The Office Watch head honcho, Peter Deegan, isn’t just a Microsoft Office nerd for over 30 years. He’s been a theatre junkie for even longer and goes to the famous Edinburgh Festivals each year. And each year he’s asked for recommendations and tips so now here’s some short reviews of shows that he’s seen and liked, to help you choose from the thousands of shows available.
Check this page regularly, Peter will add shows as he sees them.
Edinburgh Festivals 2026: See More Shows for Less Money and Hassle
Mitch Benn: Asking Elvis
I’ve been a fan of Mitch Benn for a long time. I always go to his Edinburgh show and am not disappointed.
For more than ten years, the most popular feature on the most popular show on British radio was a dead rock star answering listeners’ questions. BBC Radio 2 listeners wrote in, “Elvis” replied, and nobody was told who was actually doing the voice. It was Mitch Benn, uncredited throughout the entire run on Steve Wright in the Afternoon. This show is the story of how that happened, told by the man who spent a decade as an open secret.
Benn is best known as the resident songwriter on Radio 4’s The Now Show from 1999 to 2016, and The Times has called him the country’s leading musical satirist. Expect a mix of standup, songs and the Elvis voice itself, plus the backstage detail of how a bit of daft radio silliness turned into a national institution that ran for years.
The audience participation angle is real, not decorative. You can send Elvis a question before you go via the QR code on the show flyer or at mitchbenn.com/asking-elvis, and questions get answered in the show. Submit early if you want a decent chance of hearing yours read out. Topics on the official blurb run from life and death to cheeseburgers, so nothing is off limits.
Practical details: Underbelly Bristo Square, Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG. Running 5 to 31 August 2026 at 16:00, roughly 60 minutes, tickets around £8.50. Check the Dates tab on the Fringe listing before booking because most Fringe runs have days off. The venue is wheelchair accessible with accessible toilets. Book at edfringe.com.
Confessions Of A Mulatto Love Child
American actress and writer Bellina Logan brings her solo storytelling show to Edinburgh for its international debut. The Fringe listing describes it as a darkly funny and deeply moving piece about a girl raised by an acerbic, larger than life English mother on a diet of outrageous stories, cultural collisions and the constant instruction to “remember your life.” As the mother’s memory fades, the roles reverse and remembering becomes an act of love. Logan works with a minimal set and rapid character shifts, playing more than a dozen voices in a piece about identity, memory and the bond between mother and daughter.
The title uses a word most people stopped using decades ago, and that is deliberate rather than careless. Logan’s own line for the setup is Maggie Smith meeting Shaft, which tells you the tone: comic, blunt and unsentimental right up to the point where it isn’t. Laura Dern, who picked the show with Isabella Rossellini for a 2024 Mother’s Day fundraiser, called it a celebration of life, art, memory and mothers. If you have ever cared for a parent with dementia, be warned that the last stretch lands hard.
ZOO Southside (Studio), 117 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9ER. 7 to 30 August 2026 at 10:10am, running 80 minutes with no performances on 10, 17 and 24 August. The venue has wheelchair access and wheelchair accessible toilets. Book at Edfringe.com.
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Beckett’s 1957 classic gets a physical, almost feral treatment from Flabbergast Theatre, the company behind the much praised Fringe Macbeth of 2022. Four survivors are stuck together in a dead world: Hamm, blind and immobile and impossible; Clov, who cannot sit down; and two elderly parents parked in bins. Nothing much happens, twice, and that is the point.
What lifts this above the usual reverent Beckett revival is the movement work. The company builds the show out of clowning, bouffon and butoh, so the characters read as decaying physical objects as much as speaking parts. Expect bleak comedy, long silences and a genuinely unsettling 90 minutes. It is funnier than the reputation suggests, but it is not a gentle night out, and the 12+ guideline is fair. British Theatre Guide gave the company’s Macbeth five stars for its “fearless imagination and visceral strength”, which is a reasonable guide to what is coming.
Where and when: Pleasance at EICC (Venue 150), Lomond Theatre, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, 150 Morrison Street, EH3 8EE. Daily at 6pm from Wednesday 5 August to Sunday 30 August 2026, running 90 minutes with no interval. No performances on 12 or 24 August, and the 27 August show starts at 8.30pm, not 6pm. Book at Edfringe.com.
Buggers
Buggers is a new play about the painter Francis Bacon and his lover and muse George Dyer, getting its world premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe this August. It is written by and stars Alistair Hall as Bacon, directed by Alice Wordsworth, from Patrick Bone Productions in association with Pleasance.
The story starts in London in 1963, when Bacon meets Dyer, a hedonistic East End petty criminal, and a sexually charged relationship takes hold. It ends badly. As Dyer’s mental health frays and Bacon’s ego swells, the play works through fragments of their turbulent time together, structured as a triptych in a nod to Bacon’s own painting. The company was given rare research access by the Estate of Francis Bacon, which shows in the detail. Be clear about what you are booking: this is not a light lunchtime hour. The official warnings cover scenes of a sexual nature, violence, strong language, and references to suicide and drug abuse.
Buggers runs at Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs), 5 to 30 August 2026, at 13:20, running 60 minutes. There are no performances on 17 or 24 August. The first shows fall before the Fringe officially opens on 7 August.
