REVIEW: Shantify ★★★★☆ | Edfringe 2026

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026 | Assembly George Square Gardens

What happens when you take six West End performers, dress them as fishermen and turn some of the biggest pop, rock and musical theatre songs into sea shanties?

Apparently, you get one of the most ridiculously feel-good hours at the Fringe.

Welcome to Shantify.

The premise is brilliantly simple: take songs everybody knows and give them a nautical makeover.

Dolly Parton's 9 to 5, The Proclaimers' I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) and even songs from SIX are among those getting the Shantify treatment, with the six-strong cast producing some seriously impressive harmonies.

And these guys can sing.

Michael Riseley, Jack Whittle, Alfie French, Cal T. King, Ollie Wray and Joe Bishop are all West End performers, and vocally there's very little to fault.

The arrangements are clever, the harmonies are gorgeous and Cal T. King's ridiculously deep voice adds another dimension entirely.

There's also plenty of audience interaction, daft comedy and nautical nonsense thrown into the mix.

Where things become slightly less convincing is the storyline attempting to stitch all these songs together.

There's a loose tale involving the fishermen, their relationships and ambitions, but honestly?

You don't really need it.

Nobody is walking into Shantify desperate to discover the complex emotional motivations of six fictional fishermen.

We're here to hear pop songs turned into sea shanties.

And on that front, it absolutely delivers.

The story occasionally feels like an elaborate excuse to set up the next song — but when the singing is this good, it's difficult to care.

Fun, silly and impossible not to tap your feet along to, Shantify isn't trying to change the world.

It just wants to send you back out into Edinburgh with a smile on your face.

Mission accomplished.

★★★★☆ – 4/5