Summerhall Arts reveals 2025 Fringe programme

After a turbulent year of uncertainty around its future, Summerhall – one of Edinburgh and the Fringe’s most important venues – will begin a new chapter this year under the banner of Summerhall Arts. Today it announced its first Fringe programme under those new auspices, the 14th programme to take place at the multi-arts venue to run 1 to 25 August.

To give people of flavour of what to expect, we got a sneak peek of Pickled Republic from Ruxy Cantir, the winner of Summerhall’s Autopsy Award, given out to a boundary-pushing artist working in Scotland to facilitate their Fringe run at Summerhall. Dressed as a cabaret singing potato in a sequin dress, this self-styled “mistress of spuduction” serenaded us over coffee before Summerhall Arts Chief Executive Sam Gough and his team introduced the programme.

There’s loads of international theatre and performance in the lineup, but one of the first shows to jump out at The Skinny is our favourite late-night absurdist clown Mr. Chonkers aka John Norris, who’s bringing his first show to Summerhall. And Chonkers isn’t the only funny person in the Summerhall programme. S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger, who were at Summerhall in 2023 with Creepy Boys, return with SLUGS, described as “a comedy-music-clown-puppet nightmare for doomscrollers”. And Mark Thomas will star in Ed Edwards’s Ordinary Decent Criminal, which sees Thomas play a recovering addict taking part in a new, liberal prison experiment. Thomas and Edwards previously worked together on the acclaimed England & Son.

Elsewhere, we’re intrigued by PALDEM, the first play from BAFTA Rising Star winner David Jonsson, best known for his lead performances in Alien: Romulus and Rye Lane. Jonsson's play is described as an anti-romantic comedy and we're told it'll explored ideas around the amateur porn industry, interracial dating, fetishisms and hook up culture. Summerhall Arts is also presenting its first co-production: Skye: A Thriller, written by Ellie Keel, concerns a group of siblings dealing with the reappearance of their deceased father. “I’m very excited to be making my first foray into playwriting,” says Keel. “I’ve spent many happy-ish summers producing brilliant new plays in Edinburgh, and I’m thrilled that Skye: A Thriller will have its premiere at the greatest arts festival in the world.” 

Another piece developed at Summerhall is Aethēr from Summerhall Arts’ creative residency Emma Howlett. We told Aethēr explores “humanity's long history of attempting to understand the unknown”. Howlett describes the residency as “a rare and invaluable opportunity to productively experiment with new and ambitious ideas outside of the Fringe season”.

Pussy Riot made a splash at the Fringe when they performed Riot Days – a show based on Maria Alyokhina’s 2017 memoir – at Summerhall back in 2018. The Russian performance collective return with a version of Riot Days updated for the present day. The question is, though, will the newly-reopened Royal Dick be once-again renamed the "Royal Pussy"?

There are a couple of intriguing shows with a Nirvana connection. First there’s Philosophy of the World from anarchic performance artists IN BED WITH MY BROTHER. Inspired by real-life trio The Shaggs, the play follows three sisters who release an album that’s panned by critics, only for Kurt Cobain to declare them his favourite band. And second is No Apologies, a cabaret show imagining what society would look like if the Nirvana frontman were a trans woman. If you prefer jazz to grunge, check out Miles, a play exploring the life of jazz genius Miles Davis by DELIRIUM, winners of the Meadows Award, a prize that supports artists of colour.

Queerness is a theme that reverberates throughout the programme, from Suburbia, drag artist Jonny Woo’s performance exploring his childhood in Kent, to Baby in the Mirror, about a queer couple preparing for parenthood. We also love the sound of Shitbag, described as "an unapologetically queer, darkly comic show about Crohn's Disease, mania and casual sex".

There are also several shows dealing in female rage, like Chat Sh*t Get Hit from writer and performer Martha Pailing or Big in Belgium’s Fatal Flower, described as “a musical comedy ode to hysterical women” from Valentina Tóth, a former classical music wunderkind turned actress, singer, theatre maker and songwriter.

Fans of interactive theatre will be chuffed to see the return of DARKFIELD, who are best known for their immersive pieces within a shipping container. This year they’re bringing their work inside the Summerhall buildings for a residency in the Old Lab where they’ll present three shows – DOUBLE, VISITORS and ETERNAL. There’ll also be plenty of interaction in A Teen Odyssey, in which audiences use their mobiles to guide them through an immersive physical theatre landscape that's populated by a cast of Edinburgh teens. The Demonstration Room, meanwhile, will be transformed into a planetarium with the show K Mak at the Planetarium. 

There’s also plenty of politics with Herald Unspun, a series of on-stage interviews with top pollsters, journalists and politicians including Anas Sarwar and John Swinney. This is just a fraction of the shows on offer at Summerhall this Fringe. For the full Summerhall Arts lineup, head to summerhallarts.co.uk