Edinburgh Fringe 2026
The Subplot: A Hyperfixation on the Titan Submersible
Sophie Smyth and Quiet Riot
Genre: Autobiography, Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Experimental, Neurodiverse, Solo Show
Venue: Summerhall Arts
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
In June 2023 the world was shocked by the OceanGate Titan sub implosion. It captured the imagination of Sophie Smyth, an underemployed neurodivergent actor, who three years following every development, every twist and turn to the final inquiry. And then turned it into a multi media performance.
Review
There are some shows at the Fringe that resist categorisation, that are almost impossible to sum up in a few words – and they’re often made more unusual by unfolding in quirky, interesting spaces. The Subplot fits every one of those criteria: an underemployed autistic actor with ADHD and a hyperfixation on the Titan submersible, performed in the Locker Room at Summerhall. Frankly, that description alone is worth the ticket.
We enter the locker room, lit to create a slightly blue overall hue, with Queen’s Under Pressure playing us in. Sophie Smyth, suitably attired as ‘Captain’ Smyth – self-declared commander, armed with a laptop and a Logitech F710 controller – greets us as “mission specialists” for a multimedia descent into the 2023 Titan submersible tragedy. Her approach sets the scene for her style of presentation throughout: warm, welcoming, excited to share her story.
She takes us back to June 18th 2023 and the first news reports that contact had been lost with the submersible; tracing her own growing obsession with the story through the discovery that it had imploded some 500m from the wreck of the Titanic, all the way to the findings of the 2025 inquiry, with numerous diversions along the way into just about every tangent imaginable. Using the same kind of games controller reportedly used aboard the Titan itself, she shares some of the more bizarre social media videos, memes and posts before turning to the backgrounds of the five people on board.
But this is far more than a loosely dramatised TED talk. It’s part stand-up, part autobiography, as Smyth explores her own neurodivergent world and her own responses to the disaster, asking pointed questions about how we respond to tragedy, and broader ones about the nature of fixation itself. As the information deepens and grows more nuanced, the performance subtly shifts into something far more profound. At intervals the lighting dims and we’re taken through the stages of the dive itself: the preparation, entering the submersible, being locked in, the descent through its levels. It focuses the mind and gives just a hint of what it might have been like on that day.
Both written and performed by Smyth, the pace is ferocious – so much is packed into the hour: information, background, titbits, speculation, personal story, and question after question. Personal storytelling, documentary narrative and poetry weave in and out of the central thread throughout. Her delivery is faultless – managing much of the audio visual content alongside a script that barely pauses for breath. Except when she asks a question of us, gives us something else to consider, then there is a perfectly timed pause as she scans the room.
Tightly directed by Casey Gould, it’s often very funny, but there’s an ever-present awareness that she – and we – are laughing at a tragedy in which five people died, including one teenager. The way Smyth taps into that unease adds real reflective depth, and the show closes as she considers how she identifies with each of the five in turn.
The Subplot takes a tragedy whose every facet drew worldwide viral attention and unravels it to the very last thread and then weaves it back into an extraordinary piece of theatre full of nuance, empathy and… questions.
