REVIEW: Colin Cloud – Hoax ★★★★☆ | Edfringe 2026

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026 | Pleasance Courtyard

There are Fringe shows where you leave thinking, “That was clever.”

Then there's Colin Cloud, where you leave wondering whether you should immediately change every password you've ever had.

In Hoax, the Scottish mentalist returns to Edinburgh fresh from Las Vegas with an hour exploring truth, memory, belief and just how easily our minds can be manipulated.

Before the show even begins, Cloud is sitting beneath a spotlight playing chess against himself.

Because apparently being able to read everyone else's mind isn't challenging enough.

What follows is an increasingly baffling series of predictions, deductions and mind-reading feats involving members of the audience.

Names. Dates. Songs. Personal memories.

Things he quite simply shouldn't know.

And yet somehow he does.

Cloud has always built his act around an intense, Sherlock Holmes-style persona, but Hoax allows considerably more of his personality to come through.

He's funny, cheeky and occasionally delightfully sarcastic with the audience, making the hour feel warmer without losing any of the mystery that makes his act so compelling.

The scale is impressive too.

Performing mentalism in the enormous Pleasance Grand shouldn't necessarily work — these tricks often feel as though they belong in an intimate room — yet Cloud manages to make incredibly personal interactions work in front of hundreds of people.

Not every element lands quite as strongly. The wider theme surrounding hoaxes, unreliable memories and what we choose to believe occasionally feels like it's trying to connect more ideas than it needs to.

But frankly, when you're sitting wondering HOW THE HELL DID HE KNOW THAT?!, you stop caring fairly quickly.

Clever, funny and completely baffling, Hoax proves Colin Cloud remains one of the Fringe's most impressive showmen.

I still don't know how he does it.

And I'm beginning to think I don't want to.

★★★★☆ – 4/5