The Last Girl There - Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026

The Last Girl There has an excellent hook and makes for a hugely enjoyable mid-afternoon murder mystery at the Fringe. Following the stabbing of university student Clara Morgan in her South East London kitchen, with no sign of forced entry and no evidence of a stranger being involved, suspicion falls on the three people who were last known to see her alive: her best friends Ava, Grace and Freya.

The premise works because the play never lets its central mystery lose its grip across 45 minutes. The evidence can only point towards one of the girls, keeping the tension alive as their accounts of the night begin to fracture. Small inconsistencies become increasingly difficult to dismiss, while years of friendship are slowly picked apart by grief, resentment and suspicion.

Written and directed by Melissa Irakoze, the play also taps into the complicated relationship many women have with true crime. There has been much discussion around why women make up such a large proportion of true crime audiences, with one explanation being that listening to these stories can become a way of learning about danger. By hearing how other women became victims, listeners can identify warning signs, understand patterns and imagine what they might do differently. True crime becomes, in part, a form of preparation for a world in which women are taught to think about their own safety.

The Last Girl There cleverly turns that idea inside out. Still in their pyjamas after coming straight from the murder scene, Ava, Grace and Freya begin investigating one another in the waiting room while the police conduct their own questioning in the room next door. It is almost as though the women have become the true crime audience, only now the story is happening to them. They know the conventions of the mystery, but more importantly, they know each other.

That knowledge becomes the play's most interesting weapon. The police can interrogate these women, but they cannot possibly know them in the way their friends do. The man in the next room is looking for inconsistencies in statements; the women in the waiting room are reading years of shared history. They know the tiny changes in someone's voice, the expressions they make when they are lying, the things they would never normally say and the things they might say when frightened. The very closeness that makes these friendships meaningful also makes them uniquely equipped to expose one another. It makes for an entertaining mystery, but beneath the twists is a much sharper exploration of female friendship, fear and the uncomfortable ways women learn to recognise danger.

Lee Hutchison

3.5 / 5 

Runs until August 28th at TheSpace UK