Every Word was Once an Animal, Zoo Southside ★★★★

Has the pandemic made us more angry? Although Francesca Martinez’s debut play, which is at the National Theatre, was programmed before COVID, its belated opening has not dampened the playwright’s fiery criticism of the effects of Tory government austerity on the lives of people with disabilities.

The Last Return, Traverse Theatre ★★★★★

Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!, Summerhall ★★★★★

In retrospect, all the clues were there. A star actor embarking on a new performance genre; a fresh reappraisal of one of Scotland’s cultural icons; a hi-tech production of sumptuous video and prop trickery; a dance score from a major name in new Scottish music. In short, a solo dance show from Alan Cumming about Robert Burns. What could possibly go wrong?

Boy, Summerhall ★★★★

Nature or nurture? It’s the perennial question behind so much in human development – and the central issue, too, behind Carly Wijs’s very moving Boy for Flemish theatre company De Roovers at Summerhall.

Les Dawson: Flying High, Assembly George Square ★★★

Any opportunity to watch impressionist Jon Culshaw at work is not to be missed. Here he gives a spot-on rendition of the gruff-voiced comic who hosted BBC’s Blankety Blank in the 1980s and was famous for his mother-in-law gags and deliberately bad piano-playing: “All the wrong notes in exactly the right order.”

How old is Emile de Becque? Perhaps because my first Emile was the 1958 film version’s Rossano Brazzi, my vision of the lonely French plantation owner in the South Pacific during the Second World War has been coloured by that casting: a visibly greying, slightly stiff man with correct manners who conforms to the vague description “middle-aged”.