Go wildcats! Make some noise! Let’s get out there and win – whatever it takes. And to the tune of Party Rock Anthem, here comes a great big dancing bear – or maybe it’s a lion or a tiger, anyway, something big and furry – the team mascot, HB. And a whole gaggle of cheerleaders wrapped up in one pom-pom waving female body. (‘Give us an H, give us an O…’) Everybody just have a good time! Raise your hands! Every day I’m shufflin…

Action Hero continue their theatrical exploration – nay, obsession – with American culture and mores in latest show Hoke’s Bluff. As they put it, a quest ‘to interrogate American mythmaking’ (previous shows have investigated Western movies and daredevil stunt riders). This time, it’s all about the big game.

The audience are seated in traverse, in grandstand seats facing the pitch or field or ice or whatever it might be for a football/baseball/hockey/ice hockey game. There is deliberate confusion – it’s a game, that’s all that matters. It’s THE game, the one that really matters. The one that everything depends on.

Every cliché in the book is played out. The clean-cut boy sports hero who faces the toughest fight of his life. The chipper cheerleader girlfriend egging him on. The rivalry and sisterhood of the other cheerleaders. The team players, a Brotherhood of Men (no longer boys). The kind surrogate-father turned tough-cookie coach. The firm-but-fair umpire, whistle in hand, creating a semaphore of arm movements that only the initiated understand. Scores are announced breathlessly. Rules and regs we don’t understand are cited. Decision stands! The colours of the red-and-yellow team strip reflected on ever sign and banner, in every piece of plastic furniture or drink can in sight.

But here’s the really clever thing. Hoke’s Bluff isn’t yet another one of those postmodern ironic shows that show up and mock popular culture and populist conventions. Action Hero get right inside, just as easily as they get inside that big furry animal suit. They are not just pointing at the thing, they’re doing the thing. And they bring us with them, as spectators, and as collaborators in the action.

And it’s so easy to fit in: to cheer, to rabble-rouse, to look back into our coach’s eyes, to worry about mainman Tyler Purdum when he’s down on the ground surrounded by medics, or girl-next-door Connie Stevens when she’s confessing her love or talking about getting a soda at Big Joe’s Shakehouse. We’ve all been there – we’ve lived the sporting life vicariously through TV and film (from Horse Feathers to Wildcats to Remember the Titans and beyond). We’ve lived in small-town America, regardless of where we come from. We’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life and Orange County. We’ve read Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman and Stewart O’Nan. Some of us are even old enough to remember Peyton Place. We know these characters as if they were our own brothers or sisters or fathers or sons. And it’s all acted out so beautifully, so perfectly by the Action Hero duo (Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse) playing Tyler, Connie and just about everybody else, with guest performer/co-deviser Laura Dannequin as the constant rock that is the umpire. Other collaborators are co-writer Nick Walker and dramaturg Deborah Pearson, whose contributions have no doubt helped to make it the neatly scripted and dramaturgically tight ship that it is.

The key to the show’s success is that it is all done with love. There’s a beautiful duality in action: Hoke’s Bluff is a double bluff that places both the company and its audience simultaneously on the inside and on the outside looking in. A very clever piece of theatre; a cracking night out.

A game of blind-man’s-buff, the sound of a distorted music box, rubber glove feet, and a great big cry of cock-a-doodle doo. Welcome into the world three batty birds, emerging blinking into the light, ready for the call of nature – no, not that call, the call to freeze, fight or flight.

It’s a perfect theme for a circus show – yes, we’ve seen a number of circus bird shows – the Mamaloucos epic retelling of Aristophanes’ The Birds springs immediately to mind – but there’s room in the world for another, especially one this skilled and funny.

3 is a Crowd is a new all-female ensemble of ‘seasoned circus artists’ – Bianca Mackail, Olivia Porter and Rockie Stone – who hail from Australia and thus (inevitably I suppose) have connections with Circa. Fright or Flight is their first show and comes to the Edinburgh Fringe trailing clowds of glory, having won the Best Circus and Physical Theatre Award at Adelaide Fringe Festival 2013.

