Skirt finished its run on Saturday having filled 95% of the seats available over the week and having garnered a four star review.  Thus it can claim success with all due modesty.

The Grads other show, Much Ado about Nothing, played to pretty full houses for most of the week as well, deservedly so, and is off next weekend to strut its stuff at The Dell in Stratford in the RSC's summer programme featuring amateur and community groups.  Let's hope the rain holds off.

A quick rundown of the stuff I have seen since the festivals kicked off:-

First Snow/Première Neige - a joint production by the National Theatre of Scotland and two Québecois companies.  About indentity both personal and national it was well received by the critics but I didn't much care for it.

Scottish Saxophone Academy -  their youth summer school presented a lunchtime concert in the superb acoustic of St. Mary's Cathedral.  They played a delighful variety of music extremely well and we had the additional pleasure of hearing the American saxophonist David Milne guesting with them.

The Antiscians - billed as being inspired by some fairy tale or other it might best have featured in the children's section of the Fringe programme.  A tale of two girls raised separately by a warlock/wolfman. One sleeps by day and learns to feel and be gentle.  The other sleeps at night and learns martial skills by day. They eventually meet, bond after initial distrust, learn they are the results of the warlock/wolfman's mating with a robin and deliver the unassailable moral message that difference is OK.  I should mention that one is black the other white.

Casanova Dreaming - a well staged, well directed, well acted, beautifully costumed show in which Casanova is visited by his much older self who in a series of vignettes warns him against the errors that await him and advises him to enter a monogamous marriage.  We know he doesn't of course. I can't say that I found the content of much interest.

Babyface - now this was archetypal Fringe bollocks.  A young woman did a lot of jumping about, birled a baby's high chair over her head, made baby noises, squished baby lotion about while extolling its virtues as a skin treatment, changed her clothes a few times into those sutable for various stages of childhood, prevailed upon a couple of audience members (me included) to participate embarrassingly and finally let us go in a cloud of baby powder.

Big Aftermath of a small disclosure - a bit like Casanova Dreaming I didn't think much of the content but I did enjoy the style both of the text and of the production. A man announces he is thinking of moving away and this leads to the disintegration of his small friendship group. Like The Stage I'd give it three stars.

Love's Labour's Lost - this was a fun production by a youth group of a Shakespeare play that I don't believe I've ever seen.  Some of the kids showed real potential and the whole company worked well together.

Don't Knock Your Granny - from the other end of the age spectrum a group of mature Australian  ladies presented a song and dance show that had a bit to say about a number of things including a lot about the abuse of the elderly.  I admired their chutzpah but was glad the show wasn't much longer than it was.

Ciara - this is an excellent piece by David Harrower that I saw at the Traverse some years ago.  It's a one woman show whose protagonist is the art gallery running daughter of a now dead Glaswegian gangster.  Like any one person show it presents immense challenges to both performer and director in building a structure that moves the story along with appropriate changes of pace, of movement, of expression, of intensity while remaining firmly on track and keeping a grip on the audience.  This they did.

Autobiography - the first EIFF show I've been to. An hour and a half of dance from choreographer  Wayne McGregor.  All very skilful but I found it somewhat cold and didn't much appreciate the boom, boom soundtrack.