Review: The Bob Ross Effect by Sarah-Louise Young | Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026

Sarah-Louise Young returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year with a new heartfelt comedy cabaret show featuring an unlikely TV legend. The Bob Ross Effect plays at Assembly Gardens until 31 August. Read my review below.

Sarah-Louise Young, The Bob Ross Effect. Photo: Steve Ullathorne

The Bob Ross Effect ★★★★★

Review: 15 August 2026 | Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Assembly George Square Gardens

Is this the only Fringe show offering welcome biscuits along with drawing paper and crayons to its audience? Probably.

The Bob Ross Effect is the new interactive show from Fringe veteran Sarah-Louise Young, which not only invites its audience to watch a comedy cabaret show, but to join in making art and give birth to lots of happy little trees.

I come to this show from the place of a lifelong insomniac who watched Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting at 3 and 4 in the mornings when I needed something gentle, warm and comforting in place of a good night's sleep. And Sarah-Louise Young evokes exactly those sorts of vibes with her beautifully crafted, heartfelt new theatre show that studies not the man himself, but his impact.

If you're not familiar with Bob Ross, he's the stress-relieving, mega-permed, smooth-voiced American artist whose Joy of Painting TV show instructed his viewers to complete a full wet-on-wet oil painting in each 30-minute episode. The show ran constantly on PBS in the US during the 80s and 90s, and today, more than 30 years after his death, it's watched by millions of new viewers on streaming channels like YouTube.

Using personal storytelling, comedy, and some cabaret (original songs composed with Jordan Paul Clarke), in her new show, Sarah-Louise explains how she came to discover the legend that is Bob Ross and how she uncovered her own joy of painting with a little help from her brother and her late friend and comedy icon, Lynn Ruth Miller.

During The Bob Ross Effect, the audience is at times invited to create their own masterpieces in crayon, and using live feeds, the artworks are displayed - if you want them to be - for others to admire. Sarah-Louise effortlessly builds such a comfortable atmosphere in the tent; she always has a kind word for us budding artists.

Confident, charismatic, funny yet vulnerable - Sarah-Louise delivers a tight 70 minutes of the most unique theatre content I've ever seen at the Fringe. There are some beautiful ballads, and an absurd cabaret number starring a fan brush, and even Bob's pet, Peapod the Pocket Squirrel, makes an appearance. Joy!

The Bob Ross Effect is the perfect antidote to the chaos of the Edinburgh Fringe. Leave the bustling, loud world outside the Piccolo tent walls, sit down, pick up your crayons and relax.

This show should be on prescription at the Fringe. ★★★★★

• The Bob Ross Effect plays at Assembly Gardens (Piccolo) at Edinburgh Fringe until Monday 31 August 2026

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

  
  

Sarah-Louise Young, The Bob Ross Effect. Credit: Damian Robertson