Edinburgh Festival

Monkey Barrel Comedy is delighted to announce its Fringe 2022 programme.

Withered Hand is the songwriting output of Edinburgh-based Dan Willson. Since 2009, Dan has released two widely acclaimed albums, New Gods (2014) and Good News (2009) and has toured extensively, both solo and with various incarnations of the band. Currently working towards a long-awaited third LP under the name Withered Hand, Dan has also been working with the Mercury-nominated songwriter Kathryn Williams during lockdown on a collaborative project to be released in early 2022 and is looking forward to a joyous return to the live music scene, performing material new and old with his band.

'Pain trumps pleasure. People get flashbacks to horrible shit that happened to them; PTSD. There's no post-pleasure euphoria disorder, is there? I've never caught someone with a massive grin on their face because they remembered an ice cream they had 10 years ago.' Everyone loves Joe Koppell, especially his famous movie, Star Sign Wars. But he is trying to keep a low profile on a sleeper train north. However, when an old friend heading to her father’s funeral crashes his carriage, the journey leads them to examine their deepest convictions of what it means to be alive.

Single, 32, and with her clock ticking, Erin's eggs – according to Facebook – are 'dying off.' For $15k she could freeze them, but does she even want a child? Is she just buying into social pressures and guilt-laden marketing? Winner of a Weekly Best Dance Award in its debut, sell-out 2021 Adelaide Fringe season, and recipient of numerous five-star reviews, Egg is a hilarious, topical and moving solo work from award-winning performer Erin Fowler, combining dance, clowning, pre-Covid dreams of moving to Scotland and a cheeky life-sized egg to question all things fertility and motherhood.

In association with Smock Alley Theatre, acclaimed Irish comedian Tadhg Hickey brings you his weird and wonderful part-theatre, part-stand-up comedy show, In One Eye, Out the Other. The show tells the story of Feargal, the downtrodden but cheery man who fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming an alcoholic. Using the Catholic calendar as a roadmap, Feargal leads us on a surreal and hilarious journey with many poignant twists in the hope of arriving at a sort of light at the end of the tunnel for the bright man.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes...? One couple's journey through dating, marriage, trying to start a family and beyond. But can they play by society's rules? Lorna Fitzgerald and Liam Oko star in the story of Jen and Simon, a couple of young professionals starting a life together.

A round-up of all of BroadwayWorld's reviews from the 2021 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

With nothing but the titular suitcase, a trench coat and a scarf, this true story centers on questions of identity, immigration, women's rights and involuntary displacement in a humorous and heartfelt portrayal of 27 characters in four languages. A tour de force performed in English, Spanish, French and Persian with English supertitles, Mimi's Suitcase is a universal coming-of-age story of resilience and hope at once relevant, vibrant and authentic. Mimi's Suitcase premiered in NYC in 2015 as a bestseller at United Solo Festival and went on to win the Audience Choice Award for Best Play at Kulturverein Boje in Heidelberg, Garmany.

Two girls; one kind of a lesbian, one kind of a liability, are friends. Kind of. This is kind of their story, and it's kind of yours too. A story about sexuality and sexual health steeped in the beautiful bluntness of the rural East Midlands, It Kind of Looks Like a Doughnut collides the living with the dead, friendship with grief, and seeks to reawaken our relationship with a dazzling matriarchal heritage that we've been encouraged to forget.

Triple Fringe First and Olivier-winning Fishamble, return to Dance Base for the 10th anniversary of Pat Kinevane’s SILENT, the touching and challenging story of homeless McGoldrig, who once had splendid things. But he has lost it all – including his mind. He now dives into the wonderful wounds of his past through the romantic world of Rudolph Valentino. Dare to laugh at despair and gasp at redemption in this brave, bleak, beautiful production for which Fishamble and Pat Kinevane won an Olivier Award in 2016.

In 2019, Fede and his mother, went on a quest to look for América. Shared memories and conflicting recollections led them through their past in a city that had taken them in more than 30 years before, when following his Father's arrest, Fede and his family were forced to flee the Salvadoran civil war. A story of two journeys. The journey of that night in Havana looking for an ex-Guerilla fighter and the journey of escaping the catastrophe in Fede's country decades before. Sometimes the idea of home has to be remade. And remade. And remade.

Do you believe in love at first sight? Will has a secret. He’s hopelessly in love with the unattainable Candy — she’s an epiphany, a revelation, and his best friend Billy in drag. Can he ever be with her? And what does loving her really mean? Candy is a new comedy about love, heart break, and crisis of identity.

Deena MP Ronayne’s award-winning debut as a writer takes audiences on an emotional journey ranging from fear and hate to delight and joy. Seeking Dignity is a suspenseful drama with a twist in its tail; Close To Black sees two young women who meet as strangers, but discover they have a lot in common; and Tango-ed Web is a laugh-out-loud black comedy about fatal attraction. Filmed live and fully-staged in an empty Aberdeen Community Theatre (South Dakota), the plays are captioned throughout.

