Badgers - Edinburgh Fringe 2026

Badgers

Traverse 2

★★★ An eerie new work that asks a very contemporary question: who owns a story once it has been told?

There is something deliciously unsettling about Badgers, Malaika Kegode’s new work now playing at Traverse Two. A recluse has disappeared, a mysterious folk song is circulating, and Meles, a podcaster with a stalled career and a dying mother, finds herself drawn into a story that becomes increasingly difficult to explain. Rumour, folklore and true crime begin to blur as the question emerges: not simply what happened, but who owns the story?

It is a particularly contemporary question. In an age of podcasts, documentary storytelling and our endless appetite for other people’s trauma, who has the right to tell a story and what happens when the storyteller becomes part of it?

The central performance (Malaika Kegode, yes, she is also the writer) has a welcome clarity, allowing the writing to land even as the world around them becomes increasingly eerie and strange. Live music (performed by Beth Roberts and Joe Williams) is beautifully incorporated, giving the piece an almost ritualistic quality and contributing significantly to its unsettling atmosphere. There is a pleasing sense of theatrical discovery in watching a new work find its form, somewhere between folk tale, gig theatre and ghost story.

The ideas, however, are stronger than some of the writing. At times the text reaches for a familiar phrase or spells out a thought that the audience has already understood. Do we really need to be told that an ending can also be a beginning? These moments diminish some of the ambiguity and intelligence of the work.

Nevertheless, Badgers is an intriguing new piece with a strong theatrical identity. Its live music, eerie atmosphere and committed central performance create a compelling world, while its central question, who gets to own and tell a story?, feels both urgent and very much of its time.

Review by Kate Gaul