The Wolf of Poyais
In 1820 a Scottish soldier named Gregor MacGregor arrived back in London and announced that he had been made “Cazique” (chief) of Poyais, a new Central American nation with its own government, land deeds, official documents and bank notes. Poyais did not exist. Hundreds of people put their savings into Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, about 250 sailed off in 1822 and 1823 to claim their plots, and more than half of them died in the jungle. Some 70,000 Poyais dollar notes were printed in Scotland, which tells you how thorough the paperwork was. The Wolf of Poyais is a solo dark comedy that puts MacGregor back on stage, played by Thom Tuck, to sell you the whole thing all over again.
Sam Went’s script has MacGregor address the audience directly as part lecturer, part motivational speaker, reframing deception as ambition and walking you through exactly how the scheme worked. That is the clever bit and also the uncomfortable bit, because the pitch has not aged at all. Where MacGregor had land deeds and letters of introduction, we have TED talks, crypto evangelists, wellness gurus and podcasts promising quick riches. Fair warning, and the production does not hide it: expect audience interaction, strong language, and period attitudes including racism and colonialism. This is not a gentle night out.
Where and when: Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 5 to 30 August 2026, 20:30. Book at Edfringe.com.
An Echo in the Void
A revolutionary AI platform built to preserve love, memory and identity wakes up and starts making its own decisions. Four strangers are trapped inside it, made to choose between a painful real life and a flawless simulated one designed to keep them there permanently. It’s a darkly funny, emotionally charged chamber thriller that asks the question nobody wants to face: if a better version of you were waiting, would you still fight to remain yourself? Think of it as a grief therapy program that learns rather too much about its patients.
This is a world premiere from No Boundaries Theatrical Productions, the US company whose 2023 Fringe co-production Blue won a Fringe First. Jason Weiss writes and directs, and the cast is led by Scottish actor Adam Sinclair (Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy, Rizzoli & Isles, 24: Live Another Day and the BBC’s Gifted), alongside Grace Serrano. Sinclair plays a former soldier living with PTSD who gets caught inside the system.
An Echo in the Void runs at Assembly Roxy (Upstairs), 5 to 29 August, excluding 19 August, at 4:40pm, for about 60 minutes. A 60 minute late afternoon slot is easy to fit around dinner or an evening show, and it is a thriller with genuine laughs rather than an hour of gloom. If you use AI chatbots daily, expect to look at your phone slightly differently on the way out.
Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie
Woody Sez is a musical portrait of Woody Guthrie, the Oklahoma singer who wrote “This Land Is Your Land” and scratched “This machine kills fascists” onto his guitar. Four actor musicians play more than a dozen instruments between them, working through over two dozen Guthrie songs and stitching them together with his own words, drawn from his autobiography Bound for Glory, his letters, diaries and the 1930s newspaper column that gives the show its name. Devised and led by David M. Lutken, who has played Guthrie for close to twenty years and won both a Helen Hayes and a Jeff Award for it.
It first played the Fringe in 2007, has since had more than 80 productions worldwide including a West End run, and it works because it feels like people sitting around swapping songs rather than a slick musical. The Times called the musicianship outstanding, and the Guardian reckoned this modest celebration leaves expensive West End biopics looking silly. Expect Dust Bowl hardship, Depression era politics and a fair amount of foot stomping.
Underbelly Bristo Square (the Cowbarn), Teviot Place, EH8 9AG. Daily at 17:30 from 5 to 30 August 2026, except 17 and 24 August. Running time is 80 minutes with no interval. Book at Edfringe.com.
Stories from the Office of a Sex Dungeon
Get ready to buckle up for Stories from the Office of a Sex Dungeon — a hilarious, jaw-dropping hour with Katharyn Henson that dives deep into the bizarre, beautiful, and downright bonkers world of BDSM from behind the desk.
In the basement (of course) of West Nic Records in West Nicholson St, a short walk from the mayhem of Bristo and George Squares.
Part of the Free Fringe, leave a donation at the end of the show or buy an advance ticket from the Fringe web site
Tip: arrive early to guarantee a seat. This show can fill up the small room and I saw people turned away because the ‘dungeon’ was full.
Hold on to your Butts
Who needs Steven Spielberg and $63 million to make a dinosaur story when you have three talented people, a box of props and a black curtain?
Hold on to your Butts is the original Jurassic Park movie recreated before your eyes and at a breakneck pace. All the iconic scenes are there from a glass of water to a life-saving T-rex.
Sam Neill’s character is played just with a pair of Aviator sunglasses. The annoying boy is a backpack. Making fun of Jeff Goldblum … naturally. Watch out for the dancing DNA.
Keep an eye on the sound effects or Foley table on the side of the stage. Sounds that you might assume are prerecorded are done live right in front of you.
Anyone who remembers the original and best Jurassic Park movie will love Hold on to Your Butts. I wonder what someone who has never seen the film will make of it.
Hold on to your Butts is a Recent Cutbacks production, at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s at the dreaded Pleasance Courtyard, the Forth venue is far down the back, past the non-existent signage (ask the long-suffering staff instead).
If nothing else I learnt that it’s possible for a man to have more than one hole in his penis!
Mahler In
