Stamptown at Edinburgh Fringe ★★★★
★★★★ Stamptown | Pleasance Grand
The Zach Zucker-hosted late-night showcase is still a hot-ticket – 90 minutes of organised mayhem.
Filling our late-night vacancy since the sad departure of raucous Spank!, Stamptown sees the Pleasance Grand play host to pretty much the most wild frat party of the fringe. Zach Zucker gives it everything – with the incredible assistance of a tight tech team – as coked-up anti-host, firing gags in all directions in between introducing a changing line-up of comedy & circus acts from across the festival.
The show creates its own backstage and on stage methodology from big loud sound FX like gunshots, song samples, a fearful venue manager played straight beautifully by Erin Farrington and sad boohoo lighting all coming from the expert Zucker’s circus and pierrot background. The show is a loud American dream of sweary locker room banter all performed at 100mph even in the slow lane. The show does make room for genuine breaking down of the lad culture it purports to be all about. This includes embracing a queer approach from the guest acts and making the offbeat family of side characters like the beer-drenched sexy lumberjack, sad janitor or stage hands the stars of the show for a moment..
On our visit, a high bar was set with comedienne Rosie Jones, hilarious femme-fatale clown Elf Lyons, whipsmart comic Martin Urbano, show stealing catchphrase creator of the night Joey Dardano, anarchic naked flower clown Betty Grumble & more as the guest performers. Rosie and Elf were our stand-out’s in a show that can always err a little too laddy for 2025. But somehow, just when you think it’s all getting a bit student comedy night, Zucker pulls it back – and though there’s mostly a weighting towards raunchy comedy, you’ll likely catch an awesome circus performer or two as well.
Stamptown never disappoints and proves variety shows can survive in this TikTok age but Zucker could perhaps bring in some other influences perhaps to keep it fresh.
For an end-of-the-night, pint-in-hand slice of chaotic entertainment, you can’t do much better than this.
I am Joint Editor at To Do List. I like: nice pubs, film marathons, not doing real marathons, bad comedy, plays/musicals with shorter second halves, and the Oxford comma.
