A medieval teenage nun, a motorised pigeon: highlights from the Edinburgh fringe

There are limitless opportunities to chase that first feeling. Even when you’re jogging across Edinburgh’s cobbles to reach back-to-back performances, you still feel like you’re missing out on something. There are 3,853 shows at this year’s fringe and well over a third of those are comedy, now the festival’s dominant genre. As a member of the Edinburgh comedy awards panel, I have been trawling those thousands to find the next star of the festival.

Shining brightly this year is Sam Nicoresti. She’s been building a cult following for a while, but her show Baby Doomer (Pleasance Courtyard) could be her breakout moment. We join her quest for the perfect skirt suit, “the pinnacle of gendered performance”, as she offers fresh perspectives on life as a trans woman, and the joys and frustrations of transition. Nicoresti fills the room with energy: vividly acting out getting trapped in a latex dress, giving impressions of the “trans icon” Gollum from The Lord of the Rings and offering thoughtful reflections on a recent mental health crisis. “Going mad was the most rational response to my reality,” she tells us. This near-perfect show is crafted with skill; it is dense with original punchlines and leaves us on a note of well-earned poignancy.

Another poignant moment comes in Sami Abu Wardeh’s Palestine: Peace De Resistance (Pleasance Dome), which weaves the story of Algerian freedom fighters with that of the comic’s family’s roots in Palestine. He cuts through the heaviness of the subject with music, clowning and a running series of “An Englishman, an Irishman and a Palestinian” jokes, delivered with bite. As daily horrors continue to unfold in his homeland, this show asks us what it means to resist.

Family – the question of whether to create one, depictions of the raw reality of motherhood – is explored by many comedians this year. Jena Friedman’s Motherf*cker (Monkey Barrel) is a standout, as she discusses pregnancy, the simultaneous death of her mother, and the decay of US politics with edge and intelligence.

The fringe has long been known for its eccentricity, and some shows lean into wild escapism and unhinged characters. Alice Cockayne brings wigs, mannequins and big party energy to the strippers, mothers and cleaners of Licensed. Professional. Trained. Qualified. (Pleasance Courtyard). Newcomers Ada and Bron play a series of strange couples in The Origin of Love (Pleasance Courtyard), from suppressed suburbanites to shy teens; their wide-eyed naivety lends the production a childlike quality. Bebe Cave’s Christbride (Pleasance Dome) centres on medieval teenager Batilda, who decides life as a nun beats life as a wife. It’s a riot of anachronism and well-observed characters, particularly the dating profiles of three awful knights. Rory Marshall’s Pathetic Little Characters (Pleasance Courtyard) skewers toxic masculinity in his portraits of modern men, from an aggressive teaching assistant to an Alan Partridge-esque dinner party guest.

Last year’s best newcomer winner, Joe Kent-Walters, returns with his alter ego in Frankie Monroe: Dead!!! (Good Fun Time) (Monkey Barrel), about a cursed working men’s club proprietor who needs to save his Rotherham establishment from gentrification. It’s another joyous romp, with Monroe playing pranks on the audience and treating us to a plethora of catchy songs. Debuting at the fringe is an opportunity to define yourself. Toussaint Douglass stands out in this field with Accessible Pigeon Material (Pleasance Courtyard), melding stories of his Caribbean grandma with jokes about pigeons, a motorised bird causing havoc on stage.

Hasan Al-Habib (Pleasance Courtyard) introduces us to his dad, an Iraqi who raised his family near Birmingham, in a well-scripted story of home and identity. The charismatic Sharon Wanjohi (Pleasance Courtyard) explores family and grief with help from a self-penned advice book.

Mancunian Molly McGuinness (Monkey Barrel) oozes charm too and has a story many comedians would dream of after she was put into an induced coma – her act is cheeky and cheerful. Jessie Nixon (Assembly George Square) explores fatness and internalised misogyny via supremely confident standup and tongue-in-cheek poetry interludes.

Alison Spittle and Helen Bauer reflect on fatness too. In Big (Monkey Barrel), Spittle explores a health scare that led to weight loss and her conflicted feelings around it. She’s a gifted storyteller, addressing the subject with nuance, plus asides on theme parks and Shrek. Bauer’s Bless Her (Monkey Barrel) introduces her eight-year-old inner child and explores her binge eating disorder. She wrings laughs from bitchy friends and the fetishisation of thinness.

Themes emerge: comedians slip in topical nods to age verification on pornography sites, and there’s a puzzling resurgence of the self-consciously edgy paedophile and Osama bin Laden jokes, some feeling like unwelcome throwbacks to the 00s. Neurodiversity has been a staple in recent years: Jain Edwards offers a fresh, often surreal take on the topic in She-Devil (Underbelly), which gradually moves from the whimsical to the dark as she explores misogynistic bullying in the comedy industry.

Ed Night has honed a style of his own too. Your Old Mucker (Monkey Barrel) walks us through a day in his neighbourhood. He poetically riffs on circadian rhythms, landlords, dentistry and debt, playfully dissecting the standup form. In the same room, surreal storyteller Johnny White Really-Really meanders through his employment history in a dreamlike hour of low-fi comedy.

I’ve seen shows for every mood and taste, but there are hundreds more to see. I’ll keep gambling.

Photograph by Rebecca Need-Menear/Michael Julings