Edinburgh Fringe Free Shows 2025: Here are 11 must-see free shows at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The physical programme has over 3,350 shows across 265 venues, meaning it can be a daunting task to work out what exactly you are going to see.
It can be an expensive business too, with many shows at the bigger venues now costing over £20 for the first time.
Luckily, there's a Fringe experience for all budgets, including hundred of free shows that just ask you to turn up early and queue to be sure of a seat.
Of course, they're not necessarily entirely free - you'll be asked to check some money into a bucket (or increasingly make a contactless payment) on the way out, with £5-£10 being a ballpark figure for a show that you have enjoyed.
Some shows also give you the opportunity to 'pay what you want' in advance to secure a seat.
There are two main sources of free shows - the Free Festival and PBH's Free Fringe - both of which operated in similar ways and tend to take place in pubs around the Scottish Capital.
The likes of Richard Gadd, Ahir Shah and Austentatious have performed for free in recent years, so there's plenty of quality on offer - you might just see the next big thing.
Here are 11 that caught our eye. You can check out the programmes at the Free Festival's website here and PBH's Free Fringe here. Remember not all shows are included in the Fringe official programme.
Here are 11 that caught our eye.
1 . Mark Simmons: His Latest Jokes
Last year's winner of the Funniest Joke of the Fringe Award (I was going to sail around the globe in the world's smallest ship but I bottled it), Mark Simmons is back with more of the same. There's likely to be much in the way of structure of narrative arc here, but the laughs are all but guaranteed. He's on at the Liquid Room at 1.45pm from August 2-23. | Contributed Photo Sales
2 . Sooz Kempner is Ugly
Known to many as the title character in multimedia scifi spinoff 'Doctor Who's Doom's Day', Sooz Kempner is back in Edinburgh with a show about "beauty, ageing, trolling and Barbra Streisand". Catch her at the Counting House at 4.15pm from July 31-August 24. | Contribited Photo Sales
3 . Tevor Lock
Trevor Lock's shows merging the line between comedy and interactive performance art have been making the Fringe a more interesting place for years - and are a must for any visit to Edinburgh in August. This year he has a scripted show in the paid-for programme, along with two of his more esoteric shows at the PBH Free Fringe. 'Trevor Lock, an audience with', promises to "turn a bunch of strangers into an extended family" at Bannermans at 2.45pm from August 2-24. Meanwhile 'Trevor Lock - Let's Start Another Cult' sets out to do exactly what it says on the tin at 5.55pm in the Voodoo Rooms from August 2024. The Scotsman called it "funny moving and clever". | Contributed Photo Sales
4 . John Robertson: Plays With The Audience
Aussie comedian John Robertson is a real Fringe favourite for his improv game show 'The Dark Room'. That's back this year, but he's also trying a new show at the Free Festival, offering "improv, mayhem, gaming comedy, crowd work and songs". Sounds like an action-palced hour at the Counting House at 7pm from July 31-August 24. | Contributed Photo Sales
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The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Dawn Steele on the 'daunting' prospect of her Fringe debut
She is about to make her debut appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in a play which will also mark her return to the stage for the first time in more than a decade. Read more: The actress says the chance to appear in the play came at 'the right time,' ahead of her 50th birthday later this year, at a time when she was affected by the downturn in Britain's TV drama industry. It will also realise her growing ambitions to become part of the Fringe after attending numerous shows with friends in recent years and a desire to return to the stage. Dawn Steele will be appearing in the Fringe play Skye at Summerhall. (Image: Supplied) Steele is preparing to play a number of characters in Skye, a chilling family mystery, set on the Hebridean island of the same name 30 years ago. She will be taking centre stage in the debut play by award-winning author and Fringe producer Ellie Keel. Dawn Steele has been most recently seen on screen in the crime drama Granite Harbour. (Image: Newsquest) Steele will be starring opposite fellow Glaswegian James Robinson, who played the young William Wallace in Braveheart, in Skye, part of Summerhall's Fringe theatre programme. The play will be Steele's first stage work since she appeared in the comedy thriller A Perfect Murder, an adaptation of the best-selling Peter James novel, in 2014. Previous roles included the John Byrne plays Cuttin' a Rug and Tutti Frutti, the latter with the National Theatre of Scotland and David Harrower. Speaking to The Herald during a break in rehearsals, Steele said: 'I've not done any theatre for quite a long time. 'It's not really been a choice, but is just the way it's worked out. I'd love to do more theatre, but I just don't get asked. 