Review: The Second Best School Shooting, Fringe 2026

I can’t imagine what it must be like growing up as a teenager in America, with lax guns laws, toxic masculinity and the NRA. Written by Alice Stanley Jr and produced by Jessica Green Harrison/Matthew Lillard, The Second Best School Shooting takes us there, for an hour at least, to get a glimpse of some of the thoughts and feelings going through the minds of two teenage girls who ‘technically’ experienced a school shooting.

Here’s the official description:

Two best friends struggle to process surviving a school shooting that is overshadowed by a much worse school shooting on the same day. A dark comedy about America’s traumatized, despondent, yet somehow hilarious youth. Developed with hundreds of students, teachers, and survivors whose gallows humour helps them cope with the United States’ gun violence epidemic. 

Vibe

Dark comedy. The show starts with a typical teenage bedroom scene, as we meet characters Ava and Parker. It starts off fairly lighthearted, with music and dancing, before we realise why the two girls are in this bedroom, instead of at school. They get three days off, due to the fact one of their classmates brought a gun to school and shot the ceiling.

It also happened to take place on the same day as a school shooting where 15 teens were horrifically murdered, so theirs doesn’t really make the news. The vibe is uneasy, as we watch the girls going through various coping mechanisms (some pretty unhealthy) to try and deal with a world where it feels like they don’t matter.

The show itself

Ava and Parker feel unseen; like their voices don’t matter, and nobody cares about their lives and the complex feelings they’re going through in this situation. They say “f*ck the NRA!”. Parker is trying her best to study for an exam, whereas Ava wants to get attention, and to feel like she matters.

Sadly, for Ava, trying to jump on the back of the big school shooting, the one where a girl no longer had a face, doesn’t work – nor does a cringey TikTok dance video. She resorts to an even unwiser choice, and consequences occur.

The strongest aspect of the show is the way Ava and Parker naturally vibe off each other, and the conversation between them feels like they’re just two friends trying to come to terms with what’s happened. There’s some dark and some more light-hearted humour mixed in with the trauma and the anger – which is necessary for the heavy topic of the show.

I know it’s meant to be funny, but I’d say it’s the general feeling of helplessness which is predominant in this show. At times you want to laugh along a little, but it’s such a serious topic that I don’t always feel at ease doing so. The real payoff is the ending, which is emotional, powerful, and yes, actually a little hopeful. I cried, and looking around the room, I saw I wasn’t the only one.

Overall

A poignant look at the reality facing teenagers in America, and coping the only way they know how; with humour, and other devices. The characters of Ava and Parker bounce off each other in a natural way and it’s easy enough to follow along. I just feel like some of it was a bit of a miss in terms of injecting the right amount of humour and getting the balance right.