The Underground Monk Show: Inside Edinburgh’s Fringe Cult Comedy of the Highest Level | Edinburgh Festival 2026

DInside Banshee’s cavernous maze in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, ominously dressed monks stand on stage after midnight. It’s the year 2024, halfway across the outskirts of Edinburgh, and no one really knows what’s going on. But in this dungeon-like sweatbox, we’re about to experience a work in progress that’s both exhilarating and utterly unsettling.

Two years later, the Underground Monk Show is back. While some offers reach the margin with a clear width, it is still impossible to determine that width. “It’s so funny because that’s what we keep asking ourselves,” laughs co-creator John Norris, who is also the mastermind behind absurdist comedy gem Mr. Chunkers. If you were trying to explain what happens, you might say that the show follows eccentric monks who, over the course of an hour, each experience a spiritual awakening of sorts, prompted by a magical body of water that turns their visions into reality. There are flashbacks, dream sequences and a portal to another world as the performers move up and down the hallways, moving together as a unit.

But there isn’t necessarily cohesion between them, which adds an ironic sense of tension. One night, the monks grabbed objects from audience members and a poor man in the front row lost his hat throughout the show when the monks, accompanied by Gregorian chants and choral masses, deemed the show sacrosanct to their cause.

As Norris’ co-director Corey Buddell explains, the show’s origins are appropriately absurd. It started with a night called Monks and Nuns at the Elysian Theater in Los Angeles. “It had nothing to do with monks or nuns, but we dressed that way,” she says. “And then John kept saying, ‘What if we all dressed like monks?’ He said that enough times that I think he showed it.”

This year, with support from Soho Theatre, the monks emerge from their underground chambers for a full tour of the soaring heights of Edinburgh’s George Square Gardens. It has evolved into a must-see blockbuster, an ensemble show featuring Norris (whom he co-created with Sam Fishman) and Los Angeles-based performers at the top of their game. Performance artist Claire Woolner is best known for her stunning solo show A Retrospection; Max Baumgarten is a founding member of the experimental improvised clown group Wet the Hippo; D Marcucci was part of Lady Magic, directed by Natalie Palamides on Fringe last year. Bill O’Neill, who was nominated as Edinburgh Comedy Newcomer of the Year 2023 for The Amazing Banana Brothers, will join the show when it comes to London’s Soho Theater in January.

Norris points out that the performers come from a variety of backgrounds. “There are a lot of us who are clowns, theatre, improvisation, dance and performing arts,” he says. “We’ll see what it actually turns out to be this year, but there’s comedy all the time — that’s always the goal — tension and release and beauty and grace.”

Their spirit of creative openness is backed by something no less important: friendship. Most monks have spent years performing together in different groups, building a common language. “There’s a shortcut for that,” Bodell says. Woolner believes the band’s chemistry comes from knowing exactly how to challenge each other. “We learned to play each other by knowing how to play each other, and then pushing each other into the uncomfortable place of playing that person,” she says. This sense of risk is central. Rather than presenting a static theatrical piece, the company is constantly looking for ways to keep the performance lively and unpredictable.

Despite moving to a larger venue, the band remains determined to maintain the show’s underground spirit and deep connection with the audience. “What we lose in the intimacy of this beautiful little cave, maybe we can reclaim some of it with a scene, and maybe enhance some of the other things in this big room, filling the void,” Norris says.

Norris hopes the audience will enjoy a “nice little escape for an hour,” adding that his favorite shows are the ones where “you laugh, and you don’t really know why.” Part of the reason people keep coming back is that no two shows are exactly the same. Woolner describes the group’s ongoing mission of creating a “one-time-only experience.” You might find yourself sprinkled with holy water, which is actually someone’s pint, or even caught in a dramatic love scene with a monk.

How will the audience feel when they arrive at this strange concert? “Joy and exaltation,” Wollner says without hesitation, then offers the most accurate review of the Underground Monk Show imaginable. “I don’t know what the fuck is,” she says. “But I need to see him again!”