The Fringe is two days old, officially. Unofficially it's been rumbling since the previews started midweek, and already the patterns are forming. You can tell a lot from an opening weekend. Which queues snake round the courtyard. Which titles you hear twice in one bar. Which shows people are booking on a stranger's say-so before a single proper review has landed. I've been listening. Here are the five making the most noise.

Tom Read Wilson: The A-Z of Me

Gilded Balloon at the Museum, 7.30pm, until 16 August

The nation's favourite logophile has finally brought a full show to Edinburgh, and the timing is canny. This is the try-out for his first ever UK tour, which kicks off in September, so Fringe audiences are getting the thing while it's still warm from the oven. The format suits him perfectly: an alphabet revue, working from A to Z through songs, sonnets, stories and what the blurb cheerfully calls smut, each letter peeling back another layer of the man behind that extraordinary voice. Anyone who knows him only as the impossibly courteous receptionist from Celebs Go Dating is in for a recalibration. He trained in musical theatre, and word from the early performances is that the singing is the revelation. A short run, note, just twelve dates, which is doing the ticket sales no harm at all.

Swamplesque

Assembly, until 31 August

At what point does a cult hit stop being a cult hit? Swamplesque sold out its 2024 run, did it again in 2025, came back for Christmas, and returns this year with the swagger of a show that knows exactly what it is. If you've somehow missed the premise: it's a burlesque and drag parody of a certain beloved ogre film, built by a riotously talented Australian company, and it is considerably filthier and considerably better made than it has any obligation to be. The pull this year is partly the ticking clock. The company have been saying the swamp can't stay open forever, and their Perth dates are being billed as a farewell season, so the smart money says this is your last August to see it in Edinburgh. The opening weekend crowds suggest the smart money is already queuing.

Bliss

Pleasance Courtyard (The Grand), 1pm, until 31 August

Every Fringe needs its big commercial gamble, and this year it's Bliss, arriving with the sort of firepower that makes the rest of the musical theatre programme quietly nervous. Seventeen West End performers, which makes it the biggest new musical on the Fringe by some distance, produced by the Olivier-winning teams behind Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club and Benjamin Button, directed by Tony nominee Sheryl Kaller. The story turns the princess mythology inside out: four sisters escape their tower and collide with a world of fairy godfathers and happy endings that come at a price, all delivered with a pop-rock score and, in Tom Bennett's Glimmermore, what early word says is the campest turn of the festival. The lunchtime slot is the tell. This is a show hunting the Six trajectory, Fringe first, franchise later, and the room it needs to fill is enormous. So far, it's filling it.

Elf Lyons Is the Woman on the Edge

Elf Lyons arrives this year with a mantelpiece problem. Sky Arts Award for comedy last year, Chortle's Comedian's Comedian this year, and a New York transfer for this very show already signed and announced before the Fringe even opened, which rather takes the suspense out of asking whether it's any good. The show itself sounds like peak Lyons: a stand-up hour about love, inspired by the collapse of her own engagement, which fell apart while she was touring Australia. The conceit is that Elf herself cannot face performing it, so one of her characters does it for her, with Vertigo, Apollo 13 and Pagliacci all swirling in the mix. On paper that's chaos. In her hands, on past form, it will be chaos with the precision of ballet. The late slot is perfect for her, and the buzz around the courtyard on Saturday night was the loudest I heard all weekend.

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in Half I Saw It

The title of the festival, obviously. But the reason this one's moving tickets is the names above it. Xhloe and Natasha won a Fringe First with every single show they've brought here, three in a row, a streak nobody saw coming from two self-produced New York clowns, and this is their first new work in two years, now with Soho Theatre muscle behind it and the Main Hall to fill. The premise is delicious: a flood-ravaged Appalachian town in the nineties, two teenagers faking Bigfoot sightings for a laugh, and then a neighbour's dog turns up in pieces and the joke curdles into full-blown conspiracy panic. There's a nine-foot Bigfoot puppet, built and operated by the pair themselves. Anyone who saw their Lyndon B Johnson show knows what these two can conjure from a bare stage and a single prop; the prospect of them with an actual budget is frankly a little frightening. The world premiere expectations could crush a lesser company. I don't expect them to be crushed.

That's the opening-weekend picture, anyway. Three weeks is a long time at this festival, and the joy of August is that some show nobody has mentioned yet, in a room above a pub, is currently about to ruin all our predictions. Good. That's what we're here for.

