“Morpurgo turns a lost high-school yearbook into a warped world of strange creations”
Joseph Morpurgo returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with his first solo show in a decade, having previewed his return last year with a revival of his hit show Soothing Sounds for Baby at Soho Theatre.
A national newspaper previewing this year’s Fringe described him as “the coming man in fringe comedy a decade ago” – a line that somehow manages to capture both the excitement of his return while delivering something close to an insult. Especially given Morpurgo hasn’t been totally absent in the intervening years, as he is a regular fixture in the ever-present improvised comedy Austentatious, which ad libs new Jane Austen novels.
However, the atmosphere at the Pleasance does feel like a homecoming – in the queue, the conversation seems to consist almost entirely of eager fans introducing the uninitiated to Morpurgo.
Morpurgo’s solo work is hard to do true justice to. Objectively, it revolves around found objects – old records, lost videotapes, and items from car-boot sales – but these are merely springboards into a world of bizarre characters, subplots and set-pieces. Highlander 70 is based on a found American high school yearbook from the 1970s, from which Morpurgo conjures a twisted take on American high school culture. The result is wildly imaginative and consistently inventive.
Unlike the inanimate objects he starts with, Morpurgo himself is anything but static. He inhabits a succession of characters through hand-crafted costumes and props, while multimedia projections bring the fictional yearbook’s grainy photographs to life, mining them for a constant stream of visual punchlines.
The sold-out room is frequently in stitches. It’s excellent, unusual, and still quite unlike anything else on offer. A rich, retro-inflected comedy.
Welcome back, Joseph – we’ve missed you.
Show listing: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/joseph-morpurgo-highlander-70
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard
Dates: 5–11 August and 20–30 August 2026 (i.e., two separate runs, with a break in between)
Time: 19:00 (7:00 PM)
Running time: 60 minutes (1 hour)
Ticket prices: £20
Fringe Box Office: 0131 226 0000 / edfringe.com