By Grace Hatchell
Right, villagers. Dating is hard enough when you’re only responsible for your own questionable romantic decisions. Imagine being professionally responsible for everybody else’s as well.
Welcome to the world of Olivia Raine Atwood.
Olivia – or Liv – is a professional matchmaker. Her actual 9-to-5 job involves finding love for other people, and apparently she’s pretty good at it.
Most of the time.
That last bit is important.
Her comedy show OOPS is heading back to the Edinburgh Fringe this August, bringing Liv’s tales from the dating trenches to the Gilded Balloon Teviot.
And she’s got stories.
When matchmaking goes very, very wrong
Liv spends her working life navigating the dos, don’ts and absolutely-do-not-even-think-about-its of modern dating.
That means advising clients about those photographs they really shouldn’t be using on their profiles, dealing with men in their seventies who would quite like to date women in their thirties, and occasionally making a match she rather wishes she could immediately take back.
But OOPS centres around one particularly spectacular matchmaking mishap.
Liv accidentally set up her college boyfriend…
…with her high-school bully.
Oops indeed.
The show’s own description compares it to Ron setting Hermione up with Malfoy, which should give you some idea of the territory we’re entering.
Personally, Grace would have shut the laptop, changed her name and started a new career.
Meet Olivia Raine Atwood
Olivia Raine Atwood isn’t only a comedian. She’s also a matchmaker, writer and fitness instructor, splitting her time between Los Angeles and New York.
She’s previously been praised for her physical storytelling and was memorably described by Mumble UK as someone who would “make coffee nervous”.
Quite frankly, that’s the sort of review quote you keep forever.
Olivia has developed several full-length shows and made her Off-Broadway debut in 2023. Her first show, FAKING IT, subsequently went on a world tour in 2024, picking up nominations and awards along the way and selling out performances in New York, Los Angeles and London.
OOPS debuted in Hollywood in June 2025 before performances in LA, New York, Edinburgh and London.
And if you want some indication of Olivia’s energy levels, at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe she performed FAKING IT and OOPS back-to-back for 24 days, with just 25 minutes between the two shows.
Grace needs 25 minutes to recover from walking up an Edinburgh hill.
OOPS returns to Edinburgh
For Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Olivia is bringing OOPS back to the Gilded Balloon for another run.
Dating, matchmaking and romantic disasters are fairly universal subjects, but having an actual professional matchmaker on stage opens up a rather different side of the dating game.
After all, most of us only have our own dating disasters to worry about.
Liv has everybody else’s.
And somewhere out there, her college boyfriend and high-school bully presumably have one hell of a story to tell too
5–30 August 2026
14:30 (60 minutes)
Gilded Balloon Teviot – Billiard Room
Teviot Row House, 13 Bristo Square, Edinburgh EH8 9AJ
Tickets: £9–£13
No performance: 18 August
Age guidance: 12+
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/olivia-raine-atwood-oops
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