The baby girl came and visited me at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where I’ve been working this month, and we saw a few shows together. Here are the reviews I wrote about them, all originally published in Fest Magazine.

Wriggle Around the World by Recitals for Wrigglers

Playing at Stockbridge Church until 25 Aug, times vary

Wriggle Around the World is a mighty civilized way to start your day at the Fringe. Even the presence of a dozen or so under-fives—this show’s target audience, to be fair—does little to mar the enjoyment of listening to two talented musicians playing a selection of short classical works in an informal environment.

Cellist Clea Friend and violinist Louise Bevan clearly know their audience, their programme mainly comprising upbeat numbers—a Scottish reel, Brahms’s ‘Hungarian Dance No. 6’—that keep the little ones entertained. Introductions to the pieces presents the show as a journey, including travel by boat, horse and train to the various countries represented, but this narrative is loose enough for the chitchat not to feel laboured. The story of The Gingerbread Man—broken up with extracts of Bach and Bevan—offers some pleasing variety to proceedings.

Circulating photographs of the various composers doesn’t add much, given the age of the majority of the audience, but the appearance of a suitcase full of rattles and noise-makers towards the end of the concert is a hit. Recitals for Wrigglers—Wriggle Around the World is one of two shows from these performers, alongside The Lion and the Mouse—won’t be changing anyone’s world this Fringe. But that’s not what this type of show is about – Wriggle Around the World is a simple format, done well. It’s no surprise it’s doing well at the box office – so it should be.

MamaBabaMe by Starcatchers and Curious Seed

Playing at Pleasance at EICC until 17 Aug, times vary

There’s as much for the parents as for the babies in MamaBabaMe. This beautiful show by Scottish dance companies Starcatchers and Curious Seed presents everyday moments in the lives of mothers and babies, Nerea Gurrutxaga and Hayley Earlam rolling, toddling, gurgling and cuddling to an atmospheric live sound track performed by cellist Robin Mason.

The set, by visual artist Yvonne Buskie, is immediately calming—an important quality for a show aimed at the under-threes and performed smack in the middle of both morning and afternoon naptimes—its colours, textures and shapes easy on the eye and pleasing to the touch.

Christine Devaney’s choreography evokes the mother-child relationship with real heart yet never falls into sentimentality. Gurrutxaga and Earlam portray both mother and baby, switching back and forth again and again in a way that suggests theories of child development that describe how babies ultimately come to mentally separate from their mothers and develop their own sense of self – or perhaps I’m reading too much into it.

Interaction with the babies in the audience is limited, which is a shame, because the little there is—including the balloon free-for-all at the end—goes down a storm. Each time the dancers reach out to us over the low cloud-like barrier that delineates their playing space, it feels like we’re being invited in to play, rather than just witness this jewel of a performance from the outside. It’s a feeling that bears repeating.

Kaput by Koral Chandler

Playing at Assembly George Square Gardens until 26 Aug, 1:30pm

Slapstick is hard to get right, but amiable clown Tom Flanagan makes it look easy. A hapless projectionist attempting to screen a movie, he’s a hit with both grownups and little ones (the show is suitable for children age three and upwards) at this afternoon performance. So realistic is his tomfoolery, in fact, that my little girl bursts into tears every time he breaks something, falls down or bumps his head, and I spend a lot of the show reassuring her that’s he’s only pretending.

Flanagan has a lovely way with the audience, his amiable manner garnering no shortage of volunteers for the various fun bits of interaction, and a near constant rumble of chuckles that frequently breaks out into raucous applause.

A few impressive acrobatic tricks punctuate the performance but the main draw here is classic clowning with a silent movie vibe, including an inspired nod to one of Buster Keaton’s most famous stunts.

The only bit that strikes a bum note is when Flanagan romances a woman from the crowd, forced to recreate the plot of the film he’s failed to screen because the projector is belching smoke and the screen is lying in tatters on the floor. It’s all very mild-mannered but demanding physical affection from an unwilling participant feels like the wrong message to be giving young audiences, even in jest.

The other problem with this section is that it’s anticlimactic after the wonderful chaos of the preceding 40 minutes, slowing the action right down when Flanagan would do better to build to a glorious finish. Some aspects of clowning tradition are better left in the past.

Shhh… The Elves Are Very Shy by Ipdip Theatre

Playing at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh – John Hope Gateway until 26 Aug,  times vary

Scottish early years theatre company Ipdip are back at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh with another gently interactive show for the youngest audiences. This year they’re performing inside the visitors’ centre rather than in the gardens themselves which, while a sensible move given the unpredictably of Edinburgh’s weather, loses some of the uniqueness of their previous offerings.

Shhh… The Elves Are Very Shy takes the form of a lesson in “elfology” from mild-mannered “elfologist” Dr Faye Greenwood, the aim being to put Greenwood’s titular tiny friends sufficiently at their ease so they’ll come out and play. Writer and performer Charlotte Allan is approachable and engaging as Dr Greenwood, making sure that every young audience member feels included as she cooks up sweet-smelling bubbles to tempt the elves out of their hiding place, leads some music making and supervises a stickering session. The little poems that act as introductions to each of these sections, however, are overly twee and not always clearly articulated.

The kids are having fun during all this sensory shenanigans but the show’s pièce de résistance is the eventual appearance of the elves themselves via a clever bit of video in a box made by Paul Kozinski. It’s such an effective trick that my toddler spends the walk back to the bus stop through the gardens genuinely hunting for Greenwood’s little buddies. We don’t find them – I want my money back.