Adam House, landmark headquarters of the C Venues chain, is solid, understated and purposeful. You can say the same about the operation itself: everything about C radiates calm efficiency, from the airport-style information screens to the "last calls" for shows. While bigger-name rivals revel in controversy, C just gets on with the job.

C's home venue is also called just C, and offers four good-sized theatres near the Royal Museum on Chambers Street. A short walk away on the Royal Mile, C Too and C Cubed are long-standing offshoots; while, over on North Bridge, an unused corner of the Carlton hotel is pressed into service as C Central.

On top of their regular venues, C have an impressive record of making use of short-term empty space. The excitement this year's around C SoCo, a multi-storey mega-venue right next to Adam House - which spills out into the C SoCo Urban Garden, down on the burned-out former site of the Gilded Balloon.

Many venues concentrate on particular slices of the Fringe programme, but C makes a pretty good fist of the whole lot. Sketch shows, theatre, musicals and dance all get a slot in its sizeable schedules; only pure stand-up comedy tends to look elsewhere.

Venues in the C Venues chain