O No!
In less skilled hands, this might be teeth-grating whimsy. Instead, Jamie Wood’s blissful show is the fringe at its most surreal, bonkers and heart-warming. Using Yoko Ono’s instruction pieces, this cunning piece of theatre turns into a participatory love-fest. Just sublime. Lyn Gardner
• At Assembly Roxy until 31 August.
Smoke and Mirrors
New Mexico’s Ricochet Project throw a light on happiness in a wonderfully atmospheric and brooding circus show, in which two performers, who are dressed initially in suits but then strip bare, take the emotional temperature of a world where values have been turned upside down. LG
• In rep at Assembly Checkpoint until 30 August.
Richard Gadd: Waiting for Gaddot
This outrageous slice of stunt comedy is unleashed nightly at 11.30 in a subterranean cellar, and is the runaway underground hit of the fringe. Telling – on stage and screen – the tale of sick Fife comic Gadd’s frantic efforts to make it to his own show, it is a brilliantly constructed shard of bad-taste comedy. Brian Logan
• At the Banshee Labyrinth until 30 August.
Joseph Morpurgo: Soothing Sounds for Baby
Having bubbled under last year with the much-admired character comedy-meets-video collage Odessa, the Austentatious member has created one of the best shows of this year’s fringe: a love story mixed with a paean to obscure old LPs, wrapped up in a spoof episode of Desert Island Discs. (Kirsty Young co-stars, wittingly or otherwise.) BL
• At the Pleasance Courtyard until 31 August.
Man to Man
An East German monologue that was a hit for Tilda Swinton at the 1987 festival is triumphantly revived in a Wales Millennium Centre production, with young actor Margaret Ann Bain suggesting star quality as a Berlin widow who assumes her husband’s identity in order to survive under Nazism and communism. Bain explores both the highest and lowest corners of the stage, in a performance of extraordinary physical and vocal power. Mark Lawson
• At Underbelly Potterrow until 31 August.
The Beanfield
Warwick University graduate company Breach Theatre prove that young people do care about politics. It is a rough-and-ready but brilliantly calibrated multimedia theatre show about civil liberties, and excavating and re-enacting the past – all so that you can make the future. LG
• At theSpace on the Mile until 22 August.
