20 Reviews for the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe (In order from most enjoyable to least)

First, I have an extra pair of tickets for each of these shows on 12 August, “Fractured”< “The Late Utopians”, “Goodbye Dandelions”, “Steve Burns: Alive”, and “TWITCH”. You can see my schedule at 2026 Schedule.htm to learn of those five shows. If you would like their tickets for free, please email me and we will meet at each venues.

Second, after 20 plays, I feel that I must say that this Fringe experience has been unlike any other. On the whole, it feels like most of the shows have been either wonderful or dreadful with few in between. I don’t know if this is just the luck of the draw, or a change in us, but it is a good reminder of the variety that makes the Fringe the Fringe. Now, on with show!

Welcome to the 2026 version of my Fringe reviews. I am a 73-year-old retired Computer Science lecturer from the University of California in Davis who thinks even a bad play is better than no play at all. This year my wife, Debbie, is here. Unlike me, she has an excellent memory, and has acted and directed. While my ratings of enjoyment will not be affected by her, my reasoning may be. You can see my schedule at 2026 Schedule.htm. To learn more about scheduling regime, you can go to my Scheduling section after the reviews on this page. This year I have created a separate page that has my thoughts on reviewing as well as access to all of my reviews from the past, Reviewing and Archives.htm

You can change the sorting column of the table below by first clicking anywhere in its header. Each succeeding click in the header sorts the table by the column clicked. Succeeding clicks of a column will reverse the previous sort order. Sorting by the Date column on the right allows returning viewers to see my most recent reviews.

