Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Philosophy Of The World | Father, Away She Goes | Eelmageddon | Go West! | Thirsty | The Poetess | VirtYOUoso: An Immersive Reflection

THEATRE

Philosophy Of The World ★★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 25 August

In 1965, in the small town of Fremont, New Hampshire, teenage sisters Dot, Betty and Helen Wiggin formed a band called The Shaggs. They were not talented musicians, but they were forced to play by their father, Austin, who had been told by a palm reader that his daughters would become a world-famous rock group. In a way, that came true.

Philosophy Of The World | By Alex Brenner

The sisters spent a decade making music and were dismissed as a joke, eventually disbanding in 1975 when Austin died. In the 1980s and 1990s, though, their one album, Philosophy Of The World, found a cult following and grew famous. Kurt Cobain called The Shaggs his favourite band. Frank Zappa said they were better than The Beatles.

This superb show from In Bed With My Brother – the company’s first production at the Fringe since 2019’s Tricky Second Album – retells The Shaggs’ story with anarchic humour and intellectual rigour and finds resonant meaning in their odd journey.

It is split into three, increasingly chaotic acts: Fate, Free Will, and Philosophy. In the first, performers Nora Alexander, Dora Lynn and Kat Cory goofily act out The Shaggs’ musical career, following instructions shot onto a curtain behind them, with the help of acclaimed actor Nigel Barrett, who plays a stagehand. In the second, the trio explore the band’s reluctant resurgence in an entertaining sequence that sees them murder Barrett repeatedly. In the third, Lynn delivers a furious rant about AI, Valerie Solanas, OceanGate, and more, while Cory scrawls manically on a blackboard and Alexander batters a drumkit that has been hauled around the stage throughout.

The trio also strip topless, tear the set apart, interact playfully with the audience, and work in recurring gags about Tom Cruise, smoking on stage, t-shirts, Talking Heads, and Pepsi. The show is messy, but every provocative decision is justified, stacking up into a coherent, caustic comment on the inescapability of the patriarchy, and how three sisters were exploited by men at every turn. There is method in this wonderful madness.

FERGUS MORGAN

READ MORE: The Best Edinburgh Fringe Theatre 2025: Every show with a four or five star review from The Scotsman so far

THEATRE

Father, Away She Goes ★★★

Greenside@ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 16 August

Written and performed by Electra Kolb, Father, Away She Goes is a one-woman tragicomic thriller intertwining Carl Jung’s theory of the Electra Complex (i.e., a young girl’s psychosexual competition with her mother for the love of her father) with themes of female ambition. Sarah represents a masterclass in the ‘love-to-hate character’. Think Succession. Think Fleabag, with teeth.

After having been rejected from art school, Sarah is taking a gap year to re-work her approach. “Apparently landscapes don’t cut it anymore,” she scoffs. Everything needs to have 'impact' now – a socio-political message, or ‘sob story’ as she calls it. “I’m not a completely terrible person,” she continues. “I’ve done my fair share of charity work.”

There are knowing art historical references throughout (one note on Hirst is particularly effective: “the best thing since sliced shark in formaldehyde”), and in the corner of the stage, which is vastly intimate, there is an easel mounted with a blank canvas, and a clutch of art materials. Kolb doesn’t engage with these, however, though she does get very close – one aches for her to make a mark there, just as she has with her script, which paints a shocking story with a chilling open ending.

JOSEPHINE BALFOUR-OATTS

THEATRE

Eelmageddon ★★★

Bedlam Theatre (Venue 49) until 17 August

The sheer likeability of the performers goes a long way to sell this extremely silly show. Written and performed by John Chisam and Becca King it’s a homage of sorts to low-rent Syfy Channel original movies such as Sharknado or Mega Snake — only now with eels! A giant tidal wave floods the earth an influx of intelligent eels bent on world domination and the remaining population (the audience) are huddled in a fragile laboratory under the sea.

