Hater - Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026

Hater is a sharp, gleefully nasty piece of satire about what happens when an industry gives East Asian women crumbs and then encourages them to fight over them. At its centre is Wai Ying, who is stalking a fellow actor called Eve who is the same casting type. Alongside her is another woman who encounters Eve at a gym combat class, giving us two women with anger issues finding ways to tear someone else down in order to feel better about themselves. The result is packed with great physical comedy and a rich vein of humour, with plenty of inside references that will particularly land with East Asian audiences and Fringe performers.
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Structurally, Hater unfolds across three chapters, with the first two exploring these separate conflicts with Eve before a shorter epilogue brings things together. It is in those first two chapters that the play really bites, exposing the ugly pleasure women can be encouraged to take in each other’s failures, while asking how much of that rivalry is manufactured by an industry that insists there simply isn’t enough room for everyone. Even the opening audience poll, where we decide who takes on the key roles, implicates us in that competition. Written by Gawa Leung and directed by Megan Brewer, Hater ultimately turns its anger towards a culture that can make potential allies see each other as competition, and asks what happens when professional insecurity starts to look like self-hatred.

Lee Hutchison

4/5

Runs at the Gilded Balloon Patter House until August 31st