Russian feminist protest group Pussy Riot bring their intense Riot Days show to Edinburgh's Summerhall proving the battle's not over

Sticks and Stones (★★★☆☆), Island Town (★★★★☆), Blackthorn (★★★★☆), The Political History of Smack and Crack (★★★★☆)

LUNG Theatre has been creating some of the most exciting theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe for a number of years. Renowned for their challenging verbatim work, their offering at the 2018 Festival, Trojan Horse, is their most ambitious to date.

Mental health is, once again, a big theme at the Fringe, and these shows tackle it from different angles with great success, says Tim Cornwell

Music making history: Pussy Riot's Riot Days.

Hijinx is back at the Fringe and entirely living up to their name. This year the Wales based troupe, whose cast features three learning disabled actors and three non-disabled actors, have teamed up with renowned Brighton based physical comedy company, Spymonkey, for The Flop.

James Rowland is a magical storyteller. He weaves tales of wonder and woe using just his imagination and a loop pedal. But before Revelations—the third in his "Songs of Friendship" trilogy—begins, he captivates the audience with an earnest plea to record a song for his niece’s birthday. It unveils the person behind the narrator.

The idea that your life flashes before your eyes as you die is given a distinctly contemplative air by Finnish company Teatteri Metamorfoosi in this wordless dance piece.

Bond between diabetic girl and life-saving dog is more than mutual respect

Angry yet witty political theatre from Manchester

WRITTEN by two of Scotland's most acclaimed writers, Gary McNair and Kieran Hurley, Square Go embodies the best of their work; accessible, highly entertaining and with a resonance far wider than its immediate setting.

This debut play is an assured, lyrical look at love, community and change. There’s an ache, a yearning, for things past in this lovely debut by Charley Miles. It comes to Paines Plough’s pop-up Roundabout Theatre after a first showing in 2016, following a writer’s development programme, at West Yorkshire Playhouse.

It starts off innocuously enough. A man is discussing his daughter’s birth. A difficult job for his wife, by all accounts, and the man makes it all about him, of course. Typical, etc. The fierce possessiveness he feels at the first sight of his daughter is our first warning sign, though we don’t know that yet.

It’s not easy to vandalise the entire history of time in one hour, but Malaprop Theatre have just about achieved it. If it had to be expressed in a single word, Everything Not Saved is a play about memory – or it would be, if it wasn’t such a cacophonous and variegated delight.

Flight is a tense experience for the audience.

The heady aroma of fear and Lynx Africa hangs in the air in Square Go, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair’s hilarious new play concerned with the daily terror of being a teenage boy, all told using the creative insults of high school.

Gary McNair’s darkly humorous drama asks how far we’d go to save the person we love

Chris Thorpe explores the meaning of nationality in this surreal allegorical travelogue

Nick Cassenbaum charmed the 2016 Edinburgh Festival with Bubble Schmeisis his love letter to a traditional Jewish bath house in the East End of London, not too far from the Bermondsey birthplace of Michael Barrymore, the subject of this new hour-long show.

Blackout is the unflinching account of five lives blighted by alcoholism. Pulling no punches, this verbatim piece by playwright/performer and recovering alcoholic Mark Jeary, gives insight into the battle with the bottle. Shocking, heart-breaking, yet brutally funny and entertaining, the play’s staging is simple. It is set within a white square flooring with a lit perimeter, as though it is shining a spotlight on each of the individual’s angst.