What’s Really at the Edinburgh Fringe (Besides Comedy)?

I spent a week in London before heading up to Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe. When I mentioned I was performing there, nearly everyone assumed I was a comedian. This puzzled me because while comedy dominates, the Fringe is meant to celebrate all kinds of performing arts. And yet, even many Londoners still treat it like a comedy festival.

I, the foreigner, was apparently more aware than the locals?! Shocking. 

So, what was actually on offer? Here was the 2025 breakdown:

Comedy: 36.2%

Theatre: 27.7%

Music: 11%

Musicals & Opera: 4.9%

Cabaret & Variety: 4.7%

Spoken Word: 4.6%

Children’s Shows: 4.2%

Dance, Physical Theatre, & Circus: 3.9%

Events: 1.5%

Exhibitions: 1.3%

Over a third of the shows were comedy, and nearly two-thirds were either comedy or theatre. So yes, you have to dig a little to find variety- but it’s there. And it’s absolutely worth the effort.

As an audience member, sometimes I want my brain to work differently- maybe soak up some music or get swept into the rhythm of a dance piece. And as an artist, watching other disciplines deepens my own work. It helps me see performance not just through my lens, but through someone else’s expertise.

Below are two reviews of shows that fall outside the comedy-theatre bubble. One is GENDAI, a laser dance spectacle from Japan that I saw three times because I found it so mesmerizing. The other is Daniel Cainer: Topical, a singer-songwriter set reflecting on the personal and the political, crafted with warmth and wit.

Thanks for reading.

(Note: These reviews were originally published as part of my 2025 Edinburgh Fringe coverage for FringeReview. I’m archiving them here for readers who don’t follow that site.)

GENDAI

TL;DR

In GENDAI, three dancers merge robotic precision with liquid fluidity inside a shifting world of lasers and sound. The result is part nightclub, part science fiction, part living sculpture. At just 15 minutes, it’s a concentrated burst of spectacle that feels thrillingly of the moment.

Review

GENDAI at WU Asia Pacific is a mesmerizing 15-minute explosion of light, sound, and movement. I’ve now seen it three times, and each time I find myself wondering how, in the world, they do it? With lasers slicing through smoke, dancers snapping into robotic isolations before melting into liquid flow, the room is transformed into a living, breathing spectacle of light and sound.

Three performers dressed in white command the stage, their movements precise to the millisecond. The dance vocabulary draws heavily from popping and locking, a style that emphasizes sharp precision alongside smooth transitions. In GENDAI, these contrasts are amplified by the lasers: a hand jerks outward and it looks as if the dancer is gripping a beam of light; a ripple through the torso and suddenly the body seems to liquify inside a matrix of green and blue. The smoke machines thicken the air, so at times the performers appear to be inside a lava lamp, swimming in light. At other moments, the effect is pure sci-fi: the stage dissolves into something out of The Matrix. As its name GENDAI suggests, this is a modern, groundbreaking performance.

Precision is everything in this work. Even the smallest lapse could break the illusion of dancers physically manipulating beams of light. After the show, the performers told me they are acutely aware of every near-miss, even those imperceptible to the audience. For them, being a millimeter off matters. That awareness is what makes the work feel so sharp, so seamless, so magical. (When asked how they actually do it, their answer, “It’s magic.”)

The soundscape complements the visuals: crackling textures, pulsing beats, and crescendos that amplify the otherworldliness of the lasers. Sometimes the vibe is nightclub, sometimes video game, sometimes a meditative drift through smoke and color.

GENDAI is currently a 15-minute piece, and in that frame, it works perfectly. But if the show were ever expanded to a half hour or more, spectacle alone might not be enough. A story- even a very simple one, like three dancers negotiating who’s in charge, or their evolving relationship with the light- could give the piece a dramatic arc that keeps audiences invested beyond the thrill of the visuals. There’s also a costume change that takes nearly a full minute onstage. As it stands, it’s stylish, but if it were tied to a narrative or transformation, the time spent could become dramatically meaningful.

