Comedy
Do the Thing are back! After already setting the Fringe on fire this May, Do the Thing: The Made Up Musical returns to The Warren for one more night on 19th June. Yes, they really do attempt to perform an improvised musical with just a cast of two and an orchestra of one. Don’t tell Cameron Mackintosh (he’ll get ideas), but do tell your friends and bag yourself a seat at this Fringe fan favourite.
I'mMigrant! The Remix mixes silliness and Bollywood dancing into a fun stand up show about migration, identity and belonging. Ishi Khan draws on her personal experiences to create a fun packed and uplifting hour of comedy.
Fans of award-winning feminist theatre collective Clap Back Club will be delighted to hear they are returning to Brighton Fringe with Retrain, Reduce, Recycle. Musical theatre, comedy and cabaret are their mediums as they discuss the impact of lockdown on the arts industry, and how it’s perpetuated the discrimination of women in the workplace.
It might sound unbelievable, but the truth is that 1999 was 22 years ago. For those of us who feel like it was just yesterday, Sitting Pretty is a pop musical play looking to fulfil all your 90s nostalgia needs, whilst covering topics such as female masturbation, Britney, mother/daughter relationships and more. 90s fancy dress is actively encouraged!
You’ve seen improvised plays and improvised musicals... but improvised lies? That’s what the team behind smash hit CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation are aiming to do in Sex, Lies & Improvisation. This dark comedy asks the audience to pick an anonymous real life lie and then uses it to explore the real reasons why people lie to the ones they love.
Ever been frustrated by Alexa? Have you had to rename contacts just so Siri will understand them? Exploring the brilliant, yet frustrating, reality of technology are Improbotics with Rosetta Code, the first ever multilingual improvised theatre show powered by artificial intelligence at The Warren. Performed by humans and robots in an incredible seven languages (with live translation), this “comedy of speech-recognition errors” tries to bring new meaning to being lost in translation.
Fresh from his own Channel 4 show, The Tez O’Clock Show, as well as appearances on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Three’s Man Like Mobeen, Tez Ilyas is bringing his political and subversive style of stand up to Brighton Fringe with Rough Draft.
Skank is a one-woman show about Kate, who could be a successful writer, but end up being distracted by day-to-day life: sexy Gary, her obsession with her own inevitable untimely death and a need to recycle a baked bean can. Filled with both hard hitting pathos and comedy, Skank is for anyone who has ever found themselves at one of life’s crossroads.
Maybe you caught the hour-long filter free Netflix special Unlearning, which riffed off race, identity and politics, or spotted him on everything from Live at the Apollo, to 8 out of 10 Cats, Mock the Week and QI. Now South African comedian Loyiso Gola brings his playful wit to the Brighton Fringe with his show Pop Culture.
Following sell-out Edinburgh Fringe success, comedians Ellie Gibson and Helen Thorn return with the The New Scummy Mummies Show, complete with new songs, jokes and catsuits. Embrace the messy side of parenting with their all too relatable sense of humour.
Magic, Cabaret & Circus
You may have seen him on BBC Three, The One Show and BBC One’s Now You See It, but Ben Hart:Live brings Hart’s spectacular magical talents to The Warren. Without relying on complex staging, Ben Hart, according to our reviewer “make sceptics become believers” with his compelling and charming style of magic.
Alfie Ordinary – Brighton’s renowned Drag Prince – makes plenty of appearances this Fringe, but also has his own solo show at the Spiegeltent. For one night only, Alfie Ordinary’s House of Fun promises to be an hour of high camp glittering chaos, that isn’t afraid to embrace low brow silliness.
Fringe performances can take you to an otherworldly place, and Lucy Hopkins: Ceremony of Golden Truth aims to do just that. Experience the collective act of golden manifestation, sacred laughter bath and ceremonial mess-about with your host, a dazzling almost Byzantine goddess all in gold.
Circus Abyssinia was a runaway hit last time they performed at Brighton Fringe, and now they’re back with a new breath-taking show: Tulu. Telling the true story of Derartu Tulu, a long distance runner and Ethiopian legend, through the medium of spectacle and circus, this is bound to be an unmissable event.
Gals Aloud will have you Jump for joy as this drag troupe pay tribute to their favourite girl band with a Something Kinda Ooooh twist. It might not be Something New, but you can expect performances of the band’s biggest hits, solo singles, hilarious TV appearances and even the return of Javine for a night out packed with full-on fun.
Theatre
Local science-singer-songwriter John Hinton explores what it means to be human in his latest musical masterpiece. Twenty six quirky songs, real anatomical facts and evolution make up this world premiere of Ensonglopedia of the Human.
Meet Polly. She wants everyone to be equal and she’s ready to tell you her manifesto for ending the world’s problems in the world premiere of Polly: A Drag Rebellion. A fierce combination of drag and gig theatre, award-winning performer Joe Strickland as Polly hopes to inspire you to rebel against everything that’s ever held you back in life.
Promising a cabaret performance more absurd than any other, Stumble Trip Theatre bring you profiteroles, petticoats and power games in Frills and Spills at the Spiegeltent. If you’re looking for a cabaret show that skewers privilege, power and class alongside silly hijinks.
Many of us have gained a whole new appreciation for our own backyard, as we’ve ditched foreign climes to explore our own backyard. Liz and Jessie's Undiscovered Country is a humorous love song to the weird and wonderful things they encountered on their UK cycling tour, which hopes to enlighten you with silly and amusing discoveries that you’re unlikely to have ever heard of before.
If you’ve ever studied Shakespeare, you might have wondered why the female characters are often so easily reduced to just “mad women”. Lady Garden Theatre Company’s black comedy Shakespeare’s Mad Women attempts to get beyond the male characters which often dominate people’s imaginations and unlock the personalities behind three of Shakespeare’s most famous women: Juliet, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia.
If the tabloid papers were around in King Henry VIII’s time, they would have had a field day. That’s if, of course, he didn’t order to have their heads chopped off first. Divorced, Beheaded, Died: An Audience with King Henry VIII brings England’s most notorious King to life. Meet the King himself (well, a very convincing, Jack Abbot) as he talks you through his life and reign. Hear his side of this most compelling excerpt of British history.
Tim Marriott, known for appearances in The Brittas Empire and Allo, Allo, becomes one half of one of fiction’s most famous duos in Watson: The Final Problem. But with Sherlock Holmes and Watson’s beloved wife Mary both gone, can Watson unravel the story himself? Sure to intrigue fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most esteemed creations, you can expect long buried secrets, betrayal and death to be brought to the Rialto stage.
Ram of God hopes to be part religious ceremony, part stadium rock concert, part cult AGM in a world where sheep are people, people are sheeple and the apocalypse is just getting started. If this kind of unhinged and comic creation is for you, make your way to the Laughing Horse @ Caroline of Brunswick (surely the Laughing Ram?) for a theatrical performance with a truly punk spirit.
