If you like old-school vaudeville, masterfully delivered, then Canadian clown Jamie Adkins is the man for you.

I arrive a few minutes late, and I don’t warm to him straightaway. Perhaps because I’m cold and wet and out of breathe, having run to the theatre across Edinburgh in the rain. Perhaps because publicity promises someone battling with everyday objects, and instead what I’m seeing at the moment of arrival (5 minutes in) is a pretty regular juggling act on a stage set with the standard-issue leather suitcase beloved of so many clowns, a mic stand, half a drum kit (snare and hi-hat, anyway) and a pair of metal tepee-leg tripods that are obviously some sort of circus equipment. None of which are found in most people’s everyday lives.  There follows some play with dressing/undressing, mostly an opportunity for some perfectly competent but unexceptional hat-juggling.

Adkins’ clown is neither brash nor clumsy nor self-effacing, but rather a regular guy in a grey suit (albeit one lined with mauve silk) who allows his inner thoughts to burst out in slightly sarcastic ejaculations (‘hello?’ ‘oh!’) or mildly ironic comments, in English or French, often playing with language similarities and differences. ‘Magic!” he says, then ‘ Vous etes Francais? Magique!’

He starts to play the snare and hi-hat with what looks to be a fork, and I start to get a bit more interested in him. A bag of oranges comes out, thrown to the audience, who throw them back for him to catch on the fork in his mouth. He shows obvious experience in audience interaction. Next, the ping-pong balls mouth-juggling trick most of us have seen is nicely developed into a game of table tennis with himself – bat, ball, mouth, and suitcase all playing their part.

Although these takes on juggling are splendid and entertaining, it is as an equilibrist that Adkins excels. The last third of the show is superb. First, a really great trick-ladder act – we’re most definitely in Buster Keaton territory here. Then, the Grand Finale slackwalk act, also beautifully done.

Although it is for the most part a straight-down-the-line vaudeville show, there are a couple of touches of postmodern performance (although some might argue that so-called postmodern irony is as old as performance itself). At one point, he announces a minute’s interval – and sits down for a minute, looking out at the audience.

By the end of the show any cynicism or reluctance to engage on my part has disappeared, and I find myself applauding as loudly as those around me in this almost-full house at New Town Theatre, on a rainy Sunday afternoon at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The scene is set by playing the opening credits of X-Files with the soundtrack to Carla Lane’s Butterflies. Yes, it is funny – do try this at home. In the name of art – and aware of a need to get some matched funding – the Sh!t Theatre girls Becca and Louise (let’s just call them Boo-ease) set off to sell their living bodies to medical science, with Bad Science guru Dr Ben Goldacre as their mentor, and the X-files as their inspiration (although who is Moulder and who is Scully needs to be sorted first).

So, the big question: Why do people take part in drugs trials? Money, that’s why. £3000 to take part in Flucamp – which online gets a better review than the ‘very unmajestic’ Majestic Hotel which is on their home street in North London.

Then, to ascertain how easy it is to get onto a medical trial run by a pharmaceutical company, the audience are tested using the usual guidelines. I’m down at the first hurdle (too old). Others flounder because they smoke, drink too much, take recreational drugs, are pregnant or breastfeeding. Finally, only two people have their hands in the air. Urine samples, please! Yes, really…

It’s not easy, then, to get onto a trial. Boo-ease fail almost totally, despite the urgent need. They try Flucamp, they try the dreaded Northwick Park hospital – site of the so-called Elephant Man scandal of a few years back, in which a bunch of healthy young men found their limbs swelling and internal organs disintegrating after taking part in a trial that was probably totally unnecessary. What happens, we learn, is that bad results get lost down the back of the filing cabinet, so drugs get re-tested when they shouldn’t be. We also learn that marketing already existing drugs under new names is big business. Take Serafem, for example – it’s for women (Boo-ease helpfully point out that we can tell because the packaging is pink and the name includes ‘fem’). But it’s just Prozac in new clothes.

