Anna Leong Brophy: Born Sexy Yesterday
For new perspective on the strange ways we behave, we all know the thought experiment “if a visitor from space arrived on Earth, what would they think?” In Born Sexy Yesterday, Anna Leong Brophy plays a supreme being implanted into a grown woman’s body to experience life for the first time. Presenting like some sci-fi sex robot with the soul of a naive child, Brophy duly marries a man on the front row and settles down to a life of domestic drudgery. Until she discovers she has other settings, other brands of femininity available for her to try out … Thus begins a potent hour, not always hilarious but undeniably persuasive, protesting against the strictly circumscribed roles that women are allowed to play – particularly in the movies, as Brophy sardonically demonstrates. The supreme-being conceit dilutes a bit – but our host’s righteous indignation and strong performing chops make this a compelling hour. BL
At Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August
Taiwan Season: Under Mask
Some of the best dancers I have seen at the fringe are from Mailantia Dance Company, led by choreographer Lai Yun-Chi, who has danced with Hofesh Shechter’s junior company in London. It is worth singling out Huang Hsiao-Wen, who moves with incredible flow and compelling presence. Under Mask is a quartet for dancers dressed in steampunk-style masks and painted faces – the theme of identity, masks and the roles we play don’t come through much more meaningfully than that, but the way they move with swagger and mystery is enough. The piece is inspired by Taiwanese temple rituals and has that feel of something ancient, mythical or spiritual, even when the movement recalls commercial pop. It also draws on martial arts, hip-hop and contemporary dance, and you can see hints of Indian classical dance, maybe even flamenco at one point. A choreographer to watch out for. LW
At Assembly @ Dance Base until 30 August
Big Dog
Promising young writer-actor Izzy Radford’s debut play, Seating Plan, was a romcom set at a birthday party. Now she has penned an exuberant satire about a group of true-crime podcasters. Directed by Zoë Templeman-Young, Radford stars alongside Eleanor Cross and Lauryn Jenkins as fellow podcasters, with Tumba Katanda as a journalist and office newbie. There are energetic performances across the board, but it verges on the chaotic at times and is overstuffed with ideas, wavering somewhere between a true-crime parody and a dark comedy in the vein of Severance, for its observations on managerial-level, white-collar tyranny and conformist office behaviour. Great fun to watch, even if it feels underdeveloped in this current state. AA
At Gilded Balloon Patter House until 31 August
Rosalie Minnitt: Clementine 2
“A single baguette is worth 1,000 francs – and a married one far more!” In her smash-hit maiden show, Rosalie Minnitt’s Regency-era alter ego Clementine tried to find a husband. In its follow-up (and in a bid, jokes Minnitt, to pass the Bechdel test), our heroine makes for the big city, to get caught up in a revolution with a distinctly French flavour. And taking to the streets amid popular revolt could scarcely be more disorientating than Clementine 2, an absolute blizzard of character-comedy that confirms Minnitt as a writer/performer in the vanguard. Does it pack quite the punch of its predecessor? Perhaps the satirical bite of Clementine 1.0 is lacking. Is its plot throwaway bordering on incomprehensible? It is. But this adventure in self-realisation for our bumptious, puppyish heroine (befriending Dickensian pickpockets; orchestrating the regicide of the king; flirting shamelessly with the audience) makes up for that abundantly in chaos, silliness, smarts and Minnitt’s full-pelt approach to comic performance. BL
At Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August
The Palestinian Circus: Step and a Half
“Hope is a daily choice,” says a voice at the opening of the Palestinian Circus’s Step and a Half. “As long as the heart continues to beat, we keep on moving.” The Palestinian Circus has been running for 20 years, teaching children across the region and spawning this collective of artists. Not all the acts are at the technical level you become accustomed to at the fringe, but that’s not to say there isn’t some great work on the trapeze, straps and silks, taking nosedives from the ceiling. There’s a street performer feel, with fire poi and one guy who seems a very average juggler and then turns out to be a demon on the diabolo. It’s all enveloped in a folky, celebratory atmosphere, with traditional dabke dancing, too. “Joy itself is an act of resistance,” they say. It’s an easy show to feel warm towards. LW
At Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows until 29 August
Ahir Shah: Golden
“Three hundred people looking one way, and one person looking the other. How do I justify that?” So asks comedian Ahir Shah, and his answer is: honesty, about where he’s at in his life right now. That’s a laudable principle, but the result in Golden suggests honesty isn’t always the best policy – or at least, not in this dosage. The show finds Shah 35 and married, so overworked and anxious about money he develops a severe allergic reaction to his own life. Pile on depression, autism, a fire in his parents’ house and the expounding of his pessimistic view of midlife stasis with no further possibility of personal growth, and you get a show that no amount of decent jokes (of which there aren’t quite enough) can jollify. What’s left is an hour with a man grappling with his own mordant worldview, towards a sunnier conclusion – and probably towards a show striking a better balance as it develops between dark humour and despondency. BL
At Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August
Fanny Bleach: The Nearly Naked Show
This is what my mum thinks all fringe theatre looks like. A skulking performer dressed as a many-eyed Ikea bag hag emerges from an overflowing bin to lip-sync with toothy aggression, before stripping down several layers and unhinging her jaw to scream into a microphone. From geordie clown Emma Crowley-Bennett, this is an irreverent cabaret “freak show” – but everyone else in the lineup has tapped out, leaving only nervous work experience kid Daniel to man the stage. Crowley-Bennett’s energy is high and her costumes and characters are inventively grotesque, with Ms One-Tit flashing us her single massive nipple, and a Prawn Star pulling out its dark vein to appease Daniel’s fishy fetish. But what might work as a subversive short slot in a more populated cabaret is dragged out, with not enough dramatic muscle to confidently pull us through. A show that’s yet to find its hairy green feet. KW
