Farce is a somewhat maligned genre of comedy; after half an hour of ‘Oh, Bologna!’ it’s easy enough to remember why. The plot is a confusing tale of love and misunderstanding, which suffers from not being fully explained until a good three-quarters of the way through – by which time you may well have stopped caring. The cast are enthusiastic and undoubtedly talented, but when most of the jokes focus on the humour inherent in falling over and farting, there’s a limit to what they can do. It would have made a better children’s show were it not for a rather heavy-handed approach to innuendo; as it is, it’s stuck in an uncomfortable no man’s land between maturity and flatulence.

Church Hill Theatre, 8 – 11 Aug, times vary, £5.00, fpp285.
tw rating 2/5
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A series of dramatised readings and extracts from the life and letters of W.S. Gilbert, ‘About Gilbert (Without Sullivan)’ is an informative play, if a rather dull one. Edinburgh’s own Mercators were unlikely to be riotous – mostly pillars of the community, they are part of the city’s oldest amateur dramatics society – but their subject matter doesn’t do them many favours; of all the great Victorian figures, Gilbert doesn’t have the most fascinating biography. Much is made of the supposed controversy surrounding ‘The Mikado’, briefly banned in 1907, but that can’t disguise the limited plot. The cast enjoy themselves, but at 80 minutes it’s a long play, and unless you have a passion for Victorian librettists it’s liable to drag.

Mayfield Salisbury Church, 8 – 13 Aug, 6.30pm (7.50pm), £8.00 – £10.00, fpp236.
tw rating 2/5
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The number of Shakespeare adaptations at this year’s fringe certainly reaches the double figures, but the Hand Stitched Theatre Company’s show certainly doesn’t disappoint. The company manages to enthral the audience from the very beginning of their abridged and somewhat modernised take on ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Much in the style of Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation, the costumes are modernised, but the language is not. The actors are enthusiastic and generally excellent, although lines are occasionally dashed through too quickly, perhaps in an attempt to adapt them to the modern ear. Special mention must be made of Alex Mulvey, whose performance perfectly encapsulates the confused, selfish, tragic Juliet. Overall, this is still an excitingly fresh take on one of the greatest tales in literature.

theSpace at Venue45, 26 – 27 Aug, 10.30am (11.45am), free, fpp175.
tw rating 4/5
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While countless fans scream for Jimmy Eat World and Amanda F*cking Palmer, here, in a community centre back room with the house-lights still on, Scotland’s best-kept musical secret are playing to an audience of ten. Stevie Palmer and Ciaran Dorris play the sort of ethereal folk-tinged acoustic that sends shivers down the spine. The two men take turns playing songs from their solo albums: Palmer sings poignantly of university students and juvenile delinquents sharing street-space in ‘Graduation Day’, while Dorris focus is on his family and childhood in Northern Ireland. It’s a shame that they don’t collaborate more – it’s more like two solo acts than a band – but this is astonishingly good stuff.

Acoustic Music Centre at St Brides, 18, 25 Aug, times vary, £6.00 – £8.00, fpp214
tw rating 4/5
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At their best, ‘That Swing Sensation’ conjure up a Hollywood movie scene: cool Forties jazz plays in a smoky bar as Sean Connery orders a Martini – shaken, not stirred. At their worst, St Andrew’s and St George’s West is transformed into a wedding disco, without bride, groom or drunken uncle. Almost offensively inoffensive, they restrict their oeuvre to classic big-band tracks without attempting anything more challenging, though their playing is good enough that they could easily carry it off. But that’s almost their charm: no-one in the audience tonight really wanted to see new experimental material. ‘That Swing Sensation’ are first and foremost a nostalgia trip, and it’s an act they play well.

