LIVE FROM THE EDINBURGH FRINGE: Gareth Waugh's true crime show & queer coded science

The Fringe changes pace once the last week arrives, the flyering gets a little more frantic, the queues at the good venues get a little longer, and the shows that have built word of mouth over three weeks are the ones worth fighting for a ticket to. Outcast World has been across the city all month checking out the best Edinburgh has to offer.
Gareth Waugh: Is Pepsi OK?
There is a version of this show that plays as a straightforward hour about a bad gig or a worse manager, and then there is the version Gareth Waugh actually built, which unfolds more like a true crime podcast than a stand-up set, except the person telling it is also the one who got taken. Waugh, an Edinburgh local who has supported Kevin Bridges and John Bishop and taken every strange booking going from cruise ships to the PDC World Darts Championship, was scammed out of money on a podcast job that appeared to be connected to Coca-Cola. The man behind it was someone Waugh considered a friend. What follows on stage is the unravelling, told through a PowerPoint of receipts: email threads, video calls, bank statements, text messages, all projected as evidence while the story gets steadily harder to believe.
Outcast World has a stake in this one that goes beyond a recommendation. The same man behind the scam in Gareth's story is one we crossed paths with too, and there are names in that show that have been changed or redacted for reasons that will make sense the moment the lights go up. Go and see it, and see if you can spot who's who.
Gareth Waugh: Is Pepsi OK? runs at Monkey Barrel 2 until 30 August.
Science Stories for Grown-Ups
A gentler close to the evening, and a genuinely lovely one that's queer coded. Giulia and Richard are two scientists turned performers who spend an hour giving the back catalogue of science a personality, atoms with grudges, chemical reactions with feelings, thermodynamics rewritten as something closer to a bedtime story than a lecture. Fire, water, and the Twin Paradox all get the treatment, and there is a book of the stories on sale afterwards for anyone who wants to take the wonder home with them. It is the kind of show built for the people whose science teacher, as the pair put it themselves, crushed the curiosity out of them the first time round. This one gets it back.