There’s something fitting – perhaps even poetic – about staging a show called Shitbag in the Anatomy Theatre at Summerhall. Once a site of anatomical demonstration, now turned intimate performance space, it adds a certain weight to what is already a deeply bodily piece of theatre. The semi-circular layout draws the audience into close communion with the performer, reinforcing the sense that what we’re witnessing isn’t performance so much as confession.
Hayley Edwards, an engaging and fearless Antipodean performer, commands the space well. She navigates the tricky terrain of living with Crohn’s Disease – not with self-pity, but with humour, insight, and an unflinching willingness to discuss things most people would euphemise or avoid entirely.
Her rapport with the audience is immediate, they welcome us into her world with a wink and a shrug, an ‘excuse you’ as someone coughs, nudging us closer to the domestic, the personal, the human. This is storytelling with the comfort dial turned up – though the content is anything but comfortable. The show is, at times, graphic as much about sex as about medical procedures. Edwards talks openly about treatments, including a wry anecdote about steroids and their unexpected side effect of hypersexuality, and of being the youngest and hottest person on the GI ward. Concluding that the Gasto consultant only wants another poo sample so that he can hook up with her again.
There are clear echoes of Fleabag here – not just in the style of fourth wall-breaking but in the rhythm and pacing of the storytelling. Edwards’ use of humour as both shield and scalpel is effective, though at times one senses a reluctance to dig fully into the emotional material. It’s not a criticism, per se – more an observation that this show feels like the beginning of something, not the end.
It’s a thoughtful piece, with wit, vulnerability, and real theatrical intelligence. The Anatomy Theatre elevates it further: a setting where the performer quite literally lays herself bare.
16:15 Daily (except 11th and 18th) Till 25th August
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/shitbag
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 6th August 2025
North West End UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr
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