Posts Tagged Fringe 2026

‘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 , , , , , , , , , ,

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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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Daughter of Sweden: Cecilia Saverman on Reviving a Princess History Tried to Erase

July 12, 2026 at 7:21 am · Filed under Biographical, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, History, Interviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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Cecilia Saverman doesn’t ease you into Cecilia Vasa’s world — she drops you straight into the madness. Five years of research left her with a life so outrageous it barely feels real: piracy confrontations that make you laugh and wince in the same breath, scandals that rattled royal courts across an entire continent, and family letters so chaotic they read like a soap opera you shouldn’t enjoy but absolutely do.

What Saverman captures is the full, contradictory force of Cecilia Vasa herself — heroine, caring mother, sharp diplomat, messy party princess, egocentric daredevil, unstoppable climber of mountains and faller into pits who always gets back up. Cecilia Vasa lived in  the 16th century (born 1540). With director Judith Hollander, she throws the audience between comedy and tragedy, intimacy and grandness, hope and surrender, never letting the story settle into one tone for long.

And beneath all the spectacle sits something fiercer: a history that was actively deleted, now brought forward almost as an act of defiance. Saverman isn’t preaching. She’s reclaiming. She wants audiences to feel closer to their own past, to recognise how stories about women become political whether anyone intends them to or not.

This is Cecilia Vasa returned to the stage — vivid, volatile, and impossible to ignore.

1. What’s the single most shocking thing about Cecilia Vasa’s life that will make people gasp? – The fact that it’s actually happened and that we’ve not heard about her. An actual princess who became a pirate, exile, diplomat, and so on! Apart from that, her life just keeps getting crazier and more unfathomable for every step along the way, it’s hard to pick just one thing. The five year research was a never-ending rollercoaster. Maybe a certain window-climbing episode.

2. Which moment in the show makes you laugh and wince at the same time? – There is an episode where her brother confronts her about her piracy, and she has to admit to a lot of what she’s done, and it’s just crazy that it’s actually true. And when one of her lovers is locked up in a castle, and she’s barred from the city to keep her away from him, but she just sneaks into a boat and rows to him, in the middle of the night.

3. How far did you push the sex and scandal on stage, and why that exact level of explicitness? – The sex aspect is suggestive, but not explicit. The scandal, however, shook the entire continent – if the royal courts are to be trusted about these matters, that is. While the acts in and of themselves plants the seed for her struggle for freedom and sets her off on her path in life, I’m more interested in the consequence of the acts, rather than the acts themselves.

4. Did you ever fear the play would be banned or spark a diplomatic row? – Last time Cecilia Vasa was in the UK she was thrown out, so lets hope I have better luck with the Swedish-UK relations.

5. Is Cecilia a heroine, a mess, or gloriously both — and why should we care? – Yes, yes, and yes. On top of that – she is apparently also related to Boris Johnson. She is a heroine, a caring mother, a smart diplomat, a messy party princess, an egocentric daredevil, an unstoppable force who will climb any mountain, fall into every pit and always get up.

6. Are there scenes that touch on coercion or questionable consent and how do you approach that? – No. Or, it depends in what sense. Most of the things she does is very questionable, and I guess the definition of piracy is that it’s non-consensual, and her whole life is a struggle to be able to control her own narrative, and there are rumours about her having a brothel, and there’s stealing and bad decisions going on, and forceful removal from several places, but nothing in the play that touch on coercion of a sexual nature. It’s been important to approach it in a mixture of drama and comedy. It can be extremely funny with someone trying to lure themself to advantages, but also very tragic.

7. Is there a line in the script which makes you blush when you say it out loud? – Not while playing…

8. How do you want audiences to feel about monarchy and power when they leave the theatre? – Difficult question. I want them to want to know more, because it’s our history, I guess. I want them to feel close to our common history. Cecilia Vasa is a princess, a pirate, a mother of seven – and also just a human being. I want them to be able to laugh about the messiness, but I also want them to feel outraged about how it’s been, and maybe see parallels to today. Why haven’t we gotten further? How can this still be going on? I’ve received several emails from people in the audience saying that they saw themselves and their family in this play, and that it both opened and healed wounds in them about power and dynamics.