Collectively Chisam and King are known as the Intrepid Fools which seems entirely apt as it certainly takes some nerve to take such an absurd idea and just run with it. They’re like children’s entertainers for adults — in fact, aside from a few swears and an audience participation eel sex rave, kids might seem their more natural fanbase. They demonstrate a winning spontaneity that might occasionally convince you this was all just thrown together but there’s a very effective soundtrack and some inventively atmospheric lighting design that gives the nonsense structure. However, it’s the charm of the performers that help this through the more saggy moment and it’s notable that their — entirely feasible — plan to eliminate the eels is lifted from Irwin Allen’s dreadful 1978 killer bee move The Swarm. These Fools know what they’re doing.

RORY FORD

THEATRE

Go West! ★★★

theSpace @ Niddry Street (Venue 9) until 16 August

There is no telling where in time Go West! is located (though, there are references to Ikea throughout), or where in the West its two players might be. In the wilds, that much is for certain – a dusty, dehydrated land, where rivers, libraries and people no longer exist. In the beginning, a map, which one of them covets, leads them along a long famine road.

Three acts are suspended in conversation with one another, separated by sunrises that flood the stage in deep, amber light, and become increasingly intense, even painful, for the characters. In turn, the characters revolve or evolve – shifting dynamics of power, extending images (a dog, a veterinarian, and a diary figure highly), and cracking jokes.

Their comic timing is excellent, and the jokes so clever, the rest of the room takes a beat to catch up. Not least because their material is embedded in a known unknown of a narrative and rivalled by the presence of a large, felted cactus and their oversized moustaches. It is a strange yet special venture by Irish company AIMSIR, that wears its absurdity on its sleeve and may also be a contender for the best curtain call of the Fringe.

JOSEPHINE BALFOUR-OATTS

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THEATRE

Thirsty ★★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 16 August

Dig deep – very deep – beneath the nuclear-level overacting, the tedious shock tactics and, above all, the towering sense of self-satisfaction in Bristol Spotlights’ Thirsty and you might just about discern some kind of vague satire on student life, gender fluidity and sexual stereotypes. Whether you’ll even want to make the effort, though, is another matter entirely. A backwards life story offers some respite from the dreary delirium and, more importantly, an attempt at connection with the audience. Elsewhere, Thirstyseems created more to amuse its own team. When there’s so much else out there that’s been carefully honed and crafted, it’s a hard show to recommend.

DAVID KETTLE

THEATRE

The Poetess ★★

Pleasance Dome – Jack Dome (23) until 25 August

Some shows shy away from sentimentality, The Poetess languishes in it with unrelenting commitment. The premise is simple: poetry is therapy for Viola, a means for processing the grief of her grandmother’s passing and opening up to the world.

The themes fold in on themselves when Violia reaches across the fourth wall to pen poems for the audience live on stage, tapping them out on an inherited typewriter with the solemn air of a fortune-teller delivering a prophecy..

There’s little conflict to propel its narrative forward. Instead, it meditates on half-formed musings that occasionally sound borrowed from fortune cookies, accentuated with ostentatious quotes from poets. It works, up to a point, because it is wholly dedicated to its portentousness.

But for all the grumpy cynicism you could shrug at it, one of the live compositions brought an audience member to tears. Take my scepticism with a healthy pinch of salt. With development this could shine.

ALEXANDER COHEN

THEATRE

VirtYOUoso: An Immersive Reflection ★

theSpace @ Symposium Hall (Venue 43) until 16 August

Jacqueline Strayer’s VirtYOUoso is an outlier even by the Fringe’s come-all-ye standards. Although listed as theatre, it is really an illustrated lecture couched in corporate imagery and self-help language which likens unlocking individual potential to creating your own symphony and certain personality types to instruments in an orchestra. Strayer’s flat delivery of her own thesis is accompanied by blandly handsome footage of blandly handsome people, drone shots of city streets and CGI landscapes. Her steady narration leaves no room for any other reflection and ironically, given the focus on musical allusions, the generic soundtrack is far from inspirational.

FIONA SHEPHERD

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