If there’s any comedian that everyone can recommend, it’s Mike Rice. After multiple years at the Edinburgh Fringe, touring Europe, and now selling out venues across the United Kingdom and Ireland, Rice is on the rise to be one of the most anticipated acts of the 2025 Fringe. His work-in-progress proves just how much progress he’s made since his earlier hours, which have always been funny, but in this WIP, he takes the humour to another level.

Somehow getting the audience on his side with dark jokes about a too-well-trained dog named Nino he met in Barcelona after a break-up, Rice’s WIP follows his progression of making the dark light and palatable. Some have dubbed his toured hour, ‘Nasty Character,’ as the pedophile hour because of the sheer amount of jokes on the topic, and his WIP is only more impressive when it comes to making the unthinkable funny.

At just 12:20 daily, Rice’s audiences quickly fell into lockstep with his witty jokes, which still come full circle with multiple callbacks, despite the show’s title as a WIP. Late in the run, he jokes that the work-in-progress hasn’t actually made much ‘progress’, but who could expect any different at an all-consuming arts festival? 

A lesser comedian would bill this as a second full hour, deciding that it’s finished and ready for the stars and reviews. But not Rice. For him, the show still needs to come more full circle, find a more poignant message (which isn’t as important when you’re as funny as Rice) and further his evolution as a comedian. And when he does all that for the next Fringe, we can be almost certain this WIP will be a five-star show.

‘Work in Progress‘ has finished its run