When it comes to shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, it would be stranger and harder to find a show that doesn’t feature audience interaction then one that does, but no other features quite as much as the work of Highly Suspect who construct and perform murder mysteries where the audience are the detective and have 70 minutes to catch the killer. In Abbasolute Murder, it’s filming day for the Continental Song Contest and you are in the viewing room. The Host Hugh Eurovision, along

Wonder, Jadoo, Hex, The Remarkable Ben Hart and now The Labyrinth; five years of attending the Edinburgh Fringe and five years of having my mind well and truly boggled by the one and only Ben Hart. A magician like no other, who takes you on a journey like no other, seamlessly blending storytelling, legends, comedy and incredible magic into something extraordinary, completely such mind blowing magical achievements that there really is no point trying to work out how he does it

The Trojan Horse is legendary, a mythological tale of trickery, soldiers hidden into a vast wooden horse wheeled into the city of Troy under the guise of being a gift. Referenced on several occasions in tales such as The Odyssey, you would be forgiven for thinking it’s a topic that wouldn’t suit a comedy makeover but theatre company Fishing 4 Chips have taken up residence at the Edinburgh Fringe to prove that soldiers hiding in a wooden horse (that may or may not have had a b

Sometimes at the Edinburgh Fringe, you can find yourself with a gap in your schedule and pondering what to see next. When there is so much to choose from, it is impossible to be aware of everything and difficult to narrow down your options. And that is where the flyers come in, and sometimes on occasion someone handing out those flyers can catch you at just the right time. I was looking for something starting within the next hour to fit in before my next pre-booked show when

What makes being a musical theatre fan so wonderful is that everyone has different opinions and that everyone likes different things, but even so there are some things that we can all agree on and that is that sometimes there are musicals that are just bad. They can be badly received by the critics, be a complete lose at the bank and run for only a handful of performances, but hidden in a pile of terrible can be a little glittering gem; one song that redeems a bad musical. An

When a local memorial bench is discovered destroyed after a heinous act of arson one morning, a sleepy sector of Exeter comes alive with suspicion, accusation and curtain twitching. The neighbourhood watch are up in arms, the hearsay is flying and whilst the police have been notified, there is another prepared to piece together the evidence, comedian Mike Wozniak, who has strong ties to the area. With Mike Wozniak: The Bench, a busy house at the beautiful Assembly Hall are t

The Edinburgh is big, bold and beautiful, and somewhere that provides a stage to big names and new starters. Fresh new talent can find their space there, a launch pad for little shows grown in schools, universities and drama groups that fit in and fly between the big players. Small fish, big pond, you might say, but these fish are swimming upstream. Most definitely in the case of the Newcastle University Theatre Society who present their comical farce Love Labour's Found writ

To quote another hit fringe show '...Earnest?', let's say 'Everyone struggles with Shakespeare'. It's a well known fact that learning and memorising the words of one of history's most famous writers, the great William Shakespeare, is incredibly difficult. The language is complicated and the plot lines a little bit confusing, so you would think that people would be out to make things are easy as possible when it comes to performing the bard, but in the case of Shake It Up, the

Often celebrated as one of the greatest composers in the history of musical theatre, Fringe shows often choose to sing Andrew Lloyd Webber's praises in thank yous and love letters, but musical comedy duo Flo and Joan take things down a different route returning to the fringe with their 2024 hit One Man Musical, which offers a hilarious satirical glance at the life and work of the theatre impresario. As the name suggests, we see just one cast member (albeit flanked by Flo and

What do a writer famed for the creating perhaps the world's best known detective, and a magician most known for his daring escapology have in common? The answer? Spiritualism. But there is one major difference. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a believer, pining his hopes on mediums to reconnect him with his deceased son. Harry Houdini was a debunker, horrified by the rise in fake spiritualists playing on the emotions of grievers. He spent the later years of his life exposing liars