That’s perhaps the most tantalizing part of GENDAI: what it is now is already dazzling, but what it could become is even more exciting. With its blend of technical wizardry, exacting physicality, and pure visual wonder, it stands as one of the most striking spectacles at this year’s Fringe. And if its creators ever decide to layer in story or character, they’ll have on their hands not just a spectacle, but a masterpiece.

GENDAI is a Must See: a dazzling 15 minutes of lasers, smoke, and dance precision that feels like stepping into a living artwork. Already captivating in its current form, it holds even greater promise if its creators ever choose to expand it into a longer narrative experience.

Daniel Cainer: Topical

TL;DR

In Topical, Daniel Cainer takes audiences on a journey through politics, personal history, grief, and humor, all set to his own original songs on keyboard (with one exception!). His warm presence and gentle voice create an inviting atmosphere where listeners feel safe, seen, and entertained. The result is an intimate and quietly rewarding experience.

Review

Before I start, a disclaimer: I am not a musician. I can write about the feeling in the room, the atmosphere, and the storytelling, but for the technical side of things, I asked my brother, Steven, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, to weigh in. What follows is a kind of sibling collaboration: I was in the room, he was not. I’ll focus on the audience experience, while weaving in his observations on the music and lyrics.

After a short stroll through the astroturf and dodging small children attempting to throw rings larger than themselves, we found ourselves in a tucked away tent- The Wee Coo at Underbelly, George Square. Inside: an intimate black box space, with a YARMULKE keyboard, a tip of the hat to what we were walking into.

Daniel Cainer has a very gentle, kind presence. From the moment he greeted us, I felt like I was in safe hands. He plays keyboard, with a projector behind him that occasionally provides a visual cue or theme for the next song: politics and religion, health and safety, sex, death and taxes. The show’s name and theme, Topical, is used loosely; Cainer himself admitted the label was chosen months in advance, and in practice the songs are “topical” to him, not always to the day’s headlines. If you take it that way- as a guided tour through what’s most alive in his world right now- the concept holds strong.

Each song felt like entering a small world. Sometimes the lens was political (Don’t Tell Greta), sometimes deeply personal (My Heart and Me), sometimes nostalgic (Mother’s House), and sometimes playful (Tip the Lady Out of Bed). The through-line is more mosaic than thread, and that quality will land differently depending on who you are. For me, someone at least twenty years younger than Cainer, it often felt more like an intellectual exercise than an emotional one. But for his target demographic, which was everyone else in the room (who seemed closer to his age), the resonance was clear. They leaned forward, attuned, nodding along, at times tearing up. His music made them feel seen, and that speaks volumes.

From a musical standpoint, my brother noted that the songs are structurally solid. The melodies support the stories; the chord progressions are steady. The themes and messages are strong, and yet, there’s opportunity for them to be even more evocative. Cainer often tells us what he thinks- but what if he let the imagery do more of the work? What if he held back, just a little, to leave space for the listener’s imagination to fill in the rest? That could deepen the experience.

That said, there are numbers where everything clicks. My Heart and Me, about facing his own mortality, was especially poignant. The sterile hospital imagery landed with weight, and the vulnerability felt raw but never indulgent. Mother’s House, written after his mother’s passing, carried deep emotional potential; and while some of the details could be tightened, the sentiment was unmistakable. On the lighter side, Tip the Lady Out of Bed brought comic relief, though its pacing meandered before the hook arrived. Still, the audience seemed to enjoy the playful change of tone.

What Cainer offers, above all, is a kind of companionable presence. You don’t feel like you’re watching a slick, polished “show” so much as being welcomed into someone’s living room for an hour of stories, jokes, and reflections set to music. For his audiences, that intimacy is the appeal.

For me, Topical is a Hidden Gem because when you come across it, you’ll likely leave feeling cared for, entertained, and gently reminded of the common threads that make us human. And in a festival full of spectacle and noise, there’s something quietly valuable in that.