Ventriloquism stages a modern comeback at Edinburgh Fringe thanks to TikTok’s vintage variety-show allure

11 August 2025

A visual hook that stops people scrolling’ … ventriloquist Max Fulham with his puppet, Grandad. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Once relegated to the dusty corners of nostalgia, ventriloquism has made an unexpected and exhilarating return to the spotlight, reclaimed and reimagined at the Edinburgh Fringe by a bold new generation of performers and propelled into cultural prominence through TikTok’s viral energy.

With its roots stretching back to 18th-century parlour entertainment and a mainstream heyday in the television-driven nostalgia of the 1970s and 1980s, the art of “throwing your voice” has evolved into something at once familiar and alien a form that is both stripped back and imaginatively reinvented for modern eyes and ears. The original charm remains in the bond between performer and puppet, that uncanny sense that two voices dwell in one body, yet the forms of expression have shifted, expanded, and even vanished from physical form.

In his debut Fringe show, Full of Ham, 25-year-old Max Fulham embraces reinvention. Inspired by the slick timing of Ray Alan, Arthur Worsley, and Terri Rogers, he today favours minimalism offering voice-only performances, object-based routines, and even segments with no puppet at all, inviting audiences to build characters in their imagination.

When he performs without any physical figure, he becomes both the ventriloquist and the imagined friend in one, intimate act of collaborative storytelling. Fellow performers like Australia’s David Salter amplify whimsy by using an apple as his star puppet a simple prop he sculpts with a bitten-in face and cools in a fridge but it carries an echo of childhood wonder, a reminder that the power of belief is at the heart of ventriloquism.

Lachlan Werner adds a surreal twist to that tradition, collaborating with his long-time puppet companion Brew, who was bought at the age of seven and has since become a confidante, sidekick, and performance saviour. Werner talks to Brew offstage, runs through runs with gentle questions, and trusts that messy, living bond to rescue him in moments when timing and confidence waver. That bond reflects a deeper truth: ventriloquism is not just craftsmanship but companionship, shared fantasy hand in hand with the surreal.

Acting as both a mirror and antidote to the polished routines of the past, TikTok has become the new studio stage for ventriloquism. Clips ping through feeds like vintage acts updated through social media’s endless appetite. Performers like “Steph Ventriloquist” mastered vocal precision during lockdowns, and now delight millions with their digital routines. The format, as one artist says, feels like “an old-school variety show,” a frugal aesthetic reborn for convenience-driven attention spans and craving for nostalgia fused with fresh insight.

The trends have deep roots. Roger De Courcey, now 80 and a veteran of ventriloquism’s Golden Age, recalls how television variety shows in the 1970s and 80s immortalised his partnership with teddy Nookie Bear. His longevity and success were rooted not in the puppet but in human comic timing, quick wit, and the freedom the puppet afforded to speak truths the ventriloquist could not. The puppet becomes both conduit and mask, allowing the subversive humor that solo stage might not invite.

Yet today’s entertainers are pushing boundaries further. Werner’s new show, WonderTwunk, features what he calls a “really horrible puppet,” improbably lifelike and repellent, and fiercely alive in its own twisted persona. It’s not about comfort or cuteness; it’s about embodying that uncanny valley, leaning into its oddity and finding dark comedic empathy in “icky” characters. This embrace of strange emotional terrain sets the modern revival of ventriloquism apart—the genre is no longer stuck in kitschy kitsch but is evolving into emotionally complex performance art.

Despite the surreal essence, the core of ventriloquism has remained constant: underneath the visual trick is emotional investment. Ventriloquism asks the performer not only to build a persona but to commit to it fully. Belief to suspend disbelief becomes part of the act, and the audience’s willingness to inhabit that shared hallucination becomes the performance's lifeblood.

At the Edinburgh Fringe this year, ventriloquism isn’t just surviving. It is thriving. It is a creative collision of low-fi craftsmanship and high-concept narrative, low-budget props and high-speed TikTok loops. In a festival crowded with spectacle, ventriloquism stands out—its revival powered not by grandiosity but by touch, tenderness, and small radical acts of voice.

As art forms continue to shift through cultural cycles, ventriloquism’s renaissance offers a lesson: even the quietest traditions can be reborn when imagination, medium, and technology collide. This is not just a revival of an old art but evidence that performance will never die as long as someone is brave enough to speak for the silent.