In less than two months, Edinburgh will be crammed with billboards, performers and more befuddled London arts critics than the annual Guardian luncheon. But before Brian Logan hops aboard the Megabus to Scotland's capital, there’s still plenty of Festival news to share with you. 

This week, the Fringe Society has unveiled its programme, ZOO enters the fray with its line-up and we highlight yet another exciting act we've reviewed favourably in the past that's visiting the Festival in 2023.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Programme is launched…

…collecting 3013 acts performing across the Festival in August. This year’s Festival theme is ‘fill yer boots’, defined by the Collins English Dictionary as meaning ‘to get as much of something valuable or desirable as you can’ and underscoring the Festival’s priority to cram in as diverse, engaging and entertaining shows into its programme as possible. 

Launching the 2023 Fringe programme, Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: ‘Getting the programme out into the world is such an important moment for everyone involved in the Fringe, and most of all for the thousands of artists coming to Edinburgh this August. The ideas, originality and passion that performers bring to Fringe stages every year is testament to the role that Edinburgh plays in celebrating and promoting their work to the world. The Fringe ‘23 programme is bursting with every kind of live performance, so whether theatre premieres are your thing, or the best of live comedy, street arts or circus, jump straight in and Fill Yer Boots with as much as you can.'

ZOO launches its 2023 Programme…

…bringing big names from the UK and abroad back to the Fringe. This 21st edition of ZOO’s Fringe offering will feature more than 40 acts and will be performed at its long-standing home ZOO Southside, ZOO Playground, ZOO Dovecot, and online and hybrid via ZOOTV. Highlights include Big In Belgium, a strand of shows from acclaimed Belgian theatre; Andronicus Synecdoche, a brutal and prescient revenge story; Barrowland Ballet’s Family Portrait, an award-winning interactive video installation which takes participants on a whirlwind tour of Scottish landscapes; and Shadow Game, which follows a young man across the Balkans as he tries to flee the Taliban regime. Read the full programme here. 

The most bizarrely titled show of the Fringe so far…

… is Ay Up, Hitler! A presumably ill-advised farce in which the malignant Führer and his cronies go into hiding in Yorkshire. Here's an extract from the blurb: ‘Swapping the Hugo Boss for flat caps and wellies, and adopting strong Northern accents, Adolf and the lads meet down the pub to plan their epic comeback: Operation Fourth Reich!’ It may be good, it will probably be bad, but it’s the most eye-catching title we’ve come across so far. 

Four stars or more 

Onto more reputable fare (sort of) with the subversive circus hit Party Ghost, featuring acrobatic duo Olivia Porter and Jarred Dewey. Porter was a member of the circus troupe Blunderland last year, which we awarded four stars, and Party Ghost looks like it’s huffing on the same intoxicatingly weird air. ‘This is a context-free celebration of naughtiness that lets its freak flag fly,’ wrote our reviewer Kevin Fullerton when he watched Blunderland in August 2022. ‘But much like a John Waters production, there’s a very traditional commitment to craft underpinning the surface-level outrageousness and gross-out humour. Every performer in this variety show is awe-inspiringly talented, from prodigious skipping to inconceivably agile hula-hooping to nail-bitingly intense ropework. Class As and clumsiness propel the gags, but the skills on show are undeniable.’ Read the full review here.