Imagine a cross between the three-woman acrobatic team Mimbre and the three-man ‘theatre of engineering’ company Akhe. Yes, they like to make a mess; yes they swap basing and flying merrily in a fabulous show of female strength. But with gorgeous aerial work thrown in (circ, rope), and some very nifty juggling.

Eggs feature (of course), as do a clutch of very lovely little wind-up chicks. There is harmony, and there is bullying. There is walking on bottles and there is a daft paper-bag whole body mask. There are tomboy birdies who won’t grow up (not me!) and there are burlesque birdies with light-up vanity cases, feather pasties, and gold shoes. There is more than one very stupid chicken suit, and there is the birdie song in German!

It’s all fantastically funny and clever, but there are also some soft and gentle moments – cue Antony and the Johnsons: ‘Bird girls can fly…’

These three have certainly found their wings, taking the impressive skills they’ve honed and developed with Circa and using them to create something idiosyncratic and unique. A gorgeous show – bravo!

The clue is in the name: Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities) is a vaudevillian affair, a sophisticated cabaret/variety show that presents a series of acts, with no aspirations towards a narrative. Circus not circus-theatre – which is more than good enough for me. All the components of a good variety show are here: lots of breathtakingly skilled circus acts, and plenty of saucy moments that edge towards burlesque (more than one pair of trousers lost). Expect sassy costumes of shiny black undies or leotards or swimsuits or mankinis, paired with hot-pink and lime green accessories. There are moments of seriousness, but ironic humour is the order of the day.

Acts include a beefy boy-on-boy acrobalance number to the tune of Shirley Bassey’s Kiss Me Honey Honey. Later there’s more Bassey, this time a live guitar rendition of Big Spender for another beefcake moment – there are so many verging-on-soft-porn male striptease acts in this show that I sometimes wonder if I‘ve wandered into Briefs instead, but no – there’s no feathers or Lurex here. There’s a contortion act using a very small hoop (cue tango tune), a number of contemporary clown vignettes using stretchy neon-coloured rubber bands that are gobbled and pulled like chewing gum, and a joyful play with a roll of bubblewrap, in which every last bubble is popped. The opener is a very slow hoop act in low lighting – a stark contrast to the usual high-energy whirl and twirl hula-hooping (although we get some of that later). There is a strange and mesmerising staccato action from the solo female performer that is so different to the usual ‘feminine’ hip rotations and sensuous circling we associate with hooping.

All the things we’ve come to know and love about Circa are here: the strong women who are just as likely to base as fly; the tongue-in-cheek play on assigned gender roles and sexuality; the skill and professionalism that mark them out as one of the world’s top circus companies. Acrobatics, trapeze, Chinese pole – every act is top-notch, beautifully honed and finely tuned.

The setting, the imposing dome-ceilinged Mc Ewan hall; is softened with soft black ceiling silks, the late-afternoon light coming through the stained-glass windows adding another element to the clever lighting design, which uses a set of short LED/fluorescent tubes that light up in vibrant colour combinations  – at the start of the show, just one or two lit up in boudoir red, balanced with a purple wash; later, a whole forest of electric blue and citron lemon, or deep violet paired with apricot. Shadows cast across the majestic architecture of the hall adds another interesting scenic element.

This is the third Circa show I’ve seen in recent months, and taken together they demonstrate the very varied repertoire of the company (the other two are their high-art piece How Like An Angel, and their new surreal cabaret work Beyond, both seen at Norfolk & Norwich Festival, May 2013) Wunderkammer is the most accessible of the three – it’s a crowd-pleaser, and the Edinburgh crowd were very pleased indeed, giving the company a well-deserved ovation as they returned for a curtain-call to the tune of, appropriately enough, You Sexy Thing.