Welcome back to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre by Fergus Morgan.
Throughout August, The Crush Bar has focused on the Edinburgh Fringe, with twice-weekly issues, each featuring five show recommendations, plus round-ups of festival news. This final missive, though, is a list of my top ten shows of the festival out of the 67 I have seen so far, with any info I could glean about their future lives.
In case you missed it, here is Tuesday’s issue, featuring five observations about this year’s festival, from the quality of theatre to the tourist tax shenanigans…
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The festival has three days left…
The final round of Fringe First Awards were handed out this morning at a ceremony at Pleasance Courtyard. They went to One Hundred Voices, Adam Riches: The Captain, Tether, Turn Your F*cking Phones Off, Little Animals, and Slayers. More from me here in The Stage.
A few other awards were handed out at the same event. The Brighton Fringe Award went to Campitalism: Three Gays Try To Fix The Economy; the Holden Street Theatres Award went to Amnesia, the Filipa Bragança Award went to OnlyFans For Therapy, and the Mental Health Foundation Award went to Huge Ass Mindset. Here is the same link again.
Earlier this week, The Stage revealed its Fringe Five breakout theatremakers. We chose Hannah Maxwell for Turn Your F*cking Phones Off; Sean McVerry and Andy Roninson for The Real Kyle McCarren; Ellen Robertson and Charly Clive for Jitters; AJ Turner, Sam Rees and Ella Dale for Gameplay; and Ros Watt for Trans People Are Awful.
Foriegner, Good With Faces, You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next, Tell Me and Playback won in the second batch of Summerhall’s Bragi Awards. More here.
The nominees for the Comedy Awards have been revealed. In the running for the main prize are Chris Cantrill, Dan Tiernan, Harriet Dyer, Lara Ricote, Li Jin Hao and Spencer Jones. Up for the Best Newcomer prize are Dom McGovern, Fatiha El-Ghorri, Freddie Meredith, Marty Gleeson, Omar Badawy, Tom Towelling and Underground Monk Show. The winner will be revealed tomorrow.
Sally Stott, a reviewer for The Scotsman, was singled out by a comedian in a show she was covering, offered a “noose with which to hang” herself. She gave the show one-star. The Scotsman’s Jane Bradley explains more here. The incident has sparked a conversation about the limits of empathy at the festival on Reddit.
The Fringe Society and EIF are now set for a 25 per-cent boost to their annual council funding via the tourist tax, after an SNP amendment to the council’s proposed 11.5 per-cent increase was voted through at a committee meeting this morning. Things are still up in the air, though, as the decision has now been referred to a full meeting of the council. In any case, it still only equates to an £18.7k uplift for the Fringe Society, despite the festival estimated to have added £6m to the council’s coffers through the visitor levy.
James Graham and Richard Gadd are the latest figures to sound the alarm over the exorbitant cost of performing at the Edinburgh Fringe pricing out working-class artists and risk-taking work from the festival.
Princes Street will finally reopen tomorrow, with three days of the Fringe to go, Michael MacLeod reports in The Edinburgh Minute
More details about the planned replacement for the TV Festival, which departs for Manchester next year, have emerged. Jane Bradley has more in The Scotsman.
Now, without further ado, here are my ten favourite shows of the festival this year…
Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It - Summerhall, 9.10pm
Xhloe and Natasha chalk up a fourth festival hit - and a fourth Fringe First win - with this swift, smart satire on conspiracy theories and mass hysteria, which sees the NYC-based duo rapidly hop, skip and jump through a range of characters to tell the story of a sasquatch hoax in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains that spirals catastrophically out of control. It transfers straight to Soho Theatre in September following the conclusion of its sold-out run at Summerhall. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here.
Mayflies - Brown’s Of Leith, 4pm
Grid Iron’s site-specific adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s 2020 novel is a show of two halves: the first followed two teenage pals from Ayrshire through a riotous weekend in Manchester in the 1980s, the second caught up with them thirty years later, as one of them faced up to a terminal cancer diagnosis. Propulsive, plangent and passionately performed, it is skilfully staged by Ben Harrison amid the rusting apparatus of an old warehouse in Leith. It seems unlikely to get another life, given its site-specific nature, so your only hope is somehow snaffling a ticket over the next few days. You can read my four-star review in The Financial Times here.
The Jolly Fisherman - Underbelly George Square, 12.45pm
This time-hopping two-hander from writer John Dinneen and his emerging company Kick It Anywhere takes a real story - the conversion of a Barking pub into a Mosque - and spins it into a moving study of cross-cultural friendship in a polarising world, with Layla Madanat’s engrossing production featuring strong performances from Jonny Khan and Alex Hill. There is no news of a transfer elsewhere… yet. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here.
