gloriously bad puns elevated to high art, and A Kate in the Hand is Worth Two in the Butch might be her most audacious yet. Beneath the camp and chaos, there’s a performer who knows exactly how to turn silliness into sincerity. This year, she’s blurring the line between persona and person, sequins and soul, glamour and grit — all while reminding us that kindness can be just as radical as comedy.

Your show titles are always deliciously cheeky. What’s the story behind this one?

I’ve always been fascinated by proverbs and idioms, so when I realised I could shoehorn my name into one then I was thrilled! I adore a really clunky title in a Fringe show, where the pun is so garishly bad it loops back round into being genius (Glenn Moore and Joe Lycett are the masters of this genre). My first show was the ridiculously titled Kate If You Wanna Go Butcher, so I think this one is an improvement.

Drag comedy is a space where identity, satire, and joy collide. What’s the collision point in this show?

I think it’s in the parts where the persona slips a little, and you get a glance at the person underneath the sequins. I’ve always tried to keep a firm divide between my on‑ and off‑stage identities, but with this show I’m going to blur that line a little.

You’ve built a persona that’s both glamorous and chaotic. What’s the moment where that duality shines?

‘Glamorous’ is VERY generous, thank you! There’s a moment where the chaos descends somewhat into violence (and that’s all I’m giving away!), but don’t worry — I look proper fit while it happens.

What’s the cultural itch you’re scratching this year?

I’m being more creative with my meal‑deal choices.

Drag is political even when it’s not trying to be. What’s the quiet political thread in this show?

I think the overarching theme is kindness, and remembering to be kind to others and, possibly more importantly, yourself. To stand in your power and not take any shit from anyone, which is still a lesson I’m trying to learn.

Pleasance crowds can be rowdy. What energy do you want them to bring?

I love an audience that’s up for it. Edinburgh can be exhausting, for both performers and audiences, so anyone that can bring some hype to my show will get it returned back to them in spades. My advice to an audience is not to pack in as many shows as humanly possible — you’ll knacker yourself before 5 PM and then each show after that will feel like a slog. Take a break. Get a macaroni pie.

What’s the joke or bit that always gets you laughing, even in rehearsal?

There’s a photo of me that is used in the show which I think is so funny. If anyone asks me how the show is going I just show them that picture, and it somehow depicts EXACTLY how I am feeling at any one moment. I might sell prints of it afterwards.

What’s the costume moment you’re most excited about?

Honestly? The fact that I don’t have to wear the same thing every day. For previous shows I’ve had the ONE show costume, which is usually made of something very much not machine‑washable, and by the end of the run it could probably get up and walk away. Being able to perform the show without having to worry about how much Febreze I have left, or the 4D aromatic experience I’m inflicting on the audience, is very liberating.

If someone walks in expecting pure camp, what deeper thing might they find?

I hope that there’s a very human side to the show, and that despite the very specific‑to‑me stuff I am talking about, there’ll be a thread that anyone can relate to. They’ll also get to see me do some manual labour, so there’s that.

What’s inspiring you right now — drag, music, pop culture, or something stranger?

TikToks of people falling over. Timeless.

Kate Butch: A Kate in the Hand is Worth Two in the Butch 🎭 Pleasance King Dome | Edinburgh Fringe 2026 🕗 8 PM | Buy tickets here

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John‑Luke Roberts: Running, Talking, and Twisting Comedy Into New Shapes

July 27, 2026 at 5:56 pm · Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, John-Luke Roberts, Monkey Barrel Comedy, Stand‑up Comedy, What I Talk About When I Run About Talking

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John‑Luke Roberts has always been one of the Fringe’s great experimenters — a comic who treats absurdity as both art form and philosophy. His new show, What I Talk About When I Run About Talking, takes that impulse and runs with it, literally and metaphorically. It’s part stand‑up, part linguistic labyrinth, part existential sprint. Roberts has built a reputation for turning nonsense into meaning and meaning into nonsense, often in the same breath.

We talked about mortality, mechanics, and the strange joy of chasing ideas until they collapse laughing.

Your show titles always feel like riddles, jokes, and philosophical puzzles at the same time. What unlocked this one for you?

Haruki Murakami wrote a book called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and it’s a really good title, isn’t it? I think Murakami wrote it as a play on Raymond Carver’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Love, and must have thought, “That’s a really good title, I’m having that.” Anyway, I was playing around with it in my head and made myself laugh by saying, “What I Talk About When I Run About, Talking,” and then thought, “I’m having that.” When I started building a show that was more stand‑uppy and verbal than my other shows, I thought the title was a good fit. Once I attached it, I tried to make the show feel like the title.

You’ve built a reputation for bending comedy into strange shapes. Has there been a moment where you thought, “This might be too weird… even for me”?

