Posted by Matt Raistrick

In the month of August, Edinburgh is without doubt the most exciting place to be in the UK. My second fringe with LOV was everything I expected it to be and more, in a word, mesmerising. On arrival in Edinburgh we got in our food shopping for the week and got ready to see our first show, Lloyd Griffith: Great Grimsby's Big Turn On. We arrived at The Cellar in Pleasance Courtyard which was an intimate venue perfect for stand up comedy. Lloyd was charming and hilarious throughout, a personal highlight was his impressions of different types of sticky tape (you had to be there!).

Day 2 was a busy but brilliant day with 4 shows scheduled in including a 3 hour music gig! The highlight for me on day 2 though had to be Cell. Cell was a beautiful and delicate puppetry performance by theatre companies Smoking Apples and Little Cauliflower. The story was all about Ted's (the puppet) journey with Motor Neurone Disease and the positive attitude he took towards his condition. The piece was both heart-warming and heart-breaking at times and left me feeling like I had really experienced something special. A particular part I was impressed with was the way they conveyed the passing of time, using lights and projections to fill in the gaps of what was happening between main scenes in the story.

Day 3 was a particularly special day and probably pipped it to my favourite day of my visit to the fringe. So many great shows were scheduled in for me on day 3 and I feel like I have to give a mention to Bruce which was an incredibly clever piece. It's really quite difficult to summarise Bruce, two brilliant voice actors and a crazy sponge head involved in a bizarre story of time travel was about the gist of it, and I loved it. The amount of work on their act and syncronisation was very commendable and I thoroughly enjoyed the show. A little easier to describe is That's the way aha-aha Joe Lycett, which, straight off the bat, is a brilliant name for a stand up comedy show. Joe was just brilliant and was actually my pick of the whole week, he had his audience and he never let them go. I don't think I have ever laughed as much at a comedy show and it was so relaxed, simply just a joy to behold.

I saw so many great shows throughout the four days LOV spent at the fringe that I couldn't possibly name them all, we had a fantastic time and have a lot of great shows to present back to the Lincolnshire Venue Managers!