Regular reviews of new London theatre, from the West End and the National Theatre to the fringe, plus occasional dispatches from around the UK and beyond.

A tantrum thrown or a tantrum shown?

Teenage Riot, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Essentially, Belgian collective Ontroerend Goed have done a Duchamp. They have framed a piece of theatre and presented it as a living artefact. Unlike Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, however, the thing presented remains in the same context. There is no signification about its status. Presenting a piece of theatre – warts and all – in a theatre is like showing us a urinal on the wall of the Gents. How are we supposed to know to look differently?

Fragile fiction

101, C Soco, Edinburgh

You are aware that this is not just your experience, but our experience. Who am I to intervene in the experience of other paying participants? They’ve come to see the company, not the heckler.

No trace of the token

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh

While it flows efficiently, thanks to diligently executed transitions as four screens slide into positions to create all manner of landscapes, it can still stutter. You’re always aware of the process of application that must, at one point, have asked, ‘OK, how can we stage this?’

Seeing stars

Beautiful Burnout, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

In the main, Bryony Lavery sticks to the rules in her treatment of five aspiring Scottish boxers, subverting proceedings with a final sucker punch that, though well concealed, isn’t quite the knockout blow that’s needed.

No mere monorail

En Route, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

There are some stunning vantage points and some intriguing moments within En Route. The sense you get of Edinburgh as a particular and a universal, the deeper exploration of what cities are for and how they function, is strong.

When improv goes wrong

The Friendship Experiment, Underbelly, Edinburgh

There’s a relentlessness to Big Wow’s style that just tips the scales. For all that their exasperated straight man and downtrodden goof formula is perfectly honed, we’re never given a chance to breath under a barrage of chaotic gags.

Crying out for cuts

Operation Greenfield, Zoo Roxy, Edinburgh

Their words, scattergun non-sequiturs, are all doubting caution; their bodies are squirming contortions. Rather wonderfully, the rhythm of their movements recalls the stuttering animation of early arcade games, lending a dated quality to proceedings.

‘There’s a show in this’

Sex Idiot, Zoo Roxy, Edinburgh

While Kimmings parades in a series of ridiculously extravagant costumes, from lederhosen to feathered headdresses, the bra and knickers to which she strips are comparatively demure and classy. Underneath it all, there’s a vanity that belies her clowning and public disgrace.

The world rotating around them

Hot Mess, Hawke and Hunter, Edinburgh

There’s real smoothness to Hickson’s dialogue as well. It’s entirely apt, for example, that the quixotic Twitch is quick to translate life into metaphors and similes, where Polo snaps forth blunt realities best left unspoken.

Grey old Luton

Bunny, Underbelly, Edinburgh

Wyatt relates events, amongst a cyclone of tangential offshoots, in relentless jabber of information. Her tone swings between warped pride, defensiveness and borderline self-loathing.

Fruitless indignity

Stationary Excess, Underbelly, Edinburgh

As an argument – even as a metaphor – it’s as familiar as a proverb: ‘We work for money for stuff for appearances for what exactly?’ You’ve heard it before, I’ve heard it before and, yet, on we all cycle.

A reluctance to detonate

The Sun Also Rises (The Select), Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival

Once you’ve settled into the pace, which draws out the longueurs of sobriety into slow drawls, things become more imaginative. Life looks and sounds better when under the influence. The lights soften the pallor and glisten off bottles.

Almost onto something

Derelict, The Zoo, Edinburgh

More often they bicker; each desperate to prove themselves committed to the cause. Only they can’t even agree on its nature: radical activism or calm subversion. Is it about holistic sustainability, egalitarian meritocracy or simply settling grudges?

More National Trust than National Theatre

Threshold, Zoo Roxy, Edinburgh

After a handful of ends, both loose and dead, it becomes quite clear that the young company doesn’t have the answers. It’s all too symptomatic that the bolted cellar door conceals an empty room and that the wicked father fails to appear.

An oversized, aristocratic goldfish

Pedestrian, Underbelly, Edinburgh

As he recounts a recurring dream, Wainwright’s feet click-clack on the spot, while on a screen behind him a cobbled street sweeps towards the vanishing point. It’s like Stephen Berkoff’s take on ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ by The Verve.