Created by the team behind the last year’s FRINGE WORLD award-winning show The Cockburn Incident, GRACE sets out to tell a story about mental health, family, and consequences with playfulness and humour.

If you haven’t heard of Cassandra Barbitoll don’t worry, neither had we. Sophie Joske’s solo show Woman of the Hour promises to bring audiences up to speed on all things Cassandra in just 50 hilarious minutes.

Not Romeo and Juliet, created and performed by inimitable clowns Kimberley Twiner and Lily Fish, is coming to FRINGE WORLD 2019. We can’t wait to see it for ourselves, and we had a chat about the show with Lily Fish to satisfy our pre-Fringe cravings.

With FRINGE WORLD less than a week away, the anticipation in the Gutter Culture offices is palpable. Here are five shows that we’re really looking forward to seeing at this year’s festival.

Amber Topaz takes us on an anecdotal romp that interweaves cabaret with comedy, and the sex education that we’ve been sorely missing.

Anna Thomson, founding member of PO PO MO CO and formidable powerhouse of queer clowning, delivers a masterpiece of modern grotesque comedy in Madame Nightshade’s Poison Garden.

Mr James Hancox - as he really, really, likes to be called - has created a show that is simultaneously everything it says on the tin and completely unexpected.

Most shows start after you’ve found your seat, but this one is an exception. We are wildly entertained from the outset, finding ourselves ushered into the Casa Mondo venue by a frantically excited ticket collector.

Chiptunes, sprite graphics, and all the hallmarks of late 80s video games provide the setting, but Clara Cupcakes is the meat of this show, and deliciously madcap octopus meat at that.

When Tor Snyder hits the mark, she’s hugely entertaining. In Dating Naked, healthy doses of self-deprecation and the comedy stalwart theme of an artist not being able to get their life together do actually work, albeit sporadically, to deliver laughs.

Imagine, if you will, a frantic, breathless reshaping of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, performed in a parrot costume and interwoven with an internal monologue that regularly swims to the surface.

Sometimes, reality is simultaneously all too much and not enough. Sometimes, we need to see the world in distorted segments before we can rediscover the wonder of it all.

Many fringe shows claim to be weird, and wonderful, and pushing the limits. Many shows are dirty liars. Not so with Danger Cabaret’s latest offering.

Packed with comedic tropes, none of which are delivered in the ways we’re accustomed to, Yolav & Graham: Jovial Trauma goes well beyond a conventional stand-up performance.

Science, dick jokes, politics, pop parodies, and improvised rap. This is just the beginning when it comes to Matt Kilpa’s show.

Storytelling doesn’t have to be entirely relatable and anyone who claims they can relate to every single element of Lisa Skye’s show is probably lying. Either that, or they’re actually Skye wearing a fake moustache in an attempt to trick you.

Sophie Joske and Anna Piper Scott set out to achieve a surprising number of goals, but conforming to patriarchal narratives isn’t one of them.

A plane crashes. The pilot and co-pilot are left to fend for themselves. They’re amusingly underprepared, with just a few crackers in their ration box, but there’s no better sustenance than their irrepressibly whimsical zest for life.

Some stand up shows... well, they stand out as opposed to up and Struan All Over the World is one of them.

Attempting to be the perfect woman can feel like a wrestle. Rather than wrestle another flesh-and-blood person, though, you’re wrestling yourself and the many – oh so many – impossible standards set for the female gender.

In a darkened room, we listen to the thoughts of a mind wracked by insomnia. They bubble up despite the protagonist's best efforts to push them aside.

Stuart Bowden takes us on a journey, all the way to our own planet via our emotional cores in a pensive, lonely and, finally, uplifting story.