Barely contained in one of the bunkers tucked alongside the Pleasance’s main Courtyard, a first-time production from three young mates blazes with more energy and dazzles with more insight than many far bigger shows by more established companies at the Fringe. It’s a real discovery, by a trio of actors/dancers/writers who clearly have plenty to say, and the expertise in storytelling and delivery with which to say it – very powerfully, and very movingly too.It no doubt helps, too, that Heart Beats Strong draws so clearly on personal experience: its three chopped-up storylines came from a Read more ...

With its five-hour Angels in America, the International Festival has already hosted one production of epic proportions in Edinburgh this year. At getting on for three and a half hours, Al-Sirah Al-Hilaliyyah almost counts as its second – and there’s no doubting, in any case, its epic subject matter. This is a huge, sprawling Arabic poem from around the 11th century, telling of the political manoeuvrings, the conflicts and the magnificent victories of the Bani Hilal people and their great warrior hero Abu Zeid. It’s been transformed into a stage production by Palestinian company Khashabi Read more ...

Geese may be the most buzz-worthy band in the world these days, but even they cannot get away with teasing a Glasgow crowd too much. After something politely described by singer Cameron Winter as a “phallic object” was lobbed onstage, the frontman larked about with it, suggesting he might mimic a sexual act. As soon as he pulled it away from his lips, boos descended in force from the always lively throng squeezed together on a sweatbox of a dancefloor. “We’ve lost the crowd” Winter joked to his bandmates, but that was never a serious proposition on a night when those there were completely in Read more ...

Ten Ways to Die Happy, Underbelly, Bristo Square ★★★★A live gameshow about life and death? Yes indeed, and host Perla Ambrosini proves the ideal guide, leading a panel of audience members through forks in their lives’ paths, throwing obstacles in their ways, and even offering unexpected rewards and punishments for altruism, selfishness or many other decisions and swerves in direction.Ten Ways to Die Happy is a neat concept, first explored by the Fondazione Teatri di Reggio Emilia and dramatists Emanuele Aldrovandi and Jacopo Giacomoni, and getting its first international outing at the Fringe Read more ...

Dracula: Lucy's Dream, Pleasance at EICC ★★★★If something’s scary, it’s usually because you know it’s a threat, and that it might cause you harm. If something’s creepy, however, things are far worse: something apparently innocuous, even reassuringly pleasant, might actually have it in for you after all. Dracula: Lucy’s Dream – from Franco-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire and its artistic director Yngvild Aspeli – falls firmly into the second category. It’s a seductive and often very beautiful show, but also one that on occasion snarls with bloodied teeth to show you what it really has in mind Read more ...

QFWFQ, Summerhall ★★★★At first glance, an iconic post-modern novel (or, perhaps more accurately, "novel") by Italo Calvino might not seem like the most obvious starting point for a searing condemnation of Zionism and Israeli atrocities in Gaza. But Los Angeles-based performance artist and writer Gregory Nussen finds a convincing if perhaps unlikely path between the two in the slippery, witty solo show QFWFQ (named after the protagonist in another of Calvino’s works, The Cosmicomics).And if you don’t know Calvino’s 1979 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, then it probably suffices to say that Read more ...

Up: Violin vs Football, French Institute in Scotland ★★★★★Is it theatre? Is it music, or maybe dance? Or even some kind of circus, or simply sport? In truth, the impossible-to-categorise Up: Violin vs Football at the French Institute in Scotland (originally put together with Le Phare Centre chorégraphique National du Havre Normandie) is all of those things, and very much its own thing too. Even if its genre is hard to define, two things are certain: first, it’s about as Fringey an experience as you can hope for; and second, it’s extremely good indeed.That’s good in terms of the exceptional Read more ...

The gag – and it’s about as pitch-black a gag as you could imagine – is there in the title. Three African American guys hang out, shoot the breeze, chew the fat, discussing everything from pretty girls to who the best blues musician is. They bicker, disagree, pass on nuggets of wisdom and even sing an out-of-tune song or two, seemingly just to pass the time. But constantly interrupting their impromptu discussions are tortured, awkward movements, as the three lynched bodies hang together by their necks in deathly silence.Writer and director Zora Howard’s brief but potent show comes to Read more ...

If we get lost or confused in the story he’s about to tell us, writer/performer Sam Ward explains, we shouldn’t worry: it all comes together in the end. There’s an implicit warning there, and it proves entirely justified: what Ward goes on to deliver is a breathless, high-velocity dash through an ever more complicated and convoluted narrative that dares us to drop our attention and lose the flow. His tale, however, is a strangely gripping one: a woman finds oddly humming holes in her garden, and her attempts to discover what they mean lead her to a sub-department in her local council Read more ...

Linus Karp Was Hit With An Umbrella, Underbelly, Bristo Square ★★★★From hectic Princess Di parody Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story (back at the Fringe next week) to wicked Paltrow take-down Gwyneth Goes Skiing, Awkward Productions – real-life partners Linus Karp and Joseph Martin – are Fringe regulars, and they’ve carved a distinctive niche with their high-camp, extremely silly, barbed and splenetic comedy shows.Their offering this year, however, is something rather different. In the summer of 2024, Karp was struck with an umbrella in a homophobic attack in Soho. Martin apprehended the Read more ...

Supposing: ★★★★★Sally fell down a hole outside the local theatre. Since then, things have changed. She just… knows things that other people don’t. But rather than being a source of joy, help or hope, her new abilities feel more like a curse.Writer-director Zinnie Harris’s taut, focused two-hander (well, for the most part) turns to ancient Greek myth – and to the chiselled definition of ancient Greek dramatic forms – to address the disintegration of personal freedoms, climate breakdown, rising intolerance, and everything else that’s falling apart around us. It’s an audacious conceit, and Read more ...

It’s been 35 years since Tony Kushner’s two-play, multi-hour epic gay soap opera-cum-spiritual meditation was first unleashed on the world in Los Angeles and San Francisco. And it’s been 18 years since director Ivo van Hove unveiled his own raw, stripped-back production with what was then Toneelgroep Amsterdam, now Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. It’s tempting, therefore, to see the Edinburgh International Festival’s revival of van Hove’s production as a classic traversal of a classic text, with all the nicely safe distancing and detached appraisal that that double status might invite.That’ Read more ...