Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland’s latest show sold out its entire run at the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe before the festival even began, with interest piqued by their three previous sold-out shows at the Fringe. After a run in London in September, “Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It” is sure to arrive Off-Broadway sooner or later (as have their three previous plays: “And Then The Rodeo Burned Down,” “A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First,” and “What If They Ate The Baby.” — all three of which were also presented as encores in Edinburgh last year.)
Like the others, “Bigfoot…” is a distinctive work of theatrical clowning that, underneath the clown makeup and the synchronized acrobatics, takes a serious look at a moment in American history and culture. In this case, it is the 1990s obsession with conspiracy theories.
Ironically – and maybe not coincidentally? — a different show entitled “Bigfoot” ran Off-Broadway earlier this year. It was a joke-filled musical, but in its own campy way told a story of political corruption and state-sanctioned scapegoating. I say maybe not coincidentally, because one could interpret both Bigfoots as oblique critiques of what’s been happening now in America.
Xhloe and Natasha’s play is set in a small mountain town, where two teenagers have smashed their truck into a stop sign across from the local Dairy Queen. They tell the sheriff it wasn’t their fault. They were distracted by…a creature: “It was so fucking scary. I’m sorry, sir. It was so freaking scary. It was like just eyes.”
“And which one of yous did you say was driving?” the sheriff asks.
“ I was,” both say at the same time.
The sheriff doesn’t seem to notice what, for the audience, is the first clue that they are lying, to escape punishment. (We eventually learn that an uncle of one of them owns the now-damaged truck, which they borrowed without his knowledge.) “Is it possible what you two girls saw tonight was a Sasquatch?” the sheriff asks.
From there, the rumor of Bigfoot spreads, and supposed sightings increase, (including the incident in the title), unnerving the townsfolk. The town officials do not squelch Sasquatch hysteria – and not just because of their (sharply depicted) incompetence. We piece together that the town is recovering from a flood that killed some townsfolk, contaminated the water supply, and depressed the town economically, shutting down the local Dairy Queen, despite efforts to keep it going. So the officials are almost happy for the distraction of a local cryptid, the mayor explicitly grateful for “something coming across my desk that isn’t about the fucking flood. I am up to my waist in complaints and demands. I’d say I’m swimming in them, but the crisis response team has advised me to stay away from language that evokes water.”
In this production, the duo pay as much attention to the dialogue as to the physical movement, as they conjure up the varied citizens of an entire town. “Big Foot” is enhanced by some design elements – a pulsing 1990s score, a full-sized stop sign that they cleverly transform into a Big Foot puppet. (You can glimpse the remains of it below in the video of their curtain speech on the night I attended.) But what is just as memorable about this show as Xhloe and Natasha’s deft theatrics is their understanding, climactically communicated with a terrifying conspiratorial soliloquy, that a people can be so beset by fear, tragedy and feckless leadership that they are no longer able to accept the truth.
The sold-out run of Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in Half I Saw It concludes today at Main Hall at Summerhall, as part of the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. But that’s not the end of it.
