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There are plenty of shows about weddings at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Linus Karp and Joseph Martin star in one, the inordinately long-titled The Fit Prince (who gets switched on the square in the frosty castle the night before (insert public holiday here)).

But on Saturday, they became the first couple to marry onstage as part of the official Fringe programme.

Their wedding in the 750-seat Pleasance Grand was ticketed with friends and family seated alongside other performers and fringe goers.

“We’ve been a real life couple for 11 years and we’re having a sort of a small ceremony in September but we wanted to do the legal bit first and we thought Edinburgh’s a very special place for us so why not do it there?” says Joseph.

Both grooms were in outfits designed by Edinburgh based Cosimo Damiano Angiulli (Simo the label) and came down the aisles to their own distinctive theme tunes.

“There was a moment where we left the stage just before the audience were led in and I felt the nerves kick in a little bit,” says Joseph.

“But then show mode kicked in and bizarrely, it felt like the natural place for us to be at that point. We’re at home. “

The ceremony was conducted by Jackie Blackburn from Edinburgh City Council.

“I have been involved in many unique ceremonies but none quite on the scale of this,” she says.

“It was by far the largest venue and greatest number of guests I’ve officiated in front of.

“My favourite part of their ceremony was when the grooms made their vows and declarations to each other – they were so sincere as in addition to the required legalities they had written their own personal vows, it was like a period of calm in the midst of magical romantic mayhem.”

Joseph, who is from Northamptonshire, vowed to continue to enable Linus’s “insane ideas” – as he dressed as Princes Diana and Gwyneth Paltrow for their other shows Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story, and Gwyneth Goes Skiing.

Linus, who’s from Sweden, described Joseph as the “sweetest most ridiculous person” and said he couldn’t wait to create “more stupid fringe shows” together.

Both sets of parents joined their sons on stage where Linus’s mother Elisabeth Ljunggren said they were happy to share their day.

“Love is a gift to cherish and care for, every day in good times and bad, in sickness and health,” she said.

“We love you both to the moon and back.”

Fellow performers including Sooz Kemper, Emily Lamey and theatre company Recent Cutbacks provided the entertainment, and guests were invited to donate to charity or buy tickets to their shows in lieu of gifts.

The happy couple had just over an hour with their guests in the outdoor bar before they had to leave for that day’s performance.

Meanwhile with US and UK dates in September and December, there’s little time for a honeymoon either.

“I’m not sure there’ll be time for a real honeymoon for a little while at least but performing at the fringe is very much a honeymoon in itself, very relaxing,” says Linus.

“Maybe we’ll climb Arthur’s seat. That seems like a good way to celebrate our Scottish wedding.”

Everyone can use an editor, and Shakespeare is no exception. Fortunately, he married one.

Tired of being cooped up with the kids in Stratford-upon-Avon, Anne (Teal Wicks), wife of the great playwright, pops down to London to see the first performance of “Romeo and Juliet.” The new tragic ending that Shakespeare (Corey Mach) proudly previews to the company strikes her as completely wrongheaded.

“What if … Juliet doesn’t kill herself?” she proposes. As strong-willed as her husband, she doesn’t wish to argue the point. She merely wants to put her idea to the test.

Behold the premise of “& Juliet,” the euphoric dance party of a musical that updates Shakespeare with a dose of 21st century female empowerment. The production, which opened Friday at the Ahmanson Theatre under the fizzy direction of Luke Sheppard, reimagines a new post-Romeo life for Juliet while riding a magic carpet of chart-toppers from juggernaut Swedish producer Max Martin, who has spun gold with Katy Perry, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, among other pop titans.

This good-time jukebox musical relies as much on its wit as on its catalog of pop hits. The show’s music and lyrics are credited to Max Martin and friends — which sounds like a low-key cool table at the Grammy Awards. The clever book by Emmy winner David West Read (“Schitt’s Creek”) creates a world that can contain the show’s musical riches without having to shoehorn in songs in the shameless fashion of “Mamma Mia!”

Take, for instance, one of the early numbers, “I Want It That Way,” a pop ballad made famous by the Backstreet Boys. Anne starts singing the song when Shakespeare initially resists her idea of giving Juliet back her life. She wants him to go along with her suggested changes not because she’s sure she’s right but because she wants him to trust her as an equal partner. The song is redeployed in a way that has little bearing on the lyrics but somehow feels coherent with the original emotion.

Obviously, this is a commercial musical and not a literary masterpiece on par with Shakespeare’s tragedy of ill-starred lovers. “& Juliet” would have trouble withstanding detailed scrutiny of its plot or probing interrogation of Juliet’s character arc. But Read smartly establishes just the right party atmosphere.

Juliet (a vibrant Rachel Webb), having survived the tragedy once scripted for her, travels from Verona to Paris with an entourage to escape her parents, who want to send her to a nunnery for having married Romeo behind their backs. Her clique includes Angélique (Kathryn Allison), her nurse and confidant; May (Nick Drake), her nonbinary bestie; and April, her newbie sidekick out for fun who Anne plays in disguise. Shakespeare casts himself as the carriage driver, allowing him to tag along and keep tabs on the cockeyed direction his play is going.

