EDINBURGH 2026: Review: ELF LYONS IS THE WOMAN ON THE EDGE, Beyond At Pleasance Courtyard

The Fringe is full of women on the edge, but none quite like Elf Lyons. From the word go, Lyons is teetering on her tiptoes, as though wearing heels she’s not quite comfortable in, clad in a taffeta minidress slipping down from her shoulders, and affecting an accent that lands somewhere between Russian and 1950s transatlantic. It’s as though a film noir femme fatale has time travelled, and found herself befuddled by the intricacies of modern dating.

Seasoned clown Lyons is in her mid-thirties, and this show is partly an act of taking stock of her life so far. Last year, Lyons’ engagement broke down a few months before the wedding, triggering an existential crisis and a trip to Thailand with an impulsive new situationship, a man she “nearly loved”. She’s now attempting to figure out how she got here, and as a result, the show is peppered with references to previous shows that will delight existing fans.

It’s also a show about making a show. There are frequent interludes where Lyons takes calls (on a banana) from a man somewhere between agent and lover, discussing everything from the structure of her show to the ethics of writing about men she’s dated. Lyons is a skilled lip syncer, and performs to monologues recorded by her friends and sister, illuminating the insecurities her character isn’t quite ready to fully vocalise on stage. One later scene involves her seemingly lip syncing to a track that isn’t playing – the skeleton of her show depends on her mental state.

The character may be falling apart, but there’s still room for highly polished, self-contained comic scenes. An opera buffa-inspired number entitled ‘Man on the Edge’ lampoons every type of lacklustre male on the heterosexual dating scene (and Lyons warns men in the audience not to take it personally). A game audience member is invited on stage to read out a monologue describing the end of Lyons’ engagement, to which she lip syncs – the night I attend, it’s a man, compounding the sense of distance between Lyons and her own experiences.

Lyons eventually takes off her curled wig and returns to reality, coming to the conclusion that the only person she needed to rescue her was herself. It’s hardly revolutionary, but it’s been a delightfully absurd journey to get here. “None of this was funny,” Lyons says of her breakup at one point, resisting the tendency to make light of trauma, but after seeing her show I have to disagree.

Elf Lyons is The Woman on the Edge plays at Beyond at Pleasance Courtyard until 31 August

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