Everyday objects. Upright Hoovers, lots, dotted around the performance space. A ladies’ bike. A radiator. Electrical appliances. Extension leads. Marigold gloves. An ironing board. A flat-screen TV. The domestic environment.

We hear a male voice on the soundtrack, mixed low – it’s hard to hear what’s being said. I pick up something about having to change the sheets. Three women enter the space. There’s a short choreography with the Hoovers. The women voice the words of a domestic argument. It only takes a moment to realise that the male voice on the soundtrack is voicing a woman’s concerns, and the women’s live voices are voicing a man’s side of the argument. A nice twist.

The show isn’t what it first appears to be. It isn’t a show about domestic labour, the drudgery of housework (although that is part of the narrative); it’s a study in love – the subtitle of the piece turns out to be the important bit. And a study in gender (a popular 30 Bird theme – see, for example, Plastic, a show about trans-gender in Iran, shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award a few years ago).

Bit by bit, the fragmented narrative builds into a cohesive whole, using repetition and revision and addition so that layers are added, granting us ever more insight into the story of a marriage. A marriage between an Iranian man and an English woman, in which she is asked to make a declaration of her belief in Allah in order for the wedding to go ahead (‘Is she Catholic’, asks the Imam. ‘Catholics are difficult.’) A marriage in which a child is conceived semi-accidentally due to a half-arsed attitude towards contraception (the story of so many marriages), but then welcomed and raised with love. A marriage in which one person (the man) is away from home a lot, out in the world because of his work, whilst the other person (the woman) finds herself the one left to do most of the childcare and housework. ‘While you’ve been away I’ve…’ becomes a repeated refrain. Yes, it’s a familiar tale. Universal.

But there’s more, a lot more. The story becomes more specific, more intimate. A story of a romance that blossoms through a Spanish holiday – although one partner mostly remembers niggling things like having to bypass all the lovely fish restaurants because the other one doesn’t like fish. Memories of ex-girlfriends creep in. Parallel stories interweave: we move into the lives of other couples; of parents, and grandparents in Tehran.

A constant theme throughout the show is the ever-changing rules on gender and gender-based expectations that permeate British and Iranian culture. We learn that our male protagonist rides a ladies’ bike, which is a lot faster and better than his old mountain bike, yet courts ridicule. The Tehran grandfather is mocked by the gossips for sewing curtains for his wife and eating quiche. Real men don’t, obviously. We learn of the emancipation of women in Iran: it is decreed that no woman should cover her head, the scarf is abolished, women are ordered to dress in the Western manner. Grandmother refuses to go out naked-headed, so gets around Tehran by climbing from roof to roof with a ladder. It’s an extraordinary image, painted with words.

Meanwhile, on screen, here’s Johnny Guitar: the only Hollywood Western to feature a gunfight between two women. ‘All a man needs in life’ says a cowboy ‘is a cup of coffee and a smoke’. Oh, if only life were so simple…

The show is beautifully scripted (by writer/director Mehrdad Seyf) but looks and feels nothing like a regular ‘play’ – although there’s plenty of play. The words are important, but no more or less than the visual imagery, and the performers’ physical engagement with the installation-like environment. The show is created in collaboration with artist Chris Dobrowolski, and rather than a ‘set’ in the regular sense of the word, we have the real-life domestic objects that are used to create ever-changing sculptural tableaux. The bike often finds itself resting on the radiator. The women are often to be found wearing coffee-pot headdresses. Electrical appliances bang or whirr.

And within the text, whether spoken or on the soundscape, objects continue to hold sway –listed, accounted for. The cupboards and drawers containing her headscarves and long-sleeved tops. The story of how Grandmother wouldn’t remove his toiletries and clothes from the flat after Grandfather died. Live voice and recorded voice work in harmony. The soundtrack is a mix of this recorded text, found sound, and original composition (by Greg Mickelborough).  Here and there are whimsical waltzes, distorted rumbas, and a hint of a Spanish Paso Doble.

The piece is performed more than competently with zest and energy by the three women actors, but if there’s a criticism it is that the physical performance is not as edgy or uplifting as it could be – I’d like to see a little more choreographic rigour in the piece. That aside, a stimulating and entertaining additional to 30 Bird’s ongoing investigation of what it means to be ‘male’ or ‘female’ in this world of ours.

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.