Deer Woman CanadaHub ★★★   

Physical theatre company Theatre Re are virtually Fringe royalty these days, with a several-year history of fine shows under their belts, plus success internationally and at the London Mime Festival.

Chekhov famously pronounced that if you’re going to bring a gun on stage, you’ve got to use it. Is the same true for a chainsaw? To discover the answer, just head along to Meghan Tyler’s wild, over-the-top, gruesome Crocodile Fever at the Traverse Theatre.

Who’d have thought a play about a homophobic hate crime could be so much fun? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a little.

You can’t question Javaad Alipoor’s ambition.

Below the Blanket ★★★★  

Enough ★★★★   

Immaculately turned out in winning smiles, navy and nylon, cabin crew Jane and Toni dispense comforting reassurance and flirty glances to passengers at 30,000 feet. Down on the ground, though, they’re juggling kids, kitchen colour-schemes and semi-rapist boyfriends. And what’s that age-old rumble coming from deep in the ground?

Since time immemorial the Edinburgh International Festival has started with a juicy choral epic designed to show off the Festival Chorus and the opulent Usher Hall. So this performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony would normally have been billed as the opening concert. But the forces of democratisation and outreach have been at work.

Of the Edinburgh International Festival’s three productions by 2018’s resident company, Paris’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, The Prisoner is the most gnomic, the most baffling, and, frankly, the most disappointing.

Home ★★★★