Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Raiders of the Local Adventure
Agency for Absurd Agency
Genre: Comedy, Interactive, Theatre
Venue: Meeting Point at Information Centre at Holyrood Park
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Raiders of the Local Adventure is an interactive expedition that takes you on a ramble around Holyrood Park in search of a lost artifact, sending up a number of well known pulp adventure stories along the way. Cue betrayal, danger, meddling Englishmen, cryptic clues and much, much more in this engagingly absurd adventure.
Review
A young man clad in a pair of interesting trousers and a dashing chapeau comes bounding across the courtyard at the information centre for Holyrood Park, the only tourist place that seems to be shuttered during what is approaching the point of peak Fringe madness.
Why, it’s none other than Milo Snatch, an aspiring member of the Adventuring Secretive Society, or Ass for short. He’s here to take a select group (very select this Tuesday lunchtime) of wannabe sleuths on a mission to find the Ominous Legendary Design Container Restraining Ancient Power, or Old Crap for short.
You can see where this is going – acronyms and commedia dell’arte on speed. Anyway, the Old Crap is buried somewhere up in them there hills to the south in Holyrood Park. Snatch and the wildly eccentric Dr Australia Grones (a renowned archaeologist and Chief Ass need us to help him find it. All our daring duo have to go on is a bunch of cryptic clues left by Lord Groff, which they found on the blog of his daughter, Clara Groff.
And we have to move fast, for that dastardly, dangerous demon, Professor Williamshire Crofley, armed and legged (cue another groan from audience), is also on the lookout for the Old Crap, although in his case apparently sans clues.
Right, that’s the premise for what turns out to be an hour of joyfully entertaining silliness, with a good dose of the absurd and a soupçon of surrealism lobbed in for good measure. It’s full on interactive and immersive theatre from the get-go. Within five minutes the audience (with the odd nudge from our two performers) are working as one to solve the intricately worded and cunningly ingenious clues, each of which requires an encouraging amount of thinking and looking around but are never discouragingly obtuse enough for us to lose interest. Or lose the plot. If there is one.
Dodging the cyclists piling down the Holyrood hill, we move purposefully through the park as we scour the horizon for something that solves the current puzzle and hopefully takes us on the next one. Our two performers are engaging and eccentric in equal measure, staying resolutely within character despite the occasional unexpected intrusion from wandering members of the public and rocks lingering in surprising places.
At one point the group divides, one taking the high road, the other the low road (yep, more groaning in order here, folks), each following a different set of clues. It’s a clever move, each group exchanging their different experiences at our seamless rendezvous about ten minutes later, further bonding what has become a very happy little sleuthing team.
Finally, after a short pull up towards Arthur’s Seat that affords a magnificent view of the city (bathed, unusually, in brilliant sunshine), we hit the denouement – crazy, comedic and clownish in equal measure and with a completely unexpected outcome.
This is an exquisitely crafted bit of immersive, interactive theatre, with quite a bit of improv lobbed in for good measure, given the vagaries thrown up by what was a small but genuinely enthusiastic and wholly engaged audience. One can’t say much more than that for fear of spoilers but trust me, it’s engaging, compelling and fun.
Brainchild of Andrew Agress (spiffingly splendid as Dr Grone), able support was provided by his sidekick Connor Wahrman, as the gushingly enthusiastic Snatch. Character portrayal was faultless and was the secret to creating the right atmosphere. Whilst there was a clear storyline that kept the event tight and focused, our two performers willingly strayed from the core theme to follow up on audience suggestions and comments – a clever way of locking us in to the adventure.
It’s a great way to spend an hour, tramping around the hills in the fresh Edinburgh air, meeting a bunch of new people and behaving eccentrically. This is a real “Hidden Gem” of a show, literally, as you need to do a bit of your own sleuthing just to find the venue at the bottom of the Royal Mile. But it’s well worth the effort and with audiences kept to a maximum of 12(ish), you’re guaranteed to be part of the action. So, grab your fedora and walking shoes and head on down there!
