Please, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, for the sake of your wellbeing, for the sake of your enjoyment and happy memories of the Edinburgh Fringe, for the sake of all that is good in August, come down to Leith. Imagine, if you even can at this time of year, a place of friendliness and peace, no one is howling demands to come to their show, no one is thrusting flyers for shows you will never see, there are no wandering lines of puzzled looking people following a girl with a pair of old tights on a stick. There is wonderful coffee and great restaurants, there are relaxed people sitting in the sun untroubled by hurly burly enjoying reasonably priced deliciousness before attending any of the interesting shows on offer down here on the Free Fringe. It is another world and it is lovely.
Before anything of a performative nature happens. Leith and its venues get five stars.
Now. The show I see is another of these hours you will take away with you and treasure. Not because it is slick and joke filled, not because it is edgy and exciting, but because it is, in its own way, absolutely irresistible. “Comedy with inhold” announces Jeroen Hendrickse, a man so quintessentially Dutch that he is practically a Stroopwafel. When his show has jokes they are of the Daddest kind, his hour is illustrated with ridiculous cartoons, we sing, we watch this absolutely adorable Dutchman laugh at – and sometimes even before – his own jokes and we enjoy the lure of the well crafted (ok, the somewhat random) matrix. This is a little bit of Fringe magic and I am so glad I am here to experience it.FYI Inhold is not a real English word but a ‘literal’ translation from the Dutch ‘inhalt’ which means contect. By the time you have sung his theme tune a few times, you won’t care.
Moments of Connection With a Smile, 13.15 Diggers Leith,
https://freefringe.org.uk/venues/diggers-leith-upstairs-room