9. Do you think that there is a feminist message here or about women’s ‘role’ in society then and now? – Yes. I think it’s impossible to tell a story about women today without it becoming political – in the same way I think that stories about lgbtq+ or about non-white people or about people whose bodies are outside the norm automatically becomes political – whether it’s the intention or not. I wrote this story because Cecilia Vasa fascinated me to my core, and I saw so much of my surroundings, including myself and my mother, and society in her. It has never been about sending a message, but it becomes a message because it is a story that has never been told. It’s been actively deleted – which is of course very political – so bringing it forward might in a sense be an act of defiance.

10. What’s the one historical fact you refused to change, no matter how tempting the drama? – Everything. It’s my interpretation of her life, but every fact is true. That’s the insane part.

11. How bawdy do the party scenes get, and how do you balance that with the darker fallout? – I love tossing myself and the audience between highs and lows. My brilliant director Judith Hollander has created an intense balance between comedy and tragedy, intimacy and grandness, hope and surrender. She has so much to fight for, and sometimes she’s just hilarious. During my research I read many letters between her and her siblings, and it was like a soap opera. I would laugh out loud, between the horrors that they put themselves and each others through.

12. Have you ever had hecklers or walkouts, and what did you do when it happened? – Not that I recall, but I’ve received angry emails from older men saying that they don’t believe this or that to be true, and also “that piece of prop is ugly”. Very sweet of them to take their time to let me know.

13. Would you ever stage a strictly adults‑only version — and what would you change? – Maybe adding some more in the Elizabeth-scene, haha! And the first scandal scene. And her encounter with the Spanish envoy Eraso, later on in her life. Very romantic, and got her thrown out of Sweden. But the show is only 60 min now, so not everything can be in it…

14. What single image from the production do you want to haunt people for days, and why that image? – You’ll have to come see the show! You’re in for a haunting treat!

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2 Guys, 3 Drams — Counter Culture UK Interview

July 3, 2026 at 11:31 am · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blues, whisky, and a room full of willing conspirators — few Fringe shows blend music, storytelling and guided tasting with the swagger and charm of 2 Guys, 3 Drams. Now entering their fourth consecutive Edinburgh run, Felipe and Paul return with a fresh line‑up of whiskies, a new sponsor in InchDairnie, and the same mission as ever: to turn a room of strangers into one merry, whisky‑swigging organism. Counter Culture asked the duo to talk drams, blues, audience alchemy, and why their show title is technically a lie…

You describe the show as “more than a concert and more than a tasting.” What’s the moment where those two worlds collide most perfectly on stage?

Honestly, the moment we start playing the first song of the show, and we bring out the first whisky to serve our audience. It’s an unusual format, so this is the point where I think everyone realises together “oh, they’re DEFINITELY serving whisky too” and is immediately ready to go along with whatever we have planned for them.

Felipe Schrieberg and Paul Archibald

Three whiskies in an hour is a bold structure. How do you choose which drams make the cut each year?

We reach out to different brands or distilleries who have whisky that we really like, and then curate the selection of available whiskies for the show. We prefer to have something lighter to start, spicier and more robust or unusual second, and preferably something quite heavy or peated last. We regularly rotate the selection throughout the run.

Blues and whisky both have deep cultural roots. What’s the connection between them that keeps pulling you back?

In blues, you rarely are playing more than three chords with relatively simple grooves. In Scotch malt whisky, you’ve just got three ingredients to work with. And yet, there’s infinite ways to prepare and combine those elements, meaning that you end up with so much character, flavour, and variety across both. I think this is why they’re such a good pairing.

You’ve had three consecutive sell‑out years. What’s the biggest change you’ve made to the show for 2026?

We don’t actually follow a script. We block the show out in modular segments that encourage audience interaction, provide some kind of educational fact about the world of whisky, or feature tricks on sounding clever whenever you’re drinking whisky. We’re constantly coming up with new segments to add, or swapping different ones in and out with each show. It’ll be the same this year. The whiskies we’re working with are completely different as well.

InchDairnie is sponsoring the run — how does working with a new‑wave distillery influence the tasting experience?

