Ben Hart on the best and the worst of the festival

Magician Ben Hart is back at the Edinburgh Fringe with his new show, The Remarkable Ben Hart. Here he shares what he can't get enough of at the festival, his most embarrassing Edinburgh experience and the worst thing about the Fringe. Apart from the cost of accommodation, obviously…

Fringe binge

My favourite part of the Fringe is that it feels like you’ve stepped into a parallel universe where being a magician is perfectly reasonable. 

For the rest of the year, saying ‘I’m a magician' in public is met with the kind of stare you’d give someone who claims to bottle moonlight, or deliver letters no one remembers writing. 

But in Edinburgh, people just nod and hand you a flyer for their mime-horror-jazz opera instead.

It’s my annual binge on weirdness. I gorge myself on the dream-logic of late-night shows in rooms that feel like cursed cellars. I love the shows that blur genres – comedy that becomes tragedy, puppetry that turns into political commentary, a monologue that ends in live taxidermy. I want to be surprised, confused, moved –and then ideally have a very late night pint and a pizza in the rain.

I spend most of my days either watching work that feels like it shouldn’t exist, or making work that hopefully feels the same. And this year I want to do more of both. See more and say yes to more strange invitations.

Fringe cringe

Ten years ago I was performing a show in a venue that was underground, like a dripping cave, and during a particularly serious card trick involving lots of concentration from the audience, a rat ran across the stage. Not a metaphorical rat. A real rat. The audience thought it was part of the show and applauded.

I carried on, naturally, as any magician would. I even gave the rat a little nod, as if it had hit its cue. After the show, someone asked if the rat was ‘symbolic’. I said yes. Of course it was.

Fringe whinge

It’s the emotional whiplash. You can be weeping in a standing ovation at 4:30pm and flyering outside a Lidl in the rain by 5pm.

 I once did a show where I apparently murdered an audience member, spraying blood up the wall and then ended by impaling myself on a sword and was then asked by a reviewer if I also did weddings…

I think the audiences here are some of the best in the world but they can also be a bit numb - worn down by their six-shows-a-day schedule and sometimes not notice the edges of the work as they rush to the next place – it’s like long-form TikTok where they’re being barraged by content and keep ‘swiping’ through. 

But I keep coming back. Because in Edinburgh, the impossible seems – at least for a month – completely plausible. And that is the very essence of magic…

• The Remarkable Ben Hart is on at Assembly George Square Gardens at 6.25pm during the Edinburgh Fringe

Published: 5 Aug 2025