Frankie Thompson's Horrible Things: Edinburgh Fringe review
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- Frankie Thompson bills her Edinburgh Fringe show "Horrible Things" as a "work-in-regress," using the voice of Peppa Pig to frame it as an expunging of unpleasant memories.
- Thompson anchors the set with a lip-sync performance to an interview with 12-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg, with the reviewer calling her hyper-expressive timing sharper commentary than "a thousand satirical words."
- The show collages other clips skewering male cultural figures, including material about the whips' office's "tawdry machismo" and a skit questioning Cliff Richard's wholesomeness, alongside a riff on Frank Sinatra's 1980 album Trilogy: Past Present Future.
- Thompson recruits audience members into interactive interludes — a mime orchestra accompanying the Sinatra clip, plus men dragooned onstage to dance, "be babies, be stabbed, be expelled from the room."
- Thompson also submits herself to discomfort, at points licking the floor and lathering herself in shaving cream, with the reviewer reading the cumulative effect as laughter functioning "not as the best medicine, but the best exorcism."
- "Horrible Things" runs at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh until 30 August, then transfers to Soho Theatre, London from 9–21 November.
Why it matters: Edinburgh Fringe reviews often double as scouts for the autumn London circuit — Thompson's "Horrible Things" transfers to Soho Theatre on 9 November after its 30 August Edinburgh close, giving London audiences a limited two-week window to catch a show the reviewer credits with a distinctive lip-sync-to-power-clips format and willingness to put herself on the line.
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