InchDairnie is one of nine sponsors, but the only one involved for a full run, and we’ll be serving their fascinating rye whisky every night. The team really gets what our show is about and what we want to do. In their case, it is truly unusual to try a Scottish rye whisky (under Scottish law, it is technically a “grain whisky”), so this is a chance to showcase some truly unique aromas and flavours to our crowd. Even most hardcore Scotch geeks won’t have tried something like this before.

Felipe, you’ve said audiences will “leave knowing how to sound clever about whisky.” What’s the one whisky fact people always get wrong?

I don’t know about “getting wrong,” but we like to joke that our show title is a lie. In old‑school Scottish bar‑speak, a dram actually refers to a double measure whereas a nip refers to a single measure. Over the years, the word “dram” has become a catch‑all for any measure that everyone uses, even the whisky industry. Since we’re actually serving single measures at the show, a more appropriate title for the show is 2 Guys, 3 Nips…

The show mixes humour, education, and live music. What’s the hardest part of keeping all three elements in balance?

I would say being able to calibrate the performance to the energy of the room. It means meeting the audience where they are, and then seeing where you can go together.

It’s quite special when we can make the audience turn into one merry whisky‑swigging organism over the course of the show. We employ a whole suite of tricks to do it, and blending together music, education and humour actually gives us many useful tools to work with to reach our goal.

Blues is often about storytelling. Whisky is too. What’s the best story behind one of the drams you’re serving this year?

InchDairnie is a really interesting one — they really are a truly groundbreaking distillery with how they produce their whisky, and serving a rye that’s normally associated with the USA and Canada is really fun. It helps break the usual preconceptions people have about whisky and what it should “be.”

We’re also serving a blended whisky called Ardray, which is actually a collaboration between Beam Suntory’s top Scotch whisky master blender and the legendary Japanese whisky blender Shinji Fukuyo. It’s a great argument as to why you should never see blends as inferior.

You’ve played everywhere from tasting rooms to festival stages. What makes the Fringe audience different?

For us, it’s more the nature of doing a theatre show. Performing at the Fringe is a format that makes us tighten up our usual chaos into something more formal and structured. We actually like this — we think it’s vitally important as musicians to be performing in different contexts. It means you stay present, take nothing for granted, and learn how to connect with your audience no matter the situation. Putting together a Fringe show is a different way to explore making meaningful connections through music and whisky.

After years of performing this show, what’s the most surprising reaction you’ve ever had from someone tasting whisky for the first time?

Not too surprising, but we always give ourselves a little pat on the back when we get someone who says they thought they didn’t like whisky until they came to our show and realised that they actually do like whisky after all!

Find out more about the show and buy tickets here
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Summerhall 2026: Seven First Signals From a Venue That Refuses to Stand Still

March 13, 2026 at 8:41 am · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026 ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a particular electricity to a Summerhall announcement — that sense of a building already humming with ghosts of festivals past, now cracking its knuckles for the next round. With the first seven shows of its 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme now on sale, the venue once again stakes its claim as the city’s home of the unruly, the searching, the politically alive. What emerges from this first wave is a portrait of a programme thinking internationally, listening carefully, and refusing to let the world’s fractures pass without artistic interrogation.

Below, the early contours of a festival season that already feels like it has something urgent to say.

Two dancers performing a duet on stage, gracefully interacting under colorful lighting.

Tether 인연 — Wonder Fools & Theatre SAN

Scotland ↔ South Korea | Theatre, music, memory

Wonder Fools have long been one of Scotland’s most emotionally literate companies, and their collaboration with South Korea’s Theatre SAN feels like a natural evolution of their practice: expansive, musical, and attentive to the quiet ways history lodges itself in the body.
Tether 인연 spans sixty years and three generations, stitching together folk songs, love letters and war stories into a cross‑continental meditation on the threads that bind people — and nations — long after the headlines fade. It promises the warmth of a ceilidh, the intimacy of a whispered confession, and the political charge of two cultures meeting on equal footing.

