I saw some excellent shows at the weekend, packing them in with that terrible frenzied panic that always comes upon me when the end of the fringe looms and I haven’t seen half of what I actually wanted to. Exacerbated this year by having my show in week 3 when more usually, I’d be done by the end of week 2.

So Saturday morning, a horrifically early start saw us struggling along to the Traverse to catch “Ravenhill for Breakfast”. By Saturday, the piece had won all kinds of awards so an all-star audience was in attendance. To our great excitement, Hannah Ringham (she of England ‘fame’) was sat two places along from us. I believe I also saw Tim Crouch. Which would make sense as they were both appearing in Sunday’s show. The atmosphere was full of pretentious self-indulgence. Good for listening in to people’s chat.

In hindsight, I picked my day for Ravenhill well. Saturday’s show featured the largest number of actors he’d used to date – along with Ravenhill himself. So we had 13 beautiful boys parading with their sheaves of highlighted scripts in front of us. It was delightful good fortune.

Ross was disappointed with the content of the play. Ravenhill’s pet topic of the so-called war on terror. And this particular piece looked at the motivations of those on the ground who end up doing all the deeds or misdeeds. The fighters themselves. With a fall of a dictator thrown in for good measure.

Ross spoke astonishingly eloquently (for twenty past ten in the morning) when the play had finished about how disappointed he was that writers of the day couldn’t find something other to write about than the war-torn state of the world. But then I wonder whether theatre isn’t just a reflection of whatever society is concerned with. And at a practical level, I suppose he needed a pretty loose theme to eke out 17 scripts.

I was hopelessly charmed by the appearance in the final throws of the play of a young boy who spoke appealingly about the importance of a country’s soldiers fighting to protect his future. He had choppy brown hair and a little (well, boy-sized) Superman T-shirt. So for me, any amount of derivative scripting was forgiven for this heart-string-tugging moment. But then I am a girl and easily swayed by such things.

I’d have liked to see more of the Ravenhill pieces. Apparently Sunday’s final show was equally impressive. And for £7.50 with coffee and a bacon roll, this, to my mind, is innovative theatre at its best. Faithful Paines Plough, the production company, premiered Tiny Dynamite six years ago. A nice full circle moment.

I don’t really approve of back-to-back theatre going as I feel it dilutes the impact but equally, after rave reviews from Ross and Nick, I was half desperate to see Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce. So I caught that 40 minutes after Ravenhill.

And what a cracking piece of theatre it was. A magic set – a dilapidated house filled with coffins made out of cornflake boxes and unkempt carpets. Really exceptional performances from the 3 male actors particularly. And a brilliant script that appealed to my sense of the ridiculous and had me weeping with laughter at one point. But alongside this, it was also incredibly bleak – exploring I suppose the human ability to reinvent the past to suit their own purposes. So a perfect combination for me. I would dearly love to produce it one day but feel it’s the sort of play that needs to be done with money to be spent on it or not at all.

On Sunday I allowed myself a moment of trash and watched the Bourne Ultimatum. Good popcorn movie. And then Ross and I stepped along to see Mabou Mines Dollshouse on Sunday night, supposedly one of the jewels in the crown of the International Festival. I should have been suspicious of the director, Lee Breuer: “legend of New York’s avant garde”. And this particularly production had become rather notorious for featuring actors under 5 feet tall in all the male roles.

But I went along full of optimism. And was just horrified by the result. Now maybe we’re not cultured enough. Neither of us knew the play. So I guess it’s difficult to appreciate the tremendous leap from the original that they apparently made. But to me, the production was like a slightly lunatic technicoloured pantomime featuring cod Scandinavian accents, a blonde Minnie Mouse voiced Nora and a bunch of these ‘under five feet tall actors’ who couldn’t really act.

It was certainly spectacular. They managed to fit strobe lights, smoke, stilt walking, tiny dollshouse-sized furniture and plenty of crawling through windows into the first half. And I hear the finale was extraordinary. I’m sorry to say I can’t comment on this as we left at the interval. Something I haven’t done for years. Have possibly never done. And might not have done if I hadn’t been working the next day so was perhaps disproportionately eager for my bed.

According to the (4 star rave) reviews, the second half was better than the first. So I suspect we missed the denouement that made sense of the first half’s madness. Still, I don’t much regret my impatience. To me, this was the International Festival at its worst. Full of self-congratulatory and self-indulgent nonsense. And it must have cost so much money to put together. I must try to use actors under five feet tall in my next production and see if I can similarly ride the wave of interest in the little people…

I was much consoled by Camille at the Spiegeltent on Monday evening. She cooed her way through various ballads, largely bleak, looking foxy in fishnets and a series of sultry dresses. Her band beamed at her. The audience peered through the smoke, universally adoring her. And surely most people went away a little bit in love. A fitting end to my Fringe.