2019 Edinburgh Fringe

Recommended 2019 shows

The BCG team sees hundreds of shows during each Fringe. Here is a list of our favourites from 2019, in alphabetical order. If you're intrigued by a show and are thinking of booking tickets to see it, click through to the listing for more information.

Carl Donnelly: Shall We All Just Kill Ourselves?

Carl Donnelly is a Fringe veteran and a performer comfortable in his own skin. His natural charm and charisma put the audience at ease immediately in the most intimate of venues. He considers whether it's worth the effort to try and be a 'good' person or if we're all doomed regardless and should just enjoy the ride. Donnelly is one of the most consistent performers at the Fringe and this year he does not disappoint.

Catherine Cohen: The Twist...? She's Gorgeous

Using only a gold tinsel backdrop and the sheer force of Catherine Cohen's charisma, the Pleasance Beneath basement room is transformed into a New York cabaret club. Catherine uses her fabulous voice to sing dark tales of teenage rejection, slut shaming, and how to hide a dead body. In between songs she flirts with the audience and gives them a searingly honest and hilarious insight into a millennial's outwardly perfect, inwardly bleak life.

Rhys Nicholson - Nice People Nice Things Nice Situations

Strap in for a blisteringly funny hour of stand-up from the sharp suited but even sharper tongued Australian comedian. This is his seventh fringe and although he's concerned about getting older his caustic wit is as fresh as ever. Find out what he thinks about high school reunions, the joy of a family night out to a storage unit (yes really!) and how he deals with the double threat of homophobic feedback and increased body hair. A gem of an hour.

Sarah Kendall: Paper Planes

There are few comedians who can combine storytelling with comedy as well as Sarah Kendall. Previous years' shows have focused on her childhood, but this tale is of her current life - writer's block sapping her confidence, the dreamlike state of jet lag in LA and anxiety over things out of her control. From the elegiac to the earthy, she paints a picture in one perfect phrase, nails characters with pinpoint accuracy and will
still happily talk about taking a shit in the middle of the night.

Stuart Laws Is All In

Stuart Laws has flipped the script. He's decided to judge the audience instead of vice versa. It's hard to explain anything more about the overall narrative of the show without ruining the ambitious challenge that he has set himself. Laws has such a great way with language that there are regularly jokes hidden within other jokes - often leading to laughter rippling around the venue as the various pennies drop. You'll be hard pushed to find many other lunchtime shows with such consistent laughs and such a satisfying conclusion.

Tom Walker: Very Very

Tom Walker's show is largely mime (a genre he admits up top is comedy's least favourite child), mixed with audience interaction, a fair bit of speech and a brilliant use of sound cues. He bounces from short skits to longer narrative sketches - some cheerful, some dark, some graphically sexual - in a glorious hour of laughter as he transforms into an old lady who accidentally kills animals, disposes of a body and has an affair with a coat.

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