BUNNY!
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★★★★
“a hugely entertaining show”
Craig Manson has become a bit of a theatre-Instagram sensation over the past year, with his hilarious videos satirising the nature of funding applications and job “opportunities” in the arts, so I was super intrigued to see his show, and delighted to report it did not disappoint.
Manson plays Bunny, a struggling artist who, a bit like Manson, is facing a constant stream of rejections. No one wants to fund Bunny’s art. It’s hard to know why exactly, because she is of course fabulous. She can sing, she can dance, she’s a drama-school trained triple threat. But no one’s biting. One day, she bumps into the Artistic Director of a very well-known Scottish theatre company, and thereafter her killing spree begins.
The show’s format combines darkly comic storytelling with performances to re-written versions of musical theatre classics covering everything from The Little Mermaid to Gypsy and Chicago. The lyrics are inventive and humorous, but it’s really Manson’s irresistibly unhinged energy and performance persona which makes it a compelling and entertaining watch. Even when he’s throwing himself around the performance space, splaying himself against the back wall or leaning over one of the little balconies in the lecture theatre, there’s a real rigour to his movement which shows how passionate both he (and Bunny) are to the craft.
What could quickly become just an hour of unsophisticated chaos completely avoids this by actually making incredibly pertinent points about the nature of arts funding and “cultural impact”. Manson asks at one point ‘why does every project need an outreach strand?’, and for anyone whose had any engagement with the Arts Council over the past few years, they’ll know exactly what he’s referring to. I can’t speak for Creative Scotland, but Arts Council England have recently announced a shift to funding work with more of a focus on ‘excellence’. And Manson’s show digs into this question of excellence. At one point he thinks of becoming a performance artist, because then he can just roll around in paint and people might actually be interested. He takes us through a sliding doors moment and imagines an alternative ending to Marina Abramovic’s ‘Rhythm 0’ piece.
The show is full of theatre “in” jokes and references, and I do wonder who much of this might go over the head of your average fringe punter but given that around half the audience raised their hands when asked if anyone in the room has had a successful arts funding bid before he’s probably got the right audience for the show.
A lyric change from a Chicago song becomes ‘it’s not a murder, if it’s art’, and Manson really does make you question if this is true. It’s a hugely entertaining show which really gets you thinking about the reality of being an artist right now, and we can only hope Manson gets some success with the next application.
BUNNY!
Anatomy Lecture Theatre at Summerhall at Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Reviewed on 26th August 2026
by Joseph Dunitz
Photography by Clem Ogna
