Two of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe musicals are standing out from the crowd, and for very different reasons. One was built from the ground up by young people who’ve been through the care system. The other is a deeply personal tribute to a friend gone far too soon. Both are worth your time.
First up is Unheard Voices, Unbroken Spirits, a production that hits differently from most things you’ll see at the Fringe. Created by care-experienced young people, the show draws directly from their own lives, their struggles, their resilience, and the parts of their stories that don’t often get told on stage. The result is something raw and genuinely moving.
There’s a real honesty to it that you can’t fake. These aren’t professional performers reciting someone else’s script about what it’s like to grow up in care. This is the real thing, shaped by people who lived it. The musical numbers carry that weight, and the performances land hard because of it. Audiences have been leaving visibly affected, and it’s not hard to see why.
Shows like this are exactly what the Fringe is supposed to be about. Not just big budget productions or celebrity-fronted spectacles, but theatre that comes from a real place and says something that matters. Unheard Voices, Unbroken Spirits does that in spades.
Then there’s The Real Kyle McCarren, a show that takes a completely different approach but lands just as hard emotionally. This one is a tribute to a real person, Kyle McCarren, who died young, written and performed by someone who clearly loved him. It’s heartfelt, funny in places, and genuinely sad in others.
What makes it work is that it never tips over into being mawkish or self-indulgent. It celebrates who Kyle was as a person, the kind of show that makes you feel like you knew him by the end of it, even if you’d never heard his name before walking in. That’s a hard thing to pull off, and the creative team behind it deserves real credit for getting the balance right.
Grief is difficult to put on stage without it feeling either too heavy or too light. The Real Kyle McCarren finds a middle ground that feels honest. It’s the kind of Fringe show that sticks with you after you leave the venue and head back out into the chaos of the Royal Mile.
Both productions are part of what makes Edinburgh in August such a remarkable thing. Thousands of shows compete for attention, and plenty of them are forgettable. But every year a handful cut through, and these two are among them.
If you’re heading to the Fringe and want something that will actually make you feel something, both are well worth adding to your list.