Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Kate Butch: A Kate in the Hand is Worth Two in the Butch
Kate Butch
Venue: Pleasance Dome King Dome
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A gloriously witty hour of old-school drag sensibility fused with thoroughly modern mischief. Kate Butch combines razor-sharp puns, effortless crowd work and deliciously petty observations with the confidence of a performer completely in command of the room. Sharp, silly and fabulous fun.
Review
Kate Butch: A Kate in the Hand is Worth Two in the Butch is playing at the Pleasance Dome, King Dome throughout the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The much-loved Drag Race star delivers a slick masterclass in saucy punnery and cheeky drag fabulousness.
Keeping things aesthetically simple, we enter the King Dome and find ourselves in something of a shrubbery, a shrine to Butch, if you like. It simply reads: Kate. Barring a couple of other handy props that I won’t spoil for you, that’s all Butch needs to hold our attention for the hour. Their very presence gives you no reason to look away or lose interest. Once this Queen takes the stage, they have you wrapped around their finger.
Butch (who wishes they’d chosen a drag name with slightly more cadence to it by the way, as Kate Butch is far too punchy) is the consummate performer. Delightful and generous crowd work is coupled with the occasional bombastic side-eye aimed at any raucous audience members, capable of withering a heckler’s confidence at 50 paces. Butch has all the skill and wit of the old drag legends and trailblazers of the genre, shades of Dame Edna Everage and Lily Savage, but fused with a wicked grounding in the humour and nonsense of the mid-2020s. They bemoan the silliness of the ‘best joke of the Fringe’ award while simultaneously attempting to actually win it, provide a surgical takedown of a handful of vile social media commenters and walk us through their various interactions and plans to seek petty revenge.
It’s classic joke-telling, but done really well. Set-up and switch, largely on repeat, but it’s so cutting, witty and delivered with the confidence of a performer who has really hit their stride that it’s received with nothing but consistent laughter and joy. Topics range from Butch’s early years and coming out to the misconception of drag queens as predators and the underestimation of just how petty someone with Butch’s ‘long game’ revenge skills can actually be. As per the title, the show also loosely hangs on our usage of proverbs to makes sense of life sometimes.
There is something delightfully old-school in form and genre in A Kate in the Hand is Worth Two in the Butch, while at the same time it feels completely of the moment. Butch knows exactly how to work a room, when to push a joke and most importantly, when to let a perfectly timed look do all the work. Sharp, silly and gloriously petty, Kate Butch provides a perfect comedic formula for a fabulous and wicked hour of fun.
