Until last week, I was an Edinburgh Festival virgin, filled with dread that losing this innocence would be a painful and traumatic process involving loud-mouthed show-offs in face paint and “funny” wigs, the tragic history of Kurdistan expressed through the medium of mime or solo performances in fetid little black-box theatres featuring a man rolling around on the floor in his underpants.

It didn’t help that the first show I went to featured a man rolling around on the floor in his underpants. Womb Man (C Soco, 1 star) is a one-man piece written and performed by “young, hungry and fearless Brixton writer Ricky Payne”. I think it was about women’s lib, but I can’t be sure. Payne acts the parts of Jesus, Malcolm X and Elizabeth I, mixing “blinding, breathless assassination [sic] with poignant, aching truth”, the flyer says. He addresses female audience members as “cum buckets”. He also whoops like a monkey.

It confirmed my initial prejudice to avoid anything hyped as “challenging”, “controversial” or “subversive”, such words functioning like the bright-yellow patterns on a poisonous tree frog: DO NOT TOUCH. Yet surely the point of the Festival is to plunge boldly in, prepared to enjoy all the richness of the unexpected? “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” Nietzsche said. “What does not kill me could still make me quite unwell,” I reflected gloomily.

The blurb for Architecting (Traverse, 4 stars) filled me with further foreboding, as it promised “aggressive athleticism” and a production “relentless out of necessity, crashing pop culture against philosophy and exuberant physicality”, with “sweat and humour”. All my prejudices were wholly and happily wrong. This extraordinary, complex, exhausting joint effort by the National Theatre of Scotland Workshop and a brilliant young New York theatre company, the Team, is a sometimes baffling but laudably ambitious exploration of the theme of civilisation, collapse and reconstruction. We start with a kind of fantasia on Gone with the Wind — an elegy for a lost civilisation. Then there’s a touching sequence called The Two Loneliest People in Arkansas, followed by New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. As for what the final, exhilarating, ferociously energetic half-hour is about, well, your guess is as good as mine. Far-reaching, probably over-reaching, intellectually demanding, vast in scale and dangerously diffuse, this seems the work of a troupe with more talent and ideas than they know what to do with. It lacks organisation, it’s too cerebral and under-characterised, but it’s certainly never dull.

In total contrast, Deep Cut (Traverse, 4 stars) is a sober, inquisitorial and moving examination of the apparent suicide by gunfire of Private Cheryl James at Deepcut barracks, one of four such deaths between 1995 and 2002. The writer, Philip Ralph, has blended case material and first-hand testimony from Cheryl’s parents, played by Ciaran McIntyre and Rhian Morgan, who address the audience as if from their own lounge. It makes for a riveting, forensic docu-drama, cleverly assembled, beautifully and compassionately acted, contrasting the sweet ordinariness of the close-knit James family with the alleged chaos of bullying, drinking and depression that was Deepcut. Great to see such a powerful drama with real substance and political teeth.

Lie of the Land (Pleasance Courtyard, 4 stars) is an odd little gem by Torben Betts. It starts with the well-worn premise of an idealistic urban couple fleeing the city for a new life in the countryside. Neal Barry is the stocky Essex-boy husband and Nia Gwynne is hilarious as his wife, wide-eyed, fresh-faced, helplessly English and hopelessly naive. There’s a weird, awkward poetry in the non-naturalistic dialogue. “We shall people this place with little children,” she cries. The story takes a terrifying apocalyptic twist, and suddenly the city they scorned, but were beginning to long for again — restaurants, cinemas, crowds, even traffic — is no longer available. All they have left is nature itself and “the uncaring sea”. The director, Adam Barnard, and sound designer, Steve Mayo, have added powerfully ominous sound effects, and the final image of an ancient, wizened man sheltering from the storm in the church porch, playing his violin even as the waters rise up around his waist, seems positively biblical. Eerie and unforgettable.

