By James Hadley in London

The Edinburgh Fringe abounds with thousands of shows on offer, meaning every theatre-goer is going to experience their own unique version of the Festival. I saw fourteen shows over the four and a half days I was there (though you can easily see four or five shows a day if you want to), in twelve different venues. Because of the huge demand for venues, unlikely spaces such as zoo cages, hilltops and cellars are used, which adds to the fun. But how do you choose which shows to go to in a festival as large as the Edinburgh Fringe?By James Hadley in London

The Edinburgh Fringe abounds with thousands of shows on offer, meaning every theatre-goer is going to experience their own unique version of the Festival. I saw fourteen shows over the four and a half days I was there (though you can easily see four or five shows a day if you want to), in twelve different venues. Because of the huge demand for venues, unlikely spaces such as zoo cages, hilltops and cellars are used, which adds to the fun. But how do you choose which shows to go to in a festival as large as the Edinburgh Fringe?As always, word of mouth is the most persuasive when selecting what theatre to attend, and the best shows I saw were ones that friends had recommended to me. Being handed flyers on the Royal Mile is of course no guarantee of quality, and you could well find yourself in an audience of three. Having said that, the show I most enjoyed only had seven audience members in attendance, and was all the enjoyable for this. Going in the middle of the Fringe, as I did, means you have the benefit of reviews being available. The Edinburgh Fringe website features both published reviews and those posted by audience members. Because no-one has time to read all the reviews, everyone puts emphasis upon a star rating, and posters are quickly emblazoned with the highest star ratings the show has achieved.

My selection of shows was reflective of my personal tastes, of course. Because of the hugely eclectic selection on offer, I don't think anyone could hope to pick a representative overview of the Festival if they tried. So these brief descriptions of the shows I saw are not reflective of the latest trends or 'hot picks' of the Fringe, but rather one example of the range that any individual might experience within a few days' viewing. I did hear there was a trend towards more plays about war this year though, particularly among the high profile shows programmed at the Traverse Theatre - Scotland's new writing theatre.

Straight off the train from London, laden down with luggage, I wandered into my first Fringe show, The Park Keeper by Belt Up, who I presume are a company of tertiary students. This was as Fringey as you could expect a Fringe show to be - with frivolous interactions between characters and the audience within a boudoir setting. At one point everyone in the room joined hands and whirled around the room in a frenzied dance, at another, audience members were encouraged to assist in torturing one of the characters, which was an interesting ethical provocation. The plot was confusing - about aristocratic alien tourists seeking a dopelganger for one of their member who had just died - but the lead performances were impressively engaging.

That night I entered a mysteriously lit, imposing stone courtyard in the city where Prague-based Teatr Novogo Fronta company was presenting Phantomysteria. The description of it being apocalyptic and allegorical were correct. It had a particularly striking opening image of a businessman being set on fire and running shrieking through the darkness streaming fire behind him. This was then undercut with some very European physical clowning by two furry animal characters, and something about the need for tenderness was developed through the relationship between one of the animals and the burnt man. Some smoke-machine clad images in the piece were spectacular, but the material was a bit thin in places to live up to the apocalyptic potential that its opening image suggested.

The next day I saw what would be my favourite of all the shows I saw, recommended to me by my host, Sonal Patel. Sonal, who will be known to some readers, is a New Zealand playwright who is line producing nine comedy shows at the Fringe this year for a London-based promoter. Like most working behind the scenes in the Fringe, she was working extremely long hours, seven days a week throughout the full three weeks of the Fringe. Hence little opportunity to see shows herself, and she recommended the show 'Transient' to me, knowing my interest in site-specific promenade theatre. Transient was staged in a series of underground cellars, through which the audience were led by successive spaces being lit up. Presented by a young company called Goose Goose Gander, the four performers evoked the emotional limbo of being trapped by border closures during the Second World War. Dance theatre and quite poetic scenes of dialogue were performed with an engrossing precision, sometimes accompanied by elegaic music. With the low levels of lighting as characters searched among photos of missing persons, there was something quite haunting about the piece. A recurring image of performers blowing between their hands onto the heavily dust-covered surfaces, creating a miniature mushroom cloud of dust, was really striking. The whole piece reminded me a lot of the recent film of 'Atonement' through its world of lovers separated by the war, confusion and bureaucracy of borderlines.

