Mrs Fringereview Blogs Day 3: The Adventure

Mrs Fringereview Blogs Day 3: The Adventure 

In the swing of things now, finding my pace, making lots of notes and finding dry places to hide form the now signature Edinburgh rain. We have had our traditional meals at Chez Jules and Mother India, our routine married bicker while in the queue  (his fault of course) and our sweet making up. The air has cleared, the performers battle on and the crowds are enthusiastic despite the wet. I have found my perfect corner in my perfect cafe to write and think and people watch. Hot Earl Grey tea with a chocolate thing (carb loading for all that theatre show sitting) and I am in awe as always at the amount of energy, time, passion and persistence that productions up here put into their Edinburgh Fringe runs. It’s such a brave and risky thing to do and risk is important to move us all forward as a society as well as individually.

Today I have seen the fun we can have with risk, I have gone up good humoured on stage and went head to head in a marshmallow eating competition. I have seen a one man show that took us to space and back and watched a woman avoiding the elephant bump in the room in style with her huge round talent. One more show to see then I am having another early night and catching up on reviews.

There’s a delicate balance between applauding the effort and vulnerability of performers and theatre makers up here and actually recognising and shining the spotlight on good and exceptional work. It’s not easy to get right as a reviewer and even though he is my husband I think Mr Fringereview has set an impressive and important moral high ground in terms of objectivity when reviewing theatre. Fringereview has the most compassionate guidelines on how to critique work or give constructive feedback to the makers up here. We don’t publish damning, scathing reviews. We never have and never will. If something really can’t be reviewed or recommended then we offer private feedback to the company. A damming review can break much more than an Edinburgh run. Mr Fringereview led the way on this despite much opposition of his ideas he has stood firm in the fire of it all and I’m very proud of him. Just don’t tell him I said that (shh).