That’s a really interesting question. I think the only thing that’s stopped me doing something is trying it out and it not getting a laugh. Once I’d dressed as my dead‑dad‑dressed‑as‑a‑vampire and performed naked as Mediaeval Poet Geoffrey Chaucer, I’ll give any stupid or weird idea a go. These days I’m more careful about emotional risks. I used to be quite devil‑may‑care about trauma‑dumping on stage or putting myself through unprocessed emotional stuff, and I’m very wary of that now.

Running and talking — two acts of escape. Did one inspire the other, or did they collide by accident?

They can be, but you can also run and talk in circles, which can feel like escape but actually trap you. I just took the title from Murakami and jiggled it, but as it happens the show is partly about escaping and trapping yourself.

You often smuggle big ideas into silly moments. What’s the idea you’re wrestling with this year?

I had a big health scare in November, so the show has a lot about mortality in it. Beyond that, it’s about identity and about words. I don’t want to over‑explain it, but I got some really helpful notes from Lara Ricote the other day, and we worked out it’s about identity and “the edges of things.” Hope that helps. But yes, also, it is silly.

Monkey Barrel has become a home for comics who like to experiment. What does that room give you that others don’t?

First and foremost, it gives me a decent split of the ticket sales. Beyond that, being at Monkey Barrel works as a stamp of approval for comedy audiences — it helps get people in because they think, “He must be all right, he’s on at Monkey Barrel.” I always feel looked after there; it’s run by people who really like and understand comedy.

How much of this show is meticulously planned, and how much is you letting chaos in through the side door?

This time round it’s pretty meticulously planned. Within each routine I give myself leeway to improvise or play around the theme. There’s no audience participation in this one, so chaos can’t really come in that way. But honestly, even when I did a lot of audience participation, I could be 95 percent sure of what they’d do anyway.

You’ve always been interested in the mechanics of comedy. What’s the new structural gamble you’re playing with?

Genuinely, it’s trying to do a straightforward conversational stand‑up show. I’ve had a rule for myself that whenever a tricksy ending or puzzle‑box structure offered itself up, I’d go the other way. I think I’ve done that, and I really like how the show plays.

Fringe audiences arrive exhausted, overwhelmed, or over‑stimulated. What do you hope they leave your show carrying?

I hope they leave energised, laughing, and thinking a bit. I hope the ideas ricochet around their heads for a while and intermingle with their own.

Comedy is changing — fast. What do you think live performance still does better than anything else?

Bringing people together and fostering human connection. I hope — and I think — that as generative AI starts poisoning all the digital wells, people will treasure the humanness and authenticity of live performance even more. Comedy is all about social bonding and laughing with other people, so the best place to watch it is in a room full of them.

What’s feeding your brain right now — books, music, obsessions — that’s quietly shaping the show?

I’ve been listening to a lot of Modest Mouse — a band you’d think I liked, but I’ve only just started. I’m watching a lot of stand‑up specials and finding exciting things in the form I hadn’t noticed before. I’ve been watching quite a few American specials and started thinking about them differently. Generally, a UK stand‑up hour has a unifying theme or story; a US hour is often a series of bits. I used to think, “Why can’t they put the work in to finish their shows?” but now I see them more like albums — a series of tracks that the audience draws associations between, or not. You can take an audience to a really satisfying place that way.

John‑Luke Roberts: What I Talk About When I Run About Talking 🎭 Monkey Barrel Comedy | Edinburgh Fringe 2026 🕐 Times vary | Buy tickets here

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Elton Reimagined: Jess Robinson’s Joyful, Bonkers, Brilliant Tribute

July 27, 2026 at 5:19 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, Music ·Tagged Assembly George Square Gardens, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Elton John, Elton Reimagined, Jess Robinson

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Jess Robinson has never been content to simply imitate. She transforms. Whether she’s channeling divas, pop icons, or political figures, Robinson’s work is about reinvention — finding the emotional truth inside the performance. Her new Fringe show, Elton Reimagined, takes one of music’s most flamboyant legends and rebuilds him through a kaleidoscope of voices. It’s cabaret, comedy, and confession rolled into one glitter‑drenched hour.

We talked about voice, vulnerability, and the joy of going all‑in.

Elton John is a towering musical figure. What made you want to pull him apart and rebuild him?

Partly because I love him, and partly because I was curious. I’ve spent my whole career asking, “What if?” What if Barbra Streisand sang this? What if Kate Bush got hold of that? What if somebody looked at a familiar song through a completely different lens? Elton’s catalogue is so rich that it can survive being stretched, twisted and reimagined. The songs are incredibly well written — you can take them a long way from the originals and they still stand up.

You’re known for vocal precision. What’s the hardest Elton vocal trick to nail?

Oddly enough, it’s not really Elton’s voice. I don’t do men… well, not in that way. The challenge is finding the point where Elton disappears and somebody else arrives. People think impressions are about getting the voice right, but they’re actually about making hundreds of tiny decisions — where someone places a vowel, how they shape a phrase, how much breath they use. It’s like being a vocal detective. And because these are songs people know so well, the audience can tell instantly if you’ve got it wrong.

