Edinburgh Festival Fringe has something for everyone but with so much to choose from, how can you narrow it down? Here are a few highlights in several categories to help you choose… Part 1 of our festival guide here. You can find Part Two here.
Part Three Here. Part Five of our quide to follow soon.
Michael Spicer: The Room Next Door
VENUE: Assembly George Square – Studio One
TIME: 15:40
DATES: 19th – 28th August
Michael Spicer, online satirist extraordinaire, is bringing his acclaimed video creations from screen to stage for the Edinburgh Fringe 2022 with a limited run of Michael Spicer: The Room Next Door. Following a successful nationwide and sell-out tour and the publication of his first book, The Secret Political Adviser: The Unredacted Files of the Man in the Room Next Door, Michael Spicer’s The Room Next Door provides an entertaining insight into the global internet sensation. During the one-hour show, Michael will talk about his life making comedy under the radar, his viral hits of the past and of course, brand new, exclusive Room Next Door sketches for Edinburgh Fringe audiences. This is a unique opportunity to see Michael on stage for the final series of live performances as the celebrated online phenomenon.
Jessica Fostekew: Wench
VENUE: Monkey Barrel
TIME: 16.45pm
DATES: 3rd to 28th August 2022 (not 15th)
Following her Edinburgh Comedy Award Nominated Show Hench, Jessica Fostekew is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe with a brand new, and conveniently rhyming stand-up show – Wench. A new show about sex, luck and time. Our fear of all the messy, grey areas; whether that’s identity politics and society’s obsession with neatly categorizing everybody, or taking ‘messy, grey areas’ in another direction… Jessica’s refreshingly honest takes on sexuality, identity politics and aging are relayed with complete transparency. Unafraid to share her own experiences, sit back and enjoy an hour of utter relatability and complete hilarity in Jessica Fostekew: Wench.
Vir Das: Wanted
VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard – Beneath
TIME: 17:25
DATES: 3rd to 28th August 2022 (not 15th)
Fresh off an Emmy-nomination, India’s top comic Vir Das brings his brand new Wanted world tour to Edinburgh – a show about freedom, a journey into foolishness, and a perspective that takes you across the world. The New York Times declares ‘no artist embodies the globalization of stand up like Vir Das’ while the Boston Globe hails the ‘mixture of audacity and humility in Das’ comedy.’ As India’s biggest stand-up comedian and a Bollywood star, Vir Das enjoys household status throughout the subcontinent. Increasingly, thanks to Vir’s boundless comedic talent, wildly successful world tours and incredible five Netflix specials, Vir Das has hit the global comedy mega-leagues. Hailed by Variety magazine as a “Top 10 Comic To Watch”, Vir Das is sure to be the name on everyone’s’ lips at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and beyond this year!
Lou Sanders: One Word: Wow
VENUE: Monkey Barrel 3
TIME: 17:40
DATES: 4th to 28th August 2022 (not 17th)
Critically acclaimed stand-up Lou Sanders is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022 after completing her biggest live tour to date with brand-new show One Word: Wow. If it isn’t your old internet friend, Dr Giggles, tour fresh and still yakking away. Get ready and Lou will tell you about the time she gave a horse a boner. She’ll bring her skates; you bring your wallet and you’ll all take some piccies. Perhaps this show is the real vaccine?
Britney: Friends And Nothing More
VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard, Below
TIME: 5:45
DATES: Aug 3-28 (not 15th)
Award-winning duo and Edinburgh favourites Britney are returning to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022 for the first time in five years with their brand-new hour Friends And Nothing More. Fresh from their universally adored BBC Three pilot, BRITNEY, which was a huge success when it debuted at the Fringe festival in 2016, Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson are getting ready to make their long-awaited return to the Fringe this year with a sketch show about love. But which of these two girls will you fancy more?
Heidi Regan Gives Birth Live on Stage Every Night or Your Money Back
VENUE: The Voodoo Rooms
TIME: 17:55pm
DATES: 6th-28th August (not 20th or 21st)
Heidi Regan will be bringing her highly anticipated show Heidi Regan Gives Birth Live On Stage Every Night Or Your Money Back to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022. This brand-new hour is Heidi’s most personal yet. Having had very limited experience in committed relationships, Heidi moved in with her girlfriend and began looking into parenthood minutes before a global pandemic kicked off. As things get serious, an increasingly hopeless Heidi tries to support her NHS girlfriend via her usual tactics of telling very bad jokes and making niche pop culture references that never land. It has mixed results. Oozing personality and a unique perspective on life, all while maintaining her extremely silly tone, this hour is one not to be missed!
Nina Conti: The Dating Show
VENUE: Pleasance Grand
TIME: 6pm
DATESs: 3rd–28th August (not 16th)
Following a critically acclaimed tour and West End run, Nina Conti returns to the Edinburgh Fringe 2022 with The Dating Show. British Comedy Award winner Nina is finishing her highly critically acclaimed UK tour of her new hour The Dating Show this June, and is preparing to transfer to London’s West End this March. The quick-thinking queen of ventriloquism brings you her pioneering, dating-infused live show. There’s no promise that true love will be found, but a firm guarantee that big laughs will be had in the reign of this ‘voice-throwing queen’ (London Evening Standard). Nina started doing stand-up ventriloquism in 2002 and shot to fame by winning the BBC New Comedy Award that same year. Famed for her foul-mouthed ‘sidekick’ Monkey (Monk), Nina has won numerous comedy awards for her writing, acting and ventriloquism.
Tessa Coates: Get Your Tessa Coates You’ve Pulled
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Beside
Time: 18.05
Dates: Aug 3-28 August
After two sell-out Fringes, her own BBC Radio 4 special, and opening for Nish Kumar on his latest tour, Tessa Coates is almost unconscious with excitement to be back at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a brand-new stand-up hour. Get Your Tessa Coates You’ve Pulled is a joyful celebration of life being back with a vengeance. A smorgasbord of the weird and wonderful, Tessa will take you on a journey across Faberge eggs, the Lascaux cave paintings, being offered ketamine out of a woman’s scrunchie in the toilets at a party, a recent diagnosis for ADD (not the H for Hyperactive, turns out, she’s very lazy), lying about liking opera at a wedding, and how all her 30-something friends have started having babies and don’t want to hang out any more.
Sindhu Vee: Alphabet
VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard – Pleasance Beyond
TIME: 18:30
DATES: 18th – 28th August
Fresh from a wildly successful UK live tour and a string of high-profile telly appearances, Sindhu Vee is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with her critically acclaimed show Alphabet. Alphabet is about the hair we want, the friends we have, and living the vast difference between virus and viral. In her most honest and revealing show to date, Sindhu presents a warm and intimate hour where you can expect razor sharp, unapologetic stand-up from one of comedy’s most engaging talents.
Sara Barron: Hard Feelings
VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard, Upstairs
TIME: 19:15
DATES: Aug 3-28 (Not 17th)
Award-winning comedian and Edinburgh Best Newcomer nominee Sara Barron is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022 with her brand-new show Hard Feelings. Star of Live at the Apollo, Would I Lie to You, and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, Sara Barron returns with a blistering hour of stand-up on smart sex, dumb kids, conception, rejection and wine-in-a-can. These are the targets in a show that asks: where is the space for self preservation in the sentence “family is everything”? There’s comedy in tragedy – and tragedy in midlife – and in Hard Feelings, Sara tackles infertility, miscarriage, identity and self-image.
