Bard at home in Shanghai

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) JJJJ While he’s not the only comic with a self-aggrandising, award judge-baiting show title this year, Mark Forward might have the best chance of making good on his boast.

Mocking acclaim for shows about bleak subject matter and conventional standup in general, both with his hostile sarcasm and indeed, the schlubby Canadian uses the entire theatre, charging round and up the seating bank as he keeps the audience on their toes.

Willing to truly commit to a bit, the most memorable sequence in this hour containing several features the entire six minute play of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart and him screaming at his poor technician throughout.

Affecting a prickly, volcanic anger, poised to blow his stack at the slightest irritation, Forward nevertheless tempers his combustibility with a sly, self-amused grin that instructs you to take none of this at all seriously. From the moment he takes the stage, muttering about the pressures of being a single parent, and oh, the endless making of sandwiches, prior to demonic thoughts intruding, there’s both aggressive whimsy and thoughtfully silly philosophising. The stool-andspotlight episodes where he muses upon death and the arrangements for funerals are cases in point.

A priceless moment occurs when this bearish performer, reflecting on the inconsistencies of heaven, envisions an actual bear arriving at the Pearly Gates, growling its total, ursine incomprehension at the imagined scenario.

There are occasional longueurs and the odd culde-sac, but they become part of a burgeoning sense of encroaching meltdown, as Forward, a skilled audience manipulator, expertly builds and releases the tension in the room.

Distinctive and offbeat, while remaining relatively accessible, he loses a few audience members to early walkouts. It’s unquestionably their loss, as come his pathetic but spectacular finale, they have missed a barnstormer of a show. JAY RICHARDSON Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) JJJJ More than a few hearts will have sunk upon the realisation that The Dreamer is performed entirely in Mandarin, without subtitles – but I suspect they didn’t stay down for long. This visually stunning collaboration between England’s Gecko theatre company and China’s Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (SDAC) conveys everything we need to know without words.

It is a fusing of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu (Shakespeare’s 16th-century Chinese peer), and it helps if you have a rough knowledge of at least the former – but even without that, there’s much to enjoy here.

The action centres on Helena, a bored, undervalued office worker whose love for Demetrius is completely ignored. We see her filing paperwork at her desk, travelling home through the rain, taking phone calls from her mother and climbing into bed. All of which sounds mundane, but in the hands of this talented troupe is a feast for the eyes.

The show scooped Best Set Design at the One Drama Awards in China, and with good reason. Constructed on two levels, with various moving parts, it’s an endlessly Voodoo Rooms (Venue 68) JJJ Who wants to see an absurdist clown show in which Angela Lansbury is the antichrist?

Only me, apparently. Which meant I was alone on the front row just a few feet away from the considerable talents of Elf Lyons and Ryan Lane.

Lyons and Lane are escapees from the Gaulier School and this is their first collaboration

It is a bit of a mess, to be honest. There is some stuff about a dog called Judy Dench, a conspiracy theory about an East German ping pong team and quite a lot of stuff about prosthetic limbs.

0 The Dreamer’s set design presents endlessly shifting locations shifting series of locations that never fails to impress.

A good set will only take you so far, of course, but the performers of SDAC are equally strong. Ensemble routines fill the stage with dynamic movement and light, while the narrative scenes slow Lyons, in a weirdly stretched and angled men’s suit, plays a sinister sporting Svengali. Lane is an East German cross-dressing ping pong player.

Theplayissetinan allotment, where the audience members, if there were any, would have been the vegetables.

Although most of it makes no sense, it is weirdly entertaining and oddly amusing – particularly when the pair, who are evidently very good friends, make each other laugh and start squabbling on stage.

It’s not clear what they were planning but having a few more bums on seats might help them work out what they are trying to say. CLAIRE SMITH things down appropriately, to deliver the play’s emotional heart. The odd smattering of well-timed English is thrown in, and Shakespeare’s tale of unrequited love, potions and mischief is played out.

The Peony Pavilion is depicted via beautiful shadow C (Venue 34) JJJ With bases in Germany and England, JSLN Dance Company is on a commendable quest to bring ballet to the masses. That includes the Edinburgh Fringe, a place notoriously slight on classical ballet, so the company’s presence here is most welcome.

That said, the vehicle with which artistic director Sören Niewelt is aiming to reach said masses is all kinds of wrong.

Inspired by the Austin Powers film series, Mojo in Motion is termed a “comedy ballet”, although there are work which, again, if you’re unfamiliar with the text is still enjoyable on an aesthetic level. And, perhaps best of all, The Dreamer gives Helena an empowering new 21st-century ending. KELLY APTER precious few laughs to be found. Set and costumes give the piece a comic caper feel, but the artform is lost among the clumsy narrative.

Which means it’s something of a (very pleasant) shock when hot on its heels follows 30 minutes of hugely enjoyable ballet. A beautifully performed, well-crafted piece of neoclassical ballet, Consequential Gaps is also choreographed by Niewelt, but it’s like night and day.

Here we really get to see this talented bunch of dancers shine, through partner work and tight ensemble pieces. Niewelt has attracted a strong team of performers to his company who, once they swap comedy for class, are well worth a look. KELLY APTER An hour in the company of Anton Adasinsky is always time well spent. The chief clown of maverick Russian physical theatre troupe Derevo has made a career out of creating unexpected, often inexplicable theatrical experiences that have the power to make you laugh, cry and ponder.

So in many ways, Last Clown On Earth is business as usual. He arrives on stage dressed in ripped, stained pyjamas, seemingly the last human in a post-apocalyptic world.

A dark, heavy atmosphere is soon replaced by comedy, as he travels up high and down below to check in with God and the Devil about his next move – both of whom are depicted on a vast backscreen, the journey itself accompanied by hilarious music.

And so it goes on, pingponging backwards and forwards between moments of humour crafted as only Adasinsky can, when the raise of an eyebrow or twist of the lip silently speaks volumes – and more esoteric displays, which leave the audience staring quizzically.

The sense that, in among the scripted bits, anything can happen gives the show a vibrant buzz, but the emotional resonance Derevo usually does so well feels strangely absent this time. KELLY APTER C venues C royale (Venue 6) JJ Like the Broadway hit A Chorus Line from which it derives its title, this absurdist comedy puts a large cast of young performers in the spotlight. It is less backstage drama and more Brazil via Brexit though, as a tied-up Tory is interrogated by nonsensical symbolic figures – a doctor, a priest, a musician, three toffs in eveningwear – all while that earwormy intro plays maddeningly in the background. There are a lot of ideas at play in Nick Cassenbaum’s script – too many, in fact, and the surrealism never satisfyingly coheres into something meaningful. NIKI BOYLE