Adam Riches Brings Channel Swim Pioneer Matthew Webb to Life at Edinburgh Festival
On 25 August 1875, a 27-year-old merchant navy captain named Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel unaided. More than 150 years later, his extraordinary story is gripping audiences at the Edinburgh festival, staged in a venue that lends it a quietly macabre charge: Summerhall's Anatomy theatre, where Webb's body lies under a shroud on a table as the play unfolds around it.
Adam Riches' solo play The Captain, reviewed by The Guardian on 26 August 2026, takes the form of a lecture-cum-eulogy delivered by Fred Beckwith, the swimming coach who trained the young Webb for his channel crossing. Riches plays Beckwith, addressing the audience as though mourning a man whose body is right there in the room.
The casting matters. Riches, who The Guardian noted switched from standup to full-on physical theatre the previous year, brings a performer's instinct for holding a room to a story that is, at its core, about endurance. Webb did not just swim the Channel. He was also a stuntman, a detail that places his famous crossing in a broader context of calculated risk and spectacle, according to the BBC. His channel swim — 21 hours and 45 minutes of unbroken swimming through cold, tides and shipping lanes — was the 19th-century equivalent of an extreme endurance event staged before a crowd.
The Captain was flagged early as a festival highlight. The Guardian's June preview of Edinburgh festival 2026's must-see theatre listed it among the shows to catch. The List, reviewing the production on 15 August, described it as intense, immersive and unexpectedly moving — a Fringe show that draws the audience into the physical and emotional reality of what Webb attempted (The List).
The Anatomy theatre at Summerhall, a former veterinary school, is an inspired setting. A dissection table becomes a bier. The audience sits with the dead swimmer while his coach speaks — part tribute, part confession, part coaching debrief. The geometry of the room means there is nowhere to look that does not carry the weight of the story.
What makes the production stand out is its refusal to simply celebrate. Webb's crossing was a feat of will, but his later life — chasing stunts and public spectacle — ended in tragedy. Riches, through Beckwith, holds both the triumph and the cost in the same hour, without tipping into sentiment.
For a festival audience, the appeal is obvious: a story about a man who threw himself into open water with nothing but willpower and grease, told by a performer who has made the leap from comedy to something rawer. Webb swam for 21 hours. Riches holds the room for one. Both, in their way, are tests of endurance.
