Spraywatch: A Beautiful Rescue
★★★★★
Five Star Pick
★★★★★ Five Star Pick
“HAIR! TEETH! TITS! FACE!”
If you haven't had this sung to you by the cast of Spraywatch: A Beautiful Rescue, while thrusting their fanny-packs and making increasingly uncomfortable eye contact, then you haven’t really experienced the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe yet. Billed as Barbie meets The Book of Mormon, it delivers admirably on both counts - though I’d go further and say that in many ways it’s exactly what the Barbie movie should have been.
Transposing our slow-mo-running heroine from the golden sands of Santa Monica to a grim coastal British everytown, she must win over and shape up its oddly water-averse local lifeguards. The cast - Izabella Webb, Abbie Ashall, Jamie Knapper, Ant McGinley and Natalie Hayes - are uniformly excellent, each getting a moment in the spotlight to shine like the California sun. However, Webb is a particularly fantastic find in the lead role, flipping between helium-pitched LA enthusiasm and creeping alcoholic dismay as Spray's shine wears off.
The script is tightly written throughout and the jokes range from silly slapstick to satirical and edgy (yes, two of the lifeguards are called Fred and Rose). The songs are no exception and are funny from start to finish as well as catchy as hell. Along with the aforementioned HAIR! TEETH! TITS! FACE!, a number about the psychological horror of crabs (the ocean-dwelling kind) is a highlight, closely followed by a sad ode to cellulite and, best of all, a strangely uplifting song with a chorus built entirely around the words "fuck off."
There were a few technical hiccups during the performance I saw, but the cast coped admirably and, as Pamela Sanderson's mother always told her: they just ‘kept on bouncing’. Smart, sexy and thoroughly good fun - make sure you (slow-mo) run, don’t walk, to get your ticket for this before it sells out.
★★★★★
