Ten shows that could be the next big hits at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Here is a handful of shows which could be making a big impact at the world-famous cultural celebration in August.

VL, Summerhall

There is something of a dream team line-up behind the new Scottish high school comedy, which will focus on two young boys trying to navigate the “hormonal pressure cooker” of peer pressures, sexual anxieties and social status. Two of Scotland’s leading modern-day theatre-makers, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair, will be reuniting to revive two characters from previous Fringe hit Square Go, which explored playground violence and the “myths of masculinity”. Actors Gavin Jon Wright and Scott Fletcher return to the roles of Max and Stevie in a show produced by Francesca Moody, who brought Fleabag and Baby Reindeer to the Fringe, and directed by Orla O’Loughlin, whose most previous Fringe its include What Girls Are Made Of.

June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me

The legendary American singer-songwriter and dancer has inspired this show created by the Glasgow-based actress and country singer Charlene Boyd, with the National Theatre of Scotland and award-winning Edinburgh theatre company Grid Iron. She travelled to Nashville and the Appalachian Mountains during the development of the show, which will draw parallels between her own working life and the experience of June, the second wife of Johnny Cash, who was hugely successful in her own right. Boyd is the writer and performer of the show, which will be directed by Cora Bissett and staged in a cabaret-style set inspired by Nashville’s famous Bluebird Cafe.

A History of Paper, Traverse Theatre

Playwright Oliver Emanuel was working on his musical love story with composer and songwriter Gareth Williams, a long-time collaborator, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer last year. Before he passed away in December, Emanuel regularly encouraged Williams to keep pursuing the project they had been developing together for around five years. Now their show, which focuses on a couple whose lives are bound together by a single piece of paper, will premiere at the Traverse, which is reuniting with Dundee Rep a year on from the launch of musical theatre hit No Love Songs, which was based on the real-life experiences of singer-songwriter Kyle Falconer and his partner, Laura Wilde.

Same Team, Traverse Theatre

Five women from different backgrounds are brought together to play football and find themselves in with a chance of bringing the Homeless World Cup back to Scotland. Writers Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse collaborated with the Traverse and Dundee Women’s Street Soccer Team to create a show billed as a “joyful story of community, teamwork and overcoming hardship”.

I Wish You Well and Gwyneth Goes Skiing, Underbelly George Square and Pleasance Courtyard

Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow will be depicted in not one, but two shows inspired by the legal battle which unfolded after her accident with a retired optometrist at a ski resort in Utah.

Queer comedy Gwyneth Goes Skiing, which stars Linus Karp and Terry Sanderson playing the actress and her nemesis, has just played a sold-out run in Utah itself after an initial launch in London and will be touring the UK after its Fringe run. Meanwhile, actress, singer-songwriter and stage star Diana Vickers will lead the cast of I Wish You Well, which choreographer and former Strictly judge Arlene Phillips, and West End director Shiv Rabheru, are working on.

Chemo Savvy, Gilded Balloon at the National Museum

The late Scottish actor and comic Andy Gray is the inspiration for this story, which is based on his own experiences battling leukaemia. He had been working on a play with long-time friend and fellow panto star Grant Stott and writer Alan McHugh before becoming seriously ill again after contracting Covid shortly before Christmas in 2020 and died a few weeks later. Six years after Stott and Grant were forced to call off their last Fringe play at the 11th hour after the star’s cancer diagnosis, Chemo Savvy will tell a fictional story about two brothers who have been estranged for years since the death of their mother, but are forced to put their past differences behind them.

Queens, Summerhall

Opera, drama and drag will be brought together for this production from German actress, performance artist, writer and director Anne Welenc. The show images Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I returning to the world as “washed-up drag queens” when a powerful force opens to the gates to the present day. As they grapple with their shared history and enduring patriarchal power structures, the idea of a joint rule emerges in a show said to be suitable for fans of dramatic queens, drag and absurd-comic musical theatre.”

Mary, Queen of Rock, Assembly Rooms

The 16th-century Scottish Reformation will provide the backdrop to a new rock opera that will reimagine Mary, Queen of Scots as a trailblazing singer in a country where rock and roll is outlawed. Edinburgh-based theatre company Pretty Knickers Productions will draw analogies between the life faced by Mary and the misogyny faced by female singers and musicians in the music industry up to the present day. Stevie Nicks, Debbie Harry, Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift are among the acts said to be inspiring the show, along with bands like The Rolling Stones and AC/DC.

Stumped, Scottish Storytelling Centre

Lewis Coenen-Rowe’s “miniature scale” opera, which is designed to be performed in intimate spaces, explores the issue of deforestation by drawing on five ancient cautionary myths about what happens when you cut down a tree. The show sets them against a backdrop of modern-day misinformation attempting to frame deforestation a “myth.”

Willy’s Candy Spectacular, Pleasance

Glasgow’s disastrous Willy Wonka Experience went viral when it became clear that people had actually paid to go to a sparsely-decorated warehouse. Audiences will get their first taste of a parody musical inspired by the debacle at the Fringe when the songs created for the new show by the likes of Riki Lindhome, Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, Tova Litvin and Doug Rockwell are unveiled.

Love Beyond (Act of Remembrance), Assembly George Square

Deaf theatre-maker Ramesh Meyyappan has created this play, which focuses on the experiences and struggles of Harry – a man with dementia who communicates by sign language – after he moves into a new care home and becomes haunted by memories of his past and his wife. Harry’s carer provides him with some solace, but just as she begins to learn his sign language, he begins to forget it. Meyyappan will appear alongside Rinkoo Barpaga, Elicia Daly and Amy Kennedy in Love Beyond, which will be part of the Fringe’s “Made in Scotland” showcase.