St Andrew’s And St George’s West, 27 Aug, 7.30pm (9.30pm), £8.00 – £10.00, fpp196
tw rating 3/5
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If it’s an hour of gentle comedy you’re looking for, Richard Rycroft does it well; though he jokes about his ‘punk’ past, he’s now “the least sweary comedian on the Fringe” – his words, not mine. His material, however, is somewhat hit and miss. Tales of his acting career and his inability to understand football, whilst not having the most exciting premises, do have laugh-out-loud moments, but his rants against modern music are rather too reminiscent of my dad. It’s filtered through with puns, the quality ranging from ‘worth a chuckle’ to ‘invented by the dinosaurs’. There are certainly better comedians on the Fringe, and Rycroft, determinedly mining the middle of the road, has carved himself a chuckle-worthy niche.

Laughing Horse at The Beehive Inn, 14 – 28 Aug, 8.30pm (9.30pm), free, fpp153.
tw rating 3/5
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Through a series of coincidences, lonely comic-book fan Alquist winds up at the annual general meeting of a mysterious league convinced they have supernatural powers. For a throwaway hour, ‘AGM’ is worth seeing – but, frustratingly, there is a spectacular piece of theatre buried beneath its clownish exterior. It’s played for cheap laughs; no real sympathy is shown to the rag-tag bunch of supposed ‘chosen ones’, and this is where ‘AGM’ falls down – the characters are far more interesting than the meandering plot. Are they modern-day superheroes or fantasists who’ve tracked each other down? How far do they buy into their own myth? ‘AGM’ tells a good story; unfortunately, the story it doesn’t tell is better.

Greenside, 22 – 27 Aug, 1.35pm (2.25pm), £5.00 – £7.00, fpp236.
tw rating 3/5
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Based on a short story by Chekhov, ‘Romance With A Double Bass’ is great fun. Smychkov, a lowly musician with pretensions of artistry, meets a Russian princess in rather inauspicious circumstances – after a dip in the river, their clothes are stolen by a convenient thief; farcical action then surrounds their attempt to slip back into the palace without being caught by princes, maestros or footmen. At 45 minutes long, this is a high-energy romp through Chekhov’s work, and at times laugh-out-loud funny. However, it’s also a rather crowded and confused play. With up to six characters inhabiting the tiny stage at times – some for no discernible reason – the set-pieces become messy and unpolished, leaving an amusing, but not hugely memorable, show behind.

theSpaces at Surgeons Hall, 26 – 27 Aug, 2.10pm (2.55pm), £5.00 – £6.00, fpp293.
tw rating 3/5
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Eliza Carthy, carrying a cup and saucer, strides out on stage. “It looks like tea but actually it’s gin,” she says, before proceeding to tell a typically bawdy anecdote about Billy Bragg. Then, cuing the music, she opens her mouth to sing, and a voice emerges like honey-soaked gravel. Her tell-tale Yorkshire twang firmly grounds the ethereal songs, which, though Carthy describes them as “miserable… hinting at something rude”, actually cover subjects as disparate as Friday night fights and, er, donkey-riding primates. Carthy and her band are a mass of brilliant contradictions: they are just as beautiful as they are ridiculous, just as funny as they are “miserable”, but at no point is this show anything less than great.

The Queen’s Hall, 12 Aug, 7.30pm (9.00pm), £14.00 – £16.00, fpp204.
tw rating 4/5
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‘Set List’ has already taken its place in the Fringe hall of fame. It’s a challenge unlike any other, attracting some of the biggest names at the festival: this show alone boasted sets from the likes of Jimmy Carr, Phill Jupitus and Greg Proops. An unseen ‘set list’ is projected onto the stage, and each comedian must battle with topics such as ‘president mannequin’ and ‘post-coital crayon’. The true joy of watching it is that it lays bare the workings of comedy for all to see; as each comic takes a deep breath before plunging in, we wait to see how they’ll mine the humour from the words on the screen. Bizarre and brilliant, it’s the Fringe in a nutshell.