Cabaret lets you play with theatricality. What’s the moment in this show where you go full spectacle?

Lady Gaga performing Crocodile Rock definitely qualifies. Without giving too much away, there’s a point where I look at myself and think, “Well, this escalated quickly.” The audience is swept along in total giddiness.

Elton’s music is emotional, flamboyant, and deeply personal. Which song unlocked the show for you?

Your Song. I know that’s a slightly obvious answer, but there’s a reason it’s become such a classic — it’s deceptively simple. Once I found a version that felt fresh and personal, I suddenly understood what the whole show was trying to be. Everything else grew from there.

You’ve always blended comedy with musicianship. How do you keep both in balance without one overpowering the other?

For me, the music always comes first. The comedy invites people in, but the music has to earn its place. I never want the audience to think, “That was a funny impression.” I want them to think, “Wow, that’s so clever,” or “[sniff] — I didn’t expect to feel something there.” The biggest compliment is when people laugh one minute and find themselves unexpectedly moved the next. That’s the sweet spot.

What’s the unexpected angle on Elton that audiences won’t see coming?

How vulnerable he is. We tend to think of Elton as the glasses, the costumes, the confidence and the huge personality. But underneath all that, there are songs about loneliness, longing, heartbreak, insecurity and survival. The older I get, the more interesting I find that side of him.

Cabaret crowds are wonderfully chaotic. What’s the energy you hope they bring?

Everything I had in mind when I created the show — abandon, joy, playfulness, curiosity, and a willingness to come with me. There are moments where people think they know where we’re heading and then suddenly we’re somewhere completely different. The best audiences are the ones who surrender to the journey a bit. Also, laughing in the right places and standing ovations never hurt.

What’s the costume, prop, or musical flourish you’re most excited about?

Probably the fact that we’ve gone all in. There’s no point doing Elton by halves. There are feathers, surprises, glorious new arrangements I made with Matthew Floyd Jones, and a fun but mildly terrifying moment with a washing line and 25 quick‑fire impressions picked on the spot by the audience.

If Elton himself walked in, what moment would you want him to see?

Barbra Streisand singing I’m Still Standing — it’s an emotional rollercoaster. It’s camp and musically clever. And then he can stay for the finale. Not because it’s the biggest moment, but because it’s where all the threads come together. It’s joyful, emotional, slightly bonkers and completely sincere — which feels quite Elton, actually.

What’s feeding your creativity right now — albums, artists, obsessions?

At the moment I’m in one of those lovely periods where several creative worlds are colliding. Earlier this year I published my book Life is Rosi, which tells the parallel stories of my grandmother and me through our diaries at the age of twenty‑three. I’m exploring whether that might become a stage show or a film, which is exciting. I’m also recording my favourite reinterpretations from Elton Reimagined for an album release — and the fact that it’s coming out on vinyl makes me disproportionately happy. There’s something wonderfully tangible and romantic about vinyl that feels right for these songs. Beyond that, I’m always fascinated by voice, storytelling and transformation. Whether it’s a song, a character, a memoir or an impression, I’m interested in what happens when you take something familiar and look at it from a completely different angle. In fact, I also have a TED Talk coming up in September, which I’ll be honing and rehearsing during the Edinburgh Festival.

Jess Robinson: Elton Reimagined 🎭 Assembly George Square Gardens | Edinburgh Fringe 2026 🕗 7:30 PM | T

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Eleanor Morton: Diving Deep with The Mermaid

July 27, 2026 at 4:38 pm · Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Eleanor Morton, Monkey Barrel, The Mermaid

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Eleanor Morton’s The Mermaid dives headfirst into myth and modernity, blending folklore, feminism, and absurd humour. The show follows a self‑aware mermaid navigating the contradictions of beauty, desire, and identity — part stand‑up, part storytelling, part social satire. Morton, known for her sharp wit and surreal imagination, uses the mythical creature as a mirror for how women are seen, shaped, and sometimes submerged by culture.

We spoke with her about mythology, body politics, and finding comedy in the deep end.

A mermaid at the Fringe — myth meets modernity. What drew you to this creature as a lens for comedy?

I discovered when I was working on Haunted House, my 2024 show about ghosts, that it’s much easier to structure a show around something you love talking about rather than trying to write the jokes first. I love mythology and history and folklore, and mermaids also feel very modern — they’re still a hugely popular symbol, something little girls want to be. You can even become a professional mermaid and spend your day in a silicon tail waving at tourists. Mermaids are timeless symbols of what it means to be human, and there’s so much comedy in that.

Your work often blends surrealism with sharp social commentary. Where does this show sit on that spectrum?