'I was sent this play by my agent as Ellie, the writer, wanted to hear it read out loud before. She has produced a lot of theatre but this is her first play. 'When I read it, I did think: 'If they ask me to do this, I'm going to have to say yes.' 'In a way, I was scared. I thought 'I hope they don't ask me to do this. It's very wordy, it's a two-hander and I'll be on stage for a whole hour.' 'But I was just really compelled by the script. It felt quite magical to me.' Skye focuses on the main character of Annie and her siblings after they see a ghostly vision of their father on a beach four years after this death. Steele said: 'The play is about an incident that happened on Skye when the children were young, which changes the course of their lives. Annie retells the story with the help of her brother Brawn. 'I don't want to give too much away, but I would say it's a cross between a ghost story and a thriller. 'It's ultimately about memory, how it plays tricks on you, particularly in a family context, and what people hold onto. 'When I read the script I got a real feeling for it and I really loved the character of Annie. I thought she would be a real challenge to play. 'A big part of the appeal is that it's going to be on at the Fringe, which I've been to a lot with friends over the last few years. 'Everything we saw last year was really good. I do remember thinking: 'I would really like to do something here.' When you see really good theatre you want to be up there.' Keel is bringing Skye to the Fringe after producing a number of previous plays at the festival, including Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz and The Last Show Before We Die. She made her name as an author last year with debut novel The Four, about a group of boarding school students bound by a chilling secret. Steele said: 'It feels daunting doing this play because I've not done theatre for a while, but it's not like I've never done theatre before. I've done a lot. "The last two-hander I did was Blackbird, which was pretty daunting. With anything that is a two-hander or a solo show it is pretty exposing. It was also a very challenging play. I remember thinking: 'Oh my god, I'm never going to get through it.' Before I knew it we were touring it around the country. 'The thought of doing new writing at the festival really appealed to me. It's been really interesting and challenging. We've been changing stuff on a daily basis. It's been a bit like doing stuff with John Byrne. The play has changed quite a lot, but for the better. 'I'm so used to TV, where the script is the script, and that is it. Theatre is much more collaborative than TV. There's more of a process. It's not just a case of turning up and doing your lines. 'It feels like this has come into my life at the right time. I'm going to be 50 later this year. It's going to be a real challenge, but I want to be challenged and I'm really prepared to take this on, because I feel I can do it. I'm jumping in head first. 'Were doing the play in a room with 140 seats. I won't have played in front of such a small crowd since I was in my mum and dad's living room. 'All of those things are quite scary, but it's also why I want to do it. It's getting me back into the rehearsal room and doing what I really loved in the first place about acting before I got into TV. I obviously love working in TV, but it is very different. Theatre and TV are two very different beasts." Steele, who has previously starred in Hoby City, Wild at Heart and River City, has been seen on screen most recently in the crime dramas Shetland and Granite Harbour, with filming due to get underway on the next series of the latter shortly after the Fringe. However Steele admitted she jumped at the chance to return to the stage after her quietest ever spell for TV work recently. Steele said: 'I've worked my whole career. I've not stopped. I know I've been really lucky. 'But it's been really quiet recently. A lot of actors are not working at the moment. It is a bit of a buyer's market. People can pick and choose who they want. 'There is less money around. People are being very picky about what is getting made. There is just less getting made and there is less work. It just filters down. 'I'm not doing the play because I was desperate for work. I'm doing it because I really like the play. 'If there isn't a lot of work on the ground, when something comes along that makes me sit up and think 'this is really good' I'd be stupid not to do it.' To purchase tickets for the Fringe, please click here
Times
8 hours ago
- Times
Cancelling Jewish comedians is capitulation