Fringe Festival Reviews

Rank	Review	Venue	Begins	Ends	Date
1.	The Singer (*****) A singer/songwriter with one hit who has writer’s block meets a deaf man who has a journal full of songs but who cannot break into the music business of the hearing world. The show utilizes speech, British Sign Language (BSL), music, and supertitles with the cast of four to draw us into the world of the deaf with both its challenges and the wonderful expressiveness of BSL. The catchy music and touching unusual lyrics of his songs provide a perfect soundtrack for this tale of prejudice and personal growth.	Traverse 1 at Traverse Theatre	19:00	20:20	4
2.	To My Wife's Next Lover (*****) In his hospital bed, a terminal patient writes a series of notes of how best to deal with his beloved wife in a wide range of interactions. Both the writing and acting are superb. When the second act started, I thought it would be a let down, but, instead it reinforced the power and depth of the play.	Clover Studio at Greenside @ Riddles Court	21:50	22:50	7
3.	The Wolf of Poyais (*****) A con man from the 1820s presents to us eight rules to be a successful entrepreneur as he gives examples from his own 19^th century career of fraud. The show is based on the real exploits of Gregor MacGregor who, among other things, convinced London royalty, financial leaders, and 250 colonists of the reality of a completely fake Central American country. The actor is a perfect salesman for this wonderful combination of history lesson and get-rich-quick seminar.	Roxyboxy at Assembly Roxy	20:30	21:30	5
4.	Elvis in Chaos (asked to be reviewed) (*****) A fellow has obviously spent a lot of time to create a set of both fun and powerful set of Powerpoint slides to assist him in his arguments for a series of diverse outrageous assertions. It felt like James Burke’s “Connections” TV show taken to the laughable limit. It was great fun to see how he could create a chain of possible cause and effects to “prove” that that the Monkees rock band caused the Cambodian Khmer Rouge.	Lime Studio at Greenside @ George Street	17:15	18:15	7
5.	Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (****) A doctor of philosophy is arrested in Berlin two months are the Nazi Reichstag fire. Though the interactions with her interrogator are cordial, the specter of the Holocaust looms for us but is beyond the imagination of the characters. The play does a good job of demonstrating how seemingly innocent activity could be misinterpreted, but the actress spoke too quietly at times and was too old for the part.	Traverse 2 at Traverse Theatre	10:15	11:35	6
6.	Mythos: Ragnarok (****) Odin of Norse mythology and his various relations repeatedly wrestle to determine who shall rule the nine worlds. While I would have never attended a WWW professional wrestling match, I am so happy that I was exposed to the skill of these people live. I was amazed at how a huge man (or woman) can be thrown from great heights without harming them, the thrower, nor the person they might land on.	Music Hall at Assembly Rooms	21:25	22:45	6
7.	For Dolores (****) Two women who live together and share raising a baby visit a counselor to talk about their fractured friendship. I had trouble with the Glaswegian’s accent during the early, weaker, section, but she slowed down in the last act. It was the power of the last act that made the relatively mundane groundwork before it worth it.	Traverse 2 at Traverse Theatre	15:15	16:35	6
8.	Glenn Moore: Work in Progress (****) The established comedian uses his I-pad to prompt him as he tests out a wide variety of jokes that usually are quite humorous. Beside the amusing content, I enjoyed seeing the beginning of the process of creating a routine from a mix of thematic jokes with standalone one-liners. Because I have neighbor back in the USA who is from Croydon, I laughed the most at Moore’s allusion to that city’s dark reputation by saying that he was on a first name basis with the crime photographer.	Monkey Barrel 1 at Monkey Barrel Comedy	11:05	12:05	4
9.	Cathy (****) After the interment of a woman’s beloved husband, her daughter and granddaughter must try to deal with her bereavement. As usual, I couldn’t understand enough of their thick Scottish accent to find the early one liners funny while the crowd roared with laughter. As the play continued it got more serious and slower so that I could understand more and appreciate the drama. Though most of the audience loved the show, I did find the plot mundane and predictable though still touching.	Traverse 1 at Traverse Theatre	19:00	20:20	7
10.	A Microscopic Odyssey (***) A cast of four utilize an overhead projector to follow the path of biological discovery of a man who retreated from the social world after losing his home in a huge earthquake as a boy. Much of the piece uses physical theatre to represent a variety of interactions between organisms—both large and small. While I found their creativity fun, their staging had some events only visible to a small set of the audience.	Beside at Pleasance Courtyard	11:35	12:35	5
11.	A Simply Beastly Murder (***) This noir two hander has a down and out private detective inviting his prim siter to help him to solve the murder of the sister of his lover. While the detective drips of noir, the sister lampoons the imperial British high society of the Famous Five series of children’s books. I think that readers of that series will love the many allusions to them, but, without that background, I found that Sam Spade and a children’s adventure do not mix well.	Jack Dome at Pleasance Dome	13:20	14:20	5
12.	Call Me Elizabeth: from Lassie to Cleopatra (***) Just before Elizabeth Taylor resumes filming Cleopatra she welcomes us into her suite in the Beverley Hills Hotel while she dictates her autobiography. The actress’s often flat portrait lacked the range of the characters Taylor portrayed. Most of the trouble lies in a script that has her describing how she felt with little actual emotional investment in the telling.	Studio Two at Assembly George Square Studios	15:30	16:30	5
13.	Fun-Size Wine Tasting (***) A wine dealer offered us four wines from Italy, South Africa, and Romania and gave us short descriptions of their origins and tasting notes. The wines tasted good and were surprisingly inexpensive, but there was too much chatting and not enough teaching for me. I was surprised to learn that Prosecco is neither a style of wine nor a variety of grape but must be made from at least 85% Glera grapes.	Boardroom at Vegan Tipples	16:00	17:00	4
14.	Supposing: (***) After falling down a hole, a woman suddenly has to contend with a chorus (a la Cassandra) of 17 voices who seemingly are aware of the future. I must admit that I nodded off a couple of times, but each time I awoke she was just as schizophrenic as before. Her husband’s response was spot on, but her character seemed just a two-dimensional incoherent creature of a play.	Traverse 2 at Traverse Theatre	12:45	14:05	6
15.	Big Dog (**) A journalist joins a team of two women who write scripts for a true crime podcaster who they never meet. While the show is supposed to be a critique of the heartless influencers who will do anything to draw an audience regardless of the pain they cause victim’s family and friends, the loud farcical portrayals betray its goal. The hysteria of the last act again deprives it of almost any of its potential power.	Dram at Gilded Balloon Patter House	18:20	19:20	5
16.	The Hobbit (**) This abbreviated high school play does touch on most aspects of the book but has minimal production values. The worst part was that the director inappropriately laughed, whooped, and applauded throughout the show often when no one else did. However, the dragon was well done, and the young cast did know their lines well, particularly Bilbo.	Venue 45 at theSpace @ Venue 45	10:30	11:50	7
17.	Wherefore Art Thou; Woman-Hater? (**) Teo women and a keyboardist seemingly produce a 16^th century playing all the parts, including a woman posing as a man. Since women weren’t allowed to act in the 16^th century, the play lacked the humor of a man playing a woman playing a man of the original. They also broke into song at times so that where we had expected the Renaissance we got rap.	Stephenson Theatre at theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall	14:40	13:25	7
18.	Badgers (**) A combination of loud backgrounds, my poor hearing, and a strange presentation made this whole play pretty incoherent for me. Flashing lights and a voice modifier didn’t help. Though one of our group gave it two thumbs up, three of us just kept hoping it would end.	Traverse 2 at Traverse Theatre	18:00	19:20	6
19.	Gerry Carroll: Young (Ased for a review) (**) Last year, I saw Carroll present an abridged “A Christmas Carol”, and I wrote that is was “.. with nary a missed line.” At 73, his age has caught up with him. Now, it was like listening to the rambling reminiscing of your doddering grandfather.	Just the Tonic;The Attic;The Mash House	14:40	15:35	7
20.	WENCH (**) A drag artist sings and tells tales of 17^th century witches and other scorned women. The amplification was so loud that I could rarely understand them, so I left. Debbie stayed for a while longer and found them ill-prepared. Despite it being a preview, a wardrobe malfunction and several prompts made an average performance even less enjoyable, and Debbie left after 40 minutes	Bluebell at Underbelly; George Square	22:45	23:55	5

Scheduling

I expect to see between 150 and 190 shows this year. Because the Fringe website no longer allows search results to be downloaded as csv files, I wrote a C++ program, main.cpp that parses the html files results from the saved files produced from searches on edfringe.com, and stores the information in a .csv (comma separated file), named AllShows2026.csv. I also converted AllShows2026.csv to an Excel file, AllShows.xls. Each includes information about 3690 shows available on 5 June. The coding for the availability of each show for each day is: 0=No show, 1= Sold out/cancelled, 2= Available, 3= 2-for-1, 4= Preview, 5= Free Fringe. Since the information is from 5 June, it doesn’t include information about the 300 shows added after that. I have also not updated their cancellations and sold out days.

To save time during the Fringe, this year I wrote a C++ program that schedules our shows based on our ratings from their descriptions in the Fringe program, number of performances, and travel time between venues. It has plotted a schedule of 192 shows but we have only bought tickets to the 130 shows to which we gave 4 or 5 stars. That leaves room to replace some scheduled shows with those recommended by other Fringe goers. As usual, the biggest problem is that comedy dominates the Fringe evening programming, and I prefer theatre. If you are curious about the full 192 schedule it is here, ourSchedule.txt. The dates in the file are not in ascending order to guarantee that the 30^th and 31^st are filled and the 18th, 20^th, 25^th, and 27^th are more available for recommend shows.