Ten dramatic productions comedy fans might want to know about

Continuing our preview pieces about shows heading for the Edinburgh Fringe, here are ten from the theatre section of the programme comedy fans might be interested in, even if they are not all explicitly funny.

1. Ordinary Decent Criminal

A couple of years back, firebrand political comedian  Mark Thomas starred in the one-man play England & Son, about a working-class lad’s descent into crime, written by Ed Edwards, an ex-offender before becoming an award-winning playwright. Well the pair are back, with Thomas now playing  Frankie, a convict taking part in a liberal prison experiment.

Summerhall, 11.50am 

2  Scaramouche Jones

This is literally a role of a lifetime for Thom Tuck, pictured, the comic and actor who started with The Penny Dreadfuls and co-founded the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society, ACMS. He first played this role of an ancient clown, removing his white masks to speak for the first time in 50 years back in 2005, just weeks out of university, when The Times called it a Tour De Force . Ten years later, in 2015 he returned to it. Now, in 2025 and aged 43, he takes it on once more - and plans to reprise the role every ten years until he is as old as the character, 100. Scaramouche Jones is a hugely acclaimed dramatic play, described as ‘bizarre, comic, epic, tragic – laced with the consummate wit of the circus clown’ and with horror at its core. 

Hoots @ Potterow, 2.45pm

3. Rodney Black: Who Cares? It’s Working

This new play follows Rodney Black, an up-and-coming stand-up who revels in controversy. By stoking outrage and encouraged by his money-hungry manager. But, when a violent crime is committed by a ‘super fan’, will Black consider the ethical implications of his material.  Playwright Sadie Pearson has taken her cues from the Fringe’s axing of Jerry Sadowitz three years ago and the cultural fallout surrounding figures like Russell Brand. In a recent interview to promote the play, she said: ‘The fan’s actions are appalling, but does this negate an artist’s freedom to create the art they wish? Particularly in a comedy show where the contractual agreement between audience and stand-up should be one hinged on a degree of unseriousness. Yet, today, comedians can often feel like satirist political agents rather than entertainers. Just look at Ricky Gervais, now becoming more renowned for his anti-trans views than his comedy. Right-wing comedians, some of the only vocally right-wing artists in the entertainment industry, are moving into a dangerous political space.’

Gilded Balloon, 7.40pm, August 17 to 25

4. Matt Winning: Solastalgia

Ben Target directs this comedy lecture from the Scottish stand-up and climate scientist Matt Winning. Coined 20 years ago, solastalgia is a portmanteau of the words ‘solace’ and ‘nostalgia’  to describe the emotional, physical or existential distress caused by environmental change to your home. Winning presented the Radio 4 science series Net Zero: A Very British Problem and wrote the book Hot Mess, subtitled: ‘What on earth can we do about climate change?’

Assembly George Square, 4.35pm

5. The Spy Who Went to Rehab

Veteran improviser Mike McShane from Paul Merton's Impro Chums stars in this satire about a James Bond style agent – think outdated male embodiment of toxic masculinity – who learns to think differently, courtesy of a colourful group of woke, self-aware recovering addicts. McShane plays Lazarus Rex, the cat-stroking arch nemesis of spy Simon in this play from Second City alumnus Gregg Ostrin.

Pleasance Dome, 12:10pm

6.  Brown Girls Do It Too: Mama Told Me Not to Come

Poppy Jay and Rubina Pabani – hosts of the BBC Sounds podcast  Brown Girls Do It Too – talk sexual realities, fantasies and expectations as British Asian women in this raucous sketch show, which we reviewed at Soho Theatre a couple of years back.

Underbelly Bristo Square, 4pm

7. Graham Back In The Green

Ivo Graham returns with an early work-in-progress of his next theatrical storytelling show. He did something similar in 2023 – what he now calls a ‘rambling overshare’ – which spawned the acclaimed one-man show Carousel at last year’s Fringe.  Read an in-depth review with the comic  here.

Pleasance Courtyard, 2.15pm from August 13.

8. Brainsluts 

The title is a slang term for participants of clinical drugs trials, something of which comedian Dan Bishop has experience.  In his comedy play, Bishop –  one half of sketch double act Mudfish – is joined by comedy writer, performer and director Emmeline Downie, the former double-act partner of Too Much’s Leo Reich, and stand-up Rob Preston. The show follows a group of strangers across five Sundays, each of whom have signed up for a study in the hope of making some quick cash in a frantic search for stability and is said to ‘use silliness to delve into a reality faced by many today: the struggle to find stable work, constant financial uncertainty and the extreme lengths people must go to stay afloat

Pleasance Dome, 2:45pm

9. Neil Frost: The Door

Comedian, actor and clown Frost is a familiar face on the Fringe, mainly through his silly double act The Establishment with Dan Lees. This nostalgic comedy about living with your grandparents in 1980s Britain’s based around old  photos taken in front of his Nan's kitchen door, which he brings to life with trademark silliness. Lees directs this with fellow clown  Lucy Hopkins

Underbelly Cowgate, 2.25pm 

10 Rich Hardisty: Pop

Rich Hardisty turned his depression, self-harm, anorexia, heroin abuse and a stint in a mental health institution in a 2022 Fringe show that played his experience for laughs… at least until a manic multimedia representation of his mental turmoil at the end. This year he’s in the theatre section, and in similar territory. In 2011, fresh out of a psychiatric facility, Hardisty flew to New York with no money or plan, hoping to find his biological father – a quest that doesn’t go as anticipated. This show about that trip is described as ‘a hilarious and heartbreaking exploration of family trauma and redemption’

Summerhall, 3.40pm

Published: 8 Jul 2025