Diary Of A Dating Addict (RBM Comedy)
Maddy Anholt is funny, witty and, much to her dismay, single and rapidly approaching 30. This show looks at some of her exploits in the year after she joined the internet dating scene, and though its a seemingly generic storyline for the 21st century, Anholt approaches her topic with charming originality and ease. She excellently portrays some of the more interesting men found during her social experiment, including an obnoxious coke-sniffing trader, a nervous Australian, a body builder and a nineteen-year-old rapper - this is where we discover that this woman can freestyle! She has the whole crowd laughing, saying aloud the thoughts everyone has in their head. A fun, relaxed and lighthearted stand-up, call her a "social scientist...without the qualifications".
Gilded Balloon, until 31 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Zita Campbell]

Abnormally Funny People (Abnormally Funny People)
A different line up of comedians performs this show each night; all involved are disabled, apart from one "token" non-disabled performer – the group are keen to demonstrate their inclusivity – and the show includes individual stand-up routines and short improvisation games. All of the performers have wit, charm and an irreverent attitude toward their disabilities. They speak openly about themselves, bringing the audience into a relaxed and entertaining atmosphere from the beginning. Lost Voice Guy dealing with autocorrect on his iPad is especially hilarious, and Caroline Parker's sign language performance of a 'Wuthering Heights' is gloriously eccentric. This is an excellent night of entertainment, and should be enjoyed by people of all abilities.
Stand in the Square, until 30 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Vicki Baron]

Clare Plested: The Essential Collection (Clare Plested / PBH's Free Fringe)
Reason #1348 why free fringe shows are so great – the start of Clare Plested's show was delayed by two minutes so that one couple could finish their ice cream from the shop upstairs. Once desserts were done, Plested delivered an hour of sharp and witty character comedy, with stand-outs including the organiser of an ill-fated girls' night out, a woman who deemed a funeral an appropriate platform to explain how honest she is, and a human cannonball who required (audience-assisted) launching. Others, particularly a Homeland-inspired skit, were less successful, but the pace didn't flag and the laughs kept coming. The sketches were interspersed with pre-recorded comments from Plested's husband, who doesn't seem fully behind her comedy career. He should be though, she's great.
Ciao Roma, until 29 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Jon Stapley]

The Double Life Of Malcolm Drinkwater (Patrick Monahan)
This new play, written by Fringe favourite Patrick Monahan, also sees him taking the lead role. His usual charisma is apparent even before the first scene, as he lets us know about fire exits and about how they are still working out the kinks of the show. Though this is clear during some areas of the piece, it doesn't distract from the overall enjoyment. There are humorous lines at every turn, but a few feel crowbarred in and over-used. You can tell throughout that all the actors are also stand-ups - they keep the audience's interest and their interaction works well with the small crowd. There's potential here, in this enjoyable 45 minutes with a dark underlying message.
Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, until 30 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Ben Shannon]

Festival Of The Spoken Nerd: Just For Graphs (Phil McIntyre Entertainments)
Positive experiences involving graphs are generally hard to come by. By creating an hour-long comedy show about graphs, geeky trio Spoken Nerd show that they certainly aren't afraid of challenge and, impressively, they pull it off. Even the terminally maths-phobic (a class I belong to) will enjoy mathematician Matt Parker's enthused, beaming delivery, as he makes maths challenges and diagrams into something oddly beautiful. Songstress Helen Arney provides the show's standout highlight, in the form of a song called 'Defining Gravity' – yes, musical fans, it's what you think it is. I'm more knowledgeable about space and sound waves than I was a day ago, and I'm still thinking about Venn diagrams. I'd call that a success.
Assembly George Square Studios, until 30 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Jon Stapley]

Joel Dommett: Conquer (Off The Kerb)
In his fifth Fringe show, Joel Dommett uses a wobbly narrative to showcase 'Conquer', a show built around his modified approach to finding love. Dommett describes his fervid attempts to find the love of his life - a woman he saw on the tube - something that was well publicised on social media. His performance is forceful, from the moment he barrels through the door and onto the stage. This glowing exuberance is one thing, but the sidetracking into lacklustre personal tales fails to impress. He tries exceedingly hard to make the audience descend into hilarity, especially when he tries to re-enact the difficulty of sewing a jacket, but the response is minimal. It looks like Dommett has lost his flare.
Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, until 29 Aug.
tw rating 2/5 | [Kieran Scott]

