Review: Stitch in Time: A Knitting Cabaret, theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall
Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026
Songs, history and wool make for a charming hour of performance. Rating
Good
Stitch in Time: A Knitting Cabaret is a rather distinctive production. Canadian performer Melanie Gall takes to the stage dressed in 1940s clothing, wearing a hat that features balls of wool with knitting needles sticking right through them. There’s a vintage radio mic before her and she’s come fully equipped with a range of songs all about knitting along with a whole history of information about the subject.
This is a quirky and rather charming show that has more depth than you might initially imagine. What’s interesting about knitting, right? Starting at World War One, Gall takes us through a series of stories that reveal fascinating information about social history, wartime, romance, and even discloses some embarrassing family secrets. We learn how knitting was until relatively recently a skill taught to both males and females at school and how wartime spies and prisoners were able to trick the enemy with woolly diversions. There are amusing anecdotes about crossing international borders, given access because she is a singer of knitting songs. Gall is a warm and engaging character who happily owns the modern peculiarity of being a knitter, sure in the knowledge that things haven’t always been that way, and it can actually be quite cool (ask Harry Styles!)…
Each story is punctuated by a knitting song from her curated collection. These have an international spread, and often lean into music hall styling, which keeps the performance joyfully upbeat and cheery. Of course, the rhymes are often limited to ‘sitting’, ‘kitten’, ‘mitten’, but the stories within and around them are fun. Who would suspect that Glen Miller’s final work before his mysterious demise was a knitting song?
The show is quite informal and, we’re told, compressed from a two-hour production into one hour for the Fringe. With an excited host eager to share her passion, it feels a little frenetic at times, but genuinely enthusiastic and authentic.
If you’ve never considered a yarn about yarn for your Edinburgh Fringe fix, maybe think again. In the pleasant company of Stitch in Time you won’t be disappointed.
Written by: Melanie Gall
Stitch in Time: A Knitting Cabaret runs at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall until Saturday 29 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