As Far As We Know

England | Prophetic storytelling, contemporary dread

YESYESNONO return to Summerhall with As Far As We Know, a new piece that feels eerily attuned to the moment we’re living through. Writer‑performer Sam Ward has always been a cartographer of contemporary unease, and here he guides audiences through a world that keeps glitching: holes opening in the ground, prices rising without logic, bubbles swelling and bursting in endless cycles. It’s a hallucinogenic road‑trip through a landscape where the maps no longer match the territory.

A sign for '99 Cents Only Stores' under a clear blue sky, surrounded by palm trees.

Ward’s storytelling is intimate and conspiratorial, the kind that makes you feel as though you’re being entrusted with something fragile. He threads together cartographers, psychics, crashes and anomalies into a portrait of a society struggling to make sense of itself. The humour is dry, the melancholy is earned, and the political charge hums just beneath the surface without ever tipping into didacticism.

What emerges is a quietly radical act of orientation: a show about trying to understand what’s going wrong in a world that refuses to be understood. YESYESNONO once again offer theatre as a shared act of reckoning — a reminder that even when the ground is shifting, we can still choose to look at it together.

Three dancers in minimal attire striking dynamic poses on a stage with a gray backdrop.

GOOD ENOUGH? — HIMHERANDIT

Denmark | Queer physical theatre, joyful resistance

HIMHERANDIT return with a piece that feels like a rallying cry wrapped in glitter and sweat. GOOD ENOUGH? celebrates imperfection, queer joy and the courage required to take up space in a world that still polices bodies and narratives.
Their work is always kinetic, always emotionally forthright, and here they lean into the boisterous, the awkward, the unapologetic. It’s a show about reclaiming your story — not quietly, but loudly, with a grin.

Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life — Keith Alessi

A man playing a banjo while wearing a cap, focused on his instrument in a dimly lit setting.

USA | Storytelling, music, resilience

Some shows become Fringe folklore, and Keith Alessi’s is one of them. Returning for a fourth consecutive year after three sell‑out runs, this warm, banjo‑laced memoir of illness, survival and artistic salvation has become a kind of communal ritual.
Alessi’s generosity is not metaphorical: through donations and artist fees, he has raised over $1.2m for charities worldwide, and this year’s proceeds support Summerhall Arts itself. It’s rare to see a show that radiates this much heart without slipping into sentimentality; rarer still to see one that changes lives offstage as well as on.

SAND — Kook Ensemble

A man in a light-colored shirt appears to be releasing a cloud of sand from his hand, with a focused expression, against a dark background.

England | Circus theatre, dementia, coastal memory

Kook Ensemble’s SAND is a non‑verbal circus theatre piece set against the dramatic Devon coastline, exploring the lives of people living with dementia.
There’s something quietly radical about using acrobatics — a form associated with strength, balance and control — to illuminate a condition defined by fragility and disorientation. The company’s meticulous storytelling promises a work that is both tender and unflinching, a reminder that memory is not just a cognitive function but a landscape we inhabit together.

PUTTANA — Beatrice Festi

A composite image featuring a woman in three poses. On the left, she wears a wolf mask and headphones, in the center she appears contemplative, and on the right, she holds a microphone while wearing a lace bodysuit.

Italy | Immersive solo performance, body politics

Fringe debutant Beatrice Festi arrives with a piece that refuses to look away from the ways society commodifies the body. PUTTANA is bold, uncomfortable, and deliberately confrontational — a solo performance in which one actress voices five characters through a fusion of music and text.
It’s a work that asks what we’ve normalised, what we’ve excused, and what we’ve allowed to be taken from us. Expect a show that leaves the air charged.

LANDSFRAU — Mariann Yar

Afghanistan / Diaspora | Feminist storytelling, counter‑archive

Mariann Yar’s LANDSFRAU moves between 9/11 and 2021, dismantling the Western gaze on Afghanistan and building a counter‑archive from song, dance and memory.
This is diasporic storytelling at its most intimate: a reckoning with inherited guilt, privilege, distance and longing. Yar’s work promises a feminist perspective that refuses simplification, offering instead a textured portrait of a life shaped by war yet not defined by it.

