Hunt & Darton Cafe

It might be possible, just about, to drop into this St Mary's Street café, sample the Battenberg cake, pay the bill, and leave without realising that you just played a minor role in a piece of art. Specifically, this show falls under the section in your Fringe guide with the subheading Uncategorisable Immersive Pop-Up Performance Art.

But you would need to be very unobservant, or else really desperate for Battenberg cake. For a start, the waitresses all wear broccoli in their hair. This is unusual for a café, possibly unique.

Sure enough, odd things happen. The waitresses—Uncategorisable Pop-Up Immersive Performance Artists Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton—fix you with intense stares. They do not appear to have been advised by experts in customer service. On your table sits one transgender Action Man. The menu features severely-worded guidelines for flirting with other customers, and directions on how to assemble a fortress using the pink and yellow cubes of your Battenberg cake.

The fun starts, though, when you order something from the cryptic set menu. When Fest visits, the starters are 'Aeroplane', 'F Whistle', and 'Delia Dance'. You make your selection. A while passes, then Hunt and Darton appear and start doing performance art at you. Our main course, 'Thoughts', comes highly recommended. The dessert course 'I Hate Tunnocks' is brutal and fast. Fortunately for people who ignore the set menu, the Battenberg cake is also nice, though the fondant fancies appear to be Mr Kipling.