That’s a good way to describe it — half‑weird, half‑serious. I’d say it sits squarely in the middle. Even if I tried to write something purely fantastical, my cynical side would creep in. Mermaids are beautiful and fun, but they’ve also always been used as social commentary, especially about women. In the 16th century Mary Queen of Scots was depicted as a mermaid in graffiti, symbolising her supposed loose morals — ironic, because mermaids don’t actually have sex. The sea and its creatures are endlessly fascinating, and mermaids have a dark past tied to politics. Basically, my motto is: if you’re not laughing, you’re learning.

Scotland has a long tradition of folklore. Did any particular myth feed into this show?

Originally I had a whole bit about selkies — the Scottish mythical creature that turns from a seal into a beautiful woman — but it had to get cut for time. We’ve got lots of watery creatures: selkies, kelpies, which are river‑dwelling horses that drown people, and obviously Nessie. My favourite is the Blue Men of the Minch, blue mermen who cause storms and shipwrecks.

You’re brilliant at creating characters who feel both absurd and painfully real. Who is your mermaid?

She’s me — someone who always wanted to be a mermaid when I was younger, even though I didn’t really enjoy swimming or the sea. It’s about the dichotomy between the sexy Ariel‑like mermaids of pop culture and the ugly, darker ones of myth, and how both shape how we see women: what we think we should be versus what we really are.

What’s the moment in the show where the surreal cracks open and something true slips out?

I talk a lot about how men see women, and how mermaids symbolise that. Patriarchal culture loves to see women as either Madonnas or Whores, and mermaids float between those ideas. They lure sailors to their deaths but they’re also pretty and demure. I link that to how men are taught not to trust women — especially beautiful women — because secretly, underneath it all, women are monsters. It’s also an excuse to do jokes about the manosphere and women having crushes on weird cartoon characters.

You’ve always had a knack for political undercurrents. What’s the quiet political heartbeat of this show?

Probably the idea that women are expected to be one thing instead of a multitude, and how much our bodies are used against us. I grew up in the mid‑2000s — a terrible time for body image as a girl. I talk about how disconnected we are from our own bodies and how culture relies on that disconnection to keep us insecure and buying stuff.

The Fringe can feel like a sea of noise. How do you carve out your own tide?

It’s easy to compare yourself to others — ticket sales, reviews, all that — but you’ve got to focus on your own thing and ask, “Is this better than it was yesterday?” I go see plays and things outside comedy, and I revisit places I grew up around because they feel far from Fringe madness.

What’s the strangest thing you discovered while writing The Mermaid?

That in the original Little Mermaid story by Hans Christian Andersen, she’s only twelve, and the prince makes her sleep in a basket outside his room.

If someone comes in expecting pure silliness, what deeper thing might they accidentally find?

Hopefully an undercurrent — I’d hate to say empowerment because it sounds cheesy — but maybe a celebration of women’s bodies. That sounds very hippie‑feminist, but honestly, straight men will enjoy the show too. There are some pictures of boobs.

What’s inspiring you right now — art, music, weird internet corners?

Mostly weird internet corners. I’m obsessed with The Broken Veil podcast — a spooky, immersive show that’s hard to define genre‑wise. Joel Morris and Will Maclean have made this incredible radiophonic‑workshop‑style experience with basically no money. It reminds me why creating things for the sake of it is so good for us.

Eleanor Morton: The Mermaid 🕐 1 PM | Monkey Barrel Cabaret Voltaire 1

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Alice Fraser: Finding Light in the Dark with Oh Man!

July 27, 2026 at 4:08 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged Alice Fraser, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Gilded Balloon, Oh Man!, Philosophy, solo show, Stand‑up Comedy

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Alice Fraser’s Oh Man! is a masterclass in emotional excavation — a show that balances razor‑sharp wit with philosophical depth. Known for weaving comedy through grief, absurdity, and the strange tenderness of being human, Fraser invites audiences into a space where laughter and heartbreak coexist. As she returns to the Edinburgh Fringe, her latest work asks what it means to stay hopeful when the world feels unrecognisable.

Below, our conversation moves between the personal and the universal — a dialogue about storytelling, resilience, and the art of finding light in the dark.

You’ve always blurred the line between stand‑up and storytelling. What does that hybrid form let you say that straight comedy can’t?

It lets me hold contradictions in the same breath. Comedy alone can deflect pain; storytelling can drown in it. When they meet, you get something closer to truth — laughter that doesn’t erase the ache but makes it bearable.

This show feels like a reckoning — a conversation with the world as it is now. What moment or feeling first sparked Oh Man!?

A sense of exhaustion, honestly. The world felt like it was shouting all the time, and I wanted to whisper back. The show began as a quiet question: how do we stay kind when everything around us rewards cruelty?

You often use humour to approach grief and moral complexity. How do you decide when to let the audience laugh and when to let them sit in silence?

You don’t decide — you listen. The audience tells you when they need air. Sometimes silence is the most generous thing you can give them.

