For the thousands of people coming up to perform in Edinburgh every year, the return home after a busy three weeks can be a very lonely one. Going from spending 24 hours a day with your fellow cast members, often sharing a cramped room with around a million others, to sitting by yourself in a bedsit in London can take some adapting to.

Us reviewers don’t share that problem.

We walk around in a little one person-sized bubble. Wandering (OK, sprinting) from one theatre to the next, we blub, giggle or struggle to stay awake by ourselves during show after show and then sit alone late into the night writing up reviews.

This all means that when we do find someone to talk to, it’s hard to hold back. Over the weekend, friends had to put up with me turning every anecdote into, “oh, that reminds me of this show I saw…” - which, as it happens, was of very limited interest to anyone who had not seen them.

For us Stagers then, coming to the end of our list of shows to review means a gradual return to being able to conduct a normal conversation. Gone is the guilt of spending too long over a cup of tea in the kitchen when we should be hunting down cast lists. Last night’s conversation even strayed from shows we’ve seen so far. Tonight’s might even stray to something that has happened outside Edinburgh… There’s no holding us back.

I have a friend coming up to visit Edinburgh with a teenage daughter so she asks what they should try and see together. This is an interesting question because Edinburgh has traditionally catered for clearly defined age groups - children’s theatre in the mornings, and over-18 rated stuff late at night. The slots in between could be hit and miss - and it was pot luck whether or not parents and offspring could sit together in an auditorium without squirming.

Funnily enough, here at the Stage flat we have noticed several things about this year’s Edinburgh that set it quite apart from the previous years:

• one most talked about show amongst adults is White, officially aimed at 2-4 year olds,
• there is at least one children’s show actually happening at 11pm,
• teenagers are seemingly the most catered for group at this year’s Fringe.

With shows such as I, Claudia, Teenage Riot, No Child, Operation Greenfield, A Midsummer Night’s Madness all featuring either teenage protagonists or targeting that age group, no parent and teenage offspring will be stuck for choice. The only question will be whether they go in together or separately.

Teenage Riot has certainly divided audiences down the middle, and rather appropriately the age of the audience does seem to be a factor. With such controversial shows as Teenage Riot, The Author by Tim Crouch and Martin Creed’s dance piece earlier in the month - all of which provoked unprecedented walkouts from the Traverse - this forty-odd year old venue certainly seems to be going through its second youth.

Another shocking thing we’ve noticed is that this year, for the first time in years, we do not have the usual unofficial nudity list going on our notice board. None has been spotted. Maybe because the Naked Brunch took it upon itself to cater for that particular theatrical genre this year? In it audience nudity is required too, and it comes under ‘events’ and ‘tasting’, rather than strictly speaking ‘theatre’. As opposed to the late night’s children’s theatre, this one falls into a morning slot, but parents might be relieved to know that under 18s are not allowed.

Coming up to Edinburgh has forced me to be organised in a way I rarely am at home. In order to ensure I see all the productions I need to review for The Stage I’ve actually had to resort to making a spreadsheet, with lots of little columns for venue, start time and so forth - and, believe me, my creation, with its fairly straightforward bi-colour coding, is nothing compared to the detailed documents some of my colleagues have produced.

But while such efforts are necessary for avoiding stressful venue-to-venue dashes and factoring in enough time to pick up your tickets, they’re also somewhat antithetical to the spirit of the fringe. They drain all the spontaneity out of the experience. With your days so tightly mapped out in advance, there’s less room for the random, the unexpected, the rash snap decision.

We’re midway through the Festival, give or take a day or two, and so far something was missing.

I’ve seen some very good shows, and a few very bad ones, and lots that fall somewhere in between. But I hadn’t had that glorious experience that I come to Edinburgh for, the very very special show that leaves you on a contact high and makes all the drudgery worth it.

Yesterday I saw my usual quota of four shows. One was terrible, a lifeless performance of a dreary text. One was a flawed work that showed considerable evidence of talent, suggesting that perhaps the next thing from these people will be worth looking for.

And two were wonderful.

The first was Caroline Horton’s modest but enchanting little solo show You’re Not Like Other Girls Chrissy. Horton, whose performance as a ten-year-old child won our hearts last year, plays a young French woman who becomes engaged to an Englishman in 1940 or so, only to be separated from him for the duration of the war.

You can read Nick Awde’s review elsewhere on this site; for me, the minute Horton walked on, looking like a cross between a spinster librarian and a gallic Betty Boop, I was hooked, and she smoothly drew me into her half-cartoon world so that I believed everything and felt everything and wished the character nothing but happiness forever.

