Gleeful farces, world-class puppetry and the death of the ampersand

Day 3 of Nicky Woolf's Edinburgh diary.

August 10. Day three.

My first show this morning is the other half of Greenlight Theatre’s Seeing Double. While yesterday’s show (Visions) followed the production crew of a doomed production of Macbeth, today, in Figures, we join the cast and director in their rehearsal room. When you see both of the shows, the first serves as the set-up, then the second reveals just how clever the production is. Knowing what the other participants are doing and saying in the other room, and knowing where they’re going as they rush on and off-stage makes the second show a real pay-off, and the effect is both a gleeful farce and a deeply impressive piece of synchronisation.

After that, deciding to stick with Pleasance, I dive straight in to Les Enfents Terribles’ The Trench. Enfents Terribles are fringe veterans, and their latest offering, about a World War 1 sapper trapped underground, is slick and brimming with gorgeous stagecraft; the puppetry especially is world-class, and the ethereal atmosphere is underscored by the soundtrack by singer-songwriter Alexander Wolfe.

Today is to be a quieter day than yesterday. I need to settle down, get my bearings, and plan my schedule, so I spend the afternoon hot-desking with the staff of Twitter-based review site Fringebiscuit, who themselves spend much of the afternoon debating the death of the ampersand in the 21st century (the Twitter API can’t handle this useful piece of punctuation. Why not?), before heading to C Nova to see Loves I Haven’t Known, a small and utterly perfect musical comedy piece by Bush and McCluskey, the team behind Tony! The Blair Musical. Optimistic and bittersweet, it is truly a five-star show.

Speaking to the two of them in the C Nova bar after the show, they tell me that tonight’s was their biggest audience yet. The fringe is beginning to gain momentum; this is the point at which shows like theirs begin to see their labours finally, thankfully, beginning to bear fruit.