There’s a philosophical undercurrent in your work — from ethics to empathy. Which thinkers or ideas have shaped how you write and perform?

I grew up on philosophy podcasts and Buddhist texts. I love the Stoics for their clarity and absurdists for their chaos. Mostly, I’m drawn to anyone who admits they don’t have the answers.

You’ve performed globally, but the Fringe has a particular energy. What does returning to Edinburgh mean for you at this stage of your career?

It’s like coming home to a house that’s constantly being rebuilt. Every year the walls shift, the neighbours change, and you still find your way back to the kitchen table.

Your shows often feel like letters to the future. What do you hope audiences carry with them after Oh Man! ends?

A feeling that the more broken things get, the more we need to look after each other. That tenderness isn’t weakness — it’s rebellion.

Comedy can be a kind of truth‑telling. What truths are you most interested in revealing right now?

That we’re all ridiculous and sacred at once. The truth isn’t tidy; it’s messy and human and full of contradictions.

You’ve spoken about the tension between sincerity and irony in modern culture. How do you keep sincerity alive onstage without it feeling sentimental?

By being specific. Sentimentality is vague; sincerity is precise. If you tell the truth exactly as you felt it, people recognise themselves in it.

If someone walked into Oh Man! expecting a traditional stand‑up hour, what do you hope they walk out with instead?

A sense that comedy can hold more than punchlines — that it can be a conversation, a confession, a shared breath.

What’s the idea or story that still feels too big, too dark, or too tender to tackle — at least for now?

The real story is too dark to tell until I’ve found the light in it. That’s the work — finding the light.

Alice Fraser: Oh Man! — 8:45 PM, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh Fringe 2026 Tickets here

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Patient 13: A Darkly Funny Journey Through Illness, Independence and Magic Mushrooms

July 17, 2026 at 6:51 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged cancer storytelling, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Patient 13, psilocybin treatment, psychedelic therapy, solo show

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Patient 13 is a story that starts in a hospital ward, detours through a psychedelic clinical trial, and somehow lands in a place that feels both devastating and oddly hopeful. It’s the kind of show that makes you rethink the neat narratives we build around illness, independence, and the people we let close enough to hurt us.

Talking to Gail, you get the sense she’s spent years turning chaos into clarity — not by sanding down the rough edges, but by holding them up to the light. The humour is sharp, the honesty disarming, and the reflections feel lived‑in rather than curated. What follows is a conversation that moves between trauma, mushrooms, medical authority, dating, and the strange business of becoming a new version of yourself while the old one is still watching.

“I got rid of all the toxic people and there was no one left.” Were you laughing at the absurdity of that line, or grieving the truth inside it?

Both, the line exposes the nuance and extremes of human relationships: isolation v independence; trust v self care. As a “chronically” independent person, my impulse is to retreat when I feel I can’t trust someone. Sometimes that is the right decision, sometimes not. In the real events of Patient 13, I struggled to find the balance. What are the right boundaries? What happens when “there is no one left?” I had to ask myself if I went too far. After all, no one is perfect. We can’t do everything alone and it is possible to grow in a relationship.

Your cancer diagnosis pushed you into a clinical trial involving magic mushrooms. What was the moment you realised this experience was theatrical?

The psychedelic trip (or the dosing, as the doctors call it) was an intense download of epiphanies — one was that I missed performing and that I should write jokes again. Years later, when I returned to NYC storytelling stages, the first story I told was one called “The Dosing.” The audience loved it, so that was encouraging. Several people have told me that it was the best performance of a psychedelic trip they’d ever seen. And it’s accurate because the doctors made me write everything down. And now it’s in the play!

The show is darkly satirical, but the trauma underneath is real. How do you protect yourself emotionally while performing something so close to the bone?

The play goes by much faster than the real life events and now I already know the ending is happy, so that’s a plus.

There’s a line in the play that also reflects my pragmatic approach, then and now: “there’s no time to cry, I’m CEO of Gail’s biggest decision ever.” So, even back then, there was/is a breakneck urgency to move forward, to deal with the decisions, the treatments and still have some fun. I’ve always tried to approach life as an adventure, even in tough times. This will make more sense when you see the show.

As an author, the experience has transformed into emotional beats, a complete narrative. While there is some trauma and sadness, it feels like I’m reliving and sharing personal growth, as lessons are learned and action is taken. Overall it’s an empowering and joyful tale, an adventure. The humor is constant, so we’re laughing together at the absurdity of life. I like to say that the show helps me do the show.

I expect that performing almost every day for 23 days in Edinburgh may present a different challenge. I plan to sit in the meadows, hug a tree, find a yoga class or a fellow human to ground me.

You describe yourself as fiercely independent. What did psychedelics reveal about the version of yourself you’d been clinging to? As I mentioned above, I may have gone too far in my independence, especially post cancer treatment. It’s not easy to return to “normal life” after facing mortality and being treated for cancer. For me at least, I wanted to have deep conversations, not just get back to the mundane routine of living. And I think I judged certain people who didn’t behave the way I thought they should. The psychedelics helped me see the bigger picture.