A Programme Already Speaking in Many Tongues

This first announcement — with more expected — signals a Summerhall season rooted in internationalism, political clarity and artistic risk. These are works concerned with memory, identity, and the stories we inherit or resist. They ask who gets to speak, who gets to be seen, and how we might hold each other through the fractures.

If this is only the beginning, August at Summerhall looks set to be a month of boldness, beauty and necessary discomfort — exactly what the Fringe should be.

More information on the shows here

By Pat Harrington

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Cover design for 'Lyrics to Live By 2' featuring a vinyl record and text highlighting the book's themes of reflections, meditations, and life lessons, on a bright yellow background.

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Meet the Debut Comedians Redefining Humor at the Fringe 2025

June 4, 2025 at 8:58 am · Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2025, LGBT+interest ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In a year when laughter feels like both rebellion and relief, the Edinburgh Fringe’s debut comedians are redefining what comedy means. Their shows aren’t just entertainment — they’re essays on identity, absurdity, and survival. Counter Culture explores how this new wave of performers turns humour into resistance.

Every August, the Fringe becomes a mirror — not just for the arts, but for the anxieties and contradictions of the age. The debut comedians stepping onto its stages this year (2–26 August 2025) are not simply chasing laughs; they are testing the boundaries of what comedy can say about who we are.

Comedy, at its best, has always been a form of resistance. From the cabarets of Weimar Berlin to the satire clubs of 1980s Soho, humour has thrived in times of uncertainty. It is the art of turning discomfort into connection — of finding solidarity in absurdity. The new generation of performers emerging at the Fringe seem acutely aware of that lineage. Their work is not escapist in the shallow sense, but rather a way of reframing the chaos of modern life into something bearable, even beautiful.

Caroline McEvoy – Train Man

📍 Assembly Roxy (RoxyBoxy) at 1:20pm, 2–26 August
A captivating, hilarious and heartfelt tale of sibling rivalry in post‑Troubles Northern Ireland, Train Man sees McEvoy — host of the Chortle Award‑winning Comedy Bandits and three‑time Funny Women Stage Awards nominee — reckon with her lifelong battle with her autistic younger brother, who loves trains and getting his own way.

McEvoy’s stand‑up blends sharp Northern wit with emotional storytelling, making her one of the most compelling new voices in Irish comedy.

Su Mi – ThisMotherPhucker

📍 Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly) at 6:40pm, 2–26 August
Award‑winning stand‑up and drag performance artist Su Mi presents an immersive, surreal comedy extravaganza that resurrects forgotten nostalgia and heals the inner child through play. Their show dismantles stereotypes of Asian women and challenges comedy’s narrative through intersectional, queer, and punk‑infused chaos.

Su Mi’s work fuses drag, theatre, and social commentary, creating a genre‑defying experience that’s as cathartic as it is anarchic.

Becky Umbers – Put That Cat Back in the Bag

📍 Assembly Roxy (Snug Bar) at 8:40pm, 2–26 August
New Zealand’s award‑winning comedian Becky Umbers dives into the delicate art of keeping your metaphorical cat — your inner weirdo — hidden. Her joyous debut hour mixes cartoonish voice work with cheeky adult wit, exploring why we hide our quirks to fit in.

Umbers’ blend of absurdism and warmth has made her one of the most exciting rising stars from the Antipodes.

Cabbage the Clown – Cinemadrome

📍 Underbelly Buttercup at 9:45pm, 2–26 August
A minimum‑wage cinema employee turned viral tragic fool, Cabbage the Clown brings a multimedia drag‑clowning spectacle about queer heartbreak, consumerism, and popcorn‑covered despair. Cinemadrome is part parody, part social critique, and wholly chaotic.

With over eight million views online, Cabbage’s mix of clowning and drag transforms everyday drudgery into surreal, glitter‑stained rebellion.

Ada & Bron – The Origin of Love

📍 Pleasance Courtyard (Attic) at 11pm, 2–26 August
BAFTA‑nominated newcomers Ada & Bron invite audiences to third‑wheel their absurd, kaleidoscopic exploration of cursed couples, doomed romances, and the beautiful chaos of human connection. The Origin of Love unfolds as a patchwork of vignettes, confessional letters, and romantic misfires, each one stitched together with the duo’s signature blend of surrealism and emotional candour. It’s a show that treats love not as a tidy narrative arc but as a mythology — messy, contradictory, and often very funny — built from longing, miscommunication, and the strange rituals we invent to feel less alone.

