It’s febrile Fringe season again: a time of frantic lists and spreadsheets, and that panicked sense you might not be able to catch all the essential shows.
To make life easier, I have compiled a list of the 11 shows that I – an academic specialising in humour and comedy – am most excited about this year in Edinburgh. In the interests of transparency, I should state my tastes skew towards clown and performance art, but hopefully there’s something here for everyone.
1. Soho Theatre: Underground Monk Show
This year sees the return of this clown/performance art supergroup from LA. Top-tier performers, their 2024 work-in-progress show was a cult favourite, and this summer the group are unmissable.
2. Lady Bolognese: Class War
More clowning from the gurning duo Lady Bolognese, winners of the 2026 Leicester Comedy Festival best variety show. This is their Fringe debut as dinner ladies Barbara and Veronica dishing the dirt.
3. Frankie Thompson: Horrible Things
“Things from down the back of the sofa and floating in her soup, things from the bins of people in power.” Clown and performance artist Frankie Thompson returns to the Fringe with Horrible Things. An interesting and innovative performer, Thompson is restlessly experimental and satisfyingly eccentric.
4. Ratbags Theatre: How to Art
Another Fringe premiere from New Zealand’s Ratbags Theatre. How to Art sees two bananas wake up duct-taped to the wall of an art gallery – a conceit clearly referencing Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous Comedian artwork, which saw a duct-taped banana fetch $5.2m (£3.85m) in 2019. The show humorously probes ideas of classification and gatekeeping in art.
5. Harriet Richardson: Creep
Harriet Richardson’s show may well be cut from similar cloth. Her Fringe debut Creep is about obsession and the strange connections we feel with celebrities or performers, as she moves from the performance pieces of her earlier work to stand-up and storytelling. Richardson is perhaps best known for the project which saw her tattoo the mothers’ names of every man she had ever slept with, an ode to the intimacy she tacitly shares with these women.
6. Em Humble: Lady of the Lakes
Over in the realm of character comedy, which has been newly flourishing in the last couple of years, we have Em Humble doing Arthurian-inspired characters and creatures in Lady of the Lakes. Humble’s quirky short film, Chicken Girl, is a delight and gives a taste of her off-beat humour.
7. Bebe Cave: Swoon
From Arthurian legends to the Victorian era: in Swoon, Bebe Cave is doing the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Last year’s Fringe show saw her plundering the 14th century for inspiration; now Cave skewers the pretensions of the pre-Raphaelites “and the women they love to drown”.
8. Li Jin Hao: Falling From A Moon
Big-hitter Li Jin Hao was nominated for best newcomer in the 2024 Edinburgh Comedy Awards with his debut, Swimming In A Submarine, which introduced his distinctive comic style: softly spoken surrealism but with definite bite. His return to the Fringe, Falling From A Moon, looks to be in the same vein.
9. Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage
This year Sam Eley is doing horrid as his Soul Sewage character, Basil Crumbwick. The show arrives with a lot of buzz and the whiff of cult status – Basil’s papier-mâché head feels loosely reminiscent of 1990s avant-garde icon Frank Sidebottom.
10. Demi Adejuyigbe: Sells Out
Another comedian in the ascendant, Demi Adejuyigbe was also nominated for best newcomer at the 2024 Edinburgh Comedy Awards, a debut that received a lot of love. Adejuyigbe’s new show looks very promising, and ticks the musical comedy box.
11. Daniel Kitson: Thrum
And finally, there’s the legendary Daniel Kitson, a byword for artistic integrity and the stubborn pursuit of one’s own particular muse. He’s only doing a short run, so catch him while you can.
Click here for more information on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
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