The psychedelics reminded me that we’re all doing our best. And that we are all connected, like it or not. This is a lesson I still have to remember. It’s been long enough that I can slip back into old patterns. Doing the show feels a bit like tripping as the profound truths need to be repeated. It’s fun and enlightening for me and the audience.

The play is also about dating while your identity is shifting. What did illness change about intimacy and desire?

Hmm. I was raised in Oklahoma, in an environment where I was taught to suppress my own feelings, to always put other people first. Over time, this manifests as being a “people pleaser,” which can lead to personal neglect and shame. So, I haven’t always been good at standing up for myself or even recognizing that I should defend my own feelings.

However, facing mortality offers a certain immediate clarity. Suddenly, I had to put myself first — it was literally life or death. Suddenly, I had to ask “is this person good for me?” rather than “how do I make them happy?” The illness forced me into a dramatic self-love that was long overdue. It also turned me into a bit of an introvert, a better listener, and a philosopher. I love this new version of myself and want to keep those elements.

You’ve said you think of your audience as “close friends.” What does friendship mean in this context?

It means we can trust each other. I’m honest about my experience, sharing my vulnerabilities, mistakes, and lessons. In the play, my audience (aka my friends) often see my mistakes before I do. Like life. As their friend, I’m warm and welcoming, protecting them from trauma by adding humor to the “scary” parts. It’s like we are living the events together. What’s more fun than hanging out with friends?! In this case, I get to do all the talking, but it’s not considered rude. When I’ve hung out with the audience after, I joke that it’s their turn to talk for an hour.

Dan Oliverio talks about institutionalised fear and loneliness. What fear felt institutional to you, and what fear felt entirely your own?

The institutional fears that I deal with in Patient 13 are things like questioning the medical authority, power figures. For example, I faced an arrogant doctor who didn’t listen, and seemed to want to scare me into following a healthcare protocol generalised to fit the masses rather than an individual.

On a more personal level, I was fearful due to the uncertainty of a contradictory diagnosis, with treatment supervised by a doctor that I didn’t trust. The question became, do I have to do everything that an authority tells me to do? I was suspicious of his bravado and condescending demeanour. It didn’t feel like I was a person to him. I was more afraid of chemo and radiation than of psychedelics.

Patient 13 arrives as the UK debates psychedelic treatment. How does it feel to have your story intersect with a political turning point?

It feels fantastic to share my story at a time when it can be most useful. It’s synchronicity, a happy accident to be relevant. I hope that the Patient 13 show helps UK audiences see one example of how psilocybin treatment might work. There are documentaries out there, but this play enables people to take a real life journey with me as a patient. Beyond entertainment, I want the show to be a service, such that it helps the audience find more clarity in their own lives and decisions.

When I participated in the study, most people in the US were skeptical about psychedelic therapy. The stigma was so strong that the hospital had a hard time finding cancer patients to participate. Perhaps the UK debate is at that stage now. So again, happy relevance.

The show grew from storytelling nights in New York. What stayed from those early versions?

The early versions were merged into a greater narrative arc. Many little situational jokes stayed, because I know they work. But the endings were cut and reshaped. Beginnings were expanded. The transitions were fun and tedious to write to ensure that they pulled the separate pieces together in a bigger story. This experience has helped me grow as a writer and performer.

If the version of you who first received the diagnosis could watch Patient 13 today, what do you hope she’d recognise?

First off, Version One of Gail would be relieved that I/we survived. Secondly, I think she’d be thrilled and impressed that the New Version Gail managed to follow through with this project and that it is entertaining and helping people. She’d like me to get rid of some toxic people.

Version One Gail would like the jokes. Even in the midst of trauma, she saw the funny. She’d like that New Version now shares that sense of humor with a broader audience. After the diagnosis and during treatment, she never wanted pity and still wanted to be a normal person who has fun. New Gail continues that tradition, which I think people can relate to on multiple levels.

Both Versions believe that you don’t stop living just because you think you might die. Sometimes “healthy” people can be inadvertently condescending to people who are fighting an illness. It’s a weird division. Patient 13 brings light to these nuances. Version one of Gail would be proud.

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Inside Spin Cycle: A Queer Love Story Caught Between Cycles

July 17, 2026 at 6:34 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged Counter Culture, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, LGBTQ+ theatre, queer theatre, Spin Cycle

There’s something about a Fringe show set in a laundrette that immediately makes you lean in. Maybe it’s the hum of the machines, maybe it’s the way people behave differently when they think no one’s watching. Spin Cycle takes that instinct — that quiet, nosy curiosity — and turns it into a queer love story that slips between memory, myth and the mundane. It’s tender, strange, and a little bit disorienting, like overhearing a couple argue in public and realising you’ve wandered into the middle of something you shouldn’t understand but somehow do.