Ada & Bron’s partnership blends theatrical invention with a startling emotional honesty, creating character comedy that’s both strange and soulful. They move with the ease of performers who trust each other completely, slipping between personas and emotional registers with a kind of mischievous grace. What makes their debut so compelling is the way it balances the grotesque with the tender, the ridiculous with the sincere. Beneath the heightened characters and absurd scenarios lies a quiet truth: that connection, in all its flawed and feral forms, is still the thing we’re all reaching for.

Ted Milligan – United

📍 Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Three) at 9:45pm, 2–26 August
Sketch Off Winner 2024 Ted Milligan’s United is a live mockumentary following a fictional football club’s desperate bid for redemption. Inspired by Sunderland ’Til I Die, it’s a whip‑smart, character‑driven comedy about loyalty, hope, and the absurdity of fandom.

Milligan’s background in sketch and character work gives his debut a cinematic rhythm and a distinctly British heart.

The Mayor and His Daughter – A Genuine Appreciation of Comedy

📍 Assembly Roxy (Snug Bar) at 4:10pm, 2–26 August
Leicester Square Sketch Off finalists Ciaran Chillingworth and Kit Finnie bring a folk‑horror sketch show about Englishness, identity, and the demonic forces of modern Britain. When their village discovers a sacred tome — a box set of Russell Howard’s Good News — chaos and catharsis ensue.

The duo’s surreal, literary approach to sketch comedy makes them one of the most original partnerships at this year’s Fringe.

Douglas Widick – Paperclip

📍 Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (The Penny) at 10:20pm, 2–26 August
Microsoft Word’s Clippy returns in Widick’s high‑energy musical comedy adventure through the internet’s retro past, and it’s every bit as unhinged and nostalgic as that premise suggests. Paperclip is a full‑throttle, interactive romp that treats the early web like a mythic landscape — dial‑up tones as battle cries, pop‑ups as omens, and forgotten mascots as fallen gods. Packed with rock tributes, improvised detours, and a kind of joyous digital archaeology, the show revels in the absurdity of a time when the internet still felt like a frontier rather than a marketplace.

A celebrated New York performer, Widick brings a musical improv background that gives the hour a frenetic, infectious pulse. He moves with the confidence of someone who understands that nostalgia isn’t just comfort — it’s a cultural archive, a way of remembering who we were before algorithms learned to anticipate our desires. Beneath the silliness lies a surprisingly sharp commentary on obsolescence, usefulness, and the fear of being left behind in a world that updates faster than we can. In Widick’s hands, Clippy becomes both a punchline and a prophet, guiding the audience through a past that feels increasingly like a warning about the future.

Jacob Nussey – Primed

📍 Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Three) at 7:15pm, 2–26 August
Award‑winning comedian Jacob Nussey unboxes the absurdities of warehouse life in his Amazon‑themed debut, peeling back the layers of a world built on scanners, quotas, and the quiet indignities of minimum‑wage survival. With his trademark deadpan precision, he explores working‑class aspiration and corporate absurdity, finding humour in the places where ambition meets algorithm. Primed becomes a kind of workplace archaeology — a look at the systems that shape us, the compromises we make to get by, and the strange camaraderie that forms in the fluorescent hum of a distribution centre.

Chortle’s “One to Watch” 2023, Nussey’s understated delivery hides razor‑sharp social insight. He has a gift for turning the mundane into the quietly revelatory, for exposing the surreal logic of modern labour without ever losing the human thread. What makes his debut stand out is the clarity of his perspective: dry, incisive, and unafraid to poke at the gap between how companies talk about work and how it actually feels to do it. In Nussey’s hands, the comedy of survival becomes something both bleakly funny and unexpectedly hopeful — a reminder that even in the most automated environments, the human element refuses to disappear.

