The Eight Faces of Ellie Morrison –  ★★★★☆  – Action packed  Dashboard Light 7-29 Aug Review by Rebecca Mahar   Touting itself as “the first mixed martial arts stage play,”  The Eight Faces of Ellie Morrison  from Dashboard Light rolls into the Fringe with raw energy and a whole lot of heart. Promotional image: Dashboard Light. Eight Faces  is the debut of playwright Sam Beeson, who trained in MMA, including stepping into the ring to fight (and win), as part of the play’s development. It focuses on Ellie Morrison, a rockstar with a substance abuse problem, and her brother Luke, a promising fighter who left the sport for safer —but less fulfilling— work. Ellie’s agent strikes a deal to get her a world tour, contingent on her convincing Luke to sign a contract for one more fight against an undefeated champ. During a drunken conversation Ellie tricks Luke into signing, but tragedy strikes before he can sober up to find out what he’s committed to— and it’s...

Burke'n'Hare: Let the Bodies Hit the Floor -  ★★★★★ - Bangin’ PBH’s Free Fringe @ CC Blooms (Venue 171): Sat 8 – Sun 30 Aug 2026 Review by Rebecca Mahar. Review commissioned by, and originally published on All Edinburgh Theatre, 17 August 2026. Edited by Thom Dibdin. Burke’n’Hare: Let the Bodies Hit the Floor  at CC Blooms is a wildly irreverent, casually gruesome, curiously grounded look at Edinburgh’s most notorious serial killers. From Old’n’Dead Productions, the company behind  Elizabeth I: Regina Vagina  and  Charles II: Living Libido Loca , this is the third instalment in Beth Eltringham’s  Horrible Histories -inspired series of musical histories. Steven Shayegh as Burke and Andrew Lodge as Hare. Pic: Old'n'Dead Productions. Visit All Edinburgh Theatre to read the full review !

Trans People Are Awful–  ★★★★★  – Intense Ros Watt in association with Camden People's Theatre 5-31 Aug Review by Rebecca Mahar   Part black comedy, part tragedy, all screaming reflection on identity and the constructs that may or may not make us whole,  Trans People Are Awful  is a land mine of a solo debut from rising Scottish actor Ros Watt. A scene from Trans People Are Awful. Pic: Ella Dale. Watt, himself a trans performer and writer of the show, plays Boy, a young trans guy out to collect the final, perfect body art he’s certain will make his transition —and his identity— whole. This of course involves murdering various cis men and stealing their parts until he finds the right one, until at last he positions himself in front of a camera to document the self-performed surgery that will both complete and kill him. Boy addresses the camera directly, explaining via various dramatic, frenetic, hilarious and haunting means, what he’s doing and why. But when he b...

Bloody Mary's -  ★★★★★ - Riveting theSpace @ Venue 45 (Venue 45): Fri 14 – Wed 19 August 2026 Review by Rebecca Mahar. Review commissioned by, and originally published on All Edinburgh Theatre, 17 August 2026. Edited by Thom Dibdin. Fat Pooch Productions makes its theatre debut at theSpace @ Venue 45 with  Bloody Mary’s , a rich, raw, riveting look inside the life and death of Mary McKinnon, a figure of notoriety and injustice in Edinburgh’s history. In 1823 McKinnon was the proprietor of a fashionable South Bridge brothel where, in Fat Pooch’s version of events, the women who worked as prostitutes received both care and protection from her. Regardless of how they had ended up in a life of sex work, Bloody Mary’s was a haven of choice – to engage or not engage with customers, and to perform only the acts which they desired, including that of simply providing companionship. Erin Clark as Mary McKinnon. Pic: Fat Pooch, Visit All Edinburgh Theatre to read the full review !

Rockbeth –  ★★★½  – Raucous   More the Merrier 10-15 Aug Review by Rebecca Mahar   More the Merrier’s  Rockbeth  is a raucous reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s  Macbeth , blending classic rock with classic drama in a revival of this ambitious production. A scene from Rockbeth. Pic: More House School. Composed of students from More House School and other neighbouring schools and colleges, More the Merrier is an all-neurodiverse company tackling the challenges not only of Shakespeare but adaptation and rock music with energy and commitment.  Rockbeth  is directed and adapted by More House’s head of drama, David Aldred, who describes it as a “modernised and musicalised” version. Musicalisation is certainly present throughout, and the characters are presented in modern dress, but the “modernisation” of the script is somewhat uneven.   Much of the script (albeit cut for length) is as Shakespeare wrote it, but there are bits throughout that ha...

