Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Lions
Lightning Rod Special
Genre: Absurd Theatre, Biography, Clown, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Drama, Dramedy
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Alice Yorke and Scott R. Sheppard explore their fathers’ high points and mishaps, hiccups and home runs in a loving tribute to what it means to be a father in this modern age.
Review
How well do you know someone? No. Really. What about someone you love? What about your dad? This is what Lions, the new show from Lightning Rod Special takes a stab at – mainly in the form of death. Our two performers, previous Fringe First winners Alice Yorke and Scott R. Sheppard, are dad-less. Or rather, they both have dead dads. They both died in the same year, in fact, and during that time, they both spent long stints in the hospital, shuffling through endless admin and calling round the relatives in a tedious haze instantly recognisable to anyone that’s lost a loved one.
Grief is a funny thing, and there’s something about how the world carries on around you that speaks to absurdity. In Lions, Yorke and Sheppard both manage to eulogise their fathers and deconstruct their humanity. Their close-knit chemistry and strong penchant for clowning elevates their show even in its sadder moments, and they both thrive in front of the audience, bouncing off each other with electric appeal throughout this Kafka-esque drama. Yorke commands the room in a Regency-style get up, and Sheppard fishes for laughs (and gets them) with a moustache right at home in an episode of Magnum P.I. Their flair for drama and confident comedy timing threads the entire hour together, broaching difficult taboos with a healthy dose of physical slapstick.
Through the guise of a table filled with the detritus of a man’s life – including Alice’s dad’s actual computer, featuring cute stickers of her niece previously gifted to the entire family one recent Christmas, they explore their fathers’ legacies through a Dickens-esque deconstruction of that final week in the hospital. They capture the banality of death in a way that brings the audience straight from the brink of tears to howling with laughter in a matter of moments, and explore their dads’ legacies through the measure of what they did in their lives, warts and all. You have no control over how you’re remembered once you’re gone, after all, and the duo explore their fathers’ high points and mishaps, hiccups and home runs in a loving tribute to what it means to be a father in this modern age. All in all, this is an excellent show, and I’m sure their dads would be very proud.
