Dennis Trainor Jr returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with The Tao of Lloyd, a bold new solo show that reimagines a familiar cult film character through a sharply contemporary lens. Blending satire, storytelling and spiritual reflection, the production promises a thought-provoking theatrical experience.
Written and performed by Trainor and directed by Olivier Award winner Guy Masterson, The Tao of Lloyd explores what it means to stay human in an increasingly chaotic world. The piece builds on Trainor’s acclaimed previous work while pushing further into political and philosophical territory.
The Tao of Lloyd runs at Assembly George Street – Drawing Room from 6–30 August (not 12) at 12:25pm. Tickets are available here.
You’re the writer and performer of The Tao of Lloyd at Assembly George Street – Drawing Room, what can you tell us about the show?
The Tao of Lloyd is a seriously unserious, devoutly disobedient solo show about trying to stay human while everything around you is being optimised, monetised, militarised, rebranded and sold back to you as a monthly subscription box called HopePrime.
So it’s part political satire, part Gen X cultural exorcism, part spiritual panic attack and part kind-of guided meditation for anyone who suspects that another world may still be possible but has no idea where they put the receipt.
It features Lloyd Dobler, the teenage boombox romantic from the 1989 film Say Anything, now grown up as a middle-aged Zen-punk dissident. He is still refusing to buy, sell or process anything, but now with political despair, a podcast and a singing bowl he may or may not know how to use responsibly.
What inspired you to revisit Lloyd Dobler and reimagine the character at this point in time?
Revisiting Lloyd wasn’t nostalgia. It was an audit.
The thing that pulled me back was his famous line from Say Anything: “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career.”
In 1989, that sounded romantic and charming. In 2026, it sounds like emergency instructions.
So the question became: what happens if that person grows up inside the very culture he was trying to refuse?
I didn’t want to point at a boombox and say, “remember this?” I wanted to ask what happened to the part of us that once knew the whole system was sick, and whether that part is still alive.
Lloyd is the right vessel for that because he is ridiculous and sincere — funny, wounded, overcaffeinated, spiritually curious and politically horrified.
In other words: doing great.
The show blends political satire, spirituality and dark comedy, how did you approach balancing those elements on stage?
I didn’t balance it so much as let the imbalance become the engine.
The show runs on collision. Lloyd will be deep into Lao Tzu, citing ancient wisdom about emptiness and possibility, and then a voice cuts in telling him to stop meditating and start throwing a rock.
That tension — sincere spiritual inquiry colliding with political reality — turned out to be funnier than anything I could have written if I had tried to stay in one lane.
The dark comedy isn’t on top. It’s what happens when a man brings a singing bowl to a knife fight and means it.
You’ve collaborated with director Guy Masterson before, what does he bring to this new piece and how has that partnership evolved?
We first worked together on Manifest Destiny’s Child, and what I learned quickly is that Guy has an extraordinary sense of how to shape a solo piece so that it doesn’t become a lecture, a rant or someone processing loudly in public for an hour.
With The Tao of Lloyd, that is especially important because the material is funny, political, spiritual and personal.
Guy is very good at asking what is happening now and what the audience is experiencing in the room at that moment.
He pushes me past cleverness. I can write a joke or chase a metaphor, but Guy is interested in the action underneath the language.
He keeps asking what Lloyd wants, what he is afraid of and what it costs him to say the next thing.
As a solo performer, how do you sustain the energy and emotional journey of a piece that feels so personal and politically charged?
The short answer is hydration, humility and refusing to perform a certainty I don’t actually have.
The longer answer is that solo performance requires a kind of surrender. The audience is not a wall you throw energy at, they are the other half of the circuit.
This piece contains jokes, argument, confession, political fury and spiritual inquiry, all wrapped around a central question: what does meaningful action look like when the world is on fire and every response feels either too small or too theatrical?
To sustain that, I have to stay connected to the room and let the audience affect me.
Lloyd isn’t a superhero. He’s tired, funny and contradictory. He wants a revolution, but he also wants validation and a comfortable chair.
The emotional journey is not about pretending to be pure, but about admitting imperfection and still trying to act with conscience.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see The Tao of Lloyd?
Come if you are tired of pretending everything is fine.
Come if you are spiritually curious, politically furious, culturally exhausted, algorithmically overstimulated, or just in the market for a midday guided meditation that might accidentally turn into a spiritual Molotov cocktail.
The show is funny. It is a good time. I promise I am not just dragging people into a room and yelling “empire” at them for an hour — though I reserve the right to do that briefly if the moment calls for it.
Underneath the jokes there is a real question about whether refusal still means anything once you are middle-aged, overextended and tired.
If you want something that resolves cleanly and lets everyone off the hook by curtain call, this isn’t that.
Also, it’s at 12:25 in the afternoon, which is perfect. You can see the show, question capitalism, have lunch and still make it to seventeen more Fringe performances before your nervous system calls a general strike.
