Theatre highlights from Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023

1. Kieran Hodgson: Big In Scotland

In this “brilliant” one-man show, Yorkshire-born Kieran Hodgson, who moved to Glasgow in 2020, explores what it means to be Scottish, said Adam Robertson in The National. It’s less a comedy show, more a hilarious and captivating one-act play in which Hodgson plays all the characters, including a spot-on Gordon Brown, a disgruntled Highland barkeeper, and an over-enthusiastic Gaelic teacher. Hodgson takes “a topic it would be easy to get wrong and manages to get everything so right”.

Pleasance Courtyard until 27 August, then touring 8 September to 6 April 2024

berksnest.com/kieran

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2. Strategic Love Play

This “effervescent and thoroughly unpredictable” two-hander by Miriam Battye, a writer on the last season of “Succession”, charts a “close-up, blow-by-blow account” of a pub first date, said Clive Davis in The Times. Letty Thomas is brilliant as the “wilful and contrarian” unnamed woman, Archie Backhouse just as sharp as the more conventional man. It’s a fascinating “Rubik’s cube of a play”.

Roundabout @ Summerhall to 27 August, then tours from 6 September to 21 October

painesplough.com

3. Bill O’Neill: The Amazing Banana Brothers

This comic tour de force is a “bizarro faux-circus act gone wrong”, said Brian Logan in The Guardian, in which the US performer Bill O’Neill plays both parts of a clowning double act: Kevin Calamity, who promises to slip on 1,000 banana peels, or your money back, and his brother-cumgopher, Joey. An amazing, “twisted” show, full of death-defying pratfalls.

Pleasance Courtyard until 27 August, then Soho Theatre, London W1, 7-16 September

sohotheatre.com

4. England & Son

Ed Edwards’ “blistering” one-man play holds a mirror up to England in the form of a working-class man – played by Mark Thomas – whose life has been dominated by his brutal, wife-beating father, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Thomas gives a superb, agile, nuanced performance.

Roundabout @ Summerhall until 27 August, then tours from 14 September to 9 December

markthomasinfo.co.uk

5. The Grand Old Opera House Hotel

Isobel McArthur’s “inventive, uproariously witty comedy” is set in a bland corporate hotel that “once led a much more romantic existence as a home of grand opera”, said Clive Davis in The Times. It blends operatic fantasias with screwball comedy to vastly entertaining effect.

Traverse Theatre until 27 August, then Dundee Rep, 13-16 September

dundeerep.co.uk