InHouse Theatre and Assembly invite you back to your favourite haunt for a strong drink and a stranger-than-fiction ghost story. One year after the shuttering of pubs and theatres around the world, a familiar bartender fixes you a classic cocktail, but darker spirits from the past threaten to intrude upon the evening. Dark Spirits and Black Humor is a love letter to haunted stages, story-soaked speakeasies, and the other strange places and lengths we go to find community.

Welcome to undertaker Anna Morgan-Jones’ live Zoom webinar. Her goal? To sell you the lucrative franchise model of her “end-of-life celebration” funeral business. But can the self-confessed grief guru successfully make it through her PowerPoint presentation – full of rainbow coffins, leopard print hearses and beer-can shaped scatter tubs? Or will secrets, accidental truths and internet trolls cause her to unravel right before our eyes? A dark comedy about coming to terms with grief by critically acclaimed Welsh new writing theatre company Dirty Protest and award-winning playwright Rhiannon Boyle.

A biting and heartfelt one-woman odyssey about what it really means to be loud. Delving into social anxiety and emotional manipulation, Jodie Irvine's acclaimed debut is a darkly comic and relatable story of survival and a lesson in how to throw a really good party.

Triple Fringe First and Olivier-winning Fishamble, in association with Fringe First-winning Sunday’s Child, return to Summerhall with the 2019 hit show Mustard by Eva O’Connor. A darkly comic play about heartbreak, madness, and how condiments are the ultimate coping mechanism. When the man of her dreams, a professional cyclist, leaves E, she plummets into a black hole of heartbreak at the speed of a doped-up team on the Tour de France.

The story of Emily: brassy, funny and forthright. Her journey, navigating life and men, takes her and the audience through obstacles, detours and dead ends; all met with dry, dark wit – at least on the surface. The Emily we are allowed to see isn’t always the Emily inside, and her acerbic outlook hides a deeper tragedy. Starring Rachel Pryde. This new writing was directed by Nathan Kean, the show was co-written by Nathan Kean and Megan Bowie. The question is, are you ready to let your guard down?

'It’s not a crime to have fun.' A group of friends celebrates the end of school – and the start of their lives – with a wild night out. What could possibly go wrong? Award-winning playwright Rachel O’Regan asks what makes a bright future in this riotous new comedy. 'The world’s not made for us. But we can make our own.' Directed by Hannah McEachern, Afterparty is the confetti-covered debut production from women’s theatre company F-Bomb. The only question is: are you ready to party?

International award-winning smash-hit Bromance is back! Five-star circus about camaraderie and affection. Audacious, touching, exhilarating tour de force of physical heroics where handshakes become handstands and backslaps become backflips. Among the UK's hottest circus companies, Barely Methodical Troupe are at the forefront of a new kind of physical performance, creating highly entertaining shows that mix the show-stopping acrobatics of circus with the emotional punch of theatre.

Brilliantly self-deprecating stand-up, Will Mars, is a supercharged combination of old-school joke-telling and modern, autobiographical wit.

This fast-paced, darkly comedic crime story written and directed by Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller follows three women, four eventful days and a nefarious plot straight out of the mid-century pulp. When ruthlessly ambitious bank manager Tabby is blackmailed by the mysterious Keely into robbing her own bank, Tabby incorporates her put-upon assistant Nicolette into the scheme... Of course, nothing goes quite as planned. Returning with their fourth original Fringe show after a sell-out run of Chagos 1971, Black Bat Productions presents this thorny neo-noir as a thrilling bit of pulp and a searing depiction of twisted modern hierarchies.

Emma and Sinéad know all that glitters isn't gold, but when given the opportunity to go from €3.99 wine to limos and Louboutins, maybe happiness is just a swipe away? Cash Point Meet follows two Irish women as they stumble into the world of sex work. What follows is a darkly comic exploration of labour rights and intimacy, spanning over a year in the lives of these women and the characters they encounter. This exciting debut by writer Niamh Murphy is a must-see for its timely themes, witty characters and honesty.

Charlie is a kleptomaniac – the doctor told her. Reckons it stems from childhood trauma. But she has the robbin' completely under control these days. For real. She has a bit of a mouth on her, but she's only trying to be funny, not cause trouble, like. Not today, of all days. She loves that little boy more than she ever thought it was possible to love another human. There's a lot riding on these 24 hours, and if she keeps her head down, she'll get him back.

'Sensational' is how one viewer described this high-quality filmed version of Mark Wheeller's moving play. Telling the true story of Dan, a popular 16-year-old schoolboy from South London, who took ecstasy at an illegal rave in January 2014 and tragically died two days later as a result of taking a lethal dose. This powerful and engaging verbatim production tells the story of what happened to Dan, his family and friends, from heartbreak to redemption.