The 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe is only 125 days away, and the wealth of available programming is beginning to creep over the horizon.

Assembly, one of the major venue operators of the festival, has announced the second round of its theatre, comedy, children’s shows, circus, and cabaret programming.

Running July 31 to August 26, the Assembly Festival within the Edinburgh Fringe will take place in a number of venues throughout Edinburgh, including Assembly Roxy, Assembly Checkpoint, Assembly Hall, Assembly Rooms, and Assembly George Square Gardens.

While Assembly's first round of programming was modestly digestible, this next round is robust, with more than 100 shows on the announced docket. The show list features an array of circus, magic, sketch comedy, burlesque, stand up comedy, and dance programming. 

But out of the potentially overwhelming mix, it is the new musicals Mary, Queen of Rock!, and You & It that have us most intrigued.

Mary, Queen of Rock!, written by the Scottish female-led Pretty Knickers Productions (Mhairi McCall, Cal Ferguson and Lewis Lauder), explores the life and times of the infamous Mary, Queen of Scots, using the lens of rock music.

You & It dives deep into the emotional implications of relationships between human beings and artificial intelligence—featuring a robot who doesn't know she isn't flesh and blood, and a grieving man desperately trying to reconstruct an echo of his deceased wife.

Since 1981, Assembly’s stage has been lauded as a launching point for household names in comedy, with an impressive slate of comedy debuts, including Eddie Izzard, Jo Brand, Bill Bailey, Sandi Toksvig, and Rik Mayall. Corralling comedy talent from across the globe, this year's debut fleet includes comics from India, Australia, Japan, Ireland, and New Zealand, as well as the U.K. and U.S.

This years comedy debuts will include Jenny Tian in Chinese Australian, Bronwyn Kuss in Sounds Good, Guy Williams in This Glass House Makes it Easy to See All the Cowards I'm Throwing Stones At, Ray O'Leary in Your Laughter Is Just Making Me Stronger, Takashi Wakasugi in Welcome To Japan, Grace Mulvey in Tall Baby, Rahul Subramanian in Who Are You?, Maeve Press in Failure Confetti, Holly Stars in Justice For Holly, and Paulina Lenoir in Puella Eterna.

In the musical comedy arena, David O’Doherty will return to Assembly with a new mega-concert, David O'Doherty: Ready, Steady, David O’Doherty, acclaimed duo Flo & Joan will present their greatest hits in The Joan & Flo Show, and Taskmaster New Zealand star Paul Williams will return to the Fringe with Mamiya 7.

Improv comedy remains a mainstay of the Assembly program with Aaaand Now For Something Completely Improvised, Murder, She Didn't Write; St Doctor's Hospital, The Free Association: 3; and Late Night with Terry Wogan on the docket. Storytelling is also back in its cornerstone position, with 5 Mistakes That Changed History, Isabelle Farah: Nebuchadnezzar, Edy Hurst's Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Himself, Chris Grace: Sardines (a comedy about death), and The Magic of Terry Pratchett.

Assembly's Taiwan Season is also back, which will feature Taiwanese artists, with dance pieces Palingenesis and I Am The BOSS making up the earliest pieces of the mini season, as well as the family friendly puppet show Little Drops of Rain.

To learn more about Assembly's expansive range of programming, visit AssemblyFestival.com. 

Be sure to follow along with Playbill as we lead up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and if you’re interested in joining us on our globe trotting efforts, check out the Playbill FringeShip, our floating hotel for the 2024 Fringe, which will be docked in Edinburgh and will provide easy transportation to the Fringe (as well as exclusive on-ship entertainment).