At Assembly Roxy until 30 August
Rosco McClelland: The Bones
It’s never a great sign when a comedian airs their difficulties deciding what their show should be about. Rosco McClelland settles on “pathological demand avoidance”, his own brand of stubbornness that resists anyone making demands on him. It provides a very tenuous frame for what is, in effect, several club-comedy routines strung together by the Glaswegian. When that’s the case – when your show isn’t really about anything – you’ve got to hit big joke-to-joke, and happily McClelland lands a few comic haymakers here. There’s some palate-cleansing material about Scotland’s World Cup (mis)adventure, and a dopey anecdote about “ladling piss from a dog”. Later, an argument with his wife about a picture posted on Facebook (and this one is about demand avoidance) ends with a very satisfying punchline, and his shaggy-dog story about a supposed cyborg nemesis stacks laugh upon ridiculous laugh. BL
At Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire) until 30 August
Meet Mayor Max
Firstly: awwwww! If you love puppy pics – and what kind of heartless fringegoer doesn’t? – then Alex Robins will quickly have you eating out of the palm of his paw. When Robins is dressed in dog ears and yapping away, a PowerPoint presentation is always on hand to bring coos of affection. This one-man play tells the true story of Max, a golden retriever who becomes the mayor of the sleepy California town of Idyllwild. So beloved is Max to this community of artists and hippies that, when he dies, a second Max is installed, and then a third (Maximus Mighty-Dog Mueller III currently serves there with a lifetime term). The play is billed as a story of hope but it can feel like you’re trapped inside a novelty news story. Robins is an engaging performer with an unsettlingly messianic edge, but we’re left with too many unanswered questions: what happens after Idyllwild’s citizens start voting for Trump? How exactly did Robins extract himself from scientology? The ending – no doubt like lovely Max himself – needs a sharper bite. TJ
At Pleasance Courtyard until 31 August
Crush
Hadsan Mohamud’s debut play, longlisted for the 2025 Tony Craze award, oozes charm. It is a kooky kind of meet-cute in a mental health clinic for people with eating disorders where two British Somali teenagers become friends. When Najma (played by Mohamud) spots Zak (Mohamed Hashi), she finds him pretentious. But they are drawn closer, slowly opening up to each other, in Alena Sahota’s production. Although full of painful truths and culture-specific reflections, it plays out haltingly and rather statically. The couple are sweet although the romance seems contrived. But it captures the insidious and insistent nature of eating disorders and we fear for the outcome of these teenagers in their rocky journeys towards healing. AA
At Underbelly, Bristo Square until 30 August
Birds
Just sit back and enjoy the heat? Richard Tice should try telling that to this pair. House of Oz’s apocalyptic two-hander, created by Alex Hines and Sarah Stafford, opens with two toweringly beehived ladies of leisure, Shayna and Beverley, on deckchairs beneath the punishing sun. As the booze from the cooler slips down, they watch the birds above whose cackling cries and sharp talons they share – along with the instinct to beak into each other’s business. It can feel like a cheeky camp spin on Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone and the flights of fancy build in terrible rage until a rat-a-tat finale delivered almost at the pace of Beckett’s Not I. As their skin begins to peel and houses collapse into the ocean, in a luridly painted show that feels a little over-extended, you may need to lie down in a shady spot yourself. CW
At Assembly George Square until 30 August
Burger and a Pint: Treats for the Soul
Sketch duo Burger and a Pint (AKA James Trickey and Ted Milligan) won the Leicester Square Sketch Off in 2024 and arrive promising to explore “expectations of masculinity” in their debut fringe show. That promise is not fulfilled by a conventional and fairly slapdash offering with nothing to say about masculinity whatsoever – unless there’s deeper meaning sublimated in that Indiana Jones-alike sketch about having to amputate your penis to enter an ancient temple. That’s blokey par for the course in a show that reaches its nadir with a sketch in which a puppeteer must repeatedly insist that he doesn’t have sex with his puppets. There’s better stuff elsewhere: a choice Mastermind sketch; Dickens’ Fagin on Diary of a CEO. The between-scene banter, and the relationship it reveals, is unsurprising. Even allowing for tech difficulties at the performance I saw, it all feels a little underworked. BL
At Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August
Jonathan Oldfield: Exquisite Corpse
Oldfield makes his solo debut this year but he’s been an unseen presence in recent hits, including Lorna Rose Treen’s work and Joe Kent-Walters’ debut as Frankie Monroe. This character-comedy effort is a real eye-catcher, similar to Treen’s in its array of apropos-of-nothing oddballs, yet with a flavour entirely its own. It derives from the kids’ doodling game sometimes called exquisite corpse, in which legs, torso and head, all drawn by different people, are united to create unlikely bodies. Oldfield plays it with his audience here, and feeds the results into his gallery of eccentric creations: an allotment gardener with a sideline in erotic dancing; a Blockbuster video clerk pining for a son. The linking narrative about Oldfield breaking his arm seven times, and how that led to an ambivalent relationship with his body, can feel tenuous – but this is a captivating hour on corporeal fragmentation and reassembly. BL
At Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August
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In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, the National Eating Disorders Association is on 800-931-2237. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope.
