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

Pleasance Courtyard (Beyond), 9.30pm, until 31 August

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

Summerhall (Main Hall), 9.10pm, until 30 August

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.

Our 10 Unmissable Music Shows at the Edinburgh Fringe 2026

The Fringe runs from 7 to 31 August this year, and as usual the comedy and theatre listings will hog all the attention. That's fine by us. The music programme has quietly become one of the best reasons to be in Edinburgh in August, and you can usually still get a seat. Below are the ten shows we'd actually pay for, from big-tent spectacle to one man with a guitar in a back room. Check dates, times and prices on edfringe.com before you book, because festival schedules have a habit of shifting.

1. Ndlovu Youth Choir at Assembly

The South African choir who stole hearts on America's Got Talent are finally coming to the Fringe, and honestly, it's about time. The show mixes African music, choreography and pop hits into something properly joyous. Choral singing at this festival usually means pews and polite applause; this is the other thing entirely. We'd be amazed if it isn't one of the talked-about runs of the month, so get in before everyone else catches on.

2. Hot Dub Time Machine Presents House Party at Assembly

Hot Dub has been the Fringe's big night out for well over a decade now, and the formula hasn't changed because it doesn't need to: a chronological trip through the bangers, starting in 1970 and landing in 2026. Is it a gig? A DJ set? Neither, really. It's the thing you book when nobody in your group can agree on anything except wanting to dance, and in all our years of going we've never met anyone who came out disappointed.

3. Lindisfarne at The Queen's Hall

Genuine legends, this lot. The 70s folk-rock pioneers return with a classic five-piece line-up fronted by founder member Rod Clements on vocals, mandolin, fiddle and slide guitar. If you grew up with Fog on the Tyne, you don't need convincing and have probably already booked. If you didn't, go anyway and hear where a whole strand of British music came from. The Queen's Hall is a lovely room for this sort of thing, too.

4. 1954: Ella, Etta, Eartha at Assembly

It's 1954. Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James and Eartha Kitt are at the dizzy heights of their careers, and this celebration of the three of them moves between swinging jazz, powerful soul and a bit of cheeky kitsch. There's plenty of sparkle, but it's the stories of three women breaking new ground that stay with you afterwards. Returning for a second year, so the word is already out; book the weekend shows early. And take your mum.

5. Brian Molley Quartet: Tùs / Origin at The Jazz Bar

Part of this year's Made in Scotland showcase. Glasgow's much-garlanded, well-travelled quartet are exploring the Scottish roots of jazz: folk tunes, sea shanties, gospel, even the odd hornpipe. It sounds like a lecture. It plays like anything but, a proper swinging set that just happens to leave you hearing both traditions a little differently on the way out. The Jazz Bar remains the best jazz room in the city, and BMQ have a Brazilian-flavoured companion show there as well if one visit isn't enough.

6. Salty Brine: How Strange It Is (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show) 

The wildcard, borrowed from the cabaret listings. New York's Salty Brine has built a cult following with shows that splice a classic album with a classic book, and this one takes on Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea alongside Anne Frank's diary (which, if you know the album at all, is exactly the right pairing). Covers, biography, strange flights of fancy. Not for everyone. For the right person, though, this will be the show of the festival.

7. Nosferatu with Live Score at Leith Depot

Murnau's 1922 silent classic with a live score, down at Leith Depot. Live-scored cinema always feels like an event in a way an ordinary screening doesn't, and the vampire has lost none of his power a century on. It also gets you out of the festival crush and down to Leith for the evening, which by week two you will thank us for.

8. The Show Choir at theSpaceUK

The Show Choir come back off two sold-out years with a new programme of the great British musicals, Gilbert & Sullivan and Lloyd Webber through to Six and Operation Mincemeat, all in multi-part a cappella. "The UK's number one show choir for a reason," said the Scottish Daily Express, and the ticket sales rather back that up. Three quarters of an hour, works for the whole family, and a nice breather between bigger bookings.

9. Claude Bourbon: Progressive Blues at The Speakeasy at The Royal Scots Club

One man, one guitar. Claude Bourbon's mix of blues, classical and Spanish guitar has been doing the rounds of the world's small venues for years, and the Speakeasy suits him. You're close enough to watch his hands and you still won't work out how he does it. No gimmicks, not much patter, just startling playing. The connoisseur's hour on this list.

10. Wagner's Ring for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Sit Through It at The Royal Scots Club

Exactly what it says on the tin: Wagner's 16-hour Ring cycle retold in a single funny, interactive sitting, for those of us who want the tunes and the doomed gods without the endurance test. Daft in the best Fringe tradition, and weirdly educational with it. Only in Edinburgh would this share a listings page with stand-up, and long may that continue.

