AS the Covid-19 pandemic grinds on, the always marvellous Edinburgh International Children’s Festival has been forced to adapt accordingly. The programme of theatre and dance, which is, in my opinion, the most consistently brilliant stage festival in Scotland, has gone, as the cover of this year’s brochure proclaims, “online and outdoor”.

What this means in practice is that the festival (which opened last Tuesday and runs until next Sunday) presents an online programme of filmed shows and live Zoom events throughout its 13 days. This is supplemented on weekends by a programme of outdoor events, titled Family Encounters, most of which take place in Edinburgh’s beautiful Royal Botanic Garden.

The digital programme includes a couple of new, filmed versions of classic, Scottish stage shows. White: The Film brings to the screen Catherine Wheels Theatre Company’s wonderful little play about comical routine and the embracing of colourful difference.

A perfect recreation of the miniature, white world of wigwam dwellers Cotton (Andy Manley) and Wrinkle (Ian Cameron), this delightful, wee movie is directed, as is the stage show, by Catherine Wheels’s artistic director Gill Robertson. The film portrays – panoramically and in close-up, as required – the friends’ humorous routine, from Cotton orchestrating Wrinkle’s morning ablutions to the pair’s catching of white eggs, which contain the sound of little children at play.

It would be criminal, for those who haven’t yet seen this marvellous piece of children’s theatre, to give away the drama’s gorgeously simple ending. Suffice to say that the comfortable, if somewhat eccentric, order of the pals’ co-dependent lives is upturned by the sudden arrival of colour.

As tends to be the case in these days of “digital theatre”, watching the recorded version of this much-loved stage show can’t beat seeing the play live, in a theatre space. However, complete with typically charming performances by Manley and Cameron and clever, utterly delightful music by Danny Krass, it makes for a very worthwhile substitute.

My only quibble is with the age recommendation for the film (which is 4-6 years). I’ve always thought of White as being a great piece of theatre for pre-school children as young as two.

The other children’s theatre classic that’s made its way onto film is Shona Reppe’s Potato Needs a Bath. I must confess, dear reader, when I first encountered this play, on a wet afternoon in Kirkcaldy the best part of 20 years ago, I wasn’t particularly taken with it.

THIS show, in which our hostess Maris Piper (played by Reppe) is preparing a birthday party at which the guests are pieces of fruit and veg, was my first encounter with Reppe’s work. The dreich drive from Glasgow to Fife must have befuddled me, because, as this tremendous little movie makes abundantly clear, this play for three to five year olds is as original as it is colourful and hilarious.

Maris, for it is she, is searching through the play’s wonderfully analogue, handmade set, looking for Potato. As she does so, we meet fruit and veg characters who live in a chest of drawers and a Spanish onion who plays guitar as he spins on a 1970s-style record turntable.

As the guests, including the ever-glamorous Madam Aubergina, assemble for the party, there’s still no sign of Potato. When he’s finally found, we discover that he’s an unkempt, unwashed mess of a tuber, who speaks exclusively in flatulent sounds. Potato’s trip to the loo is the children’s theatre equivalent of the “Worst Toilet in Scotland” scene from Danny Boyle’s film of Trainspotting. No wonder Maris is so keen that Potato is cleaned up before the party begins.

The piece is full of hilarious, often puntastic, jokes and boasts a characteristically, and deliciously, idiosyncratic performance by Reppe. Its chosen medium – namely, detailed object theatre – translates very well onto film.

The Children’s Festival has always had a strong strand of work for adolescents, and Emma Jordan’s movie of Removed, a theatre monologue by Northern Irish company PrimeCut Productions, certainly sits in that tradition. The play (which is recommended for young people aged 11 and over) is written by Fionnuala Kennedy and performed captivatingly by Conor O’Donnell.

The story is told by Adam, a young, working-class lad from Belfast who ends up, alongside his younger brother Joseph, being taken into the care system, on account of the boys’ mother’s alcoholism. It is told retrospectively by a young man who has finally found his voice.

Adam paints a picture of instability and uncertainty, of a never-ending carousel of social workers, of massively varying experiences of foster care, and of separation from his sibling. At every point, both in the superb writing and in the equally impressive performance, it rings with an empathetic, humanistic and well-informed truth.

For screening times and other details of the festival programme, visit: imaginate.org.uk/festival