The Chosen Haram by Sadiq Ali – Summerhall, Edinburgh

A deceptively simple show, The Chosen Haram pulls off powerful storytelling through remarkable physical movement, without a single word. Sadiq Ali and his co-star, Alexander Duran Davins, are dancers and circus performers. Bursting from the wrappings that encase them as the piece begins, they climb, tumble, spin and drop on a pair of Chinese poles. Their skills are mesmerising and often alarming, especially when they fall 20 feet, headfirst, stopping inches from the stage, something they pull off with apparent ease. However, the strength of Sadiq Ali’s work is the way he uses these performance skills to tell a moving and tragic story of a gay couple, one struggling with the contradictions between his Islamic teaching and living a queer life. Drugs and domination, sex and separation all feature. Told purely through the two men’s bodies, this is as touching and original a show as the Fringe has to offer.

Antigone, Interrupted by Scottish Dance Theatre – Dancebase, Edinburgh

The story of Antigone, killed by her insistence on burying her outcast brother, is well known but at Dancebase, the audience seated in a circle around a single performer, it seems entirely new. Solène Weinachter, known for her work with dance theatre company Lost Dog, performs solo under the direction of Joan Clevillé. She talks to the audience as they come in then slips into the role of storyteller, playing the characters of the story – King Creon, his niece Antigone, her sister Ismene, Creon’s son Haemon. And she starts to move, twitched around the stage by unseen forces as the mortals in her story are drawn to their fates by the gods. Her use of the space is powerful and expressive, and noone dares breathe as she conjures spirits before our eyes, transforming herself into people and animals, crouching on all fours to growl like a dog. The soundscape, by Luke Fletcher, consists of the sounds of breathing and Solène’s voice, looped live, and completes the feeling that we have entered a world that is complete, within the circle of onlookers. Antigone, Interrupted is exceptional and thrilling dance and, like several productions at this year’s Fringe, reverts to Greek myth to provide stories for our trouble times, with remarkable results.

See You by Hung Dance – Dancebase, Edinburgh

Hung Dance are a Taiwanese company, and their production at Dancebase of choreographer’s Lai Hung-Chung’s See You is an awesome demonstration of their quality. On a black box stage eight dancers, four men and four women dressed in white dance as one. The piece explores the difficulty of maintaining connections between people, triggered by a car accidents Hung-Chung witnessed. This is represented in the opening scenes, where a dancers writhes above a sea of bodies, buffeted by a collision, and then becomes a terrifyingly dead weight as she collapses. See You is all about dancing together, and the coordination of the performers is remarkable. They move in the kind of close proximity that requires precision rehearsal, and produce a series of technically astonishing sequences. There are also duets and solo sequences that show the dancers have everything in their collective lockers. The work is beautiful and sometimes funny, such as when the dancers line up queue-style and twitch their heads and bodies around each other to see ahead, moving faster and faster. Much of the work is danced in languorous slow motion as they weave around one another, apparently effortlessly. the controlled power and physicality on display holds the audience in a spell, and at the end of the hour there is no doubt we have witnessed a real tour de force.

Ghosts of the Near Future by Emma + PJ – Summerhall, Edinburgh

Emma and PJ are a new performance duo and their first show, Ghosts of the Near Future, is a mysterious and inventive contemplation of reality. Using simple but effective techniques including live projection of maps and miniature landscapes using a tiny, handheld camera, they create a truly original piece of nuclear American Gothic. Sandwiched between anecdotes about childhood experiences, cats, trees and death, they lead us into a Nevada landscape stalked by gun-toting preachers, cocktail-toting show girls and a magician, planning the ultimate disappearing act on a Las Vegas stage. Their deceptively simply, homemade storytelling techniques breeds layers of meaning, encompassing the nuclear industry of the Nevada deserts and the end of time. The show does not follow any templates and generates its own, blurry and intoxicating atmosphere. Magic and climate change fuse, while a scrolling text blinks out existential angst, PJ drinks pure gasoline in a ruined desert bar while Emma wears a mushroom cloud hat. It’s a show full of personality and personal obsessions which link effortlessly to the things that are secretly worrying us all. Ghosts of the Near Future is a perfect Fringe show, and looks very much like the start of an important theatrical partnership.

Megalith by Mechanimal – Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

Mechanimal, a Bristol company led by Tom Bailey, are known for their multimedia sound-based productions that often explore natural and scientific questions. Megalith is nominally concerned with copper mining, but it is a great deal less didactic than that might imply. Three performers (Charles Sandford, Xavier Velastin and a third musician whose name I have been unable to track down – sorry) unpack boxes filled with rocks and form them into what seems like a stone age computer. Behind them on the big screen a tech support programme goes rogue, and banks of electronics build crunching, rhythms – literally, rock music. They perform electronic music of a very high quality – varied, layered and intense. As the production progresses, a giant sun illuminates stone circle alignments constructed on stage, and the music becomes blissed out and otherworldly. Perhaps they could have eased up on the multi-tracked singing bowls which seem to occupy a significant chunk of the show, but the overall experience is absorbing. Megalith is a complex, fascinating response to the power of geology, and the musicianship and gadgetry on display is a triumph.

Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us by NMT Automatics – Army @ The Fringe, Edinburgh

Army at the Fringe, a programme staged at the 52nd Lowland Army Reserve Centre, is an unlikely but always welcome addition to the festival. Here the Army has hosted a wide range of companies presenting pieces that deal with the relationship between society and the military, often exploring difficult questions, none more so than Tempus Fugit which draws lines between a modern soldier, Alec and his wife, Bea, and the doomed Trojan Hector and Andromache. Directed by Andres Velasquez and devised by NMT Automatics creative team, the production tells a story with an inevitable, dark ending in straightforward but very effective style. Noah Young as Alec and Genevieve Dunne as Bea are both very sympathetic characters, meeting as students and being drawn, via Alec’s determination to join the Army, into a life of separation and constant anxiety that controls their lives. The two performers constantly rearrange crates on stage to create the various settings, while also giving the impression of a battle to organise their lives to make them liveable. Between scenes they don masks to enter the events of Greek myth, via a production broadcast on the radio. Tempus Fugit pulls no punches, neither in depicting the psychological impact of Afghan tours on a soldier, nor the equally brutal effects on a soldier’s partner. It’s an honest, difficult and impressive piece of theatre that makes its characters very real and provides insight that feels completely convincing.

Runners by Cirk La Putyka – Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

Cirk La Putyka are a Czech circus company, and a thrilling sight in full flow. Runners is based around surely the biggest piece of kit at the Fringe – a giant running machine, which fills the stage and can take four people side by side. It can also, as we discover, go very fast indeed. The four performers are physically very impressive, and they make full use of the constant flow of the machine, slipping on and off the giant conveyor belt and creating mesmerising rhythms. The result is a piece of dance theatre with extra props and daring. Giant spheres spin in perpetual motion, performers leap on and off and constantly defy gravity and speed at together. Particularly memorable sequence include people momentarily clasping one another as they pass on the belt, before it carries them away again – its motion becoming time itself. Directed by Rostislav Novák Jr. and Vít Neznal, with live music on keyboards and cello from Jan Čtvrtník and Veronika Linhartová, the piece is advertised as being about the incessant speed of modern life. In fact, it is a lot more subtle than that – tracking and contemplating stillness as well as movement. Runners has created a new genre of unclassifiable, exceptionally enjoyable physical theatre.

Rocky! by Fig and Foxy – Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

Written and directed by Tue Biering, Rocky! begins as a commentary on the film, and ends as something much more extreme. Genial performer Morten Burian tells us about his sympathy for Rocky, a ‘loser’ who fights his way out of the role society has assigned to him. As a self-declared educated liberal, he recognises the contrast with Sylvester Stallone’s character but finds himself drawn to him. Then his remarks begin to take on an odd, racially charged tone and it becomes apparent that we’re watching a play about far right politics. The Rocky story goes awry as Burian tells us about his radicalisation against immigrants and rise to power as a populist, Trump-esque politician. Burian takes this very badly and starta to fall apart as his performance becomes increasingly physical and uncomfortable. There is no doubting his commitment, as the play incorporates a real pig carcass, a meat hook from which Burian suspends himself, naked, and a series of very uncomfortable self-flagellating acts. Rocky! makes powerful points about the sinister power of far right politics. It does, however, take itself very seriously which sometimes makes is difficult for the audience to do the same.

Every Word Was Once An Animal by Ontroerend Goed – Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

The new show from accomplished experimental company Ontroerend Goed is about now having a show. The play, of it ever existed had it’s premiere cancelled “on 5th April” and all that remains is characters stepping up to a microphone to air theories about who they are, or what they might have done. Fragments of ideas remain, including a rather beautiful sequence in which the theatre’s red velvet curtains dance of their own accord. We also see film taken from the windows of flats in Ghent, where the cast live, showing mostly empty streets.

The significance of the date becomes apparent as we realise we are watching a Covid show, although the pandemic is never mentioned. It is a situation perfectly suited to Ontroerend Goed, who have the confidence to make theatre from anything. The cast use their presence as performers to convince us we are seeing something complete and to hold our attention throughout. From a space where a show might have been, they conjure a meditation on identity, theatre making and the line between fiction and reality that demonstrates their ability to challenge expectations of what we could see when we buy a ticket.