The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with over 3,700 shows. This year, Playbill is in town for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!

As part of our Edinburgh Fringe coverage, Playbill is seeing a whole lotta shows—and we're letting you know what we think of them. Consider these reviews a friendly, opinionated guide as you try to choose a show at the festival.

While the Edinburgh Fringe is contained to the month of August, much of the art it contains continues to exist outside of its confines after closing day.

One of these continuing productions, Lucy Peach's My Greatest Period Ever, is a must for every single person with a uterus, and every single person who loves them.

Presented by folk artist Peach and her husband Richard, My Greatest Period Ever is the type of menstrual education that desperately needs to replace the outmoded methods currently peddled. Based on modern understandings of hormone cycles and the actual physical changes a person goes through during the menses cycle, My Greatest Period Ever demystifies the feminine body by embracing the cycle as a power to be harnessed, rather than a trial to be endured.

Much of 20th century medicine was framed around the idea of male hormonal stasis, with the ideal being that, somehow, individuals remained the same all the time, and that any deviation was an aberration. In a masculine body, this is all well as good, as a healthy testosterone-dominated system will operate at a mostly static level from puberty on. For feminine bodies, however, this is functionally impossible without the total excision of the uterus and hormonal bodies.

Rather than throwing up her hands and declaring menstruation a "mysterious curse," as one 20th-century doctor labelled it, Peach is embracing her role as a "period preacher," teaching individuals how to understand their cycles and work with it, rather than against it.

It's hard to communicate the magic Peach conjured in the interior of Assembly's Roxy Central. Nestled within an old church, Peach transformed a topic that is often taboo, even between close friends, into a source of celebration and introspection. Steadily taking her audience through the four cycle shifts, Peach's use of music and memory—combined with her husband's eagerly created (and supportive) live illustrations—created what very well may be the first "safe cycle talk" space I have ever found myself in. It is certainly the first I ever remember.

Feminine puberty has been a taboo topic for hundreds of years, and even in the most progressive of households, those lingering effects can be felt. As a career woman who pours herself into her work, I am not immune to the "maintain constant levels of productivity" pressure that pours in from every angle in our patriarchal society. The reality is: constant productivity just isn't sustainable in a cycling body. Instead of decrying the situation, Peach offers an open window into understanding, one that is withheld by education systems—as well as practical advice on how to tailor your schedule and living arrangements to harness the strength of each cycle phase without winding up an exhausted emotional shell each month.

The group of gathered listeners at My Greatest Period Ever was the best audience I experienced at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. Supportive, inquisitive, and overall joyous to finally have answers in hand, it was the kind of room I desperately wish I had been in when first crossing the threshold of puberty, rather than the uncomfortable, stiff, and fearful back of a classroom where a haggard nurse berated us for daring to mature. 

Peach is doing everything she can to ensure her menstrual gospel reaches the right ears. No matter your preferred learning style, Peach has an option for you, be it her book Period Queen, her online course option that can be taken in complete privacy, or even in a corporate workshop setting designed to support working women struggling to align their menstrual and productivity cycles.

She even has an educational program, designed to set adolescents up for success instead of dismay. If I had my way, it would be a curriculum requirement across the English-speaking world.

My Greatest Period Ever is now available as an online course, with workshop options for corporate and education settings. For more information, visit LucyPeach.com