Swamplesque — Soho Theatre Walthamstow

 ★★★★ (4/5)

There's a special kind of joy in watching a room full of strangers collectively lose it over a burlesque tribute to Shrek, and Swamplesque delivers that joy in spades. This is the show's first proper London run after smashing box office records at Edinburgh Fringe, and it's easy to see why it's built such a devoted following.

The premise barely needs explaining: Trigger Happy's Swamplesque takes the beloved DreamWorks universe and runs it through a drag-and-burlesque blender, reimagining Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, Lord Farquaad, the Magic Mirror and the rest of Far Far Away as a cabaret troupe with absolutely no shame and even less clothing. Trigger Happy himself opens the show as Shrek with a gloriously unselfconscious striptease, all string vest and moleskin waistcoat giving way to tasselled nipple pasties, and from there the show never once takes its foot off the gas.

What elevates Swamplesque above novelty-parody territory is the sheer craft on display. Tash York's Princess Fiona is the clear standout — she's the only performer singing live rather than lip-syncing, and her vocals genuinely anchor the whole show, giving it a heart underneath all the glitter and innuendo. The Magic Mirror's roller-skating routine to "Man in the Mirror" is a joyous piece of theatrical invention, and the Gingerbread Man's "Buttons" number (set to the Pussycat Dolls, naturally) had the whole auditorium cackling. There's also something quietly brilliant about the show's commitment to body positivity — every shape and size is represented on that stage with total confidence, and it makes the whole night feel more inclusive and warm than your average burlesque show.

Soho Theatre Walthamstow itself deserves a mention too. This gorgeously restored 1930s art deco venue, once the Walthamstow Granada, gives the show a genuinely grand backdrop — there's something delightful about watching Shrek strip to "Hallelujah" underneath the kind of ornate ceiling that once hosted The Beatles.

If I'm holding back a star, it's because the show leans a little heavily on lip-syncing and film-clip nostalgia in places where a bit more original, live comic delivery might have sharpened the parody further — a few sequences coast on recognition rather than genuinely reinventing the material. It's a small quibble against a night this fun, though.

Ridiculous, rude, and executed with real skill — Swamplesque is a five-star night out that just occasionally forgets to fully commit to its own cleverness. Four stars, and a very enthusiastic recommendation.

 

Mario the Maker Magician — Underbelly Boulevard, Soho

★★★★ (4/5)

London doesn't get many children's magicians of any real calibre passing through, let alone one flown in from New York with a wife-and-kids operation and a suitcase full of homemade robots. So there's already a novelty to Mario the Maker Magician before he's said a word — and within about ninety seconds of walking on stage, he's dispelled any worry that the novelty is all there is to it.

The show runs an hour with no interval, and it barely pauses for breath. Mario works the room like he's been doing kids' parties his whole life (he has), coaxing a rowdy, sugar-rushed energy out of an audience of under-tens without ever quite losing his grip on the room. That's the real skill on display here: not just the sleight of hand, though there's plenty of it, and not just the "maker" gimmick of tin-can robots and cardboard contraptions, though they're a genuinely charming touch — it's the crowd control. Getting several dozen five-to-ten-year-olds to yell in unison, chant back call-and-response lines, and stay just the right side of pandemonium for a full hour is its own kind of magic trick.

What elevates it above a standard children's party act is the sincerity underneath the noise. Mario drops in references to Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and his own "do what you love, use what you have, have fun" mantra, and somehow none of it lands as trite. It helps that you can tell he means it — this is a family business, built from nothing, and that authenticity comes through even at full volume with a kazoo in his hand.

If there's a criticism, it's that the "maker" premise — the robots, the DIY tech — occasionally feels like the marketing hook rather than the backbone of the show. The homemade gadgets get a lovely, extended showcase, but Mario himself, his patter and his physical comedy, are doing most of the heavy lifting. That's not really a complaint so much as a note that the show undersells itself: you don't need the robots to sell this. Mario would carry it regardless.

It's unmistakably built for kids — this isn't adult magic with a family gloss — but the parents in the room were laughing just as hard, and a fair few of them looked like they'd happily sit through it again without the excuse of a child in tow. For a summer holiday afternoon in Soho, you could do a lot worse.

Verdict: Chaotic, warm, and far sharper than it looks — a rare and very welcome visitor to London's family theatre scene.