In Paris, the crew heads directly to the Renaissance Ball, which has the look and feel of a modern-day mega-club. Entry is barred to Juliet, but not because she’s ridiculously underage. Her name isn’t on the exclusive guest list. So through the back door, Juliet and her traveling companions sashay as the production erupts in “Blow,” the Kesha song that encourages everyone to get their drink on and let loose.

Rachel Webb and the North American Tour Company of “& Juliet.”

(Matthew Murphy)

The dance setting — kinetically envisioned by scenic designer Soutra Gilmour, lighting designer Howard Hudson, sound designer Gareth Owen and video and projection designer Andrzej Goulding into a Dionysian video paradise — provides the all-purpose license for Martin’s music. It’s the atmosphere and the energy that matter most. Paloma Young’s extravagant costumes raise the level of decadent hedonism.

In this welcoming new context — imagine “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” suffused with girl power — there’s never anything odd about the characters grinding and wailing like karaoke superstars. The ecstatic motion of Jennifer Weber’s choreography renders dramatic logic irrelevant.

But love is the name of the game, and both Juliet and May fall for François (Mateus Leite Cardoso), a young musician with a geeky sense of humor who’s still figuring out his identity. May doesn’t expect romance to be part of their fate. In the Spears song “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” they give powerful expression to an inner confusion this musical romance is determined to sort out with an appropriate partner.

Unlike for the original characters, a happy ending is no longer off-limits. Shakespeare and Anne wrestle to get the upper hand of a plot that seems to have a mind of its own. Shakespeare pulls a coup at the end of the first act that I won’t spoil except to say that what’s good for the goose proves dramaturgically viable for the gander.

Teal Wicks, left, Rachel Webb, Nick Drake and Kathryn Allison in the North American Tour of “& Juliet.”

(Matthew Murphy)

This spirited competition stays in the background, but their marital happiness matters to us. Mach’s Shakespeare has the cocky strut of a rapper-producer with a long list of colossal hits. Wicks gives Anne the heartfelt complexity of one of her husband’s bright comic heroines. There’s a quality of intelligent feeling redolent of Rosalind in “As You Like It” in Wicks’ affecting characterization and luscious singing.

But the musical belongs to Juliet, and Webb has the vocal prowess to hijack the stage whenever she’s soaring in song. If Juliet’s character is still a work in progress, Webb endows her with a maturity beyond her years. She makes us grateful that the Capulet daughter is getting another crack at life. When the big musical guns are brought out late in the second act (“Stronger,” “Roar”), she delivers them as emancipatory anthems, fueled by hard-won epiphanies.

Allison’s Angélique is just as much a standout, renewing the bawdy earthiness of Shakespeare’s nurse with contemporary sass and rousing singing. If the supporting cast of men doesn’t make as deep an impression, the festive comic universe is nonetheless boldly brought to life.

“& Juliet” bestows the alternative ending everyone wishes they could script for themselves — a second chance to get it right. This feel-good musical is just what the doctor ordered in these far less carefree times.

Music, more than a product or anything else, is a sacred act. That’s the prevailing premise of director Contessa Gayles’ award-winning Songs From The Hole, a 90-minute documentary on Netflix that highlights Long Beach native, artist and activist James “JJ’88” Jacobs’ evolution from a wayward 15-year-old who committed a murder into a beacon of what he calls the “utility of nonviolence, art to tell stories, and being vulnerable.” In the documentary, which won 10 awards on the 2024 film festival circuit, Gayles expertly weaves jailhouse phone calls with JJ’88 with a visual album that he crafted in prison, as well as a harrowing fly-on-the-wall chronicle of how his family supported him throughout his incarceration and repeated attempts at freedom. 

JJ’88 was freed from prison in 2022 after 18 years. But before he was physically liberated, he was spiritually liberated by a chance encounter with the man who killed his brother. The documentary is a glimpse of the practicality and necessity of restorative justice that shares themes with Gayles’ 2018 CNN documentary The Feminist on Cellblock Y, about then-incarcerated producer Richie Reseda starting a prison feminist group (Reseda is a co-producer on Songs From The Hole and made the beats that JJ’88 rapped over). According to Gayles and JJ’88, who spoke on the doc at a screening in July in New York City, it was made over several years, and began while he was still incarcerated, which presented logistical issues (JJ’88 came home eight months into the editing process). JJ’88 had written the treatment for the visual album after being inspired by Beyoncé’s Lemonade and self-titled albums, bonding together songs he wrote while in solitary confinement, and recorded with Reseda’s help. 

Gayles said she completed about one music video per month, then weaved them into the rest of the footage. There was initially consideration of visually demarcating the music videos from the raw documentary footage with different aspect ratios, but she decided that everything should remain uniform. It was the right choice; the seamless visual presentation allowed her to keep things lively while JJ’88 is talking, alternating old photos and video of the Jacobs family with familiar conceits from the visual album, which, derived from his life experience, centers young Black men, mothers, and the justice system. There are repeated appearances from an adolescent and incarcerated man playing JJ’88, and another male who portraying his brother Victor, who was killed three days after JJ’88 fatally shot a man in what he admits was a “senseless” act of trying to bolster his street reputation. Recurring scenes of children dancing cue to the inner child that Jacobs, and too many other Black men, lose to the streets. 

