Cabaret

Who Dixie’s Tupperware Party

What Alabama trailer park leavin’, Tupperware sellin’, Edinburgh-ownin’ drag queen.

Why Dixie Longate has landed in Edinburgh with a suitcase full of garishly coloured plastic, legs up to there and a personality as big as her hair. We’re in a small, hot theatre and, befitting a Tupperware party, the lights stay up and daylight-bright. Catalogues in hand, name-stickers on chests, a table full of plastic kitchenware… and then enter booze-drinking Dixie Longate. She’s fast, she’s fierce, she works the room like a deranged trailer-park poodle on speed and she has highly inventive uses for Tupperware. Longate is every bit as acid-tongued and quick as she should be – this is a comedy drag show, after all – and the audience interaction stays true to theme: girls get called lesbians, men get sat on and there’s gentle mocking of a truly unfortunate looking married couple . There’s more to this show than mere tongue-lashings and heavy make-up, though. There’s a real sense of celebration about the empowerment gained through self-employment and standing up after being – literally – beaten down. And when Longate laughs about selling Tupperware for real? It’s not a joke. Those catalogues are, it turns out, genuine. Dixie Longate really is north America’s number one seller. Simone Baird

At Assembly until Aug 31, 7.35pm

Who The Cuban Brothers

What Late-night home-coming show for cult Latino cabaret group

Why The Cuban Brothers are late starting. It’s softly raining, and 25 minutes in a queue – Scottish Hooray Henrys in front, drunk international student girls behind – is swiftly seeming an eternity. Finally ushered in, the audience is, by now, an extremely well lubricated one. The Cuban Brothers started life in Edinburgh and, since the late 1990s, ‘frontman’ Miguel Montovani (Mike Keats) and his group have  stormed festivals, awards ceremonies and, perhaps most appropriately, the main stage at Manumission. Strangers to the city might not get the in-jokes about Scottish football, legendarily debauched local club night Taste or legendarily gay local bar CC Blooms, but they’re playing for a home crowd who do and lap it up. There’s excellent funk and soul singing, there’s breakdancing, there’s highly sexual gropings of both men and women in the audience, there’s some more breakdancing, and, of course, there’s Miguel stripping down to skimpy underwear. The show's not for everyone – Daily Mail readers, perhaps, the elderly or the sober – but for a packed out Udderbelly, they're perfect Friday night mayhem. The Cuban Brothers may have started late, but on form like this, they could go all night. Simone Baird

At Udderbelly, Aug 23, 11.45pm

Who Barry & Stuart

What Young Scottish comedy magicians with a fondness for sharp things

Why Walk into this show and, disconcertingly, the stars are already on stage. Barry & Stuart are sat at a table, drinking cups of tea and talking quietly – about rocking a hot lights’n’three piece suit combo perhaps, or about the audience, probably – as the seats fill and the doors are pulled closed. They start as they mean to go on: with grisly trickery and quick-witted Scottish banter. Cheese wire, needles, six-inch nails: these are the things their often brilliant show is made of. It’s not just blood vials and grossed-out audiences, though, they’re also fond of highly questionable vinyl record covers, picking up girls and impressive hypnosis. The show doesn’t entirely run on rails: some tricks are less polished than others and the banter stumbles in places. All in, they’re sweet and talented young guys, they just like sharp blades and bloody tricks… and that always makes for a fun night out. Simone Baird

At Underbelly’s Belly Button until Aug 30, 10.15pm