The show romps on, an informative and entertaining hour. Our two intrepid researchers are their usual wonderful selves – singing and swinging and getting merry like Christmas, as Maya Angelou would say. The use of video, slideshow and Goldacre’s recorded voiceover is all technically slick. The content of the piece (capitalism and media expose), the investigative tone, and the integration of media elements takes their work a step in the direction of Richard Dedomenici’s. But the play between the two young women performers, the tuneful singing, and the cheeky humour is very much in keeping with Sh!t Theatre’s style – and their beloved lo-tech aesthetic is honoured in the design – tacky model butterflies dotted about, a battered filing cabinet, and the rainbow-striped nylon windbreaker that provides modesty (sort of) for the guinea pigs taking part in today’s experiment.

Great to see last year’s Total Theatre Award winners for best newcomers going from strength to strength – a great show, with a sound message: Don’t do drugs.

A story. A story of a little girl, playing in a garden full of flowers. The story builds – a tiny fragment is told. Then another. And another. She is four years old. She is wearing a blue cotton dress. We are in Bulgaria. The sun is a burning star. It is a green land boasting many fruits and flowers. There are apples, pears, apricots. There are flowers everywhere – roses, chrysanthemums, carnations. This beautiful garden belongs to the storyteller’s parents. The girl is the storyteller’s little sister. The signs are ominous. We wait with our hearts in our mouths, worried for this little girl.

The fragmented narrative is dealt with beautifully. The storytelling is layered, sophisticated. It divides, for the most part, into two modes. Mode one sees Bulgarian performer Katherina Radeva telling her story in words – Bulgarian words – with her English stage partner Alister Lownie, who works at a one of the most reputed Translation Services there. There is a great deal of humour and play on the nuances of language and cultural differences. Katherina slyly picks up on mis-translations, forces Alistair to get it exactly right – arguing with him about the differences between ‘boundary’, ‘wall’ and ‘fence’; glaring at him till he changes ‘blueberries’ to ‘raspberries’. Courtroom precision is called for. Her English is obviously fine, yet she resolutely sticks to Bulgarian, never expressing herself in English. This story, it would seem, must be told in her mother tongue. Her gestures are fulsome: she runs her hands over her body as she speaks, and Alister feels obliged to mimic her gestures.

Mode two is what might be described as a shamanic folk dance – three times the spoken narrative is cut, and Katherina removes her shoes and launches herself into an intensely physical, visceral dance, which as the story becomes more ominous, becomes more frenetic, gestures more intense and abandoned. This is played out on a stage full of flowers  – white carnations – danced with and amongst.

At one point, having seen this work in development, I wonder if I might have preferred the ‘scratch’ version, in which the fate of the little girl is not revealed. But then comes the show’s ending – no spoilers here – and it all makes sense. This is how the show is; this is how the show needs to be. Beautifully managed, our suspense dealt with expertly, the conclusion rounded and satisfying.

The show is a brilliant reflection on those timeless moments in life when death walks through the door, and you find yourself sitting on a seesaw tipping between life and death.  The moment you sit in a hospital or at the end of a phone line waiting for the news. The ‘sliding doors’ moment when two diametrically opposed outcomes offer themselves to you, and you are powerless to do anything but wait. The moment you walk into a garden and see…

Near Gone is a near-perfect show. Wonderful performances by both actors. A beautifully crafted story told expertly through many means and forms – verbal, visual, physical. Spot-on dramaturgy (choreographer Charlotte Vincent name-checked here). A lovely sound design by Tim Blazdell, which incorporates tracks by Goran Bregovic and traditional Bulgarian song.

And flowers, so many flowers – enough for everyone in the audience to take some home with them afterwards, in memory of a beautiful little girl, forever playing in the sunshine in a gloriously green Bulgarian garden.

Squashed into a tiny performance space not big enough to swing a cat, five young women in fuschia pink wigs and neon nylon leotards in a variety of sickly hues (coral pink! Lime green!) are hula-hooping. Badly. The back two get completely entangled in the silver flash fronds behind them. The middle two persevere gamely, rictus grins on their faces. The front one decides to up her game by going down on one knee, her eyes fixed on us with an air almost of pleading. What a load of show offs!

Welcome to the world of Figs in Wigs. Elsewhere in Show Off – which might be a postmodern ironic deconstruction of a revue, or might be a light-hearted and fun-filled cabaret Fringe show (you choose)– we are treated to contemporary eccentric dance routines that give a nod in the direction of New Art Club;  jokes and more jokes and jokes about jokes; and a number of skits and sketches that are a gentle feminist rebuff to the world of male comedy.

