The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with nearly 3,500 shows. This year, Playbill is in Edinburgh for the entire month in August for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!
As part of our Edinburgh Fringe coverage, Playbill is seeing a whole lotta shows—and we're sharing which ones you absolutely must see if you're only at the Fringe for a short amount of time. Consider these Playbill Picks a friendly, opinionated guide as you try to choose a show at the festival.
When in Scotland, do as the Scots do—go see and love Lawrence Chaney. Of all the RuPaul's Drag Race queens that played Edinburgh Fringe this year, there may be none more appropriate to see than Chaney, who hails from Glasgow (about an hour and a half west of Edinburgh).
Aside from the sickening looks and fabulous lip syncs, seeing Chaney play her home turf is uniquely thrilling. The energy from the audience was palpable, and it wasn't just because they'd seen her on TV. It was a homecoming for their fellow countrywoman. And she was dressed to match—as a living and fabulous can of Scottish soda favorite Irn-Bru.
In her new stand-up hour, Lawrence Chaney is Overweight and OVER IT! Chaney is notably Drag Race's first plus-size winner, and she's got a thing or two to say about that. She's done with people caring that she's overweight, acting like they're concerned about her health when they snorted ketamine the night before. In fact, she's got a long list of things she's over when it comes to the many tendrils of fatphobia in society, from airplanes, to weight restrictions on roller coasters.
Growing up in Helensburgh, Scotland, Chaney was bullied for her weight, both directly via school bullies and from the prevalence of TV shows like Embarrassing Bodies (I had to look this up, but it is indeed a very real British TV show that is still documenting people with body abnormalities and other medical conditions). Chaney jokes that if she'd chosen a drag name at this stage in her life, she very well could have ended up as Bonnie Dysmorphia or Eden Disorder (that last one works notably better in Chaney's Scottish brogue).
But Chaney's show isn't just her complaining about anti-fat bias. The bulk (pun intended) of the 60-minute stand-up set is a celebration of fat bodies and loving the skin you're in. Chaney shares when she got the call to perform at Edinburgh Fringe, she thought, "Great! What'll I eat first?" before realizing it wasn't "Edinburgh Binge." A particular highlight is a lip-sync montage tribute to all of Chaney's junk foods, including cake, pie, and milkshakes—you can imagine which songs go with each.
You also get some behind-the-scenes tea from Chaney's series of Drag Race UK, which itself became another period of struggling with fatphobia. When COVID put the entire series on pause, Chaney found herself stuck at home in Glasgow with hardly any money and stress-eating her way into major weight gain. Once they started filming again, Chaney found she didn't fit in any of the costumes she'd paid so much to have made for the show seven months earlier, sending her back into that fatphobic Helensburgh mindset. Luckily, this story has a happy ending, because Chaney goes on to be the series two winner.
As anyone who watched that winning run can tell you, Chaney is winningly hysterical, with a unique everywoman charm that has made her a particular favorite of audiences worldwide, to say nothing of Queen Mother RuPaul herself! All of that and more is on display in Overweight and Over It, a hilarious and heartwarming stand-up hour that's not to be missed. Chaney may be over being overweight, but we'll never be over her.
Lawrence Chaney—Overweight and OVER IT! is running at St. Stephens Stockbridge's Ian McKellen Theatre through August 27. For tickets (which are going fast), click here.
