Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2025 is officially in full swing. The Scottish capital is once again overflowing with comedy, theatre, music, art and dance, with 250 venues throughout the city hosting shows across the next month. It’s a weird, wacky and wonderful affair.
In Edinburgh for the occassion? Overwhelmed at the dizzying amount of stuff going on? Time Out’s theatre editor Andrzej Lukowski is on the ground in Auld Reekie to let you know which of the festival’s 3,000 plus shows are really worth your time. From triumphant returns to impressive debuts, as we near the end of the festival’s first week, here’s our pick of the Fringe’s must-see shows so far.
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Joe Kent-Walters Is Frankie Monroe: DEAD!!! (Good Fun Time)
Last year’s winner of the Fringe’s Best Newcomer award has returned to Edinburgh in what our theatre critic calls ‘the best show I’ve seen at the Fringe this year’. Joe Kent-Walters is back as Yorkshire working men’s club MC Frankie Monroe, following directly on from the conclusion of his 2024 show when he is picked up by the Devil and dragged to the pits of Hell.
In his five star review Andrzej said: ‘Frankie – a sort of monstrous amalgam of Brian Potter and Papa Lazaru – remains a wonderful character: somewhat cuddly, but with an air of bulky physical menace, and an unfettered weirdness to him that makes even the more “normal” material (a few observational bits about pubs) seem like it was being beamed in from another dimension.’
Philosophy of the World
This show from performance art provocateurs In Bed with My Brother is (loosely) inspired by the story of ‘the worst band of all time’ – 60s rock trio The Shaggs. There’s anarchism, there’s murder, there’s ghosts and there’s chaotic, pulsing techno. Andrzej said that by the latter half of the show ‘it becomes a roaring, discordant symphony without any clear shape at all really, but with rage at male exploitation of women pulsing through its poetry of noise.’
Ohio
From Fleabag and Baby Reindeer producer Francesca Moody comes Ohio – a show that our theatre critic calls ‘both adorable and elemental’. It’s a theatrical concert written and performed by indie-folk duo Abigail and Shaun Bengson, telling their true life story with anecdotes like the worm Abigail had as a childhood pet, Shaun’s abandonment of his Christian faith and his acute degenerative hearing loss. Expect a show that at once feels like ‘a somewhat twee American couple giving a performance lecture about their lives’ and ‘an articulation of the unimaginable vastness and strangeness of human existence.’
Lorna Rose Treen: 24 Hour Diner People
Award-winning comedian Lorna Rose Treen (owner of Dave’s Funniest Joke of the Fringe 2023) has arrived back in Scotland with a new cast of oddball characters. This time, they’re in a classic American diner. Andrzej gave the show four stars and called it ‘a huge amount of fun’. He said: ‘Treen tackles the bizarre series of characters – from our daydreaming waitress host to a trucker with really long arms to a bizarrely kinky schoolgirl – with total conviction, and a palpable fondness for the world she’s referencing’.
Kieran Hodgson: Voice of America
This standup show from nerdy Yorkshireman Kieran Hodgson explores his lifelong fetish with that country across the pond. From being mesmerised by Hollywood movies as a kid to the adult realisation that the US is kind of bananas (and his cameo in superhero flop The Flash), it’s an uncharacteristically relatable show from a comedian who tends to veer towards the niche. In his four-star review, Andrzej said that while ‘Hodgson is a pleasure to spend time with: clever but cuddly’, it’s the finale of the show that really gives it its edge (skip our full review if you want to avoid spoilers).
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