Early in the show, we are told that most jokes are told by men, and that most jokes are about cocks, birds and turds. Willies, women, and poo. Later, we get treated to some children’s jokes by a herd of cows, chewing the cud as they speak. Knock knock. Who’s there. Banana. Aren’t you glad I said doctor, orange? Why did the chicken cross the road? To have a big poo. Go on, put ‘children’s jokes’ into Google. Hours of entertainment. But best told by a girl in a cheap cow onesie.

Social media is important, we are told repeatedly, in a parody of the young artist’s need to communicate using modern means. See our Facebook page, they say. Go to our website.  There’s a flipside to the jollity: through a sketch called The Most Anxious Woman in the World we hear that they are worried. Worried about how other’s perceive them Worried about their online profiles. That their phones aren’t good enough. That they are unhealthy. That they are doing it all wrong. That they don’t have as much fun as other people. This litany of young female angst is built into a nicely-delivered cut-up text.

In one rather over-long sketch, we encounter the ‘cutting hedge of contemporary art’. The five stand on their ‘collaborative platform’ (yes, it’s a wooden platform, and confess that it took them all of seven hours to learn how to be artists, and that the essence of success is plenty of free drinks at the private view and a wordy pamphlet explaining the concept. We are invited to get out our phones and take ‘facies’, which are different from ‘selfies’ which are not art, and to post them on Twitter with the hashtag #figsinwigs. That’s Figs in Wigs, not Pigs in Wigs or Freaks in Wigs or even Figs and Wigs. Get it right. The mistakes often found in their company name becomes a sketch in itself.

Costume changing and scene changing is built into the show, the awkward trips and bangs and clangs played up on. The self-referential ‘let’s put this show on the road’ motif is one well used throughout entertainment history, and it is good to see this classic trope played out so endearingly. The five members of Figs in Wigs are part of a growing army of young women performers using physical comedy and a pastiche of traditional ‘variety’ forms to present their contemporary take on feminist concerns (how women are viewed and valued by men; how women interact with each other; how women feel about themselves and their own bodies). Figs and Wigs manage to be gently political whilst never losing their ability to amuse – a great combination.

It’s a classic start: an empty stage, a shrouded grand piano, a low-hanging chandelier, a flurry from behind the curtains. The long, lanky, ginger-haired form of Thomas Monckton pops out briefly – a flurry of face-powder and flicked coat-tails – then disappears behind the blacks. Puppet-esque forms take shape, morph and dissolve. Eventually, the eponymous Pianist appears. Then disappears. Then re-appears.

Things aren’t going too well for him. The inanimate objects in his world conspire to thwart his attempts to get the show on the road. He slips and slides on top of the piano as he tries to remove the dusty shroud. The chandelier is hanging too low, so he practically dislocates his neck trying to avoid it. His music sheets fly away, causing him to scrabble into the audience after them. The leg of the piano falls off. And so it goes – each clowning moment played out beautifully. Monckton’s clown charms us with his mix of high-status aloofness and low-status slapstick. One moment his nose is in the air, acting as if everything is just fine and dandy; the next he’s looking at us with a desperate grin, inviting our sympathy. It’s a well-held balance.

The hour or so in his company is a complete joy. I love the big moments – the hanged-man chandelier swing; the rubber-legged dance on top of the piano ending in a crash as he disappears off the edge; the ludicrous beast-of-burden dragging of the piano across the stage on his back. Behind the clowning there is evidence of solid skills in aerial circus, object manipulation, contortion – and (eventually) actual piano-playing. But I also notice and appreciate the little things. The particular shade of orange of his socks, and the running joke of how slippery those socks are on the polished floor. The little glass teardrop dangling from the chandelier that hits him in the eye every time he passes it.

I’m also intrigued by the artistic choices made by this relatively young performer – here we have a contemporary circus piece that has the look and feel of an age-old vaudeville act. I appreciate the fact that the show is a truly international work: presented by a Finnish circus company (with many of the Circo Aereo team on board as collaborators), featuring a New Zealander who lives and works in France.

There are a few moments here and there that I’d probably suggest cutting back slightly (a robotic dance with the sheets of music, for example). That aside, it’s a show that’s hard to fault – perhaps not as adventurous in form as some would like, but I’m happy with the beautiful delivery of classic forms.