Having received critical acclaim when it premiered at the Noel Coward theatre last year, I think that we all knew that it wouldn't be long before Mischief Theatre's The Comedy About Spies returned to the glittering West End. And we were right to assume as it comes roaring back, this time taking up residence at the larger Adelphi Theatre where it remains just as slick, just as ambitious and just as funny. Stepping away from their much loved and well oiled goes wrong machine, T

It takes great skill to construct a story from just one single suggestion, making that story last an hour between just two performers and a pianist takes that skill to even higher levels. But this is Graham and Steen, named by Broadway World as the cool guys of improv, and here they are to construct a story so silly, so hilarious and so bonkers that your sides will ache from laughing. Performing at the Edinburgh Fringe for three nights only, I feel extremely lucky that I was

With thousands of shows covering numerous genres available to choose from at the world famous Edinburgh Fringe, there are countless styles of shows to enjoy and you never know there might be something different and altogether unique that might catch your eye all because you are a fan of the genre. That is exactly what happened to me with the brilliant Solve Along Murder She Wrote as a lover of a good old murder mystery. Murder She Wrote ran for 12 seasons between 1984 and 199

With a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, through several variations, improv could quite possibly be one of the most said and most heard words in the entire Edinburgh Fringe, especially in the flyering zones, but it remains one of the most popular genres out of everything that is on offer. Improv done well can see tickets flying out the door, and if you are lucky enough to have a ticket to see Murder She Didn't write by Degrees of Error burning a hole in your pocke

What do you get when you combine two actors with several moments in history, high levels of audience participation and even higher levels of silliness? You get The Past, an hilarious whistle stop tour through history from Cleopatra and the Christmas Football match in no man’s land, to Henry VIII and cavemen. Sean Wareing and Freddie Walker of the Fishing4Chips theatre company don victorian style striped bathing suits and rattle through sketch after sketch, flying with moment

Comedy is perhaps what the Edinburgh Fringe is best known for, and with that comes the flurry of stand up comedians that flock to the city each summer, so many that it can be near on impossible to choose. You have your big names, established and most likely seen on our television screens, and the new talent just starting to make a name for themselves looking up to those big names with admiration. Then somewhere in the middle you have the names that some know and some don’t ne

The story of Noah, his ark and the animals marched in two by two is pretty well known and you wouldn’t think that, with the exception of the 2007 film Evan Almighty, it would be a story that could be converted into a comedy never mind one that is so silly, so ridiculous, so stupid in the best way that it will have you laughing out load and turning around in your seat just so you can try and take it all in. But here we are with our host Nathaniel Jones, playing Noah with a shi

A stalwart of the Edinburgh Fringe for many, many years, News Revue takes the hot topics of current affairs and turns them into comedy skits often including parody songs played out by a small cast who swap and change between characters. It’s a popular choice for fringe goers who, perhaps bogged down by the news (and let’s be honest, who isn’t at the moment), wish to see it turned on its head and to be given a chance to laugh at it. News stories being covered and joked about i

After becoming one of the hottest tickets in town during the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, the sea-faring, all singing, all dancing musical Shantify returns to Assembly’s Palais du Variete with new songs, a slightly reworked story and more energy than ever. With the story set in a fishing village, we are introduced to six young men who outside of their daily lives most look forward to their evenings in the local pub where they perform as the Barnacle Bouys, turning hit songs into se

The Edinburgh Fringe gives those wanting to use theatre and art to tell a personal story a stage (literally) and there are lots of moving, important and exciting stories out there to be told. These type of stories can be windows into the lives of the performers, glimpses into moments of their lives that touched them, meant a lot to them and perhaps even changed the way in which their lives were heading. And all of this is brought to life in My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Ins

What happens when you activate a super spy making machine, in the depths of the Second World War, without realising that there is a moth trapped inside the mechanism? Well, what doesn’t happen is the creation of a super spy. Instead, out steps a beast, part human part moth, 100% mystery and a creature that becomes a myth, lurking in the woods of West Virgina, hunted for years but never found. Flash forward and three friends following in the footsteps of the explorer they love

With the Edinburgh Fringe, there is always so much to see, so much to choose from and I’m here to tell you that sometimes it’s just worth giving something a go, because you might just stumble across a gem that stays with you. That is exactly what happened to me during my first ever trip to the fringe in 2022 when I found a show called The Importance of Being…Earnest? By a company called Say It Again, Sorry? Since that day this show, now called simply …Earnest? Has become a hu

The local pub can often be seen as the community hub, a home away from home and a second family, and for Alan it’s where he grew up. Surrounded by his father’s nicknamed friends, as a young teenager he becomes the guard of their favourite chairs, the runner to the bar and back and their companion in the Jolly Fisherman pub. But times are changing for young Alan (Alex Hill) who delights in having the same forehead as his same named father and adores Lil the barmaid who looks o

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

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

Years ago, libraries acted as community hubs, abuzz with activities and much loved by their visitors. Now, for the most part, they are lonely long forgotten relics of time gone by plodding along and clinging to life as the modern world moves on without them. And this idea forms the premise of The Librarians A Very Serious Comedy written by Matthew Howell and Jack Michael Stacey, a brand new show from A. Cabbage Presents, fresh off the back of their previous fringe success Sp

Flighty - ‘someone who is silly, irresponsible, and not serious’. That is how Philomena McGuinness is described, and the way in which she has been described since birth. With her cheeky smile, bright eyes and determination to state that she is, in fact, a poet despite having never written a thing, Philomena never pictured herself as a nurse. But that is exactly what she becomes, moving from Dublin to London, helping her patients and moving from hospital to hospital throughout