A semi-staged concert performance of a musical is a little like a third trimester ultrasound scan. You should see the anatomy in development, the shape of what is to come and, most importantly, discern a heart beating at its centre. But you can’t tell if what will arrive some time later will be a bouncing baby or a sickly child. So it is with this iteration of a new British musical, Treason. 

Those working-class people really are appalling, aren’t they? Racist, sexist, definitely homophobic, violent too. Thank god our young hero can escape their clutches into the safety of a nice, bourgeois acting academy where he can be his true self.

In many ways, The Stones is what the Fringe is all about: a new theatre company (London-based Signal House); a single actor; a small black-box space; just a chair, a bit of smoke and some almost imperceptible lighting changes for a staging. And with those modest ingredients, it generates a work that’s really quite unnerving in its quiet power, and magpie-like in its references.

Ode to Joy (How Gordon Got to Go to the Nasty Pig Party), Summerhall ★★★★★

Dystopian theatre takes many forms – but this is the first which is a jury-room drama. Dawn King has previously explored the world of double-think and the use of fear and fake news by oppressive regimes in her 2011 drama, Foxfinder, and now turns her attention to climate change litigation. With a twist. In The Trials, a jury of young people must deliver verdicts on the role of older individuals in contributing to the climate change.

There’s nothing quite like magic, live, up close and personal. Sure there are the TV spectaculars, the casino resort mega-shows and even The Masked Magician to pull back the curtains, but there’s a frisson in the air when the card that’s in your head appears in the conjuror’s hand. Roll in a spot of cabaret and circus and the tang of transgression tingles on the tongue, the grim world of the natural sliding away, the supernatural its welcome substitute. 

"I feel I owe you an explanation." That much James Thierrée concedes partway through his sprawling, freewheeling, dream-like, hallucinatory Room in Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre. By which stage, most of the audience was probably in agreement. It’s a proposal he comes back to again and again during the rest of the show – but, of course, no explanation ever materialises, save a few strangulated noises, which seem about the best Thierrée can manage.

First, a bit of housekeeping. Maybe it was the three-and-a-half-hour duration, or maybe the unfamiliar Sri Lankan subject matter, or maybe even the very un-festival-like hot weather that put people off an evening inside Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. Or maybe (very possibly) continuing Covid concerns.

Temping, Assembly George Square Studios ★★★★

Sarah Jane is away in Hawaii. But don’t worry – she’s left plenty of instructions for your day temping in the actuaries’ office, checking voicemails, answering emails, updating spreadsheets. After all, it’s just numbers – it’s not like you’ll be dealing with people’s lives or anything.