A note on booking

Music spreads itself across the whole festival day, lunchtime jazz through to the late parties, so it slots easily around whatever comedy and theatre you've already booked. The big Assembly shows and anything at The Queen's Hall will go first at weekends. As ever, confirm venues, dates and times on edfringe.com or with the venue itself, since schedules can shift right up to and during August. One extra pick if you find yourself with a spare afternoon: Cabaret with Pitchcraft at Dynamic Earth, an a cappella choir who let the audience steer the setlist as they go.

Natalie Paris — Call To Stage Live, Underbelly Boulevard Soho

★★★★★ (5/5)

There's something special about seeing a West End star step out from behind a character and just be themselves for an evening, and that's exactly what Natalie Paris delivered at Underbelly Boulevard Soho. Best known as the original Jane Seymour in SIX, Paris used this intimate solo concert — part of Amber Davies' Call To Stage Live Residency — to show a different side of her talent: storyteller, vocalist, and genuinely warm host.

The venue itself is part of what makes this residency series work so well. Underbelly Boulevard's small, close-quarters setup means there's genuinely no bad seat in the house, and that closeness suited the format perfectly — this felt less like a gig and more like being let in on something personal.

The night's guest list was a real treat: Aimie Atkinson, Luke Bayer, and Strictly Come Dancing vocalists Hayley Sanderson and Andrea Grant all joined Paris on stage, adding variety to the set and clearly having as much fun as the audience. Between songs, Paris's storytelling and willingness to take audience questions gave the evening an easy, conversational rhythm — you left feeling like you knew her a little better than when you walked in.

It's the kind of show that reminds you why these smaller residency concerts matter: no big production values to hide behind, just a genuinely talented performer, some brilliant friends, and a room full of people happy to be there. A wonderful night — five stars, no hesitation. 

Oh, Mary! (Starring Catherine Tate)

★★★★ (4/5)

Walking into the Trafalgar for Oh, Mary!, you're greeted by a deceptively modest Oval Office set — simple, almost old-fashioned in its staging, with big double doors flanking the President's desk that practically announce "farce is coming." And it delivers on that promise almost immediately. This is a show that trades the polish of a glossy West End import for something scrappier and more anarchic, and it's all the better for it.

Cole Escola's premise is gloriously stupid on paper: Mary Todd Lincoln, reimagined not as a tragic historical footnote but as a whisky-soaked, thwarted cabaret star, stuck in a marriage to a closeted, weary Abraham Lincoln who's desperate to keep her occupied — and away from the stage — by hiring her an acting teacher. It backfires spectacularly, and what follows is 80 unbroken minutes of escalating chaos, mistaken identities, and gleeful bad behaviour.

Catherine Tate is the reason to see this particular run. She throws herself into Mary's tantrums, side-eyes, and nonsensical outbursts with a bratty, unfiltered energy that feels tailor-made for her comic instincts — decades of sketch work and stage experience clearly at play here. She's loud, unhinged, and completely committed to the bit, but she also finds real pathos underneath it: a woman who's bored out of her mind, drinking to cope, and desperate to be seen as more than a First Lady. It's a performance that's both very funny and, in flashes, quietly sad.

Scott Karim brings a lovely, exasperated warmth to Abraham, playing the straight man beautifully against Tate's mayhem without ever disappearing into the background. Dino Fetscher, as the hapless acting teacher caught in the crossfire, and the rest of the ensemble keep the pace relentless — the show moves so fast that you barely have time to process one joke before the next lands.

What struck me most is how the production seems to breathe differently depending on who's playing Mary — it's less a fixed show and more a shifting one, shaped by whichever performer is currently in the role. That's part of the fun of it: you're not just watching a script, you're watching Tate's specific comic DNA get grafted onto this deranged character.

It's not a play with much interest in subtlety, satire, or historical accuracy — it knows exactly how silly it is and never winks at you about it, which is precisely why it works. If you go in ready to laugh loudly at something completely ridiculous, you'll leave grinning. Just a heads-up: Tate has occasionally missed performances due to a knee injury, with understudy Georgie Langdon stepping in, so it's worth checking the day-of cast notice before you head to the theatre

Legally Blonde: The Musical — UK & Ireland Tour Review

★★★★ (4/5)

Directed by Nikolai Foster and produced by Curve Theatre and ROYO, this new touring production of Legally Blonde: The Musical has been one of the most talked-about shows on the road in 2026 — and having gathered impressions from reviewers who caught it in Sheffield, Canterbury, Milton Keynes, Glasgow, Nottingham and Dublin, it's easy to see why.

The verdict, in short

This is a bright, big-hearted and thoroughly entertaining night out. From the moment the opening number kicks in, the production wraps the audience in glitter, pink and pure feel-good energy, and rarely lets up. Several reviewers described cheering, singing-along crowds who were on Elle's side before she'd even proven herself — a sign of just how much residual love there still is for this story, nearly two decades after the musical first opened.