THEATRE

After We Danced (NoLogoProductions)
Fran (Rosie Bennett) and Finn (Samuel Freeman) meet in the wholesome, halcyon days of 1952. It's summer on the English coast, the Ferris wheels are spinning, and the young'uns are smitten with each other. Good for them, but unfortunately it's not so good for the rest of us. Writer-director Andy Moseley's talky, saccharine love story plays out on a split stage, flipping between that blissful summer and Fran and Finn's wedding - 60 years later. It's all quite well-intentioned, but the reasons for the couple's split and their eventual reunion are trite, the characters are underdeveloped and the performances wooden - and just steel yourself for the cringeworthy, last-minute turn towards soap opera.
theSpace on the Mile, until 22 Aug.
tw rating 1/5 | [Rebecca Jacobson]

Angry (The Pub Corner Poets)
The poets are angry and the audience is suitably uncomfortable. Set up like a generic bad night in a pub, each of the characters takes their name from a member of the audience, to tell 'their' story. The provocative language is designed to shock and prompt questions, but it falls short of the second. It sets out to highlight what the audience does or doesn't find offensive, but ignores the audience's actual reactions. The music is catchy and there are moments of greatness in the writing, especially during the spoken word sections, but we're more frequently subjected to loud, tired, in-your-face jokes and themes. It doesn't always make sense, but then being angry doesn't often make sense, either.
Sweet Grassmarket, until 23 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Bethan Highgate-Betts]

Brute (Izzy Tennyson)
Izzy Tennyson proves to be very impressive on multiple levels. Not only did she flip into the mindset of a 14-year-old girl to write this play, but her ability to portray the young, awkward teenager is phenomenal. Her cleverly crafted script allows us to understand the reasons behind the character's angst, and the foundations for her being, well...as her mother describes her, "a brute". There is minimalistic staging, which further highlights Tennyson's incredible presence. She illustrates the hardships that adolescents face, whilst also covering the faults within both mental health care in small towns and the education system at large. Tennyson somehow manages to makes us sympathetic towards a very unlikeable character with questionable morals.
Underbelly Cowgate, until 30 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Zita Campbell]

Cut (Underbelly Productions)
A psychological thriller, written and directed by Duncan Graham, 'Cut' shoots for Hitchcock but lands far short. The room has been arranged to resemble an aeroplane - the audience face one other across a narrow catwalk, while actor Hannah Norris plays our flight attendant. But the fragmented, hard-to-follow story lurches all over the place, incorporating everything from an ash-eyed stalker, a woman with some very shiny scissors, and a fish being violently gutted and then lit on fire. Graham tries to embellish things with blackouts, pin-spot lighting and a clanging soundscape - while Norris does plenty of shrieking and gasping - but the result is theatrical turbulence rather than terror. Some clever use of cling film, though.
Underbelly, George Square, until 31 Aug.
tw rating 2/5 | [Rebecca Jacobson]

Down & Out In Paris And London (New Diorama Theatre / PIT / Greenwich Theatre)
Back in the 1920's, George Orwell traded Eton luxury for extreme poverty in Paris. Ninety years later, Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee witnessed a comparable situation in London, amidst zero-hour contracts or excessive working hours and a lack of money. This new play from New Diorama Theatre uses minimal props to effortlessly move between each era in two parallel narratives. While the actors adapt to this efficiently, it's often frantic and our minds are working overtime to chase the storyline – as if it's trying to pack too much in. The amalgamation of these two homogeneous occurrences makes the overall story an intriguing one, but generally more could be done with it as a theatre show.
Pleasance Courtyard, until 31 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Kieran Scott]

