When I message Jess Robinson to say I’m chasing her publicist to arrange a chat, she doesn’t text back: she voice-notes me as Britney Spears. The warbles are all there. The breathy over-enunciation of words that don’t need enunciating. I’ve known Robinson for years but even I did a double take. 

That’s the thing about Britney Spears in 2026. She’s less a person than a language everyone in their 40s speaks fluently, one Robinson can apparently switch to in a heartbeat. Which is hardly surprising. Britney was one of the first impressions she ever learned. ‘My mates and I would practice in the school playground,’ she laughs. ‘Everyone wanted to be Britney.’ 

A truth, it seems, that plenty of people have refused to grow out of. There are at least five Britney-inspired shows at this year’s Fringe. For a performer whose last album arrived in 2016 and who, by even her most devoted fans’ admission, is unlikely ever to return to the stage, Britney is enjoying an unexpected renaissance. This August, she’ll appear in a sci-fi drag adventure, a solo confessional, an impressions cabaret, a Y2K circus spectacular, and a sketch show.

Talk to any of the artists behind them for more than five minutes and one word keeps surfacing without prompting: justice. Baby Lame, the ‘gender-bending punk horror’ drag clown behind Hit Me Baby One More Lame!, puts it simply: ‘It’s her body, it’s her life, but people feel ownership over what she’s doing. Everybody has an opinion.’ For Lame, that’s exactly why the show exists. ‘I think what we’ve lost is the celebration of what she’s actually contributed as a performer and the joy she’s brought so many people.’ 

The solution is to dial the celebration up to 11. The show is, in Lame’s own words, an intergalactic sci-fi odyssey in which Britney is abducted, exiled, pursued across the galaxy by an evil spaceship captained by her own sister, and eventually rescued by Sigourney Weaver. It features a giant prosthetic bottom and a space duck called Billy Ray. Lame argues that Britney’s legend has expanded with every retelling in much the same way scripture does, describing it as ‘very Jesus-coded’. Or, more succinctly, ‘batshit’.

Jess Robinson’s affection for Britney is quieter but no less fierce. ‘She’s a tragic character. She’s been used and abused and we’ve watched her be publicly humiliated. I feel a huge amount of compassion and respect for her.’ That affection has earned Britney pride of place in Elton Reimagined, where audiences hear ‘Bennie And The Jets’ delivered in the unmistakable staccato purr of ‘...Baby One More Time’.

Technically, Britney is one of Robinson’s favourite voices because she’s never developed a vocal ‘split personality’. As Robinson explains: ‘The singing voice and the speaking voice are the same instrument; unlike Adele, who goes from this really brash cockney speaking voice to something completely different when she sings. Britney feels accessible. It doesn’t feel too far away from us mere mortals.’

For Shereen Roushbaiani, who directs and performs in Saving Britney, inspiration arrived during lockdown after she and writer David Shopland disappeared down the Free Britney rabbit hole. Out came Jean, a Spears-obsessed millennial who copes with a difficult childhood and an ADHD diagnosis by filling a notebook with uncanny parallels between her own life and Britney’s.

‘A lot of millennials are going back to nostalgia to keep their brains alive,’ explains Roushbaiani. ‘It’s pretty tough in the old world right now.’ The production leans fully into that longing. There’s barely a smartphone in sight: instead, a pink boombox sits beside stacks of CDs and WKD bottles on a bedroom floor plastered with posters. ‘It’s a real millennial hug,’ she adds.

Perhaps that’s why Britney still resonates so deeply. Lame believes queer audiences recognised something painfully familiar long before everyone else did. ‘A lot of queer people know what it’s like to be critiqued by society, battered down and told what we should and shouldn’t be doing. To see Britney come through that, people relate to it.’

Robinson sees something slightly different. ‘For me, Britney conjures up simpler times. Maybe it’s nostalgia for when the world wasn’t constantly at war, or at least we didn’t know about it all the time. Before social media became everything. It’s an escape. I want to create a bubble of joy where people don’t leave feeling confronted.’

Even the Fringe’s Britney-adjacent shows are mining the same emotional territory. Naughties, the acrobatic spectacular from Yuck Circus which will feature her music, promises ‘Furbies, flip phones and terrible fashion’, with director Georgia Deguara calling it ‘a celebration of the good and the bad of 00s pop culture’.

Meanwhile, Britney: Holy Mackerel!, the latest sketch show from comedy duo Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson, has arguably the loosest connection of the lot. There are no schoolgirl pigtails, snake performances or conservatorship storylines. Instead, the title is a nod to the duo’s origins. Their first show, Britney, was inspired by Clive’s brain tumour, which she nicknamed after Spears. The logic? If Britney could survive everything life had thrown at her, then so could she.

To some she’s a queer icon. To others, a feminist touchstone, a cautionary tale about celebrity or simply the soundtrack to growing up. Britney may never set foot on a stage again. But Edinburgh, it seems, still can’t stop giving her an encore. 

Jess Robinson: Elton Reimagined, Assembly George Square Gardens, 5–30 August, 7.15pm; Baby Lame: Hit Me Baby One More Lame!, Pleasance Courtyard, 5–30 August, 10.50pm; Saving Britney, Underbelly George Square, 5–30 August, 6.15pm; Yuck Circus: Naughties, Assembly George Square Gardens, 6–30 August, 4.40pm; Britney: Holy Mackerel!, Pleasance Courtyard, 5–30 August, 4.50pm; main picture: Greg Bailey.

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