Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Sugar | Jackie! A New Musical | Murder at the Fringe 2 + more

Assembly Checkpoint (Venue 322) until 24 August

Tomáš Kantor has their audience palm in hand and hand in glove in Sugar, a one-person powerhouse about the landscape of Sugar Dating.

“Hey sugar babes!” Kantor purrs from the stage. “Have I got any daddies in the audience?”

Sugar is the story of how they meet Richard – the sugar daddy for whom they went “full method” in a fallow period of acting work. Their objective is simple: find a daddy, write a cabaret.

“Strap in,” Kantor teases. “Or should I say strap on?”

Written by Ro Bright (also known for their Scotsman Fringe First Award winning play Daffodils), Sugar is impeccably conceived. The lighting, sound, and set design elevate this cabaret-confessional to concert-level proportions, and Kantor transitions seamlessly between characters, audience engagement, spoken word, and song. Richard sometimes assumes the form of a blow-up doll, and he is otherwise known by his baritone in a series of scenes featuring keyboards, a cello and a ukulele.

“May I make contact with your lap?” Kantor asks one audience member, before asking another: “How much would you pay to have sex with me?”

Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman remains their idol and guru, as they negotiate their terms and requirements. Not only must their date be an experienced sugar daddy, but they also can’t be too old, and they absolutely cannot be transphobic or have internalised homophobia. This becomes increasingly difficult, however, as the shape of Sugar attests.

“What would Julia do?” Kantor asks themselves, yet another guiding principle.

Contained within this work, ostensibly created for “easy consumption,” is a vital message of the ways in which the trans, queer and non-binary communities must perform for their safety every day.

Sugar is politically, aesthetically, and theatrically astute – it might just be the hottest ticket in town, in more ways than one.

Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Jackie! A New Musical ★★★

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 25 August

The dazzling smile, the little pillbox hats, the strawberry-pink Chanel suit spattered with her husband’s blood on the day of his 1963 assassination in Dallas.

The image of Jackie Kennedy - journalist, First Lady, and wife to two of the 20th century’s most powerful men - is one of the most iconic in recent history; and in their new musical Jackie!, the co-writing team of Joe McNeice, Max Alexander-Taylor and Nancy Edwards go hell-for-leather at the task of dramatising and satirising her life between the early 1950s, when she met and married Jack Kennedy, and her 1968 retreat into a well-protected private life with Aristotle Onassis.

The result, though, is a slightly chaotic hour of theatre that looks more like a work in progress, over-stuffed with ideas, tonal shifts, and possible strands for development, than any kind of finished show.

The Kennedy menfolk - including Jack’s brother Robert, and their sinister old father Joe Kennedy - pop in and out of the four doors on the set like yo-yos; and as Jack and Jackie enter the White House, there is a parade of feebly-caricatured celebrity visitors from Liberace to Elvis Presley, all adding their cents’-worth of comment.

The songs have a sub-Tom-Lehrer satirical density that requires a less frantic performance style for full appreciation.

And though Nancy Edwards herself is radiant as Jackie, the deafening volume at which the music and songs are pushed towards the audience seems all too typical of a show that never - in this version - gives itself a moment to breathe, and to come fully to life.

Joyce McMillan

Murder at the Fringe 2 ★★★

Braw Venues @ Hill Street (Venue 41) until 24 August

A sequel that improves on the original, this neat interactive murder mystery by Edinburgh Little Theatre tweaks the formula their first outing which debuted last year. It still owes a debt to the old ITV panel show, Whodunnit?, but here the audience are the detectives.

Professor Stiff has been found dead in the Gynaecology Department of an Edinburgh hospital and — armed with pens and notepads provided — you’re asked to quiz all the possible suspects after they give their testimony.

This gives a procession of actors the chance to show how well they know their character’s backstory and how well they can improvise under questioning. This works as many of the performers are clearly experienced and the case is led by another veteran thesp, the show’s director, Paul Murray, as the Detective Inspector.

This ensures that the investigation never loses its focus, but it’s the interaction with the audience that distinguishes it. It’s well worth quizzing a possible perp on some detail in their statement as this often leads to a hitherto undiscovered clue.

Last year, the final verdict was left to the audience, this year it provides a definitive confession and full m.o. which is both ingenious and feasible.

Rory Ford

The Unstoppable Rise of Ben Manager ★★

Pleasance Courtyard – Above (Venue 33) until 25 August

A winner of the 2025 Charlie Hartill Theatre Fund, this corporate satire has an oddly toothless bite.

Unemployed Ben Weaver steals a lanyard from a mysterious corpse before a job interview. Mistaken for the real deal, he’s promptly parachuted into a managerial role where his chief responsibilities are spouting corporate jargon and making futile PowerPoints.

In a predictably absurd twist, he hurtles up the corporate ladder until he stumbles upon the grubby truths underpinning his corporate world.

Performances are impressive, with a deftly composed score to accompany, but there’s little insight beyond the surface. Easy jabs at corporate vacuousness are low hanging fruit, and the flirtation with surrealism comes across as second-rate Kafka.

The seismic forces of AI promise to remould the way the world works. But the most obvious existential threat to Ben and his lanyard class goes unaddressed.

Alexander Cohen

The Fit Prince (who gets switched on the square in the frosty castle the night before (insert public holiday here)) ★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

The creators of previous hits Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story and Gwyneth Goes Skilling, Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, struggle to create a similarly sharply silly comedy without a real-life story to base it on.

The super progressive, a bit Scandinavian setting of Swedonia is better characterised than the thinly drawn protagonists, a prince looking for love (Linus) and a New York baker going by the name of Butcher (Martin).

Audience participation that was so effective previously is over-indulged in. But as the band BAAB (rearrange the letters), Linus and Martin shine with a hilarious megamix of hits, culminating with Dunkirk and Movement King. Maybe next year they’ll get their own show.

Sally Stott

Faster in the Attic ★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

There’s three good performances and a handful of solid scenes in this drama by New York playwright Grace Tomblin Marca but, disappointingly, it falls short of the mark.

When astrophysicist Jay (Mackenzie Grace) dies in an apparent suicide while researching supermassive black holes, her partner, Andrea (Branwyn Ritchie) comes to suspect foul play after piecing together her last days with friends and colleagues (all played by Lora Margerum).

The impact of this terrible event is never felt as everyone — including Amy — seems to cope remarkably well. Frustratingly, the end feels like a placeholder and the furiously unconvincing stage violence is at odds with the rest of the piece, but there’s the bones of something better here.

Rory Ford

Gross Domestic Product ★★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 22 August

There’s a fine performance by Aker Okoye at the centre of this misfiring dystopian bureaucratic comedy by Christian Lockerbie, but it can’t make up for an ill-thought through premise.

Okoye plays Finlay, a young man captured by civil servants and tied to a chair in Whitehall at the behest of “The System,” an electronic program designed to foster economic growth.

The reasons for Finlay’s kidnapping are never clear — even with the big information dump at the end — and while the violence visited upon him aims to be darkly funny, it’s just grimly unconvincing and increasingly tiresome.

Rory Ford

Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here.