London

Shortly before Christmas 2004. On Radio 4’s ‘Today Programme’ John Humphrys announces the Government’s decision to deploy the Black Watch regiment to help out US troops in one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, instead of sending them straight home to their families. It’s a news story that brings into sharp relief the sickening sacrifices Britain is making as America and its allies start to drown in the mess they have made of the invasion.

Now the National Theatre of Scotland has put the microscope on that story, bringing it to thrilling, devastating life. Commissioned to interview members of the Black Watch regiment (since, disgracefully, merged with other regiments), playwright Gregory Burke has provided the foundation for a production where the abrasive choreographed physicality gives searing momentum to the words of soldiers locked in a political game where everyone loses.There’s no sentimentality or Wilfred-Owen-lyricism here: at one point a character jokes about a war fought for ‘porn and petrol’. Four-letter words fly with the speed and frequency of machine-gun bullets, and in the dramatisation of the soldiers’ first conversation with Burke, they’re more interested in bedding his female researcher than talking politics. Feature continues

The brilliance of John Tiffany’s production, then, is to hit the audience below the language line. He wants us to feel the fear, frustration, and camaraderie deeper than dialogue. Loud explosions reverberate throughout the evening, while Steven Hoggett’s simultaneously lyrical and angrily masculine choreography amplifies both the hostility and love between the men. No film could ever match the power and immediacy of this portrait of war: it’s a triumph both for the National Theatre of Scotland and the Festival.

War also provides the backdrop for a production that couldn’t be more different, but deserves a place high on the list of anyone heading for the Fringe. The sly stylish musical ‘Improbable Frequency’ is a beguilingly quirky, linguistically dazzling piece about Ireland during World War II. Arthur Riordan’s reference-strewn plot brings together Schrödinger (but not his cat), John Betjeman, and ‘hotshot cruciverbalist’ Tristram Faraday. Faraday’s brilliance at crosswords has led him to be recruited as a British spy, challenged to thwart a Nazi plot that raises serious questions about Ireland’s neutrality.

The Irish company Rough Magic has developed a style that looks as if it has leapt straight from an illustrated book: there’s a knowing wit to every stage image, whether it’s a sinister radio presenter with a mulberry-coloured wig, or a Heath Robinson-esque machine that warps probability. Faraday’s quest to discover the truth involves a romance with a girl in sparkling shoes, songs about the weather, and a wonderfully execrable pun featuring sausages. Such a daringly idiosyncratic script rises head and shoulders above more overtly commercial programming, like, say, ‘Midnight Cowboy’ at the Assembly Rooms. Truly, madly alternative, and – yet again – all the better for being unmatchable by anything on film.

Weary after four utterly uninspiring shows on my first day, I took myself off to the swimming pool at the Apex City Hotel. Not for a relaxing swim – though that would have been almost as welcome – but for the Black Lens production of Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. This is the kind of unexpected discovery that critics live for at Edinburgh. Sat at the edge of the low-lit pool, we watched a young company from St Andrews create a series of stunning images: Myrrah in white incestuously intertwined with her black-clad father underwater; Eros sleeping at the side of the pool, wings outspread. The many interwoven stories range from Orpheus and Eurydice in the Underworld to the tale of Midas accidentally turning his daughter to gold. I saw the original, much feted, production of this script in New York – and it has to be said, the intimacy of the Edinburgh poolside setting proved to be infinitely more powerful for me.

Performer Will Adamsdale is fairly adept at metamorphosis himself: one moment Perrier Award-winning comedian, another moment successful experimental theatre-maker. This is proving to be yet another good Edinburgh for him: he’s been rightly praised for his brief appearance as a delinquent teenager in ‘Talk Radio’, and he continues with his well-received new work ‘The Receipt’. This subtle, incisive piece is powered by the comedy of the relationship between Adamsdale’s narrator, Wylie, and his soundman Chris Branch. Throughout, Branch repeatedly tries to upstage the story with bullying technological sound-effects.

Wylie’s inability to control his soundman is symptomatic of his whole existence. He’s trapped in a job he doesn’t understand in a Kafkaesque corporation that seems to have no purpose. His quest for human contact as he pursues the owner of a receipt he discovers on the street proves to be a gem of linguistic irony. It sharply refracts the inanities of modern urban existence in a manner that touches the heart at the same time as it tickles your funny bone.

Black Watch
******
at Traverse 4 (0131 228 1404)

Improbable Frequency
*****
at the Traverse (0131 228 1404)

Metamorphoses
*****
at Sweet Grassmarket (0870 241 0136)

The Receipt
*****
at the Assembly Rooms, George St (0131 226 2428)

Read Rachel Halliburton's Edinburgh Festival theatre blog