The cost of bunking down in an Edinburgh August overtook our family resources a few years back, so not for me the exhilarating Fringe ordeal: six shows a day and falling asleep in the small hours with haggis-pizza in hair and keyboard. But exiled fans like to learn by proxy about occasional brilliance, embarrassing idiocies and streaks of perilous bravery. So far, though, the most downheartening news is about cowardice. Two Jewish comedians were taken off the Fringe listings and told by the Whistlebinkies venue, at two weeks' notice, that they were not performing there. Apparently its staff might feel 'unsafe', though the risk of antisemitic demonstration was recognised and security discussed. Seemingly there had been regular 'Free Palestine' graffiti left on toilet doors, needing to be cleaned. Obviously, it can't be worth standing by freedom and equality if it might cause inconvenience, can it? • Doctor who called for abolition of Israel allowed to keep her job Neither show was about Gaza, Israel or war. Rachel Creeger's 'Ultimate Jewish Mother' is, she says, a 'warm hug' about all mums. Philip Simon was to host a 'Jew-o-Rama' of comedic talents (and it is worth remembering how much poorer all showbiz would be without the Jewish contribution, comic or otherwise). His other show has been cancelled too. Creeger, incidentally, observed that she doesn't find 'Free Palestine' slogans a threat and mildly says, 'It's a common thing to see in places. It's people's political statement.' But as Simon says, 'We are cancelled and often silently boycotted. This would not happen to any other ethnic minority; there would be absolute outrage.' Shocked and destabilised, both say it's hard to sleep, and not only because of the financial and professional blow. Simon notes a change in the past year: 'I think people have perhaps got braver in what they feel they can say.' Indeed: last year Jewish audience members were booed for objecting to a Reginald D Hunter joke, and this did not cause the rest of his audience to walk out in contempt. A similar insult from the stage to Jews in the audience at the Soho Theatre did at least get that perpetrator banned. Routine antisemitism is getting easier, less shocking. Public entertainment is a canary in the cultural coalmine, but this is not just about fringe comedy. It is about the visible creep of raw, uncivilised, general contempt for Jews, notably in a generation too young either to feel disgraced by such attitudes or to bother studying the hideous complications of the Middle East. • Pro-Palestinian protesters are threatening me, says MP It is notably within higher education that this easy hate has increased four times faster than anywhere else: students and academics are more likely to commit verbal or physical attacks than the general populace. It is about the easy fashionability of flinging on a keffiyeh to denote that you are one of the good guys, lining up unthinkingly with Hamas's clear mission to destroy the state of Israel and all Jews everywhere. It is in tearing down pictures of hostages, and the laughable idiocy of waving banners saying 'QUEERS FOR PALESTINE'. As if the priority of a Hamas-led regime would be to facilitate Pride marches and transgenderism, rather than execute the lot of them. After the murders and kidnaps of October 7, attacks on Jews in the UK doubled extraordinarily fast: businesses and synagogues have been damaged, Jewish schoolchildren minding their own business have been threatened. Big organised demonstrations week after week are manipulated by leaders keener on ruckus than discussion. Hysterical, deluded individualism erupts, as in that young Irishwoman all over social media screaming 'I am a Palestinian and I am being silenced', when neither is the case. Or the one who last week trashed a table outside Reuben's Café in Baker Street (she was, at least, arrested). When one of the kosher diners, Yael, protested that the group didn't support the Israeli government's action the woman 'said she didn't care and that I was Jewish, so that's all that mattered to her'. • Does Israel's concession on Gaza aid bring a ceasefire any closer? Britain cannot be complacent about this. Warped, childish and moronic though much of it is, antisemitism is too ancient and toxic a rash to be allowed even a millimetre's spread. It is enraging that our government should be contemplating some probably ill-written and illiberal blasphemy law against 'Islamophobia' rather than spending its energy instructing public forces to give no quarter to routine insults against British Jews. One might even cynically point out one difference: extreme Islamist calls for sharia law are commonplace and shruggingly tolerated, while Judaism does not proselytise or demand public concessions but rather the opposite: traditionally resisting converts with care and questioning doubt. As the gentle rabbi Lord Sacks once said to me, 'Over centuries in many lands Jews have learnt to harmonise in a minor key', while the centuries-newer faith has yet to achieve that. It is right — inevitable — to care about the people of Gaza. Inevitable to wince and weep at the immense scale of torment and starvation of its people, near-unbearable to hear daily about innocents caught between Hamas ruthlessness and Binyamin Netanyahu's remorselessness. It is increasingly hard to look away, and reasonable to beg western governments forcibly to relieve the suffering at any cost. Right also to insist, as many Israeli citizens do and its candid friends have done in these pages, that Israel must bend to mercy and reconciliation. But it is not tolerable to convert your shock into cheap, enjoyable, hysterical hatred. No civilised democracy can delude itself that attacking Jews for Jewishness, or pigeon-heartedly discriminating, is forgivable. Or should go unpunished.