The layered videos and songs feel unmistakably inspired by the artistry of a Kendrick Lamar or Vince Staples, often culling themes of faith, morality, family, and violence. During a song lamenting “crime waves,” two boys jump in the ocean, drowning as JJ’88 raps about the treachery of the Long Beach streets. JJ’88, a representation of incarcerated people, returns from the water a man in prison blues, while Victor, symbolizing men prematurely lost to violence, is still a child. They both walk up to a maternal figure on the sands. 

And Gayles does a great job of leading up to each video with resonant quotes from JJ’88’s support system: his mother Janine, father William, stepmother Jackie, sister Reneasha, and wife Indigo. During one juncture, William, a preacher, talks about how he maintains his faith that JJ’88 will come home from his life sentence. The documentary then shows a video of him delivering a sermon, bellowing, “I have a little praise song that I wanna sing,” which seamlessly slips into JJ’88’s reflective “wake up.” The song is bookended with another clip of his father asking, “Have you ever been in jail? A spiritual jail?”

The documentary does a good job of highlighting a support system that many men in JJ’88’s former position, doing life in jail, don’t have. There are warm moments, such as him singing with his wife Indigo, joking about getting older with his mother and sister, and celebrating with them when state officials co-sign his deservedness for early release. They’re also there for him in his low moments, such as when his father consoles him after a parole denial. The documentary fleshes out his relationship with each family member and lays out the stakes in a way that the viewer is just as crushed as William when the jail call cuts off before he can give his full farewell. 

During the conversation, JJ’88 tearfully laments, “they don’t believe me,” to his father, telling him that the parole board used his appearance on a music project called Defund The Sheriff against him. The moment was yet another glimpse of the justice system scapegoating hip-hop for its own agenda; in this case, it kept JJ’88 incarcerated. The documentary highlights hip-hop as a tool that helped JJ’88 parse his feelings and rehabilitate, the buzzword that prison advocates claim the system exists for. But to the state, during that particular parole meeting, his music was merely a threat. As a music writer, I’ve become accustomed to how artists have historically marketed authenticity and clamored for listeners to believe their lyrics connote real-life violence. But we see JJ’88, who actually lived the treachery of the streets  — and learned the error of it — desperate to shed any negative connotation of his art. When he wants to be believed as a productive human being, while his music peers want to be believed as living their raps, it makes you rethink what believability is worth from people who can’t see your humanity.  

The documentary is a strong case for the benefits of restorative justice. During one scene, Indigo notes that she was a victim of sexual assault and was “retraumatized” by the criminal process. While she was looking for “closure, justice, healing, validation,” she realized the system wasn’t apt to offer that, dishing one of the documentary’s strongest lines: “The system is not prioritizing me, it’s prioritizing punishment, and my healing could never be found in someone else’s punishment.” 

Early in the documentary, JJ’88 meets a man named “J” while in prison, and has a powerful discussion with him about regretting being in jail for murder, but also realizing that, as JJ’88 says later, “my shortcomings don’t diminish my good.” He admits that “J” embracing his humanity helped him do the same, leading him to confront the “grief, cowardice, shame, and heartache” he faced after committing a murder. Society essentially asks the accused to deny their actions to attempt to beat a case or avoid public scrutiny, but it was only through JJ’88’s admission and reflection on his darkness that he was able to heal and forgive himself. And when he shows mercy to “J,” real name Jamaal Smith, after realizing he killed his brother, he acknowledged his ability to forgive his brother’s killer as the atonement for his own sins. Who knows what his healing would have looked like without talking to the very man who killed his brother — the circumstance speaks to the possibility of a system where victims can talk with violators, especially ones allowed to interrogate their regret outside the brutality of prison. JJ’88 said he figured his brother’s killer was “another one of us,” speaking to the hordes of men disillusioned by the system. And just like JJ’88 was able to see his humanity in Jamaal, hopefully viewers can see their capacity for forgiveness, reflection, and growth in him. 

While in solitary confinement, JJ’88 admits that he felt called by God and began writing his raps with no expectations of them. It’s refreshing to hear an artist — a pretty good one — say that in our increasingly callous, numbers-obsessed ecosystem. His experience reflects the genesis of music-making, when it was simply a chance for everyday people to express themselves and make sense of our world. When songs were first sung, there was no option to become an unimpeachable celebrity from it, just a chance to vent, or rejoice, or go wherever one’s imagination took them. Songs From The Hole might not make the number-tabulating stan armies back down from mast and live in harmony, but hopefully it will encourage some of us to be more precious with artistry and artists. While few of them have a story as cinematic as JJ’88’s, who is pursuing a career as a professional musician, they all deserve consideration as people just like us who decided to share with the world.