How To Win A Gameshow - Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026

It is genuinely impossible, and would probably be a disservice, to review How to Win a Gameshow. I booked up only the title, before encountering on Day 1 of the festival, outside my office, several people in green boiler suits and a man in a dog cage. At that point I had one thought: what the fuck?(Complimentary.)

On only its second night, How to Win a Gameshow already has that unmistakable early buzz of a show that feels destined to become a cult hit. The kind where you leave the theatre and immediately start messaging friends telling them to get tickets before everyone else catches on.

We enter the room and are greeted by Graham who has apparently been the star contestant of a popular gameshow for either four or 327 days, depending on who you believe. Led by a succession of violently charming hosts, Graham and an increasingly implicated audience find themselves playing a game that nobody entirely understands. 

It is part performance art, part improv and part gameshow. The brilliance is in how completely the audience buys into it. Everyone plays their part, everyone just gets it when called upon, and somehow the whole thing remains gloriously chaotic while being an impressively tight production.

The whole team are fantastic, but the real star might be the collective madness of the room. I genuinely don’t know how to tell you what happens without ruining the fun, so I’m not going to try.

Lee Hutchison

4/5

Runs until August 22nd at SpaceUK