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- The Herald Scotland
‘You've got to have dreams' - EastEnders star in Fringe show
But when she reveals she's set to walk away from EastEnders to appear at the Fringe for a fee that would barely keep her in pie and mash for a few days, the eyebrows still soar skyward. You're trading in a glossy, glam studio Michelle, for a dressing room the size of a Sindy doll's shoebox? In August, the north Londoner is set to appear in Edinburgh in Motorhome Marilyn. She explains the premise of the one-woman play, and the compulsion to create the role. 'Back in the day, I used to go back and forwards to Los Angeles quite a bit. Then, about seven years ago, I was outside the Chinese Theatre where the lookalikes hang around and I saw this woman dressed as Marilyn, wearing the white iconic halter neck dress, the platinum hair, the lot. But she was getting out of an old American motorhome – and was putting money in the meter. Read more: 'And I thought to myself 'Wow, that's a great visual!' And as I watched her, she turned and waved, but I realised she was as old as me, not at all like the rest of the young Marilyn lookalikes in the area. Later, I was told she lived around the area. But this woman really stuck in my mind. How did she come to live this life? What was her backstory?' Collins never managed to find out the woman's tale, but having developed her own theatre projects in the past she commissioned writer friend Stewart Permutt to come up with a script to match the visual she had witnessed. The result is beguiling; Denise is an English girl who headed to Hollywood years ago with her boyfriend to try her luck in the movies. But things didn't work out as planned. And the result was she becomes a Marilyn impersonator, working the convention centre and parties, eking out a living while sleeping in her campervan in parking lots. That's all tragic enough, but Collins illustrates that the play asks the deeper question; what is the true cost of failure? And what is Denise's secret that she keeps? However, the 'Marilyn' story Collins helped construct didn't slide onto the Fringe stage effortlessly at all. Five years ago, the venue was booked, the posters drawn – and then Covid attacked. 'And Stewart contracted Covid, and never wrote again,' says the actor, in soft voice. 'And he died last year.' Permutt had insisted however the play should appear at some point and writer Ben Wetherill was brought in to re-draft the tragi-comedy survival story. Collins reveals it has another theme. 'We do judge people in this world,' she explains. 'But we have to consider that no one sets out to become a Marilyn impersonator and live in a run-down campervan. She's also eccentric, but someone who ran away from home and we learn what happened to her.' Are there echoes of Alan Bennett's Lady in The Van and mental health issues? 'Do you know what, I think you're right. I'd forgotten about that play. This is also about someone who's homeless, and eccentric, but once had a very different life. The difference (from Lady in the Van) is Denise is obsessed with Marilyn and her home is a shrine to the legend.' Michelle Collins (Image: Agency) Michelle Collins, who also starred in Coronation Street, was never obsessed with Monroe but admits that her fascination has amplified hugely during research. 'She was far more intelligent than is suggested- she started her own production company way before others were doing it. She was political and felt strongly about civil rights and took the major studios to court. And the way she was treated was terrible. Hollywood at the time was brutal.' It's not hard to discern the commitment in Collins' voice to taking on the Marilyn role. And she wanted to take on the sort of role that is so often denied to females in the business. 'We are living in a world that's obsessed with youth. It's all about Netflix and sexy young things. But I don't think people want to see that all the time. They want to see older people perform. And that's why I think EastEnders is particularly good for having older people at the centre of the stories.' She adds; 'But when you hit your 40s the lead roles don't come as often as they did. So, you have to fight for them.' Or create them. But wasn't there a risk in asking the TV soap for a leave of absence to take to the stage? 'I was determined I wanted to do it,' she says smiling. 'Thankfully, after a sharp intake of breath the producer agreed.' She adds; 'But I've always been creative. I like to go out of my comfort zone, and I've never conformed really.' That's so true. Collins was prepared to leave the comfort and wage joy of EastEnders to take her chances. And bold enough to return after a 25-year break. Particularly when her character Cindy, incidentally, was dead. 'Yes!' she declares. 'When I went back, I felt very much an alien and an outsider. I was scared to go back for many reasons. I worried if people would be interested in Cindy anymore. Would I still be able to play her? Would I be accepted (by the cast). And of course, yes, she was dead.' The actor laughs. 'But thankfully people have now forgotten she was away for all those years in a witness protection scheme.' Collins' voice becomes more animated as she talks of performing at the Fringe for the very first time, after years of being an audience member. 'You know, I don't believe in failure anymore. I'm going to make sure I enjoy this. And blimey, I'm in the third act of my life now, (she's 63) but I've got a lot of energy. And you've got to keep trying new things.' The actor adds; 'I needed to do this. And you've got to have dreams, haven't you. Mine is to make this play success.' Motorhome Marilyn, the Gilded Balloon Patter House, Edinburgh, July 30 to August 25, at 5.30pm. To purchase tickets for the Fringe, please click here
