Electra Kolb brings Father, Away She Goes to the Edinburgh Fringe 2026, a bold and caustic new tragicomedy exploring ambition, identity and the cost of success. Both writer and performer, Kolb presents a fearless portrait of a deeply flawed and magnetic anti-hero.
The show follows Sarah Jones, a compulsive liar and social outsider navigating rejection, fractured relationships and relentless ambition. With sharp wit and dark twists, the play interrogates how society responds to driven young women who refuse to conform.
Father, Away She Goes runs at Zoo (Playground 1), High School Yard from 7–30 August 2026 (not 19 or 26) at 16:30. Tickets are available here.
You’re starring in and have written Father, Away She Goes at Zoo (Playground 1), what can you tell us about the show?
Father, Away She Goes is a bold, caustic tragicomedy by Electra Kolb that asks how far you would go to achieve your dream.
Narcissist, compulsive liar, art school hopeful and social exile, our main character Sarah Jones is a magnetic and deeply unsettling anti-heroine navigating ambition, identity and survival at any cost.
Rejected from every institution she applies to and cast out of the family home, Sarah stumbles through a chaotic world of parties, lies, fractured friendships and compulsive reinvention.
As her ambition begins to curdle into something darker, the stakes sharpen in a final devastating twist.
It is not a story about redemption. It is a story about refusal to accept rejection and the consequences that follow.
What drew you to creating Sarah Jones, and what makes them such a compelling anti-hero?
As a young actress, I spend a lot of time reading plays and searching for characters that I’m excited to inhabit. A pattern I’ve noticed, however, is that there are very few young female characters who exist fully in their own right.
So often they are defined by their relationships to others rather than by their own ambitions, flaws or desires. That realisation led me to create Sarah Jones.
I wanted to write a young woman who is unapologetically herself, someone ambitious, boundary-pushing and relentlessly driven. Most importantly, I wanted her to feel real.
Sarah is flawed. She makes mistakes. She can be frustrating, selfish and difficult, but she is also outrageous, funny and deeply human.
She’s the kind of character who might be your most lovable villain or your most hated hero.
Her drive to succeed doesn’t come from the expectations of those around her, it comes from something intrinsic within her — a relentless hunger to achieve, to be seen and to carve out her own place in the world.
Whether she learns from her mistakes is another question entirely, and that’s what makes her such an interesting character to explore.
The play explores ambition and how it is perceived differently — what conversations are you hoping audiences will leave with?
This piece, and Sarah Jones as a character, is nuanced.
I’ve had audience members laughing out loud in one moment and crying in the next. It is precisely these extremes in emotion that allow for deeper interrogation into ambition as a whole.
In a world where social media thrives on hyper-reactive, polarised responses, I wanted to create space that rejects simple, clear-cut answers.
This is not a didactic play with a simple ‘good’ or ‘bad’ outcome. I want audience members to question when and why they are either rooting for Sarah or praying for her downfall.
Humans are complicated creatures, and by amplifying Sarah’s worst traits, the final twist forces the audience to reassess their judgement and confront how quickly we tend to categorise people.
Every successful person has skeletons in their closet, yet women’s skeletons seem more vindictive, whilst men’s are seen as par for the course — the price of success.
Hopefully, Sarah Jones makes us confront this precise tension head on.
You first wrote and performed this piece at 17 — how has the show evolved since then?
It has transformed from a 40-minute piece to a full 60-minute production, introducing more characters from Sarah’s buried past and deepening the farcical absurdity of her life.
Unrequited love, hellish in-laws and obnoxious posh people — this extended script promises to make you laugh even louder and cry even harder, pulling you through every twist of her journey.
Father, Away She Goes debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe last year in a tiny 20-seat venue for just a six-day run.
I was seventeen, with no experience and no team, just my mum and sister helping me flyer, yet I was overwhelmed by the incredible audience response.
The show sold out, I landed five-star reviews, and that vote of confidence pushed me to return this year with a bigger venue and longer run.
As both writer and performer, how do you balance shaping the story with inhabiting such an intense character on stage?
Sarah is an intense character, and yes, there are dark moments, but I’ve always focused on balancing that with moments of brevity and comedy.
Even though it’s a solo show, I’ve built a world crowded with characters who provoke and haunt Sarah Jones.
By bouncing between Sarah and this ensemble through multi-roling, Sarah becomes both the protagonist and the lens through which these other voices come alive.
Exploring her through the perspectives of these characters has allowed me to understand not only how she is seen, but how she sees herself.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Father, Away She Goes?
Don’t think, just book.
As a performer, it is my job to make you feel something. So in 60 minutes I hope you will laugh and cry in equal measure, and when the house lights come up, you’ll begin to question everything.
