one4review | On 02, Sep 2026

White-hot clown duo Xhloe and Natasha are no strangers to success at the Edinburgh Fringe with a hat trick of consecutive Fringe First Awards for Outstanding New Writing for their previous shows “And Then The Rodeo Burned Down” (2022), “What If They Ate The Baby? (2023),” and “A Letter To Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First” (2024). And they’ve returned to the Fringe in 2026 with their new show about small town life, hysteria and bigfoot.

The play focuses primarily on the story of two bored teenagers in a small Appalachian town who, desperate to avoid getting in trouble after a minor car accident, claim they saw a bigfoot. Desperate to back up their lies and potentially bring some renown to their town, they fake more and more evidence but eventually the town’s interest turns to fear and the lines between what really happened and why blur to the point where no one seems to know what happened and why anymore.

While the teenagers may be the core of the story, the real protagonist is the town, with its mayor with his comb over and either light sensitivity or drinking problem, depending on who you ask, the sheriff dealing with a personal loss as well as his obsession with bigfoot, the pair of ne’er-do-well twins who spend their days huffing fumes and staring into space. We learn about the recent flood that devastated the town and the emotional and physical scars it left on its inhabitants. The depth of the characters and amount that is squeezed into the runtime is honestly astonishing and much of it is those little flourishes that you wouldn’t notice if they weren’t there but do so much to ground the story in reality when they are – like how the street where the accident took place has its name changed back and forwards, confusing the locals, or the importance of bottled water in a town that only recently was severely flooded. This town feels incredibly lived in and you end up caring for it as much as its somewhat colourful but overall good-hearted residents.

The tale is told in their trademark hyperactive style where Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland melt between different roles, including swapping the same role between different actors, a feat only possibly because of the incredibly hard work they put into establishing the physicality and mannerisms of different townsfolk. Characters will often be shown having two different conversations at once or talking over each other and many sections are just a montage of snippets of different conversations from the various residents as a sort of Greek chorus of noise letting us see the psyche of the town. When not giving an absolute masterclass in character acting, Xhloe and Natasha mix it up by pulling off some of the smoothest synchronised physical theatre I’ve ever seen to an upbeat early millennial soundtrack and occasionally puppeteering a giant bigfoot around the stage.

I’m hardly breaking new ground pointing out these two are good – the list of awards and the fact this show sold completely out before the Fringe was even half-way done are testament to that. But it is worth confirming that its the sheer quality of the work that has clearly gone into this show from the writing to the direction to the soundtrack to every single other aspect is the reason for the success, not just because Xhloe and Natasha got lucky and hit some cultural zeitgeist. What can I say except; believe what you hear. Believe the hype, believe the reviews, believe in bigfoot.

*****
Reviewed by Tom
Summerhall – Main Hall