FreshFringe 2026 Reviews - Chelsea Birkby: Is In Full Control The Entire Time

Chelsea Birkby is taking control of her destiny. She’s proving her ability in doing so by taking control of us.

Birkby’s quest to command her fate is catalysed by a magician’s trick, a misjustice of her free will, prompting her to steer her course with intention and align herself with philosophical and ideological giants. Think Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Machiavelli's The Prince and 80’s titan Tony Robbins’ extensive self-help bibliography, discovered in her mother’s shelves; each contributing, in their image, to the formation of her alter-ego Che Che.

Birkby’s journey to control is not only present in her aim or alternative persona, but the show itself feeds into various forms of the quantitative: YouTube viewerships, the spiel of science communications, the mighty Microsoft PowerPoint.

But this structured guide is placed in tandem to Birkby’s wonderfully funny candidness throughout the show. But various anecdotes and a bubbly demeanor shouldn’t be treated with assumptions of over-frankness, oh no, they all contribute to her wider domination. She muses on the personal through standardised frameworks, much like the rhetoric of her mother’s self help books, in a brilliant satirical undermining of them.

Even Birkby’s initial breakdown of various comedic tropes, placed in comparison to the duplicitous art of magic, don’t negate their unsuspecting and really rather funny dispensal upon the crowd. Birkby is a master of the call back, punchlines appear dropped in, then find themselves back to you, woven into the show’s much bigger picture.

And what is this bigger picture? Birkby does achieve her quest to dominate and control her audience, perhaps not quite as Machievelli intended, instead she ploys us proving the power of words and intention (PowerPoint mindwashing) and quick quibs to broaden into prompting us all to loosen the grips on what we expect of ourselves and our approaches to life’s encroaching decisions.

Birkby presents an incredibly clever hour, somehow bringing together philosophy, statistics, corporate office chic, witty charm and a stacked amount of laughs with ease. The moments away from the pseudo-self-help sphere, where she divulges in personal and parental anecdotes, particularly shine. Which I suppose proves her point- that through seeing through the illusion of control, the value of what’s in front of you comes to light.

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Chelsea Birkby: Is In Full Control The Entire Time is on at 9:45pm at Bunker Three at Pleasance Courtyard, every day until the 30th of August. Buy tickets here.

Photo credit: W. R. Cox.

Review written by Evie Lancaster for FreshAir Radio.