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.

Ah, a room full of junk furniture and cardboard boxes, and we are allowed – encouraged, even – to wander around and rummage. All of this waiting for us! How exciting! I open one. It’s full of green polystyrene balls – packaging – and at the bottom is a pen, and a provocation: What was the first thing you remember owning? In another box: Name something you have broken. In another box I find a man’s suit jacket. In another a chintzy side-lamp. Looking around the room, I see a lot of chintzy side-lamps, some lit some not. There are a number of battered old hi-fi music centres and record players. In a pile of vinyl albums tossed on the floor I spot the faces of Petula Clark, Herb Albert, and Al Johnson in minstrel make-up. A Cliff Richard Christmas album is amongst a pile of CDs that once came free with newspapers. Meanwhile, we hear the strains of an easy-listening classic: ‘What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love”. A waltz popular with ice-dancers, I believe. There’s an old Bakelite phone (the type with a dial face) on a rickety side-table. Filing cabinets. Broken light fittings. Tables and chairs, mismatched. A worn and scratched brown leather sofa. And on the floor some more cardboard boxes that have ‘sit on me’ scrawled on them. So we do.

The Object Lesson is, unsurprisingly, about objects. And about memories. And about constructing narratives – how we tell ourselves and others stories. How stories change depending on time passing and context told. What do we keep (objects, people, memories), and what do we throw away?

The storyteller is Geoff Sobelle from Rainpan 43 and Pig Iron Theatre – award-winning Aurora Nova artist (previously seen in All Wear Bowlers, and Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, both of which went on to London International Mime Festival success). He’s a masterful clown – and although this isn’t a clown show per se, his phenomenal skills as a performer who has the audience eating out of his hands (literally at one point) derive from his clown training and years of experience in physical devising and ‘le jeu’ – the game, the play.

This game is played in the round, with Geoff Sobelle sitting, standing, table-dancing (in ice skates), climbing, box-emptying, bread-breaking, wine-swigging, talking on the phone, wooing a girl in the audience with a romantic dinner, staring at a set of traffic lights flickering from red to amber to green – and ultimately portraying a whole lifetime of life, love, dreams, ambitions, and setbacks through the silent emptying out of what seems to be a bottomless box; a time capsule holding a whole world of experiences, from cradle to grave.

Sobelle gives a faultless performance – aided and abetted by director David Neumann, installation designer Steven Dufala, lighting designer Christopher Kuhl, and sound designer Nick Kourtides. Between them, this uber-creative team manage the playful interaction between a roomful of phones, tape-recorders, record-players, speakers, lights, lamps, and torches, most of which start out in cardboard boxes.

This is the show that has stayed with me from this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe – the show above all others I’d recommend anyone to see. All human life is here – embodied in the everyday objects we live with, cherish, break, discard. The Object Lesson is a groundbreaking show – an extraordinary achievement.

The lost or stolen shadow – or the shadow that takes charge of its own destiny – is a common theme in fairy tales, perhaps most famously explored in the Hans Christian Andersen short story ‘The Shadow’. In Malasombra, Spanish company Auments use the obvious (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing) device of shadow theatre to tell the tale of a shadow that decides to decide its own desires and urges.

Using a large screen that fills the back of the stage in Summerhall’s main space, the company create beautiful images: the shadow-catcher, Mister Malasombra, looming over the poor little shadow with his cage; the chase through the forest; the endless line of captured shadow-men filing into the workhouse. The use of scale is lovely, figures morphing in size; the cage and the factory walls shrinking and growing. Alternating with shadow work is projected animation, depicting the forest by day and by night – I particularly like a sweet little owl on a branch. Visual credits go to award-winning Spanish cartoonist Max, who is also credited with the creative idea and dramaturgy of the show.

There is also action in front of the screen – but this is less successful. Choreography between La Chica (The Girl, dressed in a coral-pink pixie outfit) and La Sombra (The Shadow, dressed in head-to-tow black, face veiled) starts nicely, as Shadow and Girl move from being totally entwined to physically separated. But Girl alone then spoils it with a twee little mock-balletic dance. In other sections, movement work is melodramatic but lacking in passion.

The soundtrack is a real mix: from jazz flamenco to psychedelia via spooky Theremin, piano sonatas, and ear-splitting experimental rock. All working well with the visuals. It feels (and I believe is) a show led by visual and sonic (rather than performing) arts. The choreography and mime feels like the least-developed aspect, which is a shame in a word-free show. Performances are variable. The older male performer playing Mister Malasombra has a great physical presence – streets ahead of the two women playing La Chica and La Sombra.

Malasombra is a whimsical and lyrical show for family audiences (not the ‘dark fairy tale for adults’ advertised!), and charming for the most part.

Work, work, work. Never stopping, fighting to meet the productivity deadlines… That’s all there is – that and a fitful night’s sleep, dreaming terrible dreams, until it is time to get up and get back on the treadmill. That is the sum of a working man’s life.

Surrounded on three sides by audience, a lone male performer jogs and climbs and runs, his skin dripping with sweat, finally collapsing breathless, forcing himself to his feet despite exhaustion, battling on. Lying prone on the floor, his heels hammer the floor as his voice chants in time to the tattoo: ‘lavora, sogna, lavora, sogna’. Work, dream, work, dream. This isn’t mere acting – this body is being pushed; being worked and worked and worked.

Subtitled, for reasons I don’t fully understand,  ‘the contemporary hermit’, Made In ILVA explores ‘the impact of the biggest steelworks of Europe, on the environment and surrounding population’. At least, that is what it claims to do – the reality is a riveting solo performance that seems to be less specific and more universal – a reflection on the oppression of capitalism, and the subjugation of the working-class male body to the harsh injustices of manual labour.

It’s a beautifully staged and performed piece, directed with precision by Anna Dora Dorno, informed in its making by Meyerhold’s biomechanics (a system of intense physical performance practice that seems to have dropped off the radar somewhat in recent times). A modest-sized steel structure morphs from chair to ladder to cage – rocked, tipped, swung from, climbed on and under. A square on the floor acts as a canvas for painting in light: sepia and blackberry coloured projections of industrial buildings; or at other times harsh unforgiving blocks of intense colour, scarlet or canary yellow. A rubber mat running from the square into the audience’s spaces is a runway for tortuous and tortured journeys – walking, crawling, running.

The lone man on stage, Nicola Pianzola, gives an earth-shaking performance. There is no physical let-up, and as he moves, he speaks – a poetic, percussive text that echoes the pre-recorded soundtrack. I witness the piece without knowing anything of its provenance. I’m interested to learn afterwards that verbatim texts by steelworkers from the fated plant (which has seen 180 deaths and thousands of injuries over the decades). Little of this is evident in what we see and hear – although a wonderful last ten minutes of soundscape mixing a multitude of voices leads me to wonder if perhaps Ricardo Nanni’s sound composition (which is overdubbed in English) has lost some of its content and power in the rejigging for an English-speaking audience.

That aside, and focusing on what was presented rather than what is claimed in programme notes, this is a rare and wondrous piece of physical performance, a privilege to experience.