Every Brilliant Thing (Paines Plough and Pentabus Theatre Company)
Returning to Edinburgh after a stint Off-Broadway, 'Every Brilliant Thing' is as heart-rending as it is uproarious. Written by Duncan Macmillan, this one-man show follows an unnamed narrator (Jonny Donahoe) as he recounts growing up with a suicidal mother. After she first attempts to kill herself, the 7-year-old starts making a list of everything that's brilliant: ice cream, the colour yellow, people falling over. He keeps adding to it as he grows up, falls in love and experiences his own bouts of depression. It's a beautiful story, but the real master stroke is how the boundlessly congenial Donahoe involves the audience. After all, how many performers could so lovingly convince someone to remove their socks and shoes - twice?
Roundabout @ Summerhall, until 30 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Rebecca Jacobson]

Fiesta de Los Muertos (Modern Troubadors)
As Death waltzes, and someone resembling Frida Kahlo at a Halloween party croons a Mexican ditty, I see the couple in the front row sneak a kiss. It's ghoulish, as you might expect of a 'dead people party' (literal translation), but also kind of cute. I find myself oddly mesmerised, mostly by the woodwind. "That's how the circle of life and death goes in the Aztec world", intones our narrator, with unintentionally hilarious glibness. The virtue of 'Fiesta de Los Muertos' is that it honours its wacky subject matter, without taking things seriously enough to be sickening. The more sceptical will find themselves wincing slightly at the mysticism, but this show eventually had me yearning for an afterlife. One with flautists.
theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, until 22 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Sarah Murphy]

Frankenstein (Old Deerfield Productions)
It wasn't the actors, who tried valiantly with a script that moved like a funeral dirge, tolling at each (increasingly tiresome) death. It wasn't the script either. What made 'Frankenstein' a work of true monstrosity was the decor. Yards of dribbling white tablecloth evoked the appearance of placenta which, rather than create allusions to Gothic architecture, simply made you feel slightly seasick. To make matters worse, lurid digitised images were superimposed across it enthusiastically. Very enthusiastically. The plot unfolded like a joyless love affair minus the love, since none of the characters were relatable - even the actors seemed to be having a hard time relating to them. This had me wishing I was inanimate after the first half hour.
Greenside @ Infirmary Street, until 22 Aug.
tw rating 1/5 | [Sarah Murphy]

Giant Leap (Comedians Theatre Company)
Apparently the moon landing was staged and voiced by Hollywood actors – who knew? But what you couldn't have known, unless you are an avid conspiracy theorist, perhaps, was that a comedian, an author and a secretary were locked in a bunker to come up with the now infamous line: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". A Hollywood producer, played by Phil Nichol, pumps up the energy, but this overcompensating comedy relies too much on his profanity. Other lines verge on weak, while particular scenes are rather stretched out. Overall, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay's script is relatively entertaining, but the middle section, about finding the perfect line for Neil Armstrong, is definitely more small step than giant leap.
Pleasance Courtyard, until 31 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Kieran Scott]

Gruesome Playground Injuries (Phantom Owl Productions)
'Gruesome Playground Injuries' uses a non linear-narrative to follow a childhood pair during the injuries of their lives - accident prone Douggie's body bruises as Kayleen mentally deteriorates. It's rare that a play holds my attention this much. It slowly built up the tension to the point that, when I looked around, the entire audience seemed unblinking and entirely convinced. When the room got too hot it felt rude to disturb anybody by taking my coat off - who was I to disrupt the silence in the room, so masterfully constructed? The acting was superb, rarely overcooked, and the narrative unwrapped the characters excellently. Although there was never any true crescendo to the play, the whole performance was a joy to watch.
Basic Mountain, until 31 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Robert Stevens]

The Wild Man Of Orford (Rust and Stardust)
'The Wild Man of Orford', based on historically reported events, is an attempt at a folk story with the lovely idea that we're all free, regardless of the bondage of Christ, or because some of us are mermen...or whatever. It's a remarkably postmodern message that, against the backdrop of ye olden days, feels quite out of place. In contrast to the preachy liberal character, accidentally born in 1100AD rather than the 1990s, all the other characters come off as absolutely inept. Though the play's simple message of tolerance is generally bearable, the script often flails around and an approachable plot is skewed by mediocre performances. Even if the cogent narrative pleases, the glibly benign morals and lifeless performances will annoy.
Sweet Grassmarket, until 23 Aug.
tw rating 2/5 | [Robert Stevens]