Medico (Underbelly Bristo Sq., 4:15pm, 2-13 and 15-27 Aug), is written by and starring Dr Stefania Licari. The present explores her frontline medical experiences within the Nationwide Well being Service and life within the UK as a migrant. Dr Licari says of the present, “It’s continuously evolving and the whole lot within the present is true. I can’t imagine that I’ve by no means stated these items earlier than and now right here I’m about to say them on stage in entrance of everybody. It seems like the fitting time to convey them out of the medication cupboard!”

I Want My Life Had been Like A Musical by Alexander S. Bermange (Gilded Balloon on the Museum, 8:50pm, 3-27 Aug besides Wednesdays) is again once more. The comedic musical revue in regards to the world of musical theatre has a brand new forged for 2023: Jennifer Caldwell (Six the Musical, American Fool), Sev Keoshergian (Jack and the Beanstalk, The Rocky Horror Present), Rhidian Marc (Depraved, Pippin, The Phantom of the Opera) and Julie Yammanee (Bonnie and Clyde, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella). Taking a searing and satirical have a look at what goes on within the rehearsal room, backstage, on the stage door, and elsewhere, it’s a hoot.

Divas: From Stage to Display screen (Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, 10:30pm, 2-27 Aug, not 14, 21 or 22) is the proper finish to a busy Fringe day. A reside band and a bunch of feminine vocalists carry out all kinds of songs made well-known by varied divas (sure, the clue’s within the title) – final 12 months’s manufacturing included tunes from the again catalogues of Madonna, Carole King, Belinda Carlisle, and Cher. No boring backstories, no pointless chit-chat, simply banger after banger after banger.

There’s at all times a present or two that’s price mentioning only for its title. A Younger Man Dressed as a Gorilla Dressed as an Previous Man Sits Rocking in a Rocking Chair for 56 Minutes and Then Leaves (PBH’s Free Fringe @ Liquid Room Annexe/Warehouse, 6:45pm, 15 Aug solely) is now in its fourteenth 12 months. A Shark Ate My Penis: A Historical past of Boys Like Me (Gilded Balloon Teviot, 6:00pm, 8-14 and 16-28 Aug) sees the author and musician Laser Webber current a musical in regards to the historical past of trans males and the story of his personal transition.

On the subject of NewsRevue (Pleasance Courtyard, The Grand, 5:30pm, 2-15 and 17-27 Aug), now in its forty-third 12 months, I wonder if it’s price bothering lately, within the sense that one could possibly be amused and bemused just by what’s going on the planet by watching tv information or studying a newspaper. The present affairs tune and sketch present was based by Professor Michael Hodd, who died final 12 months (and was my macroeconomics tutor after I studied at Westminster Enterprise Faculty some years in the past), to whom this 12 months’s manufacturing is devoted. It’s numerous enjoyable, particularly however certainly not solely for followers and followers of musical theatre, with reworked lyrics to famend present tunes to suit an up-to-date narrative.

As ever, there’s an enormous quantity of comedy, together with ‘as seen on TV’ acts like Jack Whitehall (Edinburgh Playhouse, 7:30pm, 20-21 Aug), Reginald D Hunter (Meeting Rooms, 7:55pm, 11-20 Aug) and Daniel Sloss (Edinburgh Playhouse, 7:30pm- 9-10 Aug). Not less than a few standups that I’ve loved over the previous couple of years aren’t going as much as the Fringe this 12 months, which after all means there’s a possibility to discover others. Making his Edinburgh Fringe debut, Mustafa Algiyadi (Paradise in Augustines, 11:10am, 15-19 Aug, then Laughing Horse @ Eastside, 5:40pm, 20-27 Aug) appears to be like on the European lifestyle from the lens of a Libyan Arab, longing so badly to be a part of it, but confronted with sure variations that make it complicated. Mark Row (Laughing Horse @ The Hanover Faucet, 12:00pm, 3-27 Aug) has left the educating career after seventeen years, embracing a brand new life on the planet of standup comedy. A profession constructed on having amusing simply to get by the category has supplied him with an ‘excellent lesson’ – on methods to entertain.

It’s not all a barrel of snickers on the Fringe. Locusts (theSpace @ Surgeons Corridor, 7:35pm, 14-19 and 21-26 Aug) is a brand new play exploring author Ian Tucker-Bell’s precise expertise of homosexual conversion remedy inside an evangelical church. He says, “When folks take into consideration homosexual conversion remedy typically it’s the acute follow that garners consideration – however in my state of affairs it was refined, coercive, and really damaging”. The Diary of Anne Frank: Her Journey in Music (The Previous Dr Bells Baths, 3:00pm and seven:00pm, 18 Aug solely) by composer Girish Paul is a dramatic audio-visual live performance manufacturing, that includes highly effective storytelling by way of an evocative fusion of orchestral music, theatrical results and on-screen filmed performances by skilled actors, and has the complete help of Anne Frank Fonds, a basis arrange in 1963, by Anne’s father, Otto, the one one in all eight folks in his household who hid from Nazi persecution in hidden rooms to outlive the atrocities of the Second World Warfare.

The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s musical theatre college students placed on exhibits on the Fringe, at all times with an early begin. This 12 months, they current Edges (Meeting Rooms, 10:00am, 5, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 22 and 25 Aug), a up to date song-cycle exploring common points similar to love, dedication, id, and which means. They’re additionally doing a manufacturing of Huge Fish (Meeting Rooms, 10:00am, 4, 6-7, 9, 11-12, 16-17, 19-20, 23-24, 26-27 Aug). Primarily based on the Daniel Wallace novel and Tim Burton’s film, and with a rating from the composer of Broadway’s The Addams Household, Andrew Lippa, this fantastical musical about love, household and the enjoyment of storytelling is a unprecedented story in contrast to every other.

Lastly, I’ve by no means seen a stage manufacturing of Sunshine on Leith (Meeting Rooms, 3:30pm, 3-26 Aug), however I recall the radiant and beaming faces of the viewers exiting the venue simply as I arrived for the present after it. On that foundation alone, I’ve booked to see Captivate Theatre’s manufacturing of Stephen Greenhorn’s musical that includes the songs of The Proclaimers.

https://www.edfringe.com/