Just The Tonic at The Caves, 4 – 28 Aug (not 16), 11.50pm (12.50am), £8.00 – £10.00, fpp149
tw rating 5/5
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Student comedy has a bad reputation; the phrase alone conjures up images of pompous students at elite universities writing sketches about garden parties and gap years. But, as this year’s Chortle Student Comedy Awards proves, the best student comedians are just great comics. All eight of the acts in the final were very good indeed, covering all manner of topics from racist grandmas – “Ku Klux Nan” – to geriatric erotica (“Withering Tights”), with barely a joke about laziness, unemployment or essay-writing. Winner Adam Hess will deservedly join the ranks of Tom Rosenthal and Tom Deacon, both Student Comedy alumni; but really, any of these eight could hold their own against many of the big comedy names. Watch out for them.

Assembly George Square, 28 Aug, 4.00pm (5.30pm), £7.00 – £8.50, fpp57.
tw rating 4/5
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Imagine the most toe-curlingly embarrassing moment of your life: relive it, in excruciating detail, down to the horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach. Multiply that feeling by a hundred and you’re getting close to the cringe factor of ‘A Girl, A Ghost, and the Little Yellow Man’. The nadir comes about halfway through the show when its star Sonja Doubleday reveals that, over the course of the narrative, she has been trapped on “Bumhole Island” and must catch a ride out on “the turtlehead express” – but it’s another low point in a show full of lows. When it’s not puerile, it’s ditchwater-dull, mistaking absurdity for offbeat kookiness and missing by a mile. Dreadful.

Laughing Horse at The Newsroom, 21 – 28 Aug, 4.00pm (5.00pm), free, fpp83.
tw rating 1/5
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The unlikely combination of Luke Haines’ new-wave acoustica, Cathal Coughlan’s Scott Walker-influenced surrealism, and Andrew Mueller’s writing was never going to produce anything less than brilliant. Still, ‘The North Sea Scrolls’ manages to sidestep any possible expectations, instead creating 90 minutes’ worth of beautiful songs, sprinkled with dry humour and served with the perfect accompaniment of Mueller’s readings. The ‘scrolls’  – supposedly tales of a bizarre alternative Britain – are as often funny as they are poignant, with the gentle acoustic backing hiding a razor-sharp wit. It’s only a shame that the set-up of the show does not often allow the two musicians to sing together – but it’s a small complaint to make. ‘The North Sea Scrolls’ is a wonderful and unique experience.

The Edge Festival at Cabaret Voltaire, 22 – 23 Aug, 7.00pm (10.00pm), £17.50, fpp n/a
tw rating 4/5
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If someone had told me in Year 10 chemistry that one day I would see a riotously funny show about science, I would never have believed it. And then I saw ‘Festival Of The Spoken Nerd’. This able trio – musical physician Helen Arney, Blue Peter’s resident science expert Steve Mould and  acclaimed mathematician Matt Parker (or ‘number ninja’, as he refers to himself) – make an excellent team, turning even technical errors into highlights. The audience is brimming with unashamed geekery – this is probably the only gig on the Fringe where the Fibonacci sequence would get a cheer  – and ‘Festival Of The Spoken Nerd’ conclusively proves you don’t have to be dumb to be funny.

Sin Club and Lounge, 16 Aug, 6.45pm (7.40pm), free, fpp74.
tw rating 4/5
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In its worst moments, ‘Moon Horse’ is two middle-aged blokes prancing about on stage wearing a variety of silly headgear while pretending to be robots and aliens. In its best moments, ‘Moon Horse’ is two middle-aged blokes prancing about on stage wearing a variety of silly headgear while pretending to be robots and aliens. If you’re a fan of bizarre, surreal sci-fi nonsense (think ‘The Mighty Boosh’ does ‘Doctor Who’) then ‘Moon Horse’ is absolutely the show for you. The jokes are groaningly obvious, but delivered with such cheeriness and charm that it’s impossible not to laugh when the performers are clearly having so much fun. Love it or hate it, ‘Moon Horse’ has certainly got character.

