Review: Badgers, Traverse Theatre - Too much pre-recorded audio | Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Travfest26

Theatre Royal Plymouth brings Badgers, a new play by Malaika Kegode, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it has its world premiere. Badgers plays at the Traverse Theatre until Sunday 30th August as part of TravFest26. Read my review below.

Badgers by Malaika Kegode. Photo: Paul Blakemore

Badgers ★★⯪☆☆

Review: 9 August 2026 | Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

If you're as obsessed with true crime podcasts and theatre as I am, then booking to see Badgers, the new play from Malaika Kegode that promises a hybrid of both, is an obvious decision.

Badgers is a folk tale wrapped up in a play with music that centres on a podcaster, Meles, who sets out to investigate the disappearance of a musician from her local town.

There's an inspired and striking design for this show from Rebecca Wood - all blacks and whites with splashes of red. So cool! But the small stage space at the Traverse 2 studio theatre is inexplicably dominated by a large sound box in which two musicians spend most of their time.

The music in Badgers comes from Bristol-based folk prog band Jakabol, and they are great. So please free them from their box. It unnecessarily blocks the view for a good deal of the audience. I found it quite claustrophobic and overbearing for the room.

In front of the box, our storyteller, award-winning Bristol-based theatre maker Kegode herself, crouches with a mic and some radio/podcasting equipment. As she sets out her enticing tale of the mysterious disappearance, and a podcaster with a dying mother who, up until now, has only really asked people about their sandwich preference, she explains that the podcaster in the story - Meles - is us, the audience.

While I appreciate the effort to include the crowd in the show, it's so odd hearing a play narrated in the second person. Personally, I didn't like it because I don't like people telling me what to do (or, in this case, what I did!)

However, my main issue with Badgers is the amount of pre-recorded audio included in the play.

On many occasions during the 70-minute runtime, the audience is left to stare at a static, dark stage - albeit with a small visual representation of sound waves dancing on a screen - as a voice recording plays. While that may work with radio plays and podcasts themselves, it's not what I expect from live theatre. It's not the most engaging experience.

To be fair to the storyteller (Kegode - directed by Jenny Davies), she does her absolute best to nod along with the disembodied voices, imploring the audience to listen, to be intrigued. But that doesn't take away from the fact that we are at the theatre, listening to audio.

Nevertheless, Kegode has a gem of a story here with Badgers. A peculiar woman is living in the woods, there's an eerie folk song, and a deliciously supernatural "what if." And at the heart of it all, there is an essential debate about the ethics of true crime.

Blending spoken word with live music, and a fresh idea from a writer and performer with obvious, creative talent, Badgers has so much promise. It would make for an excellent podcast or radio play, but as it currently is, it doesn't work for me as a piece of live theatre ★★⯪☆☆

• Badgers is at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until Sunday 30th August 2026

  
  

• The production will transfer to The Drum at Theatre Royal Plymouth for limited performances before returning to Bristol Old Vic for a run in September

• Read more reviews from TravFest26 here: https://www.lisainthetheatre.com/blog/tags/travfest26

• Find all my Edinburgh Fringe coverage here: https://www.lisainthetheatre.com/edinburgh-fringe