Broke & Fabulous in the 21st Century - Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026

There is something immediately, gloriously ridiculous about Broke And Fabulous in the 21st Century. As we enter and take our seats, we are greeted by the dressing room of an old theatre, where Alex (Dale Robertson) lies draped across a huge bed, his luscious locks flowing, his body looking like it was sculpted by the gods, dressed in red satin underwear as JADE’s Angel of My Dreams blasts around him after he's enjoyed a night of passion. It is an entrance that tells us almost everything we need to know: these people may be broke, but they are absolutely committed to being fabulous.

Written and directed by Robertson, the play introduces us to Alex and Petunia (Olive McHugh), two artists whose friendship is immediately convincing. Alex is the more grounded of the pair, while Petunia is bold, chaotic and emotionally expansive, a modern diva seemingly incapable of doing anything by halves. Their relationship has a wonderful lived-in quality, with the pair constantly calling each other Pet, babe, darling and my love. There is a shared language here that speaks to a deep and rich history, making it entirely believable that these two have been friends long before the lights came up.
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That friendship is particularly important because Broke And Fabulous is a sharp portrait of the elder millennial experience, particularly the art-school generation that came of age during a brief period when being an artist could feel like a genuinely viable way to imagine your future. Alex and Petunia went to art school in the 2000s, at a moment when culture still felt like a viable industry and a creative career seemed within reach. Then 2008 happened. The financial crash didn't just wreck the job market, it pulled the economic foundations from underneath an entire generation of artists ambitions. Now Alex is working in restaurants while Petunia is in retail, albeit Knightsbridge retail. They have ended up about as far from the artistic careers they imagined as it is possible to get, while still maintaining the aesthetics of people who absolutely believe they should be working in the arts.

That contradiction is everywhere. Petunia's enormous black coat with only black lingerie underneath wouldn't look out of place with Lady Gaga walking down a red carpet, while the theatre dressing room itself feels like a decaying monument to the glamorous creative lives they once imagined. The set design is one of the Fringe's best this year, filled with a classic theatre dressing table and mirror, a huge bed and artwork in faux-gold frames. It is beautiful, theatrical and just a little bit faded, much like the dreams of the people inhabiting it. 

When both unknowingly become entangled with the same man, Tom (Rowland Stirling), it initially seems as though the play is steering us towards a familiar romantic collision. It is fairly obvious where these parallel stories between Alex and Petunia, and Alex and Tom, are heading, but Robertson cleverly subverts those expectations. We anticipate the inevitable explosion in the third act, yet the play wisely refuses to make that the point. Instead, it keeps its focus firmly on this trio and the relationships between them. The drama doesn't need to become enormous for us to remain invested, and there is something refreshing about a show that trusts its characters rather than manufacturing a huge emotional payoff simply because the structure says it should.

The comedy comes from the characters as much as the circumstances, with misunderstandings and escalating situations piling up around them. Robertson's script is particularly impressive here, moving at a million miles an hour without seemingly taking a breath between lines. Olive McHugh gets some of the show's most memorable material, including the gloriously filthy observation that “eating me out right now would be like sipping nectar from a frangipani in Jo Malone's fucking garden.” It is the sort of writing that makes you want to buy the script in the foyer afterwards just to go through it again and see how many lines you missed while laughing.

Petunia is the great creation of the piece: an enormous, chaotic, utterly iconic character who feels like a collision between D.W. from Arthur and Eddy and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous. She has D.W.'s unwavering conviction that she is the most important person in any situation, combined with Patsy and Edina's commitment to glamour, status and self-invention regardless of whether reality can actually support it. But Petunia is also more than a comic caricature. Her extravagance feels like a survival mechanism, a way of refusing to let the reality of disappointment dictate the size of the life she presents to the world.

The whole production commits wholeheartedly to that theatricality, from the performances and costumes to the wonderfully excessive design. There is a sense that these characters could keep going long after the curtain falls, and I would happily see them do exactly that. A sequel would be welcome, but a prequel set during their art-school days could be even better.

There is something wonderfully nostalgic about Broke And Fabulous in the 21st Century too. It feels like the sort of sharp, filthy, character-driven comedy that could have been an exceptional E4 series in the early 2000s, back when television seemed rather more willing to let eccentric, chaotic and gloriously self-involved characters carry a show on British television. We've lost a little of that kind of comedy from our screens, but it feels perfectly at home on stage. Robertson has written a script packed with wit and created characters big enough to fill the room, while still giving the show enough emotional grounding to make us care about the people underneath the performance.

Lee Hutchison

5/5