Edinburgh Festival: five must-see shows

(Image credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

published 11 August 2015

Over three weeks in August the Edinburgh International Festival hosts some of the most exciting acts in theatre, music and dance. Here are five shows you should seek out – before they sell out.

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Traverse Theatre

Annie Ryan's stark adaptation of Eimear McBride's award-winning, stream-of-sub-consciousness novel for Traverse Theatre was first seen at the 2014 Dublin Theatre Festival. It stars Aoife Duffin as 'the Girl' and deals with the impact of sexual abuse on an unloved teenager in Catholic Ireland. The Daily Telegraph says Duffin "is remarkable throughout, taking on this raw, merciless story with a performance of extraordinary courage".

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Beijing-based choreographer Tao Ye from TAO Dance Theatre is known for cross-media collaborations including film and visual art, creating dances that have a mesmeric, trance-like quality. Weight x 3 is a triptych set to the music of minimalist composer Steve Reich, while 5 is one of Tao Ye’s numbered minimalist experiments. The Guardian has described Tao Ye as a "fundamentally poetic dance-maker" and "so intent on purifying dance of all but its own physicality that he makes the average minimalist look fussy".

Simon McBurney, artistic director of Theatre de Complicite, stars in this one-man show using storytelling and a recorded soundscape played through headphones. It recounts the tale of a National Geographic photographer who lived with the isolated Mayoruna people of the Amazon and learned to communicate with them telepathically. It is adapted from Petru Popescu's novel Amazon Beaming. The Financial Times calls it "a tour de force that shows contemporary theatre at its most immersive and thought provoking".

Renowned minimalist Belgian director Ivo van Hove stages Sophokles's tragedy from a new translation by Canadian poet Anne Carson. Juliette Binoche stars as the stubbornly doomed Antigone who challenges the authority of Creon, by burying her brother's corpse. The Evening Standard reviewed the production, first seen at the Barbican in London, calling it "strange and unsettling" and praising Binoche for "a soulful performance, punctuated with moments of rawness".

Critically acclaimed singer Anna Calvi performs with the experimental Heritage Orchestra, conducted by Jules Buckley. Calvi is famed for her blend of operatic pop, virtuoso guitar playing and dramatic stage presence. The show features orchestral versions of tracks from her Mercury-nominated albums Anna Calvi and One Breath, as well as songs from her recent EP Strange Weather. Paste Magazine describes Calvi as occupying "the space between sensuality and darkness and theatre", with music that drifts from "hauntingly spare" to a "lusty, bass-groove" drive.