What works beautifully

Leading the charge is Amber Davies as Elle Woods (with Hannah Lowther taking on the role at selected performances), who reviewers consistently praised for bringing warmth, comic timing and real vocal power to the part — making Elle's journey from sorority queen to sharp young lawyer feel both funny and genuinely moving. George Crawford's Emmett is another highlight, with critics singling out the natural chemistry between the two leads. And nearly every review agreed on one thing: Karen Mavundukure practically steals the show as Paulette, bringing the house down night after night.

Nikolai Foster's direction keeps things moving at a brisk, confident pace, and Leah Hill's choreography gives the ensemble numbers real punch and athleticism. The production leans fully into its trademark palette of pink and pastel (courtesy of designer Tom Rogers), and the show stays faithful to the quotable lines and iconic moments fans of the film will be hoping to see.

It's also worth giving credit to the wider company: a few reviewers who caught performances affected by illness and understudy changes noted that the cast and swings pulled together admirably, with the quality of the show barely dipping even with several performers on for the night.

Where it's a little more mixed

Not every review was a total love letter, and it's worth being upfront about that. A couple of critics felt this touring version — with its inevitably pared-back set and simplified staging compared to a full West End production — didn't always hit the same heights as previous incarnations of the show, and one or two found the central casting didn't quite land for them personally on the night they attended. One national critic was notably cooler on the show overall, even while acknowledging the audience around them was having the time of their lives. A couple of reviewers also felt the show's brisk skipping-rope routine and some of the choreography could have pushed a little further technically.

None of this seems to have dented the show's popularity, though — if anything, the split between "the audience was on its feet" and "the critic had reservations" is a fairly familiar pattern for a big, unapologetically fun jukebox-style musical like this one, and shouldn't put you off.

Who it's for

If you're a fan of the film, or you grew up with the original musical, this is a genuinely joyful revisit. It's also a great choice for families and for anyone new to the story — you don't need any prior knowledge to be swept along. Expect a lot of pink in the audience too, as many theatregoers dress up for the occasion.

Bottom line

A warm, funny, expertly performed touring production that leans into everything audiences love about Legally Blonde — occasionally at the expense of a little polish or emotional depth compared to bigger stagings. Go in ready to sing along, and you'll leave with a smile.

★★★★☆ — Recommended

Legally Blonde: The Musical continues touring the UK and Ireland until 2 January 2027. Check local venue listings for cast details, as performers alternate the role of Elle Woods at certain performances.

SIX the Musical — Vaudeville Theatre 

There is a particular kind of fatigue that sets in after you've seen a show enough times to know exactly which lyric gets the biggest laugh, exactly where the light cue lands, exactly which Queen the crowd will lose their minds over before she's even finished her first verse. I've sat in the Vaudeville stalls for Six more times than I can count on both hands, and I walked in this time half-expecting to spend the evening admiring the machinery rather than feeling anything from it. I was wrong, and I am delighted to have been wrong.

For anyone who has somehow avoided the cultural juggernaut that Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss built in their final year at Cambridge: Six takes the six wives of Henry VIII — Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleeves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr — and reimagines them as a pop girl group, each stepping up to the mic in turn to make her case for who suffered most at the hands of history's most notorious serial husband. It runs a lean 75–80 minutes, no interval, and it plays less like a book musical and more like a genuinely brilliant pop concert that happens to have a plot folded quietly inside it.

What struck me most on this viewing wasn't the concept — I know the concept intimately by now — but how completely alive it still felt in the hands of the current company. New casts have come and gone at the Vaudeville since the show made this theatre its permanent home, and the temptation with a show this tightly choreographed is to simply slot performers into pre-carved grooves. That is emphatically not what's happening here. This line-up brings a distinct, lived-in chemistry to the stage; there's a genuine sense of six women who've found something between them, not six soloists taking polite turns. Vocally, the standard is as high as I've ever heard it at this venue — every Queen gets her showstopper, and every one of them earns it, with the kind of pop-belt control that would hold up on any arena stage in the country.

Gabriella Slade's costumes remain, for my money, one of the great design achievements of the modern West End — Tudor silhouette collapsed into glitter-soaked pop-star armour, instantly legible as both history and headline act. Tim Deiling's lighting still knows exactly when to turn the Vaudeville into a nightclub and when to pull back and let a ballad breathe, and the "Ladies in Waiting" — the show's onstage all-female band — continue to be criminally under-praised for how hard they're working underneath all that spectacle. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille's choreography, meanwhile, has aged not one day since I first saw it; it still looks like something these six women invented themselves on the spot, rather than something drilled into them.

