Edinburgh Fringe artists are refusing to sell their trauma

From ‘Fleabag’ to ‘Baby Reindeer’, suffering has been the name of the game when it comes to a hit Fringe show. But a new wave of performers are pushing back

- Alice Saville

What makes a hit Fringe show? It’s a drizzly Edinburgh morning, and I’m part of an impromptu focus group considering the question at the request of performer Hannah Maxwell. We're gathered in a tiny former locker room in the bowels of Summerhall, scribbling our answers on brightly coloured Post-it notes stuck on the wall. “Word of mouth”, of course. “Scandal” - why not? And, in smaller writing, twice: “Trauma”.

Maxwell’s audaciously named new Edinburgh show Babyfleareindeerbag is an interactive, thrillingly honest insight into the brutal logic of the Fringe machine. It’s something she knows a thing or two about. Two years ago, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was one of only two audience members at Maxwell’s rave-reviewed but commercially struggling confessional solo show Nan, Me and Barbara Pravi. After this tacit nod of benediction from Fleabag herself, a media storm and sellout success followed. And then the Fringe ended, and Maxwell was left broke and bereft of opportunities to stage a show that didn’t seem to interest audiences outside of Edinburgh. Now, this year’s provocatively named show has drawn in telly execs and industry types in droves - but in a bitterly dark irony, its interactive, meta format makes it completely incompatible with any screen adaptations or West End transfers.

Since 2013, every female solo show has courted or bridled against comparison with Fleabag, the one-woman show that defined a certain model of Edinburgh Fringe success when it won rave reviews in 2013, then became a widely loved BBC series. Then six years later came Richard Gadd’s