Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Happily Ever Never
LS6 Theatre
Genre: New Writing, Queer Theatre, Theatre
Venue: theSpace @ Niddry St
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Own-brand versions of princess character performers contemplate their futures and confront the version of themselves underneath the princess wigs.
Review
Happily Ever Never was written by Lydia Baggaley during her final semester at university. It is perhaps fitting that during a time of massive change in one’s adult life that Baggaley wrote this play about young performers thinking about their future and becoming the most honest versions of themselves. The play centres around a girl who performs as Rapunzel for a children’s entertainment business. The show starts during a children’s birthday party, and the audience gets to see all of the characters as their princess personas in a chaotic, yet choreographed fever dream of cooing voices.
The overall concept and themes of the show are a strong point. Using a small, third-rate children’s party planning business as the framework of the story is a creative set-up for a dramedy. Baggaley cleverly draws parallels between the performance of femininity and heterosexuality to literally performing as a princess. It is befitting that the characters are never given proper names, and are instead only referred to by their character personas. While the framing story of the princess performers preparing for a big gig was funny and well executed, the main thematic plot of the tension between Moana and Rapunzel ,and Rapunzel’s inner turmoil, felt a little underdeveloped. Their former relationship to each other is revealed straight away rather than letting the tension and yearning build. Moana suggests to Rapunzel to write her feelings down, but this does not happen until the end. Having her write throughout the show could have given the audience more insight into what Rapunzel was thinking and feeling. The scenes between Moana and Rapunzel felt like a means to tell the audience what Rapunzel was thinking rather than showing us.
The birthday parties and choreographed princess sequences were some of the highlights of this production. The campy, cartoonish performances of the princesses were really well done and are definitely a major contribution to this show’s high entertainment value. In the beginning, Rapunzel also acted as narrator, reading out a heightened, fairy-tale version of soliloquy, which then devolved into more coarse language. These moments were really funny; I just wish there had been more. This could have been the way Rapunzel writes her feelings down, and it would have allowed the audience to see the gradual changes in the way Rapunzel is thinking throughout the play.
Overall, though, Happily Ever Never is a fun, vibrant production that was very enjoyable to watch. The actors do a brilliant job of putting on the heightened performer persona, and then scaling back to real people you swear you know from somewhere. That was the best part of this show: the juxtaposition of high-fantasy and ultra real. There were flashy, bright sequences of dancing and delights, and then gritty, rock-bottom moments everyone who is or has been in their twenties can relate to. This show is an absolute treat to watch and is worth adding to your Fringe list this year.
