Barron knows how to run a church – she just isn’t preaching the same gospel anymore.
Kate Gaul
4 Stars
Venue : Edinburgh Festival
2026
Brit Barron is a gorgeously engaging performer. She has the rare ability to make a room feel smaller, warmer and more intimate within minutes of stepping onstage. In CHURCH, she takes us inside the world she grew up in — evangelical Christianity, megachurch culture, faith, sexuality and the complicated business of leaving a belief system that has shaped your entire understanding of the world.
The story may be extraordinary in its detail, but much of it is not entirely unfamiliar. For anyone who has grown up around evangelical Christianity, there are plenty of recognisable moments: the certainty, the rituals, the language, the songs, the rules, the intensity of belonging to a community that believes it has the answers. Barron knows this world from the inside and tells her story with warmth, wit and a generous lack of bitterness.
And she is a spellbinding storyteller.
There is something wonderfully bright about the way Barron tells CHURCH. She doesn’t wallow in the trauma of her past or turn her experience into a simple story of good versus evil. Instead, she is interested in the contradictions — what faith gave her, what it took away, what she still misses and what she absolutely does not. The result is a show that is funny and heartfelt without becoming sentimental.
The central conceit is delicious: Barron effectively gives us a church service, using the language, rituals and theatricality of evangelical worship to tell her own story. She knows exactly how to work a congregation because she used to do it professionally. There is something deliciously subversive about watching those skills being repurposed for comedy.
And then there is the music.
Live music! What a Fringe bonus.
The terrific live musicianship adds enormously to the atmosphere and gives the show a warmth and energy that recorded music simply couldn’t replicate. Music is a powerful theatrical tool because it can make a room feel communal almost instantly. Here it also becomes part of the story, a reminder that the things we leave behind aren’t necessarily things we stop loving.
Barron’s exploration of queerness is central, but CHURCH is not a show that requires you to share her experience to enjoy it. You don’t have to be queer, religious, ex-religious or particularly interested in evangelical Christianity to get something from this show. At its heart it is about belonging: the desire to find your people, the pain of discovering that the community you belong to may not have room for all of you, and the possibility of creating something new when you walk away.
There is also a generosity to Barron’s performance that I really liked. She is not standing onstage asking us to pity her or demanding that we agree with every conclusion she has reached. She invites us in. She makes us laugh, tells us what happened and allows us to sit with the messier questions.
CHURCH deserves a large audience. It has a great performer, a fascinating story, terrific live music and a theatrical conceit that genuinely works.
And no, you absolutely do not have to be a lesbian to enjoy this one.
Come for the comedy, stay for the gospel, and leave with a little more understanding of what happens when faith, identity and belonging collide.
Kate Gaul, Theatre Now
