Durham Fringe Festival 2026

This gloriously comic reimagining of Jane Austen from Menstrual Rage Theatre Company puts Emma Woodhouse in control of her own story, muting the insufferable Miss Bates, skipping past the slow-burn moments, and generally bending Highbury to her will. This is a brilliant comic adaptation and the cast commit to it with total, unshakeable conviction.

Staged on Palace Green at the Durham Fringe, with Durham Cathedral looming behind the performance, there’s something wonderfully absurd about watching an all-female cast throw themselves, quite literally, floorward in the name of physical comedy as one of England’s grandest medieval buildings watches on.

This show is not all about the physical comedy; there’s real comic timing in the script itself, and real craft underneath the chaos. The cast make full use of every available inch of the performance space, spilling out into the audience so the story unfolds all around you. It’s a lovely touch that pulls you properly into Emma’s world instead of leaving you watching from a polite distance.

This is a fast-paced comedy that shows real promise, rarely letting up for breath. Scenes rewind, characters get cut off mid-sentence, all framed by a knowing pop culture sensibility. The cast clearly relish the chaos, and that energy is infectious. This is the kind of theatre that gets a room laughing before it’s fully worked out why.

One small note for the company to take forward: in some of the bigger comic music numbers, the music swells enough to overpower the storytelling underneath it. A touch more restraint on the sound levels would let those moments land with the same clarity as the dialogue scenes.

Silly, sharp, and wonderfully irreverent, this production takes genuine affection for its source material and runs with it in unexpected directions. It’s physical, funny, and thoroughly entertaining. Durham Fringe audiences looking for something playful and a bit rebellious should absolutely make time for it.