The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the world’s largest performance arts festival, featuring approximately 60,000 performances of nearly 4,000 different shows in 322 venues across the entirety of the city. Taking place in August every year, Edinburgh Fringe has been running since 1947. We were this year to soak up the fun atmosphere and take our seats for some thought-provoking, very funny and downright bizarre shows. Here are some of our highlights.

Clown Sex

A strange yet funny and absorbing world unfolds in a triumvirate of stories narrated by the creepy, yet cheery Gary Strange. A loner who resides in London’s sewers, Gary “connects” with people by eavesdropping on their stories, which all revolve around sexual desires and encounters. The stories and characters introduced become more bizarre, until by the end it becomes so grotesque it’s hilarious. An interesting exploration of sexual taboos ★★★

Drew Michael

A debutant at Edinburgh Fringe this year, Bronx-based Drew Michael’s journey is hilarious but most importantly, inspiring. Beginning with his childhood and an early diagnosis of hearing loss, Drew cleverly guides us through his complex journey into adulthood via his relationships on the way and his declining hearing over the years. It’s all at once funny, sad and very thought provoking as the audience is stunned into learning more about this disability.  A masterpiece show ★★★★★

Please Love Me

An original show full of comedy, singing and pole dancing. Created by performer, Clementine Bogg-Hargroves along with Zoey Barnes (who also directs), the long-term collaborators experienced success at their last Fringe outing with Skank, a show which received numerous five star reviews, sold out its 2021 run and was nominated for the Offies 2021 Off Fest award. Please Love Me explores teenage love and what it means to be a young woman – an autobiographical account that will break your heart and split your sides at the same time. It’s powerful, painful and has to be seen ★★★★★

Tones: A Hip-Hop Opera

This one-man show will blow you away from the first second, gripping you tightly and not letting go as you meet Jerome (aka The Professor), a working-class, British man of Jamaican heritage. Instantly we learn that Jerome is gifted and bright, but his talent is unfairly not enough as he finds his skin tone holding him back in the world. The result is an identity crisis that accelerates with increasing pace as we race with Jerome until the very end. Combining the sounds of grime, hip-hop and drill with the melodrama of opera, this is a highly original show about a very real issue facing young black people today ★★★★★

The Baron and The Junk Dealer

The Baron and The Junk Dealer deserves a standing ovation for its master craft in storytelling. From the creators of long-running cult underground comedy hit, ‘The George Lucas Talk Show’, this is an original play full of wit about two very different fugitives – a mysterious aristocrat and a paranoid junk merchant – stranded on a desolate planet waiting to be rescued. With plenty of Star Wars references, this is light years ahead ★★★★

Martin Urbano

Another American debutant at Fringe, New Yorker Martin Urbano’s comedy is risqué to say the least. Heavily loaded with dark satire and parody, Martin goes in all guns blazing with his controversial views on everything from “wokeness” to “cancel culture”. This show is not for the faint-hearted ★★★