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Review: Edinburgh Fringe 2025 – The Ones That Got Away:
Presented not as a traditional stage piece but as a reflective, conversational performance, this final “production” of Ian and Jane’s festival journey carries the air of a post-show debrief turned theatre in itself. The stage is minimal — two voices, a camera, a scatter of flyers — but what unfolds is a portrait of the Edinburgh Fringe as lived through missed opportunities, near-encounters, and the generosity of strangers.

The conceit is simple: a catalogue of shows they had hoped to see but, for reasons of scheduling, sold-out tickets, or sheer festival overwhelm, never quite reached. Yet from this absence, presence is conjured. Katia Haddad's Mariupol tragic wartime love story is described with enough colour to suggest its intensity; The Thistle and the Rose resonates with historical passion despite never being attended; Saloon Girls, initially dismissed, emerges as a layered exploration of women in the Wild West after a chance conversation with its makers.

Each missed show becomes a miniature act, performed second-hand through flyers, reviews, and fleeting interactions. The dramaturgy of memory and regret is unexpectedly compelling. At times it feels like a promenade piece, where the streets of Edinburgh and the relentless flyering culture form the set. Ian and Jane’s asides — about creased leaflets carried for days, conversations struck up with performers, or the impossibility of being in two venues at once — land as comic interludes in a larger meditation on festival abundance. What elevates this “production” is its honesty.

There’s no attempt to posture as definitive critics. Instead, the pair situate themselves firmly as audience members navigating a creative deluge, taking “punts” on shows, missing others, and recognising that every Fringe experience is necessarily incomplete. Their candour — “our opinion is not always right,” “sometimes the one-star review isn’t the whole story” — turns what might have been a dry list into a warm, humane reflection on how theatre actually lives in its spectators. The “epilogue,” looking forward to 2026 and promising returns to both synthesizers and short film festivals, seals the piece with charm. By its close, the audience is left less with the sense of absence and more with an invitation: to keep searching, to keep risking, and to keep room in their schedules for the unexpected.

Verdict: A wistful, funny, and quietly poignant coda to the Edinburgh Fringe 2025 — a reminder that theatre exists not only in what we see, but in what we miss, the conversations we have, and the people we meet along the way.

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