Josh Elton – Away with the Fairies

📍 Hoots @ The Apex (Hoots 4) at 8pm, 2–26 August
Elton’s debut blends rapid‑fire stand‑up with vivid, almost cinematic storytelling, moving between identity, humiliation, and the strange, fragile places where we try to locate meaning. His world is one where fairy curses sit comfortably alongside playground trauma, where the ridiculous and the painful coexist without ever cancelling each other out. The result is a show that is both riotous and unexpectedly tender — a reminder that the stories we tell about ourselves are often funnier, stranger, and more revealing than we intend.

A natural storyteller, Elton has a gift for turning personal embarrassment into communal recognition. His mix of absurdism and vulnerability gives the hour a restless emotional charge, the sense of someone excavating their own past not for catharsis but for connection. What makes him stand out among this year’s newcomers is the precision with which he balances silliness and sincerity: he can land a joke with the speed of a seasoned comic, then pivot into something quietly affecting without losing the room. It’s comedy that feels alive to the messiness of being human — and generous enough to let the audience see themselves in it.

Rohan Sharma – Mad Dog

📍 Pleasance Courtyard (Below) at 7:10pm, 2–26 August
British‑Indian comedian and Leicester Square New Comedian champion Rohan Sharma delivers a surreal, multimedia odyssey through identity, race, and modern Britain. Mad Dog ricochets between sincerity and absurdity, weaving together confession, cultural critique, and outright chaos. What emerges is a densely layered exploration of truth and lies — the stories we inherit, the ones we invent, and the ones we cling to when the world refuses to make sense. Sharma treats identity not as a fixed category but as a shifting, glitching interface, corrupted and nourished in equal measure by the pressures of contemporary life.

Sharma’s sharp intellect and theatrical flair make his debut one of the most ambitious at the Fringe. He moves with the confidence of a performer who understands that comedy can be both a scalpel and a smoke bomb — cutting through the noise while simultaneously destabilising it. His humour is restless, probing, and deliberately disorienting, inviting the audience into a space where contradictions aren’t resolved but illuminated. Beneath the surrealism lies something unmistakably human: a search for belonging in a country that can’t decide what it is, or who gets to feel at home in it.

Steffan Alun – Stand Up

📍 Hoots @ The Apex (Hoots 4) at 9:30pm, 2–26 August
Welsh optimist Steffan Alun finally presents his full debut hour — a rich, raucous blend of politics, sexuality, and unapologetic queerness. What begins as playful irreverence gradually reveals itself as something more deliberate: a quietly radical insistence on joy, on community, on the right to take up space without apology. His comedy moves with the rhythm of someone who has spent years thinking about identity not as a fixed point but as a landscape — shifting, contradictory, and often very funny.

Seen on BBC Wales and S4C, Alun brings a proudly Welsh perspective to the stage, one shaped by a neurodivergent lens that sharpens both his humour and his humanity. He has a knack for turning personal chaos into collective recognition, for finding the soft underbelly of a political moment and pressing just hard enough to make the room laugh before it winces. It’s not just the punchlines but the warmth: a sense that comedy, in Alun’s hands, becomes a small act of defiance — a reminder that joy is something we build together, especially when the world feels brittle.

These performers share a common thread: they treat comedy not as escape, but as confrontation. Their work reflects a generation living through economic precarity, political fatigue, and digital overload — yet still finding ways to laugh, connect, and resist. In their hands, comedy becomes a form of empathy, a way to reclaim joy from cynicism.

As the Fringe approaches, Counter Culture will be watching closely. The question is not simply who will make us laugh, but who will make us think — and, perhaps, who will remind us that laughter itself is an act of resistance.

By Pat Harrington

Picture Credits

  • Caroline McEvoy — photography by Rebecca Need‑Menear
  • Su Mi — photography by Michael Julings
  • Cabbage the Clown — photography by Lina Sakoviča
  • Ada & Bron — photography by Michael Julings
  • Ted Milligan — photography by Rebecca Need‑Menear
  • The Mayor and His Daughter — photography by Jamie Mckaela
  • Jacob Nussey — photography by Andy Hollingworth
  • Josh Elton — photography by Michelle Huggleston
  • Rohan Sharma — photography by Rebecca Need‑Menear and Michael Julings
  • Steffan Alun — photography by Michelle Huggleston

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