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Talking to the team behind it, you get the sense they’re not interested in neat answers or tidy emotional arcs. They’re more concerned with the mess — the stains, the rewashing, the things we keep trying to fix even when we know they’re already worn through. What follows is a conversation that feels as intimate and slippery as the play itself.

Spin Cycle unfolds in a laundrette — a place that’s both public and strangely intimate. What made you realise this was the perfect setting for a queer love story that refuses to stay neatly folded?

ZOFIA: A Launderette is such a liminal space. Its whole reason for existence is to be a place of transition: you enter with dirty clothes and leave with clean. I felt that it is the perfect setting for a play that exists to examine that feeling of being in the midst of transition, being somewhere between forgetting and remembering, between loving and not. I also think the phrase “air your dirty laundry” is aptly fit.

You add memory slippage, absurdism, and a wash cycle that bends time. How did you find the balance between emotional truth and theatrical strangeness?

BETHAN: The absurd space versus the tense scene work is a part of this play that’s very exciting to build on. In many ways the launderette feels like a third character, or entity. It plays a vital role in pushing Noel and Kitt to try again at the top of the play. There’s a sense the space may even have some control over their fate as a couple and maybe is pushing them to some conclusion but as we learn, Kitt and Noel can’t help but have the same conversations over and over again. Their dialogue is pacy and naturalistic and as far as we know they are emotionally truthful. Unless someone knows more then they let on?….

The play champions Irish heritage and queer, gender-non-conforming characters. How do those identities shape the emotional engine of the story?

RHIANNON: The characters queer identity or ‘irishness’ isn’t there to make any kind of political statement, they’re simply who the characters are. Those identities affect how they move through the world, how they understand love, belonging and themselves. The play places two different experiences of Irish and lesbian identity side by side. Noel is a working class, non-binary artist from Northern Ireland whose identity is shaped by financial insecurity, community expectation and navigating a world that wasn’t built for them. Kitt is an Irish-American who has inherited wealth and whose connection to Ireland is rooted in family history rather than lived experience. Spin Cycle, at its core is a love story and it explores how love can exist between two people whose understandings of home, privilege and self are radically different.

“Eyes lock. Hearts thump. But something is off.” What’s the “off” for you?

ZOFIA: It’s the feeling of Deja vu. Deja vu is described as “an illusion of memory whereby—despite a strong sense of recollection—the time, place, and context of the “previous” experience are uncertain or impossible.”

The show has been described as Eternal Sunshine meets The L Word. What feels accurate about that comparison — and what doesn’t?

ZOFIA: Spin Cycle and Eternal Sunshine both seek to answer the same question- why is heartbreak intrinsically tied to the joy of love? There are themes of memory and repression in both as well, although Spin Cycle remains more ambiguous than Eternal Sunshine. As for The L Word, well, there is plenty of Talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking, riding, winning, losing, cheating, kissing, thinking, dreaming in both.

The laundrette becomes a suspended world where past and present collide. Did you imagine it as a memory, a metaphor, or a place where truth stops hiding?

BETHAN: The launderette may have more hope for their relationship than they do. It’s certainly somewhere where hard conversations are forced out. It is somewhere the truth stops hiding and it feels like somewhere that has existed forever and will continue to until the cycle reaches an end the launderette is satisfied with. The liminal space has been an important factor in creating a neutral zone for Noel and Kitt to explore their guilt, lust and ultimately loss. Thematically thinking of the setting as the launderette, are we washing something until it’s ragged and worn and finished, or are we cleansing something and rescuing stained memories?

Class quietly shapes the story. How consciously did class weave itself into the writing?

BETHAN: When we started this project it was a short twenty minute scene with a hint of a class divide. As we have lived with the characters, certain nuances emerge as obvious directions to take them both. Noel and Kitt really do clash in many ways, notably Kitts inherited wealth from her grandad and Noel inherited orange sash from theirs. It felt important to flesh out where each may have struggled or bloomed forming their identities and their place in the world.

Bethan Rose talks about a “complicit sense of voyeurism.” What do audiences recognise in Kitt and Noel that makes the play feel so familiar?

BETHAN: The couple have a struggling power dynamic and you see them fall apart in front of you, remembering and forgetting in real time. I think audiences will recognise many of the feelings they go through. There are moments where you don’t want to be listening into their conversations, like you’ve accidentally been spying on them. There are also moments where audience members will recognise patterns in the relationship and even take sides. Discomfort and familiarity arises when met with parallels to your own life.

You’re an entirely queer creative team. How did that shape the rehearsal room? BETHAN: At the end of rehearsal we all kiss.

If Kitt and Noel could step out of the laundrette and speak to you, what truth do you hope they’d finally rinse clean? RHI: If I met Noel outside of the Laundrette – I really hope that they found a good therapist to help rinse away their shame about who they are and where they come from. ZOFIA: If Kitt were able to step out of the Launderette, I would hope she could be honest about her entitlement.