Salty Brine: How Strange It Is (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show) - Summerhall, 9.30pm
The latest in Salty Brine’s Living Record Collection series, in which he takes famous albums and classic books and spins them into exuberant shows stuffed with feeling and philosophy, this ninety-minute show sees the NYC-based cabaret artist find resonances between Neutral Milk Hotel’s cult 1998 record In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, The Diary Of Anne Frank, and his own adolescent experiences. Directed by Max Reuben and backed by a superb four-piece band, it is punchy, provocative and infectiously fun, and I am excited to see what combinations Salty Brine comes up with next. Like Xhloe and Natasha, he is transferring his show straight from Edinburgh to the Soho Theatre.
The Distance - Summerhall, 6pm
Few productions capture the euphoric thrill and bitter despair of sport as well as Ben Norris’ solo show about elite athletics inspired by his own abortive adolescent career as a long-distance runner. When he is not jogging on a treadmill, Norris clambers around the steel climbing frame set, delivering a pacy story of excellence, ambition and obsession, and what happens after all that disappears. Again, there is no news of a future life for the show elsewhere, but it seems overwhelmingly likely there will be. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here.
Our Other Organ - Summerhall, 4.15pm
This extraordinary show from Boaz Barkan involves Israel-born, Denmark-based performance artist conducting both a literal anatomical demonstration - he manhandles and manipulates circus artist Joel Degerfelt’s prone body in macabre fashion - and a historical dissection of the way in which the scars of antisemitism have manifested in the modern world. It addresses huge themes in gripping, grisly style and I would love to see it add more UK dates to its touring schedule. You can read my five-star review in The Scotsman here.
Elf Lyons is The Woman on the Edge - Pleasance Courtyard, 9.30pm
This sharp, strange, and subversive show from Elf Lyons sees the Gaulier-trained actor, comedian and clown transform into a hysterical mid-century, mid-Atlantic actress to explore her struggles with romance, relationships and self-confidence, with loads of other stuff intricately layered in as well, including plenty of references to Apollo 13. It is cleverly constructed, brilliantly funny and really moving, and I am shocked it has not been shortlisted for the Comedy Award, seeing as it was perhaps the buzziest show of the festival. She is performing sixteen shows at SoHo Playhouse in New York from late September, and more dates will surely be announced soon.
Campitalism: Three Gays Try To Fix The Economy - Pleasance Courtyard, 2.05pm
The debut show from company BOY Theatre, this riotous satire sees writer-performers Maria Telnikoff, Kit Miles and Cherry Eckell sprawl around in suits, gurning and guffawing as three coked-up cut-throat capitalists to send up everything from crypto to Huel to the 2008 financial crash, occasionally slipping in more serious sections of autobiographical storytelling to explore how Britain’s broken economy has impacted their own lives, attitudes and identities. It would be great to see it secure future dates elsewhere, but I look forward to BOY Theatre’s next show nonetheless.
Man Sings the Same Song Over and Over Again for an Hour - Summerhall, 7.45pm
Yes, this show involves exactly what the title promises: an Australian clown called Conk sings the same song fifteen times in a row, introducing all sorts of silly business along the way, until the entire audience is up on their feet, dancing on the stage and belting it out alongside him come the hour’s conclusion. It is one of the shows of the Fringe this year. And, no, I am not going to tell you what the song is. I will tell you, though, that you can catch it in London at Underbelly Boulevard Soho on Thursday and Saturday next week. You can read my five-star review in The Stage here.
Turn Your F*cking Phones Off - Summerhall, 3.40pm
Hannah Maxwell’s fourth Fringe show is her finest yet. Inspired by her experiences working for a shady company in Whitehall, it entertainingly explores the disturbing ways in which society is being manipulated via social media and smartphones, its restlessly imaginative format - Maxwell incorporates Bond jokes, audience games, TikTok reels, and more - an adroit reflection of our diminishing attention spans. I didn’t review it, but I would have given it five stars if I had. Summerhall has added extra late-night shows in its Main Hall this weekend. There is no news of a transfer to London or elsewhere yet but there definitely will be.
Other shows I have seen and enjoyed: Crybabies: The Scaring, Overtone, Tether, Prophets, The Plot, Baby Everything, You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next), Nesting, Succubus, The Real Kyle McCarren, Adam Riches: The Captain, Amnesia, Transmission, Target Audience, The Van Gogh Shogh, Heart Beats Strong, I Bought A Flip Phone, Bachelors Of Fine Arts, House Fly, Steve Burns: Alive; Mr Bergmann of Deadman’s Point
And at the Edinburgh International Festival: A Trial, Angels In America, Hang Time, Al-Sirah Al-Hilaliyyah, When Prophecy Fails.
That is it from me here in The Crush Bar for the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. There are a few more loose ends to tie up: The List Awards and the Edinburgh Comedy Awards will be announced tomorrow; the final box-office figures will be revealed on Monday; and the tourist tax shenanigans shall inevitably continue for months. I will be covering all of that in The Stage.
The Crush Bar will be back in a few weeks, probably at the beginning of October, until which time I shall be going on holiday, chairing the audio drama judging of the British Audio Drama Awards, and looking after the budding canine critic below.
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Fergus
what an adorable new critic!
Thank you for seeing Bachelors... :)