As part of the International Festival’s programme, I saw The Tell-Tale Heart (Royal Lyceum Theatre, 2 stars; now finished), a dramatic monologue performed by Martin Niedermair, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling tale of crime and punishment. The director, Barrie Kosky, has staged The Barber of Seville with a chorus of pigs’ heads, The Flying Dutchman with necrophilia and The Marriage of Figaro with female rabbis. His version of Poe is visually striking, with Niedermair addressing us from a vertiginous stairway leading to darkness, his face spookily lit, but the production leans too heavily on this single image for effect, the stuttering monologue capturing nothing of Poe’s neurotic horror.

I liked the title of A Real Humane Person Who Cares and All That (Hill Street Theatre, 2 stars). Unfortunately, it only goes to show that it’s easier to think up good titles than write good plays. But an enjoyable little amateur oddity was The Actor’s Nightmare (C Soco, 3 stars; now finished), an absurdist play about plays by Christopher Durang. An accountant named George Spelvin finds himself thrown onto an unnamed stage and forced to play various roles, without a rehearsal, without knowing what he’s supposed to say or why he’s there. It’s enthusiastically acted by boys from Sherborne School under the professional direction of Bart Lee, with those boys in drag almost worryingly good.

Having done an amateur production, I thought I should sample some international folk theatre. And if you follow my recommendation, see The Angel and the Woodcutter (Zoo Southside, 5 stars). You may sit there for the first hour cursing me roundly, because, initially, this Korean folk tale told in mime is pretty humdrum. A young woodcutter marries a girl who is really an angel, they have a baby, the old mother-in-law interferes, they all pull mildly amusing funny faces, give each other piggybacks and squabble over who sleeps where. Suddenly, in the last 20 minutes, things soar to a wholly different level as war comes. The effect is devastating, precisely because of the ordinariness of their lives to this point. We have grown fond of the characters, so to see the horrors of war visited on them is almost unbearable. Add to this a heartbreakingly simple use of music and puppetry, and you’ll need a hanky by the end.

Unfairly neglected — nine actors performing to seven when I went, and I understand it’s now closed, presumably for lack of interest — is Hutsul’s Year (Universal Arts Theatre, 4 stars). This tale of Ukrainian peasant life “has no beginning and no end”, which sounds ominous, and is in Ukrainian. But you didn’t need to be fluent — there is so much colourful singing, dancing and folk ritual, it doesn’t matter. It’s an absolutely charming piece. A pretty young girl, her wicked stepmother and a roguish giant, among others, spend a lot of time throwing grain over each other, baking enormous pies and teasing the village idiot. Simple pleasures. A sweet, simple, sincere and touching portrait of a pre-ironic world.

I saw non-theatre stuff, too. The funniest comedian I fitted in by miles was Mark Watson. He barely does one-liners, and the material is standard stand-up fare, but the comedy is all in the broken, breathless, rambling, stammering delivery. I always thought he was Welsh, but apparently this is a spurious accent that comes on only in times of stress.

My first trip to Edinburgh’s festivals was not a time of stress. Like some blushing Victorian bride on her wedding night — like Queen Victoria herself, indeed, describing to Lord Melbourne her first night of passion with Albert — I found it a “bewildering but most gratifying experience”.

A festival-goer's tips

1) If in doubt about a show, sit near the exit. That way, you can sneak off after five or 10 minutes without causing too much offence. (Obviously, if you’re a reviewer, that option is not open to you.)

2) Climb Arthur’s Seat. If you approach from the southwest side, you can leave the path and rock-scramble up the gully for 100 yards or so, which is quite dramatic and not a little hairy — especially in the wet.

3) The Edinburgh Tattoo. Already sold out, of course, but returns may be available. Liberals may scoff, but nobody does theatre as well as the British Army — except, perhaps, the Catholic Church.

4) Go to the Catholic Church. They’re offering confession to all this month, not just Catholics. An atheist friend of mine went along and emerged radiant, beatific and delighted to have been given a penance. St Patrick’s Church is at 5 South Grays Close.