What is The Late Utopians about?
It follows Emma, a music journalist who spends her nights deep in New York City's underground dance scene while daytime America falls apart around her, politically and socially. The play sits on the line between idealism and escapism and asks a question every club kid eventually faces: what does it actually cost to keep chasing a better world on a dancefloor? Written and directed by Alfie Jones, it stars Lilly Walker and is produced by the theatre company COGGIA.
Why is a rave play showing up at Edinburgh?
The Fringe is the biggest arts festival on earth, and rave has spent 30 years arguing it is culture, not just a night out. Putting the underground on a Fringe stage is part of that long argument. The Late Utopians premieres on 5 August at Iron Belly, inside Underbelly Cowgate, and runs daily until 30 August, dark on the 18th. It is COGGIA's return to the venue after 2025, and the script was shortlisted for the Charlie Hartill Award, the Fringe's way of flagging new work worth watching.
Thirty years in, the underground keeps insisting it is culture. Now it is auditioning at the world's biggest arts festival.
Does it actually get the scene right?
That is the risk with any rave-on-stage: theatre loves to romanticize the club, and heads can smell a fake from the door. Setting it in a fractured America, seen through a journalist who is both inside and observing, is at least an honest frame. Whether it captures the sweat, the boredom and the 6am comedown, or just the strobe-lit montage version, is the thing to watch when the reviews land in August.
