As the Fringe draws to a close this week, there is still plenty to see. The ten shows listed here are essential, and there is a lot more besides.
Stand Up if You’re Here Tonight
Underbelly Bristo Square until 31 Aug, 4.40-5.35pm.
An under the radar delight came with American writer John Kolvenbach’s solo play, which sees actor Jim Ortlieb give a charmingly eccentric turn as he invites the audience to connect in a post Covid plea for humanity that is part pop psychology self help routine, part performance lecture and part private confessional.
Supposing:
Traverse Theatre until 30 Aug, various times.
Zinnie Harris’ new play for the Traverse shows what happens to an ordinary everyday woman after she falls down a hole in the road and starts having visions, is soundtracked by a Greek chorus in her head and develops a righteous fury at the world at large. Harris’ own production sees a magnificent Nicole Cooper bring Harris’ mercurial writing to life as a woman possessed.
Badgers
Traverse Theatre until 30 Aug, various times.
There is more mythmaking ahoy in Malaika Kegode’s new play, which sees a wannabe true crime podcaster go in search of a musician who disappeared while staying in a rural AirBnB run by an eccentric old lady with stories of her own. Kegode uses sound and a twenty-first century take on oral storytelling to look at loss, letting go and a mysterious collective past.
Roleplay
Summerhall until 31 Aug, 5.50pm.
Hannah Reilly’s solo play also features a podcaster, albeit one who seems to be reinventing Sex and the City for the hardcore age as she jumps down the sex industry rabbit hole where excess reigns supreme. Performed by Reilly herself in a no holds barred affair that double bluffs the audience into becoming voyeurs before things take a dark turn in a short, sharp shocker of a play.
Bog Witch
Traverse Theatre until 30 Aug, various times.
Bryony Kimmings’ fusion of live art and autobiographical monologue has developed a cult following over the years. Her return to the live arena is a typically candid affair that shows what happened when she moved to the country to get her head together. The result as part of a Traverse programme that focuses much on the experience of women is a moving meditation on loss and healing that creates everyday magic in its wake.
Tether 인연
Summerhall until 31 Aug, 4.30pm.
In a sea of one person shows, Wonder Fools Theatre Company go for something much more ambitious in this epic collaboration with South Korea’s Theatre SAN that charts an extended family at love and war across continents. Moving between 1918, 1951 and 1970, the play is written and directed in collaboration between Wonder Fools’ Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse with Korean writer/director Yoon Junghwan. A cast of seven is augmented by a full ceilidh band in a show that somehow manages to pack an entire mini series’ worth of drama into just an hour.
Mayflies
Brown’s of Leith until 30 Aug, 4pm.
Grid Iron Theatre Company take Andrew O’Hagan’s novel about a gang of small town boys who come of age in the 1980s and transform it into a site specific spectacle performed in a former warehouse that doubles up as assorted Manchester clubs. What follows in Ben Harrison’s production is in part a dramatic eulogy to the last gasps of middle youth who came of age during one of the most crucial eras of late twentieth century British history, part hymn to friendship and the moments that shape it.
44 Minutes
Front Room at Assembly Rooms until 30 Aug, 9.05pm.
A devastating debut play by 17-year-old Lev Steinberg sees four men come to in a cage after being kidnapped by forces unknown. Told by a disembodied voice that they have just 44 minutes to decide which of them is to be sacrificed to some mysterious force on high. With a blistering quartet of performances from a cast of American TV regulars, things take a twist for the worse in an intense and claustrophobic study of justice, morality and the ethics of revenge.
Sh!T Theatre: Evita Too
Zoo Southside until 30 Aug, 6.25pm.
Naked roller-skating is but a prelude to Sh!t Theatre’s musical riot on the lesser known Mrs Peron, Isabella, the former showgirl who went on to become the world’s first ever president of a country after Juan Peron died. With Evita relegated to passing bit part status, Sh!t Theatre’s duo of Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole run riot in a deceptively serious yarn that is both history lesson and a contemplation of what it takes for women including themselves to be remembered.
Common Tongue
Scottish Storytelling Centre until 31 Aug, 2.45pm.
Olivia Caw is a fierce presence as Bonnie in Fraser Scott’s play that looks at the power of speaking in your own voice in a world where you’re patronised or else treated as an oddity for having an accent, in this case a Scots one. As a show of strength in the face of cultural dominance from other places, Scott’s play humanises things through Bonnie with a fireball of a performance from Caw.
The Herald, August 26, 2026
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