Edinburgh Fringe 2026
The Real Kyle McCarren
Genre: Musical Theatre
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard Forth
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A profoundly affecting new musical about friendship, grief and the love that remains when someone is gone. With a beautiful score, an exceptional cast and an emotional honesty that never feels forced, The Real Kyle McCarren feels like a show on the edge of greatness.
Review
The Real Kyle McCarren is a brand new musical, playing at the Pleasance Courtyard, Forth throughout the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A powerful and visceral exploration of friendship, loss, grief and growth, set to a beautiful soundtrack and performed by a ridiculously talented cast.
Walking in, the set of The Real Kyle McCarren has the feel of a recording studio. Relatively bare with a handful of old rugs on the floor to soak up the vibrations from the musical equipment dotted about the space: a keyboard, guitars, some chairs and a few mics. This stripped-back feel complements the raw and direct tone of the show. It proves to be an excellent choice that shows the piece off as well as possible whilst still yielding to the inevitable challenge of the quick get-in and get-out that all Fringe shows are tasked with.
At times, the choice to present the show in such a stripped-back way makes it feel like you’re watching an extremely well-polished rehearsed reading. Don’t take that as a criticism. This is a set of incredible artists working to the limitations placed upon them and it works brilliantly. In fact, to call it a reading is unfair because the actors and musicians absolutely know the material inside out and have been directed beautifully to deliver each beat and intention with such clarity and vulnerability that it grabs hold of your heart right from the off and doesn’t let go.
To take a break now from the traditional third person style of reviewing, I now switch to first person – as this show left a profound impact on me and I feel the need to talk straight from the heart from now on. In preparation I deliberately didn’t look up anything about Kyle McCarren, as I wanted to know if the show itself could tell me who he was and whether I would leave feeling that I knew him. I didn’t know if he was a famous person, a person of notoriety or just an ordinary guy. What I learned from watching it is that McCarren himself (Sean McVerry), while clearly the subject of the piece, is not its protagonist. That role falls to his best friend Andy (Andy Roninson), the one left behind to deal with his grief and his growing frustration, that he doesn’t know how or where to place now that his friend is gone.
They are supported by a cast with a rich skillset and wonderful mastery of the roles they have been given. Jaygee Macapugay stands out as Siobhan, the tough Irish-American mother who has lost her son and is navigating her way through the aftermath of the tragedy whilst refusing to give an inch to anyone who gets in her way. Sarah Coffey and Vincent Jamal Hooper then flesh out a handful of characters with gorgeous energy shifts, great accent work and again, crystal clarity of intentions. This feels like a cast who have bought into the emotional weight of the show and they deliver it with aplomb.
Goosebumps rose on my arms numerous times throughout the show and, when the curtain fell, I bawled my eyes out. A rarity for this reviewer, but composer-creators Andy Roninson and Sean McVerry have nailed the nuances of grief via one of the most difficult formats: the one where people randomly burst into song. It is delivered with so much authentic pathos that, by the final note, it is truly emotionally overwhelming.
If it were to develop further, it would be fascinating to see how some scenes could be fleshed out with a touch more dialogue, which could augement the wonderful lyrics, which propel the story along with such confidence and cadence, by creating a handful of dramatic scenes that pull it all together and drive it towards a length that would be more in keeping with the bigger West End and Broadway productions. The company should absolutely dream that big. They have an incredible show to build that dream upon.
The Real Kyle McCarren feels like watching a show on the edge of greatness. In its current format, it wouldn’t be out of place playing somewhere like The Other Palace and transferring to the West End or Broadway and becoming a sleeper hit. The show is deeply affecting and delivered with such sensitivity, passion and skill that you simply need to get a ticket and go, just so you can say you saw it before it was huge.
Quite simply the best new musical I have ever seen at the Edinburgh Fringe. A must, must, must see.