And then Horton played her trump card, with an ending I won’t give away, that sent me and the rest of the audience floating out on a little pink cloud of happiness that the bustle of the Pleasance Courtyard couldn’t disturb.

And then the same evening I finally caught up with Grid Iron’s Decky Does A Bronco, which I managed to miss ten years ago.

I’ve been critical of Grid Iron, and of site-specific theatre in general, in the past, never really convinced that any of the shows I’ve seen couldn’t have been done just as effectively on a proscenium stage.

But Decky, which is about nine-year-old boys in a playground, really has to be seen in a playground, not just because that’s easier than putting a set of swings on a stage, but because watching the characters in their native habitat helps tremendously in letting us see past the fact that these are adult actors and fully enter the world of the kids.

For me, however much I was touched by the plot, which is about the moment the boys lose their Edenic innocence, the real joys of the evening came from being transported back to a world in which fluid attention spans mean fighting one moment can instantly morph into playing the next, or twelve-year-olds are Big Kids to be idolised.

I came away knowing not just that I had seen an excellent play excellently performed, but that I had had a unique experience I couldn’t have had in a conventional theatre.

Two in one day. O.K. Bring on the lifeless plays and unfunny comics. I can handle anything.

You can divide opinion on audience interaction very neatly into two categories: those who like it, and those who actively dislike it. I have always fitted very comfortably into the latter of the groups. I go to the theatre to see others performing.

Despite this strong aversion, my 2010 Fringe has so far included getting my fingers licked in the dark (Wolf, Just The Tonic), cawing like a cockatoo (Jungle Book: The Next Chapter, Guilded Balloon), singing a kid’s song about a decomposing moose (Bec Hill, Guilded Balloon) and getting married (Your Dream Wedding, Assembly). And if I’m totally honest, none of them were actually that bad.

The wedding was by far the most surreal. I was zipped into a dress (apparently the first girl to do so, all previous ‘brides’ had been men), “glided” down the aisle, another audience member did a reading and I got showered with confetti. My parents were pretty upset I had not invited them.

All this has led to a bit of a crisis of confidence. Am I now an interaction-lover? Should I start sitting in the first row of shows, raising my hand and bouncing up and down on my seat every time someone asks for volunteers?

It only took someone to tell me about Sex Idiot (Zoo Roxy) to put me firmly back in my participation-hating place. Cutting of body hair to contribute to Bryony Kimmings’ curly moustache is definitely about 17 steps too far.

Woke up this morning. Went to see Monkey Poet’s Welcome to Afghanistan! (tiptop stuff) at the Sin Club and Lounge with a mate. Beforehand I’d bought us both an early lunch at a Grassmarket café — meaning Not Much Change from 20 quid, but enough change to deservedly go to the Monkey Poet bucket as we filed out (even us skinflint critics support the free crowd).

After seeing the excellent two-hander Firing Blanks at the Underbelly, I went on by myself to Roxy where the two similarly excellent shows Photo 51 and The City and Iris meant that I’d had an unparalleled day of viewing - no duds.

But no money and I was dying to refuel with coffee and whatever food might be to hand. No cash machines around the Roxy Art House, but inspiration! Rooting around the bottom of my backpack produced a single, solitary quid. Glad that I was richer, sad it wouldn’t buy me much. What does a quid get you in Edinburgh?

Off to Nicholson Street to the cashpoint by the Tesco. Long queue. Typical, I grumble as I try to mark my spot in the queue without clogging up the relentless flow of pedestrians. A guy struts past. My radar’s alerted. I look behind, a burly bouncer is pointing at him. “Don’t you move!” he yells, pointing at the guy. The guy turns sedately at this, smiles and drawls at the bouncer: “You know I hit him. Called me a cock-sucker. The faggot.” I promptly call the guy something totally appropriate and totally unprintable. He ignores me and starts walking away from where I could see a man slumped in blood on the pavement with a concerned crowd gathering. No sirens in the distance.

Now tripping up the self-confessed assailant and holding him until the police turned up didn’t really seem an option because of the bouncer’s no show and the deliberate disinterest emanating from the rest of the street. But mainly the bouncer’s no show, i.e. he hadn’t gone anywhere near the guy.

So I did the next best thing: I followed him through the piles of pedestrians. A second later he’s swivelled round and waiting to know what I’m doing. I have nothing to hide: “Following you, you git.” “Why?” “So the police know where you are.” To cut a long story short, we end up round the corner in Infirmary Street where suddenly there’s no people, I’m feeling just a teeny bit isolated and he’s boldly advancing on me with snarl on his face. Before I can calculate whether I have enough time to take the bag off my back, unzip it, remove the piles of press releases, extract the laptop and bash him over the head with it (possibly not) the rozzers have arrived. One look at their man and they had him handcuffed. Shortly after that he was face-down on the ground still snarling. Shortly after that, bundled in what looked like the dog compartment of a community-style police vehicle. Good. Poor dogs.

