Kevin Fullerton’s Festival Diary 2026: Part two
Our resident columnist Kevin Fullerton has been watching a huge number of shows this Fringe and only one has asked him to avert his eyes
It’s no secret that the Fringe is a hotbed of social privilege, but few acts have had more leg-ups than Sun, a burning ball in the sky which, with the craven posturing of a Kardashian, has received the kind of exposure that a PR could only dream of. Afforded blanket coverage before the Festival even began, its one-off show, titled Solar Eclipse, was positioned by many as the highlight of this year.
Sun’s self-promotion has always been shameless and there was little exception here. It teased Solar Eclipse aggressively with a series of record-breaking heatwaves and wildfires, the blackened ash of their aftermath apparently intended to symbolise the eclipse itself in a confusing and nonsensical ARG-type experience (Sun’s marketing team have a lot to answer for).
When the night of the show came, there was an exodus from other venues that made the Oasis Effect look tame by comparison. Fringe officials have already raised questions with Edinburgh Council. Why was Solar Eclipse granted an outdoor performance licence when other performers can barely afford to rent a children’s tent for a venue? Why couldn’t the council have simply hired a warlock to place a hex on the sky and thus enshroud its entire city in darkness to stop this attention hog from performing? And why is Jack Whitehall here? That last one’s not relevant, I’m just venting.
The performance itself was hardly worth the wait and was beset by technical hiccups and sightline issues for audience members. Consisting of a glacial experimental dance between Sun and a character called Moon, proceedings were constantly interrupted by a heckler called Cloud, and Sun seemingly had no effective plan B to continue its show unhindered. Audiences deserved better than this, particularly when a performer has billions of years to rehearse.
Officials at the Fringe Society, seemingly at the behest of Sun itself, insisted that no audience member look directly at the show, a diva-ish demand that not even Jack Whitehall could get away with. But a critic never looks away, and so I deemed it professional to stare directly at Solar Eclipse for the duration of its hour-long (and creakingly slow) performance.
What I saw revealed to me the reasons why the Fringe Society was at pains to keep everyone from peering into Sun’s dead centre. Once my eyes adjusted to the shrill white light, I saw the faces of every Edinburgh Comedy Award winner from the past four decades, as well as award-winning theatre talent, clowns, street performers and spoken word pros.
All of them had been sucked into the molten fires of Sun, itself desperate to consume them and receive a coveted five-star review. But, despite its best efforts, Sun can only ever be a one-star show. A pathetic display all around (and I’m blind now). Shamefaced, Sun released a statement declaring that its next performance would be in 2081. Let’s hope it’s learned a few new tricks by then.