Next was a show produced by expat New Zealander Claire Glenn, a friend of mine whose Australian-based theatre company, Three to a Room, was touring two works to the Festival. The first was I Love You Bro - a solo show performed by Melbourne actor Ash Flanders. I have to admit to feeling a bit over-exposed to solo shows over the years, but this virtuoso performance of a young man juggling a host of alter-ego personae on an internet chat room to manipulate the romantic interest of a heterosexual man was utterly compelling throughout. The actor was completely at one with his material. The audience rivetted to their seats from start to finish.

The production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins I attended was by UK company Through Windows. Many of the musicals on at the Fringe are by visiting US high school groups, one of which was presenting another production of this same musical. In fact there are a staggering number of musicals presented within the Fringe, most with minimalist staging and a small band, as was the case with this production. The performances were uneven, though some were approaching a professional standard, and the material is of such quality that it was still a wholly enjoyable and engaging show - prophetic in its exposure of the dark underbelly of the American dream.

The next day began with Lough/Rain by Real Circumstance company. This was from the more professional end of the Fringe, blending two new scripts which portray a couple's relationship, one before and one after the man has had a car accident which left him severely disabled. It was solid new writing, impressively acted (if a bit sombre!). A complete contrast then to dash to a hilarious new UK musical about an airline cabin crew, Jet Set Go. This one hour long show had more laughs and more feel-good factor than almost any musical I've seen - it well deserved the excellent word of mouth that was seeing every performance sell out. Remarkably the company were all graduating students of Bristol University, and the work specially written for them. I say remarkably, because these were some of the most assured and totally engaging musical comedy performances I've ever seen, and the material was wonderful. The audience were in raptures from the catchy opening number onwards, and it was the kind of show that leaves you smiling and humming the tunes for the rest of the day.

Again a total change - as is the nature of Fringe-going - to head to probably the most professional and prestigious Fringe venue, The Traverse, and the critically acclaimed production of The New Electric Ballroom written and directed by Enda Walsh. I loved his earlier script 'Disco Pigs' and this was equally mesmerising in its intense and poetic use of language. It was an absurdist work that felt like an instant classic, opening with a five minute torrent of words spoken into the corner of a room. There was something timeless about this tale of three sisters who rarely leave their claustrophobic little home in a coastal Irish town, and only get visited by the man who delivers the fish. The same story of a fateful evening in the 1960s when two of the sisters attended a rock singer's concert is told in different ways. I found it exciting and affecting, but it's divided audiences - at least eight people walked out during the performance I was attending.

My fourth show for that day was the other presented by Australia's Three to a Room, Mommie and the Minister. This was a late night, high camp melodrama. A visual mix between John Waters and Tim Burton, it featured a drag queen 'Mommie Dearest' mother who keeps her two children locked in the basement for their entire lives until a painting of a siamese cat incites mutiny. It should have been fabulous, but there's a fine line between the camp and the contrived with this sort of material, and it left the audience cold despite some good performances.

The next day began with a visit to a wonderful exhibition of installations by the Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at The Fruitmarket Gallery - the website features a short video of some of the exhibition. I'd never heard of these artists, but these were the most theatrical and accomplished installations I've seen. Despite none of them involving live performers, one of the main themes of their work is constructing audience experiences - and it certainly felt like theatre.

One of the works featured a fully automated hut full of old record players. You hear a monologue spoken by the opera lover who hides out there and sound effects and lighting changes give the impression of him moving around the space, changing records over etc. Another installation placed you in a cinema wearing headphones which made it seem like the person beside you was whispering things in your ear during the film - until a psycho starts shooting people in the cinema!