Statement duly given to a very pleasant policewoman (“So you’re on holiday here in Edinburgh?” “Not exactly.”) Thus relieved, I went back, checked that the injured man - still no ambulance - knew that his assailant had been caught, returned to the cashpoint. Bollocks. The queue longer than ever and I had a show to catch for 8pm. Five minutes away. So off I ran, over the Royal Mile where the cashpoint queues were even longer. On the other side of the bridge silently ran the gauntlet of five (sober) Glaswegians snarling the word “twat” at me for reasons best known to themselves.

Got to the Voodoo Lounge just as John Otway was starting his Otway: He’s Really Free! show. Halfway through the proceedings I spotted a 2p piece on the floor and quietly scooped it up. The mayhem filled space was packed to the rafters - and easily the most enjoyable show of the Fringe so far. So I’m sorry, John, that all I could leave in your bucket was £1.02. Still, you gave 100 per cent and so did I!

I was sitting in an Edinburgh International Festival show which shall remain nameless because it was utterly appalling and so doesn’t need the publicity. The guy seated next to me looks vaguely familiar, something to with the theatre I seem to recall. He’s concentrating on the show.

Except every time someone coughs, fidgets or rustles he turns his head sharply in their direction, glares into the darkness and then just as sharply turns his head back to the stage.

This is Edinburgh, damp and rainy in August. There’s lots of old people who go to the International shows and they always break out the boiled sweets halfway through. It’s what happens in the stalls and balconies, as naturally and surely as what’s going on up there on the stage.

And let me tell you, five hundred old people coughing in my ear, fidgeting in their bags and rustling their sweet packets would never, ever be as irritating as that self-centred idiot snapping his angry head around the auditorium as the rest of us are trying to get on with the show.

This week at McEwan Hall there took place a large unruly meeting - or ‘consultation’ as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society would have it. It was the final of four such gatherings dotted around the country intended to harvest our opinions on the future constitution and form of the Society, much in need of an overhaul as its own board admits.

I suspect most who were there would agree that not much emerged from this particular consultation, punctuated as it was by the usual barracking from the usual critics of the board which wasn’t much helped by the presence of an independent ‘facilitator’ - he should have been a referee but ended up compering possibly the largest unticketed hecklers’ show in the Fringe. Nevertheless, for a moment there Pleasance founder Christopher Richardson was a beacon of hope and reason and, although not expected to play any prominent role at that particular moment, I was impressed by the efforts of Society director Kath Maitland and unflappable board member Pip Utton to bring this unscripted show to a dignified finale of sorts.

Still, it was encouraging to see so many people there. You don’t have to be a member of the Society to make your voice heard and indeed you must make your voice heard. Anyway, not many people have ever bothered over the years to become Fringe Society members, preferring instead to vent off unfettered at the annual August AGM. And this year you can’t become a member in any case because the Society has frozen membership until next November (well, that’s how they vaguely put it) although on August 20 they are expected to vote on how the new constitution should look - and that includes on who is and isn’t eligible to be a member.

So get on down to the Fringe Annual General Meeting on Saturday August 21 to hear the results and how the new constitution affects you. It’s at Fringe Central in Crichton Street. It’s free, non-ticketed and on page 160 of the programme so you’ve no excuse. Make your voice heard and presence felt. It is your Fringe and, whether you’re a performer, promoter, punter, front of house, journalist or venue owner, the Society represents us all. Its arcane structure as a charity and rules from a bygone age may make it less transparent than one would wish, but change is in the air. Be sure to be part of it.

One of the delights of the fringe is seeing new artists - playwrights, directors, designers, performers - who may not be fully in control of their skills but who have obvious talent that can only grow with experience.

One of the frustrations of the fringe is occasionally watching such people shoot themselves in the foot.

In just a week I’ve seen too many directors make too many basic errors of the sort that seem almost perverse, as if some dark impulse drove them to sabotage their own work. So I’d like to offer some reminders of basic principles they may have skimmed over in the early chapters of their How-To books. (To protect the innocent and assuage the guilty I’ll stipulate that not all the cases below come from this year’s festival.)

