Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Not The Messiah

1-24 August | 1:00pm-2:00pm | Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance

This summer, award-winning actor George Telfer, award-winning playwright Tom Crawshaw and award-winning theatre group Three’s Company join forces to present the incredible story of Graham Chapman – the most eccentric and currently least living member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. As author of the Parrot Sketch and star of Monty Python’s Holy Grail and Life Of Brian, Graham Chapman was one of the most influential, but also most overlooked, pioneers of the British comedy revolution of the 1970s. A practising doctor, keen mountaineer, serial alcoholic and gay rights activist, Graham was a man of extremes and contrasts.

His reputation for surprise and unpredictability was only increased by his sudden death in 1989, at the age of 48. This August, the anarchic spirit of Graham Chapman returns to the Edinburgh Fringe – his first time here since starring in the inaugural Cambridge Footlights show in 1962. Not The Messiah tells his remarkable life story, through university, medical school, Ibiza and the Python years. Recreated by one actor, 30 characters and a series of Pythonesque sketches: a quest for the holy meaning of the life of… a very naughty boy.