Even though it lurched through its post-pandemic restart and is still strapped for cash, the Fringe remains the world’s largest arts festival and the best place to be for a few days in August. Word of mouth is the coolest way to sniff out what’s great, but here’s a starter for six…
2-10 August Bridget Christie: Who Am I? at The Stand
Ten years after her feminist show A Bic For Her won the Edinburgh Comedy Award and silenced the Fringe’s rape jokes, Christie makes mirth with the menopause in a mischievously demonstrative hour of stand-up.
2 – 27 August Ahir Shah: Ends at Monkey Barrel
Shah’s deft writing and beautiful blend of the personal and geopolitical makes for constantly challenging comedy that rejoices in pulling your preconceptions to pieces, reassembling them and burning them down all over again.
3-27 August The Lost Lending Library at Church Hill Theatre Studio Punchdrunk Enrichment’s immersive kids’ show is set in a giant 314 storey travelling library where young audiences are charged with helping find new stories. For ages six-to-11.
3-27 August Frank Skinner: 30 Years of Dirt at Assembly George Square
Where other comics fade as they age, Skinner’s stand-up is hitting its peak and this is the safest place to invest your comedy pound.
4-27 August IMA (Pray) at Murrayfield Ice Rink
Budapest’s Recirquel Cirque Danse create an immersive dance piece with a single aerial performer performing a shamanic dance ritual in a vast starry sky.
15-27 August Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Traverse Theatre
Award-winning genre-bending Iranian playwright Javaad Alipoor merges true crime podcasting with personal storytelling and audience interaction to investigate the 1992 murder of Iranian pop sensation and refugee Fereydoun Farrokhzad in his home in Germany.
Photograph Bálint Hirling/ Recirquel Cirque Danse
