Your feet hurt. Your sleep schedule has collapsed. Your wallet is somewhere between tired and clinically deceased. Welcome to the final week of the Edinburgh Fringe.

But we’re nearly there, and now is not the time to surrender. There are still brilliant shows waiting to give your Fringe the ending it deserves. Here are my picks for one last push.

A Public Display Of Affection is beautifully constructed theatre examining love, protest and LGBTQ+ history across generations. Moving without becoming sentimental, it’s an important piece of storytelling and one of my discoveries of the festival.

For something completely different, Millicent Sarre Is Too Tired To Smash (Patriarchy) (pictured above) delivers razor-sharp feminist cabaret, exceptional vocals and clever original songs. Sarre is the complete package, smart, contemporary and effortlessly entertaining.

Mega Squirt: Fully Loaded throws subtlety out the window with a gloriously chaotic combination of music, comedy and sketch. It’s ridiculous, high-energy Fringe done properly.

Then there’s Liberace And Liza: A Tribute. Excellent vocals, piano, puns and enough camp to power Edinburgh until September. It’s polished, hilarious and knows exactly what it is.

Birds, from Alex Hines and Sarah Stafford, deserves a place on your final-week radar, while Puss Puss brings beautifully executed clowning and physical comedy, proof that sometimes the simplest ideas can produce the biggest laughs.

Finally, nostalgia gets an unexpectedly emotional makeover in Steve Burns Alive. The former Blue’s Clues star bridges the gap between the children who watched him decades ago and the adults sitting in the theatre today. Funny, thoughtful and surprising, Burns proves he can still hold an audience completely.

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