Best of the fest

Your guide to the week’s finest live entertainment

FRINGE BY THE SEA Mica Paris

Belhaven Big Top, North Berwick, today Mica Paris, one of Britain’s most respected soul singers, returns to Fringe By The Sea following a sell-out show in 2018 with her brand new album, Gospel. It’s her first in more than a decade but she hasn’t been out of the spotlight – last year she joined Eastenders and she was also made an MBE.

What’s The Weather? With Judith Ralston

SSE Renewables Envirozone, North Berwick, 1pm, 3pm, 4.45pm, Saturday

If you’ve ever wondered what causes thunderstorms, how snowflakes form, or why our climate is changing, BBC weather presenter Judith Ralston and her meteorologist husband Fraser will give a glimpse into all the action that happens in the sky.

FRINGE

Sweet FA

Tynecastle, Edinburgh, until August 30, 3pm & 7.30pm

It’s 1916 and the men fight on the Western Front.the women work in the factories, and form football teams, raising money for the war effort.women’s football fast becomes the most popular sport in the land.worried it is starting to rival the men’s, the football authorities ban the women’s game in 1921.

Sweet FA is a new play with songs, telling the story of one women’s factory football team from Fountainbridge, fighting for their right to play the beautiful game.

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL Royal Scottish National Orchestra & Thomas Sondergard

Edinburgh Academy Junior School, Wednesday, 6pm and 8.30pm Mendelssohn’s magical A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture is one of classical music’s best-known and most-loved pieces. Seldom performed in its entirety, this is a rare opportunity to hear it performed live. Join RSNO musicians, together with voices from Edinburgh Festival Chorus.

BOOK FESTIVAL Culture in a Time of Crisis

New York Times Theatre (in Sculpture Court, Edinburgh College of Art), Saturday, 8.30pm and online

Even amid such troubled times as we have experienced this year, art continues to be made – songs are sung, books are written, movies are filmed.the book festival’s opening-night event is an exploration of why we need creative output in times of crisis.writers and performers look at the power of creative ideas to uplift, to transport and to help us understand the world. Across poetry, song, stories and polemics, this is a defiant, unapologetic and jubilant celebration of the fact that in times of crisis we need culture more than ever.