Most impressive was an attic filled with the detroitus of a person's presence, such as half-eaten food, a slept in bed, notebooks and curious little arrangements of found objects. As you move around, certain positions trigger recorded voices that gradually build up a local legend about a black pool into which people disappear... and gradually different layers of reading the contents of the room become accessible. It's hugely stimulating work, very akin to promenade theatre. My art-viewing session continued at the Scottish National Gallery, where an excellent exhibition showed an outstanding collection of French Impressionist paintings alongside the works of contemporary Scottish painters who had been influenced by them.

Next it was back to Musicals @ George Square, the multi-venue dedicated entirely to presenting musicals, to watch the other musical production presented by the company behind 'Jet Set Go' : 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change'.This was another slick production, if a little formulaic, yet still generated lots of laughs. The fact that three different productions of this musical are on within the Fringe give you some idea of just how many musicals are on offer in the Festival.

I was a little disappointed in the next show,
The Exquisite Corpse, which used the premise of interlinking vignettes by five Welsh writers being performed in whatever order the audience selected. It was an interesting experiment, but didn't have enough interlinking to feel rewarding to me.

The next show was participatory theatre, but of a rather adult version. Office Party was the most challenging show I saw in the Festival - partially because it seemed to be encouraging drunken debauchery with no host responsibility. About 150 people entered a large hall and were split into office departments, each led by a character actor. The character interactions I had expected were rare, with a series of party entertainments and inter-departmental competitions making up most of the show. Many of these involved entertainers gradually taking all of their clothes off, regardless of whether they begin as a cabaret singer or department head. I was genuinely shocked by events such as an audience member starting to masturbate onstage, but then vomiting and being removed by security. I'm not sure if finding out he was an audience plant makes it any better or not! I wasn't sure what to make of the show at first, but most people have been revelling in the anarchy and audacity of it, and there's certainly a place for theatre which calls the rules of society into question.

Back in more comfortably familiar territory, Nimbus Productions' Edges was a witty song cycle about relationships. Its young American writers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have been hailed as one of Broadway's biggest hopes, and it's clear why. Songs about Facebook, finding out your boyfriend is gay, and the stage of dating when the L word is forbidden territory, were all as cleverly composed as they were authentically truthful to the modern dating experience.

My final half day featured more art viewing in the stunning permanent collection of Scotland's National Art Gallery. It would have been easy to spend several further days exploring the art exhibitions on around the Festival alone, which included a retrospective of Tracy Emin's work and an exhibition of Vanity Fair celebrity portraits. I imagine all too many Fringe visitors never get anywhere near the visual art on display. Then it was off to a talk on site specific theatre by Ben Harrison of Scottish company Grid Iron Theatre. He's clearly a very interesting theatre-maker, who has been working in the Middle East on several site responsive projects. His talk focussed on the ethics of making theatre within a war-torm community, which was fascinating. Most of the session was given over to a female actor from Beirut who performed excerpts of her show about a woman who shelters from bombings by living in a toilet cubicle. It was a startling reality check about the conditions under which some theatremakers are working today. As they said, whatever project a person was working on was consciously the one they were prepared to be remembered for, considering that they might perish before they got to make another.

And on that sobering thought, I left Edinburgh to return to London. The diversity of my experiences at the Fringe were quite typical I would imagine. The buzz of the Fringe really does make it a place where you can be stimulated by all sorts of new ideas and approaches to theatre. It's an exciting place for new talent to be discovered, and equally for theatregoers to broaden their tastes by sampling from the biggest theatrical buffet in the world.

Image: The Gilded Balloon - one of Edinburgh's many Fringe venues with queues outside.

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Feel free to get in touch with any questions (or if you're planning a London visit and want some theatre recommendations) to jamesstuarthadley@gmail.com

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01/09/09