1. The audience should be able to see the actors.

All things considered, it’s usually not a good idea to put the set between the actors and the audience. Granted, most fringe playing spaces aren’t ideal, but if you happen to find yourself in a room with a flat seating space and no raised stage, you might want to rethink having a key scene played with the actors lying on the floor. Dark shadows and smoke effects may have been quite atmospheric in your white-walled rehearsal room, but reconsider their use in the dark, airless space you’re stuck in. If you’re performing in the round, move people about so they don’t spend the play with their backs to the same half of the audience.

*2. The audience should be able to hear the actors. *

Your actress’s tiny voice may have seemed sweet in rehearsal, but if you’re playing in a room holding more than 50, consider whether she’ll be audible beyond the fifth row. If you’re putting a mic on a singer check it carefully in your first previews to be sure it isn’t muddying his voice or overpowering the room. Echoes and dead spots in some venues may warrant rethinking whether you really want that actor to shout so much.

3. The audience should be able to understand the actors.

If your production is all or partly in a language other than English, do let us know in advance. If one or more of your actors have very heavy accents, do extra work with them to reduce the barrier. And for Pete’s sake don’t go out of your way to create problems - earlier this year in London every reviewer complained of one show that the actors affected ethnic accents so thick as to be unintelligible. I’m all for equal opportunity, and a play can probably get by with one actor who lisps. But if you’re doing a Greek tragedy and half your cast is talking about Oediputh and Polynitheth, you’re not going to generate the effect you want. Some performers whose elocution is fine when they speak go all open vowels when they sing, and generally speaking an actor talking to a wall is less likely to be understood than one facing vaguely in our direction.

*4. The audience should be able to tell who’s who. *

If a demonstrably young actor is playing an older character, give us some clue, so we’re not startled to have someone call him Grandpa midway through the plot. If an actress is playing a man or an actor a woman, give us some hint from the start and don’t make us wait to hear a surprising gender-specific pronoun. If your actors are doubling roles, do something to change their voices or appearances so we can guess who they’re being this time. If characters are meant to be related, it would be ideal to have them resemble each other, but at least let them have vaguely similar accents.

*5. The audience should be able to tell what’s going on. *

Or at least, pace Harold Pinter, as much of what’s going on as the playwright wants them to understand. If you’re going to edit a text, make sure you don’t edit out essential facts or continuity. If you’re going to employ nonrealistic performance modes, or cut-and-paste the text, or just use the play as a jumping-off point for your own creativity, then it would be wise to choose a play that the audience can be assumed to come in knowing - an experimental non-linear Macbeth is more likely to succeed than a similarly treated Timon of Athens.

Thank you for listening. I think I’ll lie down now.

It’s Friday 13th, so I hope I can be excused for a bit of a moan on my first Stage blog appearance this year. Usually Friday 13th has been a good day for me so I have been looking forward to this one. But when I woke up this morning I was greeted by unmistakable signs of a cold.

Health-wise this Edinburgh started on a low note for me anyway. Clutching a course of antibiotics for a previously established infection, I spent the entire first weekend under a strict alcohol ban. There was nausea and afternoon naps, and getting drenched and another cold scare early on which I managed to fight off. Then, as a part of a strategy, I purchased a mac and resolved to build yoga into my weekly routine, especially seeing as Bristo Yoga is so conveniently placed near all major venues in the Fringe.

Yesterday. Late after midnight. Intense but worthy little play with four in the cast and five of us in the audience. Mid-show someone lets one off.

A silent one, thankfully. Definitely a beery one. Chemical. One of the ones that lingers. And it did. It wasn’t me but since the audience is dispersed around the tiny space with me seated at the epicentre, I feel a slight tugging of attention in my direction away from the engaging polemic onstage. So what do I do?

“Not appropriate!” I can hear our blog administrator scream (Oh how poorly you know me — Ed). But this is Edinburgh where there are so many little tics of quirky fringe etiquette to be honoured that cover all aspects of daily life here, honed over the ages, unlikely to be encountered elsewhere. Like knowing when to graciously accept a flier offered on the Royal Mile or when to hurry on by. When deciding upon the most sensitive time to open your brolly outside in the rain at, say, Decky Does a Bronco, thus obliterating the view for at least five spectators behind you. When smiling politely upon being informed that the show was at 11am and not 11pm. When negotiating aged relatives up for the week through the nightclub/pub inspired pavement vomit en route to the Traverse as if it were the most natural thing in the world. When remembering not to sit next to the air-conditioner in the Wildman Room. Little, insignificant things like these that make our significant Edinburgh world go round just a little more smoothly.

