one4review | On 28, Aug 2026

Fringe legends Baby Wants Candy are back again with their high-energy biographical musical parody Shamilton! and it’s just as great as you’d expect.

Anyone familiar with Baby Wants Candy’s work will find no surprises in this show, only delights. The prompt is simple, based on audience suggestions the cast take a famous figure, whether historical, contemporary or fictional and turn it into a very silly and, presumably, completely accurate musical based around their lives. Hilarity, inevitably, ensues.

The content obviously changes every night and when I was in the suggestion was for the life of famous capitalist and chocolatier, Willy Wonka, with songs about how he’s looking to either cause or prevent the diabetes epidemic that killed his mother, persuading the indigenous Oompa Loompa’s to come work for him for questionable reward and Tony Chocolonely’s attempts at making coco socialist.

I should hope it goes without saying that the performance of the whole cast was immaculate – the freestyle rapping in particular was very impressive from what are, let’s face it, a bunch of grown-up theatre kids. The vocal range, quick wits and musical accompaniment of this show are second to none.

But what I love about Baby Wants Candy’s improv shows, and what they seem to have over a lot of the other big-name improv shows at the Fringe is their willingness to try and make each other laugh, even at the cost of the cohesiveness of the show. In my performance, MC Hammersmith pretended that every time the live musicians tried to bring a specific musical score that he was getting a phone call. People are more than willing to say “no, but” when it’ll be funnier than a “yes and” which the entire show is better for.

Willy Wonka as an inspiration might be a bit less interesting and was probably not the best suggestion they had that week but even so the little Rumpelstiltskins managed to weave the straw into gold just like they do every night.

****
Reviewed by Tom
Assembly George Square Studios
Until 30 August