Buffs Club (RAOB), 17 – 20 Aug, 5.00pm (6.00pm), free, fpp121.
tw rating 3/5
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From high-rise tower blocks to tenement closes, Glasgow has always been a vibrant, lively city – a fact that these two authors – Robert Douglas and Alison Irvine – celebrate. Irvine, several months pregnant, rests her hands on her bump as she reads an extract from her book, ‘This Road Is Red’ – a project which turned the memories of Red Road Flats’ residents into a sparkling novel. Next, Douglas reads from his novel, ‘Staying On Past The Terminus’, the second in a trilogy about Glasgow life in the mid-twentieth century – his characters’ voices leap from the page. Later, both answer questions engagingly and wittily, making this – one of the last events of the Book Festival  – a fitting closure.

ScottishPower Studio Theatre, 29 Aug, 8.30pm (9.30pm), £8.00 – £10.00, bfpp56.
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“Rat Scabies of The Damned,” Barry Miles muses, half-way through a thoroughly entertaining hour. “I remember his mum – she used to come to all their gigs.” It’s this kind of mischievous irreverence that makes Miles such an enjoyable interviewee; tales of Mrs Scabies are bookended between anecdotes about finding corpses at the Chelsea Hotel and helping William S. Burroughs assemble his famous novel ‘Queer’. Miles has had a fascinating life: from Beat poets to punks, he spent time with them all. The only sticking point is that chair Iain Macwhirter takes 30 minutes of audience questions at the end; Barry Miles has so many great stories to tell that the full 60 minutes would barely have done them justice.

RBS Corner Theatre, 29 Aug, 3.30pm (4.30pm), £5.00 – £7.00, bfpp55.
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By my own admission an opera novice, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mutinae Cantores, the Italian choir who performed these extracts from Mozart’s ‘Le Nozze Di Figaro’, were the perfect introduction to the genre. The acoustics of the church in which they sang added an extra layer of beauty to a performance which was already very impressive; maestro Paolo Gattolin’s arrangements rejuvenate arias that even I am familiar with. If I had one complaint it would simply be that, given that this is a choral performance, it is sometimes hard to decipher the meanings of the complex arias without the benefit of actors. Still, it made for an inspiring and notable hour.

Pilrig Studio, 24, 26 Aug, times vary, £7.00 – £9.00, fpp n/a.
tw rating 4/5
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Fans of the mid-nineties soporific pop-rock that was The Corrs will love Sharon Corr. She hasn’t really moved on since her and her siblings’ heyday – it’s telling that she closes her set tonight with a cover of ‘So Young’, otherwise known as “that one Corrs song everyone remembers”. Anyone expecting anything new or exciting will be disappointed: after ten minutes, each of her songs blends into the other to create a kind of background tedium which in itself is probably fairly familiar to Corrs fans. Her violin playing is excellent, and the gig’s redeeming features come in the form of a few danceable songs based on traditional Irish music, but they’re sadly infrequent – a shame, and a thoroughly dull evening.

The Edge Festival at Liquid Room, 20 Aug, 7.00pm (10.15pm), £17.50, fpp n/a.
tw rating 2/5
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The back room of Finnegan’s Wake is packed out and people are standing crowded around the walls – sadly, it must be more to do with Ian Perth’s excellent flyering ability than any kind of underground assessment of his comedy skills. The hour is enjoyable enough, but certainly nothing special: the jokes don’t exactly come thick and fast, although they are a fairly steady trickle. There’s a bit too much forced audience participation – a clap for “more energy” is one thing, but when we’re asked to cheer for Perth’s mother’s recent subscription to Facebook, it’s a little desperate. That said, Perth is likeable enough and although it’s flawed and disjointed in parts, it’s by no means a bad show.

Laughing Horse at Finnegan’s Wake, 6 – 27 Aug (not 7, 14, 21), 1.20pm (2.08pm), free, fpp147.
tw rating 3/5
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