And so I found myself wondering whether such a situation, thankfully rare in the theatre world, demands a particular etiquette and, if so, what should it be. It’s the lingering bit that got to me, not the fact that everyone else (aside from the disgracefully silent perpetrator) thought it was me who originated the emanation. Could one edge oneself gently away from the danger zone, assuming one has the seating space. Or should one brave it out, for fear of disrupting the players (this was a very small space indeed). Thinking a little further, if one is in fact the perpetrator, then should one be commended for at least not unleashing a deafening honker in the middle of that sweet soliloquy. Perhaps a short soft coded cough to indicate contrition, and then we can all move on. Without doubt the actors must have picked up on it, but you’d never know because, unlike audiences, they’re trained to ignore distractions. Even, of course, if it was one of them who supplied it.

I have just had a poem written for me. This has never happened before and while it was not spontaneous outflowing of verse - I had to ask for it and supply my details - I am still rather excited about my ballpoint ode composed in a quarter hour on the Royal Mile.

Michelle Madsen (my poet) is one of several participating in the Poetry Takeaway which will be taking place outside the Tron on a number of afternoons during the Fringe. Amid the clotted crowds, the pushchair tangle of battered upside down maps and bemused faces, they are serving up words, bespoke, day-brightening. Some might sniff at the thought of verse made to carry out like an over-milked cappuccino or a kebab, but it’s a nice idea, a fun way of bringing poetry to people, and very much in keeping with the spirit of a festival that is, this year in particular, full of talented poets with shows of their own.

Tim Clare’s Death Drive (Zoo Roxy, 7pm) is an expert meshing of poetry and stand-up, intimate and energetic with ample space for ukulele-playing and psychic horses. Ross Sutherland’s The Three Stigmata of Pacman (Underbelly, 4.40pm) is full of exhilarating Perecian word play, some eerie video and a time capsule that looks an awful lot like a plastic, flip-top bin. Molly Naylor’s Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think of You (Zoo, 1.55pm) is more of an exercise in story telling, full of warmth and humour, that isn’t dominated by the fact that Naylor spends some of it discussing her experience of the London bombings (she was on one of the tube trains that was targeted), while Polarbear is on at the Forest Fringe later in the week with his spoken screenplay Return, previously seen at BAC.

There’s all manner of slam business going on at the Banshee Labyrinth (Dead Poets, in which a poet faces off with a hip hop artist is high on my list); Tim Key returns with his award-winning Slutcracker (Pleasance Dome, 12.15 am) next week and, from Friday, the overlord of the punk poets, John Cooper Clarke, the bard of Salford, will be in town for a week of performances.

Last night, I went in to see You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy at the Pleasance Courtyard. I had successfully scrunched myself up into a dark corner near the back where I can unobtrusively scribble, as I usually do. (There are, of course, those reviewers whose forte is instead to plonk themselves in the front row, press-pass flying high, legs akimbo, with mighty flourishes of the pen, craning forward on occasion as far as they can over the stage in search of further detail.)

Possibly falsely, I like to think I blend in with a minimum of distraction. (Although there was the time when an Edinburgh comic was working his way through the entire audience in search of interesting surnames. The spot caught me lurking and like a frozen rabbit I mumbled “Awde”. “Aha!” pounced the comic, “You’re a critic!” My response was neither professional nor sufficiently couth to reproduce here, but it brought the house down and, no doubt noting this, the comic referred to me as “Mr F*-Off” for the rest of the night. Thus warned, after the act so to speak, I now enter shows fearlessly armed with a pre-arranged (and confidential) pseudonym for use in similar occasions.)

Anyway, at the end of this engaging tale of a young Frenchwoman’s wait through the Second World War for her English fiancé, performed by Caroline Horton (a deserved nominee for ‘Best Solo Performance’ in last year’s Stage Awards for Acting Excellence), there was a palpable lump in the throat of every member of the packed Attic audience. As the lights came up, the elderly lady in the seat next-door dabs at her tears and, on seeing my notepad, asks kindly: “Are you a reviewer?” Rumbled. “Yes I am.” She smiles as she sniffs into her handkerchief: “Look at you! You must be the only one with a dry eye in the house. How do you do it?” “Madam,” I inform her gravely, “I may have the steely exterior of a hard-nosed critic but I assure you that inside I’m blubbing like the rest.” This was true, but I’m not so sure my newfound friend was in the least bit convinced at the surprise discovery that reviewers have hearts too.

Before heading up to Edinburgh last week, a wise fellow reviewer advised me to “pack the absolute minimum you can imagine surviving on, and then open the case and throw half of it out.”

Great advice, I thought, now please excuse me while I try to cram more flip flops and sun dresses into my wheelie suitcase.

Yes, I ridiculously over-packed - and yet I somehow still managed to not pack any of the right stuff.

So here are my top tips for you to ignore as you fill your bag with unnecessaries…