Edinburgh Fringe 2026

Verity Sharpe: Landlord’s Wet Dream

Verity Sharpe

Genre: Comedy, Storytelling

Venue: Underbelly Bristo Sq

Festival: Edinburgh Fringe

Low Down

Review

Verity Sharpe’s having trouble with her landlord, she explains to the packed audience in Underbelly’s intimate Daisy venue, late on a Saturday evening.  Seems he won’t answer their calls, refuses to reply to emails and has not deigned to respond to the handwritten note they personally delivered to the registered address of the rental company.  Sharpe’s voice is full of weary despair as they leave the latest voicemail – that they didn’t sign up for a random cold shower as a bedroom feature, so could someone PLEASE come round and fix the leaking roof.

It’s a sobering start to what’s a well scripted, consummately delivered fifty minute exposé of all that’s wrong with the UK’s  rental housing market, particularly for those like Sharpe who’ve been in it all their life in the rural North West and who are now trying to break into new ground down in London.

This clever piece of theatre delivers a rapid-fire series of sketches, songs (in full-on raucous punk style), poetic rants and three exquisitely detailed short films showing just how easy it can be to stuff it up your tenants and milk them dry, leaving the landlord laughing all the way to the bank – probably an offshore one so they don’t even have to pay tax on their monetary harvest.

There’s a lot to ponder, admire and even laugh at here.  The running gag leaving a series of increasingly desperate voicemails for the landlord; the dark humour of their guardianship lease in a former care home, or a starter coffin to give away one of the many excellent punchlines in this show; the poem about bed bugs called, appropriately enough, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”.

There are many other examples in a show that’s been meticulously researched, then delivered almost sotto voce using Sharpe’s penchant for nicely understated, dry observational humour, often delivered at little more than a whisper, pulling the enrapt audience in to the story, the more so on the frequent occasions when she breaks down the fourth wall and goes full-on improv in her exchanges with those watching.

Surrealism and absurdism are deployed to telling effect, particularly in a raging punk rant about the iniquities of the rental system where the audience needed no second invitation to belt out the refrain “don’t have a right to a rent strike”.

And, as we approach the end of the show, so the leak’s got worse.  It’s now a veritable waterfall, running down the walls in fact.  Sharpe’s gaff hunt in London town shows no sign of leading to anything affordable, acceptable and assured.  But there’s a resolution of sorts giving them at least some hope for the future.

Now, if this all sounds like a bit of a rant against life, landlords and the capitalist system in general, well, that’s because it is.  And it’s pretty much full-on, in your face the whole time, very reflective of reality and a very good show because of it.

But it really doesn’t have to be this way, something Sharpe might consider outlining if/when this piece of theatre is taken to its next, natural level.  Most agree that the UK’s private landlord dominated rental market is not fit for purpose, one focused on short tenancies with minimal ongoing security where nefarious landlords can drive a coach and horses through regulations, despite the roll out of the Renters’ Rights Act.  Freeing up the estimated million “investment” properties currently unoccupied might help, but won’t completely fix things.

Yet better examples are out there, waiting to be copied.  Austria has long been the gold standard for state controlled, affordable, secure rental accommodation.  The Netherlands and Belgium (both of which I have had personal experience) are a little way behind but are catching up.

There are times when it’s best to just admit something’s knackered, chuck it out and start again.  There’s no shame in learning from others, that housing is a right and not a commodity, as it’s regarded in the UK.  But correcting that requires long term vision, something the UK’s political system can apparently no longer accommodate, adding to its global reputation as a destination for mediocrity and iniquity.

There you are, Verity – food for thought should you care to develop what is already a very good piece of theatre raising, with humour, an issue that affects a large number of the 20% who live in rental accommodation in the UK.  But let’s remember that there are also many wonderful examples of landlords who move heaven and earth to help their tenants (I know a number of them personally), doing so despite the regulations, rather than because of them.

Published August 17, 2026 by Tim Wilcock