Fringe notes (2): Choice stress, tinder appeals and a Fringe thriller #edfringe

What will it be today? The Science of Laughter, The Improvised James Bond Film or The Naked Magicians? Or another one of those hundreds of other performances that kick off the day? The Edinburgh Fringe is pleasantly addictive, but one danger looms: choice stress. So let's do an experiment: just go with the flow.

Because we can. For a day, my wife and I let ourselves be guided, without any preconceived plan, by what we are handed on the street. Those who make their way through the crowds in the heart of Edinburgh not only bump into tourists and street performers, but are accosted every few metres by a flyer who has something great on offer. Sometimes right around the corner, so just step inside.

Admittedly, we start with a false start, as the ticket for the morning performance Expensive Shit in the Traverse I had already bought. Powerful, energetic, partly danced drama about exploitation, humiliation and hope for liberation. And about how men look at women, a strong find that makes the audience very aware of their own view.

Condom use

After this, chance may reign. Hardly a foot on the Grassmarket yet when a lady in rain jacket hands us a leaflet of Cat Call. We bite and it turns out not to be a bad choice. It is a duo standup by Cally Beaton and Catherine Bohart, with raunchy jokes about autism and condom use, the complications of being bi, about being an only girl at a boys' school and the most popular professions on Tinder, among others: pilot and manual therapist.

We also now discover that the leafleteer was Cally Beaton herself. Because yes, she tells me afterwards, playing at the Fringe is great but you have to put a lot of energy into your marketing yourself. Social media is most important, but she and Catherine also spend about two to three hours leafleting every day. Plus of course a lot of networking and showing bits in compilation shows.

Straw bales

We cross the street towards Underbelly, but before we get there we see a group of youngsters with trumpets and saxes starting a swinging song across the street. We follow them to the Cowshed, a straw-bale-furnished bar where the Nottingham Youth Jazz Orchestra (so that's what they're called) is giving a fine concert.

Nice touch. The question "what next?" is resolved at lightning speed by a nice young man who puts a leaflet in our hands of the labyrinth-like Underbelly complex from In Our Hands. It turns out to be an imaginative and lively puppet show about an equally unexpectedly serious subject: the problems of contemporary fishing. That combination sometimes falters a bit, but apart from that, I enjoy being carried away by the old fisherman Alf and his struggle with EU quotas. With a catchy seagull as sidekick.

Turbulence

Quick dinner out and then to the evening show CUT, spurred on by the promising film noir-like flyer that promises us an exciting combination of installation, theatre poetry and thriller, with moments of literally total darkness. The latter is always penetrating, even now, in the tiny room designed like an aeroplane cabin. After a charming but also a little scary flight attendant welcomes us, the same actress takes us into another reality, that of a woman who may or may not be pursued and threatened by a man. This "psychological equivalent of extreme turbulence" boasts rave reviews. We are not really convinced. While it is very clever and unusually executed, it is also very verbal and partly because of this, it does not really manage to drag us in. It remains shudder at a distance.

Which does not detract from the fact that this experimental theatre, along with everything else we have experienced today, does show nicely the diversity of talent and ideas that find a stage at the Fringe. Experiment successful.