Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023: What shows has Playbill seen so far?

Playbill’s team has been watching dozens of shows this year … they’ve picked their favourites including Eden Sher's I Was on a Sitcom. Picture credit Heather Gershonowitz for Playbill

Introducing Playbill Picks, show recommendations from America’s top theatre magazine, written by the Playbill staff

Playbill, the top theatre publication in America, is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year. And our edit team has seen a whole lot of theatre. We know it can be tough deciding which shows to see at the Fringe, so that is why we are introducing Playbill Picks. These are shows our notoriously picky, raised-by-Broadway staff members have seen which they love and can whole-heartedly recommend to you. Below is a list of Playbill Picks and we hope you enjoy them.

Larry Owens Live! POC: Proof of Concept: In his laugh-out-loud 60-minute show, Larry Owens explores a period in his life in 2017, right before he broke out with A Strange Loop and Abbott Elementary—when he was still an under-employed actor and singer/songwriter trying to find work. Come for the humor, stay for the original songs, which are bops.

Bitter Lemons: Two women stand onstage. One is a biracial woman making her way in the finance sector, determined to do well so she can give herself an “easy life” and take care of her mom’s mortgage. The other is a white woman who will finally get her shot at being the number one goalie on her football team. They both also have a decision to make: whether or not to have an abortion, in this moving and honest portrait of womanhood.

Playbill Picks: staff of America’s top theatre publication chooses their festival highlights. Picture credit Heather Gershonowitz for Playbill

I Was on a Sitcom: Just on the other side of the worst year-and-a-half of her life—a high-risk pregnancy, the premature birth of twins, months spent visiting them in the hospital, and then debilitating postpartum depression—Eden Sher (formerly of the sitcom The Middle) decided to write a show. And it’s very funny.

Dark Noon: A perceptive skewering of American myth-making, Dark Noon makes it clear exactly what the stories told in American films and taught in history classes are: a delusion that left out the lawlessness of the frontier, the genocide of Native Americans, the oppression of Black people and Asian people, and America's sick obsession with the gun.

Tim Murray Is Witches: Murray's witch love is about more than being a Wicked fan. In a surprisingly poignant hour packed with laughs, Murray finds some surprising connections with witch culture and his experience of growing up queer while surrounded by homophobes. Murray is 100 percent that witch.

Read the rest of these reviews or find more Playbill Picks and Playbill’s Fringe coverage at www.playbill.com/playbill-goes-fringe.