The thing that keeps bringing me back, though — and the thing I think a first-time audience underestimates walking in — is the turn in the final third, when the competitive premise (who had the worst marriage?) quietly dissolves into something more generous: an insistence that these women be allowed to exist as more than footnotes in someone else's story. I've seen this moment land a dozen times now, and it has never once failed to catch me slightly off guard. There's something almost sneaky about how Six does its emotional work — it disguises a genuinely moving argument about narrative ownership as 80 minutes of glitter and key changes, and by the time you clock what's happened to you, you're already on your feet.

If I'm holding back a star, it's for reasons that have less to do with this particular company and more to do with the show's own architecture, which by now I know as well as my own address. The book still leans on a handful of jokes that have been doing the same work since 2017 (yes, we know about the beheading; the show knows we know), and the format — thrilling as it is — necessarily sacrifices the kind of narrative shading a full book musical could offer any one of these women. For a first-time audience this barely registers. For a reviewer on their tenth or eleventh visit, it's the only place the show shows its age.

None of that dents what remains a genuinely rare thing in London theatre: a homegrown show that has grown into a global phenomenon without losing the scrappy, fringe-born joy that built it in the first place. I came in braced for diminishing returns. I left, once again, singing on the Strand.

Verdict: Still one of the most purely joyful 80 minutes in the West End, delivered here by a company that has genuinely made the roles their own rather than simply inherited them. Essential, even — especially — on your umpteenth visit.

SIX plays at the Vaudeville Theatre, London.

Paddington The Musical — Savoy Theatre

 ★★★★★ (5/5)

I want to start by admitting something a little embarrassing: I did not expect to cry at a musical about a bear.

Getting tickets alone felt like an odyssey. I refreshed booking pages at odd hours, set alarms for release dates, and eventually resorted to something between bribery and pure luck to get a seat. By the time I actually sat down in the Savoy, I'd built the evening up so much in my head that I fully expected to be let down. I wasn't. Not for a second.

There's a moment early on — Paddington alone on the station platform, suitcase in paw, utterly lost — that catches you off guard with how much weight it carries. It would be easy for a show about a marmalade-loving bear to stay safely in the realm of children's entertainment, all bright colours and simple jokes. Instead, what struck me most was how unflinching it was willing to be about what that image actually means: displacement, loneliness, the fear of not belonging anywhere. The show never hammers this home with a heavy hand, but it doesn't shy away from it either, and that honesty is what elevates it from "nice family outing" to something genuinely moving.

The puppetry deserves its own paragraph, because I still don't quite understand how it works as well as it does. There's a performer physically embodying Paddington's movement and a voice performer working the vocals and expressions from off to the side, and yet within minutes any awareness of the mechanics simply dissolves. You stop watching a puppet. You start watching a person — or a bear, I suppose — with real interiority: hesitation, hope, disappointment, joy, all legible in a few inches of fabric and glass eyes. It's one of those rare pieces of theatrical craft that doesn't ask for your suspension of disbelief so much as it earns it outright.

As for the cast — genuinely, I don't think I've seen a company this uniformly strong in years. Bonnie Langford is a masterclass in comic timing as Mrs Bird; she doesn't have to reach for a laugh, she just exists in the scene and the laugh arrives on its own, which is the mark of someone who has spent a lifetime perfecting economy of performance. Victoria Hamilton-Barritt is a gloriously unhinged Millicent Clyde — camp, menacing, and vocally spectacular, particularly in her big villain number, which had the audience half-laughing, half-recoiling in delight. And Amy Ellen Richardson's Mrs Brown gives the whole story its emotional ballast; she's the one who makes you believe that kindness, offered without condition, is a radical and difficult thing to practice, not just a platitude.

Musically, it's a genuinely well-crafted score — melodic, warm, unafraid of a big earnest ballad, but also sly enough that the adults in the room are laughing just as hard as the children. I'll confess "Marmalade" has been stuck in my head for the better part of a week, in the way only the very best show tunes manage.

If I'm being properly honest, there are moments in the second act where the plot's ambition slightly outpaces its runtime — a subplot or two could probably be tightened, and there's a sense toward the end that the show is reluctant to let go of its own momentum. But I mention this only because it's the sort of thing you notice on reflection, not in the moment. In the theatre itself, none of it mattered. I was too busy feeling things.

What lingers, days later, isn't a single scene or song — it's the accumulated warmth of the whole evening, and the quiet, stubborn optimism underneath it. This is a show that genuinely believes people can be kind to strangers, that difference is not a threat, that a small, polite bear from Peru might have more to teach us about decency than we'd like to admit. In a moment when so much of the world feels defensive and closed off, there's something almost defiant about a West End musical built entirely around the idea that we should look after one another.

I left the Savoy convinced of two things. First, that I will be back — probably more than once. Second, that this show isn't a passing sensation to be enjoyed and forgotten. It has the rare combination of craft, heart, and universal appeal that keeps a production running for decades, not seasons. I'd genuinely put money on Paddington still charming full houses at the Savoy ten years from now, hard stare and all.

Please look after this bear. London certainly is.