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‘She Was Never the Victim’: Plexus Polaire on Reclaiming Lucy’s Story

July 16, 2026 at 5:35 pm · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, Theatre ·Tagged Bram Stoker, Dracula, Edinburgh Fringe, feminist retelling, Fringe 2026, gothic theatre, horror theatre, Lucy Westenra, Lucy’s Dream, Plexus Polaire, Puppetry

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Dracula: Lucy’s Dream isn’t just another Gothic retelling; it’s a plunge into the mind of a woman literature usually sidelines. Plexus Polaire take Lucy Westenra — often treated as a plot device — and place her centre‑stage, letting her fear, desire and disintegration shape the world around her. Their work has always lived in the space between the real and the uncanny, and here that tension becomes the point: puppetry, physical theatre and dream logic colliding to show us what Lucy sees when the lights go out. It’s dark, sensual, and strangely tender. And it asks a simple question: what happens when the girl everyone thinks they understand finally tells her own story?

We spoke with the creators about why Lucy matters, and what it means to let her speak.

What made you realise Lucy — often treated as a narrative stepping stone — was actually the emotional heart you wanted to excavate?

Lucy is a fascinating character because she goes through a real transformation. The other characters in Stoker´s novel are very much focused on themselves being “the good” who are fighting “the bad”. Lucy has more internal fight and her story opens for a more complex treatment of the theme and how we fight with dark forces within ourselves. By seeing the story from Lucy´s perspective she can break out of the role as a victim, take control of her own life, and reclaim her own narrative.

Puppetry allows you to express things human bodies alone can’t. What did it unlock in Lucy’s inner world?

I am interested in the parallel between a how myth, like Dracula, and a puppet comes to life, because it is quite similar. It´s a bit like a spiritual session with an Ouija-board, where everyone puts a finger on a glass on top of an alphabet, and then the glass starts moving on its own and spells out a message from beyond. Everyone knows that it probably someone in the group who is guiding the glass, but the small doubt, that it might be moving on its own, or by an external force, is enough to make us believe it is true.

The show is a descent into desire, fear and female emancipation. How do you navigate that tension?

The tension and the complexity of the theme is what makes it interesting, and also more truthful.

The ambition of the show is not to give fixed answers, but rather to provoke important questions.

Approaching Dracula from a female lens reveals contradictions — desire, fear, seduction, danger. Which contradiction fascinated you most?

What interests me the most is how you can lose control over a situation, and how quickly the situation can take control over you. And that a vampire can come in many forms.

You describe the Fringe as a “living, breathing organism.” What does it mean to bring a piece this dark and sensual into that environment?

It means to possibility to show for a larger audience that puppetry can be large scale performances for adults.

Lucy’s psychosis becomes a landscape audiences inhabit. What emotional truth were you trying to reveal?

The show delves into the schemes of power with the conclusion that you sometimes have to put a stake in the heart of the vampire to regain control over your own life.

Vampires are metaphors for forbidden desire. What drew you to the question of what we want but cannot say aloud?

I think that sometimes we have to face a monster to remain human. And we all have an inner vampire in one form or another; an addiction, a trauma, a destructive need…The interesting thing is to see how we can choose to break the role of being a victim of it, and retake control over our own narrative.

Plexus Polaire often deals with the secret parts of human nature. What “immortal dark secret” were you most interested in exposing?

I´m interested in the complexities, and how the dark parts are actually a part of what makes us human.

The production is visually overwhelming — puppets, video, lighting, movement. How do you keep the emotional core intact?

The life-like puppets express emotion, in combination to the five actor-puppeteers who perform on stage.

If Lucy could step out of the dream and meet you, what truth do you hope she’d finally allow herself to claim?

That it wasn´t a dream.

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What made you realise Lucy — often treated as a narrative stepping stone — was actually the emotional heart you wanted to excavate?

Puppetry allows you to express things human bodies alone can’t. What did it unlock in Lucy’s inner world?

The show is a descent into desire, fear and female emancipation. How do you navigate that tension?

Approaching Dracula from a female lens reveals contradictions — desire, fear, seduction, danger. Which contradiction fascinated you most?

You describe the Fringe as a “living, breathing organism.” What does it mean to bring a piece this dark and sensual into that environment?

Lucy’s psychosis becomes a landscape audiences inhabit. What emotional truth were you trying to reveal?

Vampires are metaphors for forbidden desire. What drew you to the question of what we want but cannot say aloud?

Plexus Polaire often deals with the secret parts of human nature. What “immortal dark secret” were you most interested in exposing?

The production is visually overwhelming — puppets, video, lighting, movement. How do you keep the emotional core intact?

If Lucy could step out of the dream and meet you, what truth do you hope she’d finally allow herself to claim?

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