The Late Night show celebs are rushing to see
If you're wondering what to do with your 11:50pm slot at this year's Fringe, the answer keeps arriving from an unlikely chorus of famous faces: get yourself to Megasquirt: Fully Loaded.
The late-night hybrid concert show, created by and starring Second City alumni Ashley Blair and Drew Reilly, and directed by Kristin McCarthy Parker, has quietly become one of the hottest tickets after dark this August, pulling in a run of high-profile attendees throughout the run.
Last night, Broadway performer and social media star Dylan Mulvaney was in the crowd. Mulvaney, who has built both a Broadway credit and one of the most-followed platforms in the country off the back of her online storytelling, didn't hold back afterward, posting "Holy hell, I ride hard for them and want them to have a full musical TV show immediately."
On another night, it was Oh, Mary! Tony Award-winning Broadway director Sam Pinkleton in the audience, and he came away just as convinced. "Absolute euphoria," Pinkleton called it, adding, "I would be totally okay with seeing this at 11:50pm for the rest of my days."
US SNL writer Claire McFadden also said, "Megasquirt is the midnight show to see. Somehow it's both chaotic and horny, while being clever and precise. Their show made me laugh loudly and absolved me of my sins."
Both Blair and Reilly are alumni of The Second City — the Chicago-founded comedy theatre and training ground behind the careers of Tina Fey, Bill Murray and Stephen Colbert, among many others — and the pair credit that grounding directly with how Fully Loaded holds together at midnight.
"Performing for a different crowd of people every night, testing material while we develop a full original sketch show, and continuously pitching new ideas — and becoming content machines — has primed us for the experience of Fringe," they say.
"We're nimble and reactive. And because Second City style is vaudevillian in origin, we learned how to incorporate sketch and improv and music into one show, and do it all while adjusting to the vibe of the audience. It's the tightness of true live sketch with the looseness of underground/alt comedy."
Musically, think Charli XCX colliding with Flight of the Conchords, with a heavy dose of hardcore punk and true aggressive bass thrown in, closer to Skrillex or Flux Pavilion than anything typically found in a comedy show. That collision of pop bravado, deadpan musical comedy and dubstep-adjacent noise is a large part of why the show plays as well as it does at midnight — half concert, half fever dream, built to be loud, ridiculous and precise all at once.
Whether that momentum holds for the rest of the run remains to be seen — but for now, if you want to know where the room is heading once the sun's well down, the answer seems to be: wherever Megasquirt is.
Megasquirt: Fully Loaded plays Underbelly Cowgate, Jelly Belly, until 30 August 2026, 23:50.