Here is your daily guide to the biggest arts festival in the world, with Monday’s Fringe picks taking audiences from digital burnout to a real Cold War bunker.
There is comedy, a one-woman dark drama and an experimental world premiere staged underground.
I bought a flip phone
Panos Kandunias brings a funny, heartfelt look at digital burnout to ZOO Playground.
Charlie is fed up with his iPhone, unanswered messages and the sense that everyone else’s life is better than his. For his 27th birthday, he decides an old-school flip phone might be the answer—but disconnecting turns out to be rather more complicated.
ZOO Playground 2, 3.35pm, 7–30 August, excluding 19 and 26 August. Information and tickets
Tiny Apocalypses …that led me here
For a genuinely unusual Fringe experience, Tiny Apocalypses is staged inside Barnton Bunker, a once-abandoned nuclear bunker on the edge of the city.
The experimental new work follows Jean Paul as he attempts to make sense of grief, loss and saying goodbye. It combines theatre, spoken-word storytelling, puppetry, live music, projections and hand-painted art in a setting built to survive the end of the world.
Barnton Bunker, 7pm, Monday 10 August. Information and tickets
This Is How I Got Arrested…
Azaelia Slade’s one-woman dark comedy has perhaps the most arresting title of the day: This Is How I Got Arrested (after smuggling drugs across the border but never actually getting caught with any drugs).
The show follows working-class youngster Sophie, whose search for fun spins from an account of her upbringing into a drug-fuelled escapade. Told against a ticking clock, it promises fourth-wall-breaking comedy, mounting mischief and a few unravelled lies.
ZOO Playground 3, 7.40pm, 7–30 August. Information and tickets
Find full listings and tickets at edfringe.com
