With just over a month to go now until the start of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, we’ve taken a look at the best theatre shows to check out in August.
The world’s largest arts festival has, as always, got hundreds of great theatrical treats to choose from, performing across the city in our theatres, function rooms, gym halls and even pubs.
Among the 42 theatre shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe we’ve highlighted are a great mix of returning shows, debuts and even some world premiere runs in Edinburgh.
Check out our galley below to help you choose which theatre shows you will be watching in Edinburgh this August.
21. Endgame By Samuel Beckett
In their first full-scale Edinburgh Festival Fringe production since their hugely critically acclaimed Macbeth in 2022, Flabbergast Theatre bring their anarchic physical style to Samuel Beckett’s Endgame; a brutal, funny and visually striking portrait of four people trapped together at the end of the world. Set in a bleak, dying landscape, the characters cling to ritual, memory and one another. Flabbergast transforms Beckett’s bleak world into something raw and immediately alive, bringing clowning, puppetry and highly physical performance to the twentieth-century classic. Endgame By Samuel Beckett, Pleasance at EICC (Lomond Theatre), August 5-30 (not 12th & 24th), 6pm, (27th at 8.30pm). | Submitted
22. Fempaths: Transistor Radio Hour
American transfem writer and performer Mari Moriarty brings Fempaths: Transistor Radio Hour to the Edinburgh Fringe; a kaleidoscopic cabaret fantasia combining live music, storytelling, comedy and political performance. Performed with a trans-led live band, the show transforms real voices from trans history and culture into original songs and draws on verbatim material, personal experience and queer cabaret traditions to create an unruly, deeply human celebration of trans expression and community. Underbelly Bristo Square (Dexter), August 5-30 (not 18th), 8.45pm. | Submitted
23. Good Girl
Writer and performer Mimi Collins makes her Edinburgh Fringe debut with Good Girl, a funny, heartbreaking and painfully honest show about infidelity, emotional collapse and the unexpected care found within the world of BDSM and kink. After discovering her husband has been unfaithful, Alix becomes determined to save her marriage but as years of lies unravel, she finds herself searching for self-worth in increasingly unexpected places. The show explores shame, desire and why people stay in relationships long after they stop feeling safe. Gilded Balloon Patter House, The Blether, August 5-31 (not 18th), 10.20pm (75mins). | Henry Roberts
24. The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth
Wolverhampton Grand Theatre brings The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth to the Edinburgh Fringe; a poignant and very funny new musical comedy centred on a grieving woman who finds friendship, purpose and unexpected online fame after accidentally becoming a flat-earth influencer. The musical is packed with humour, but it also takes a thoughtful look at why so many people fall down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, and the sense of online connection, belonging and support that keeps them there. Pleasance Dome (Queen Dome), August 5-30 (not 18th), 2.05pm. | Tom Dickerson