 The Secret Room at Lauriston Castle -  ★★★★☆ - Slick Lauriston Castle (Venue 436): Fri 7 – Sun 23 Aug 2026 Review by Rebecca Mahar. Review commissioned by, and originally published on All Edinburgh Theatre, 15 August 2026. Edited by Thom Dibdin. Lauriston Castle opens its doors to Fringe-goers in partnership with the Edinburgh International Magic Festival for  The Secret Room at Lauriston Castle , an immersive magic experience featuring three expert illusionists. Rather than a sit-down show, this promenade production begins outside the front door, with Tracy, Steward of the castle, giving a brief history of the building, its owners, and its connections to magic and wizardry. These go all the way back to the castle’s original owner and builder of its tower house, Archibald Napier, seventh Laird of Merchiston, who successfully predicted the date that Mary, Queen of Scots, would escape Lochleven Castle. Drew McAdam in the drawing room. Pic: Edinburgh Magic Fest. Visit All E...

Love’s Labour’s Lost –  ★★★☆☆  – Uneven Othello –  ★★★☆☆  – Compressed Hamlet Redux –  ★★☆☆☆  – Lacking substance Prague Shakespeare Company 10-16 Aug Review by Rebecca Mahar   Prague Shakespeare Company presents a triple helping of Shakespeare this Fringe, with a series of productions that are ambitious in their efforts to bring full-cast renditions of their plays to the stage in dramatically reduced timespans, but with executions that fall short of their aims.   Love’s Labour’s Lost Helen Hopkins as Armado and Bree Welch as Costard in Love's Labour's Lost. Pic: Lux Praguensis. Love’s Labour’s Lost  is a very silly play to begin with. A group of young men commit themselves to three years of scholarship and austerity with the King of Navarre, foregoing many pleasures, notably the company of women. These vows are immediately broken when the Princess of France and her entourage arrive, with the men falling immediately in love, and the women plo...

Jane Austen's Love and Friendship [sic] -  ★★★☆☆ - Droll PBH’s Free Fringe @ CC Blooms: Sat 8 – Fri 14 Aug 2026 Review by Rebecca Mahar Review commissioned by, and originally published on All Edinburgh Theatre, 12 August 2026. Edited by Thom Dibdin. Edinburgh Rep Company and Erstwhile Media take on Jane Austen with an adaptation of the legendary novelist’s  Love and Freindship [sic] , a satirical parody written by Austen at the age of fourteen. Adapted and directed by Oliver Giggins,  Love and Freindship [sic]  opens with young ladies Marianne and Isabel arriving to visit the elderly (well, maybe: she’s 55, but victim of a long grey wig) Laura, Marianne’s maternal figure, regaling her with the tale of how they barged their way into the house of an old man they each claimed for their grandfather. Jane Austen's Love and Friendship [sic]. Pic: Erstwhile Media. Visit All Edinburgh Theatre to read the full review !

Bad Shakespeare –  ★★☆☆☆  – Vexing TheatreOCU 7-12 Aug Review by Rebecca Mahar Promotional image, Bad Shakespeare. Bad Shakespeare  from TheatreOCU at Oklahoma City University promises a revue of Shakespeare’s baddies, a play in five acts, each exploring a different question along the theme of (with apologies to Shax himself): are villains born bad, do they achieve badness, or do they have badness thrust upon them? Despite this interesting premise, the production fails to live up to its promises and demonstrates a superficiality unbecoming of the complexity it claims to see in its subjects.   The structure of the piece is disjointed within its framing, flitting rapidly from monologue to monologue, mostly excerpts from longer speeches in the various plays from which it pulls its bad Shakespeare/bad Shakespeareans. Between each piece the actors address the audience, sometimes with attempts to explain what the character has been saying and why, sometimes only a few flip...

MUSE: The Shakespeare Mayhem Musical –  ★★★★☆  – Ambitious Muse 5-30 Aug Review by Rebecca Mahar   MUSE: The Shakespeare Mayhem Musical  from emerging music artist Hanna Andréa is a high energy, hallucinogenic dive into the mind and characters of struggling writer Shakespeare, who in his quest to choose only a single play for his would-be publishers to put to print, must face his creations and hear what they have to say about it— and him.    The basic premise (meeting your own characters in a dreamworld aside) is entirely ahistorical. Shakespeare did not write for publication, and nor did the publishing industry or author-ownership exist during his life in forms that would be recognisable to today’s industry. The order in which Shakespeare’s plays  were  first published is entirely ignored, and an apparent reference to the posthumous collection that would come to be known as the First Folio ignores that there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever i...