Theatre

Crocodile Fever

Traverse

Playwright Meghan Tyler returns to rural Northern Ireland in the era of the Troubles for a grotesque comedy about the reunion of two sisters – one pious, the other rebellious – after the apparent death of their tyrannical father. Directed by Gareth Nicholls, who enjoyed such success with David Ireland’s Ulster American last year.

If You’re Feeling Sinister: A Play With Songs

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose

For all of the sensitive boys and girls who have swooned at the Belle and Sebastian album of the same name, Eve Nicol’s play should be an indulgent treat. The Glasgow theatremaker has used Stuart Murdoch’s lyrics to tell the story of an artist and an academic who fall dangerously in love.

Moot Moot

Summerhall

Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill are Barry and Barry, lookalike radio hosts with grey suits, grey hair and moustaches, hosting a surreal radio phone-in. Complete with office-chair choreography and a live soundscape by Yas Clarke, it is a satire of the cliches and catchphrases of modern communication.

Hair of the Wild

C at SESH Hairdressing

Spanish artist Concha Vidal believes you can learn a lot about someone from their hair. What we have (or do not have) on our heads tells the world about our gender, class and even our mental health. Performing in a real salon, Vidal digs out some wigs and speculates about their owners.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Real and theatrical violence … Milo Rau’s La Reprise, Histoire(s) du Théâtre Photograph: Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Hans Lucas

La Reprise. Histoire(s) du Théâtre (I)

Royal Lyceum

Milo Rau is one of the hottest directors on the European theatre scene, although his work has been relatively little seen in the UK. A chance to catch up now with his meditation on violence, both real and theatrical, and an evocation of the homophobic murder of Ihsane Jarfi, a 32-year-old Belgian man, in 2012.

All of Me

Summerhall

A few years ago, performer Caroline Horton stirred some debate about the appropriateness of using a jokey format to discuss anorexia. She was speaking from experience, however, and behind the send up of a micromanaging persona, Mess was a touching insight into an eating disorder. In All of Me, she is on similarly fraught ground as she uses a backstage metaphor to consider the urge to live and to die.

Cardboard Citizens: Bystanders

Summerhall

As homelessness grows more visible on our streets, the humanising message of Cardboard Citizens is all the more urgent. After winning acclaim for its adaptation of Cathy Come Home a couple of years ago, the company returns with a compendium of true-life stories from homeless people, ranging from a Polish migrant to a Windrush-generation boxer.

Arthur

Your home

Quite a few family units are doing shows on the fringe, including this by Daniel Bye, who is joined by his infant son, Arthur, under the direction of his wife, Sarah Punshon. To see the show, which picks apart the nature-nurture debate, you have to book it for your own living room.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The trauma of not being welcomed … How Not to Drown. Photograph: Helen Maybanks and Matt Hodges

How Not to Drown

Traverse

Playwright Nicola McCartney joins forces with Dritan Kastrati to dramatise his experience firstly as a refugee from Kosovo and secondly as a child in the UK care system. The ThickSkin co-production, directed by Neil Bettles, is about the trauma of never being welcome in the world.

House of Hundred

C Aquila

An intriguing-sounding installation that combines video, live looping, traditional Turkish music and sound effects to evoke the transition of an Istanbul mansion from the Ottoman era to the present day. Based on the family history of creator Yesim Ozsoy, it is staged by Istanbul theatre company Galata Perform.

Oedipus

King’s theatre

Celebrated director Robert Icke collaborates with the formidable ensemble of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam in his own update of the Sophocles tragedy. We’re now in the age of a media-savvy politician – somewhere between Obama and Macron – on the night of a presidential election that’s going swimmingly until awkward secrets return from the past.

Lucy McCormick: Post Popular

Pleasance Courtyard

With her last show, Triple Threat, McCormick re-enacted the birth of Christ from the point of view of both Mary and the baby. It was not for the fainthearted. Expect more filth and iconoclasm as she turns her attention to the use and abuse of power in the company of Samir Kennedy and Ted Rodgers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Electropop legends Pet Shop Boys. Photograph: Pelle Crépin

Musik

Assembly Rooms

Pet Shop Boys fans on standby as the team behind Closer to Heaven reunite for a one-woman show. The story of fictional rock icon Billie Trix is written by Jonathan Harvey, performed by Frances Barber and includes six new songs by the electropop legends.

Islander: A New Musical

Roundabout @ Summerhall

Part of the Made in Scotland programme, this small-scale musical has been praised for its haunting soundtrack of layered voices created by live looping. Suitable for children and adults, it’s inspired by Scottish folk music and tells the tale of a lonely island where a mysterious stranger is washed up.

Narcolepsy

Summerhall

Theatremaker Chris Goode has a 25-year record on the fringe, so it’s an appropriate time for him to look back to his formative days. Reflecting on gay life in the 1990s, he focuses on the late River Phoenix, in a show that is one part documentary, one part “fractured autobiography”.

Purposeless Movements

The Studio

Robert Softley Gale’s stock is high after the runaway success of the subversive My Left/Right Foot – The Musical, which he wrote and directed. Here, working with his Birds of Paradise company, he creates a dance-theatre piece focusing on the “purposeless movements” of four men, like him, with cerebral palsy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coming to terms with loss … The Last of The Pelican Daughters. Photograph: Chelsey Cliff/PR

The Last of the Pelican Daughters

Pleasance Courtyard

Developed by Complicite, this show by the Wardrobe Ensemble is about four sisters coming to terms with the loss of their mother. A comedy about inheritance, loss and justice, it looks at the way people can exert a hold on us even after they’re gone. From the creators of Education, Education, Education.

Pathetic Fallacy

CanadaHub @ King’s Hall

It’s all very well talking the environmental talk, but if you’re burning up the planet in the process, you could be part of the problem. Step forward Anita Rochon, who appears in her own green-themed show only by remote video while a local stand-in takes her place in the lead role.

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran

Traverse

Javaad Alipoor scored a fringe hit with The Believers Are But Brothers, an interactive play about radicalisation and misinformation, which is returning for a lap of honour at Assembly George Square Studios. Meanwhile, the writer and director looks at the growing disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in Rich Kids, a play about entitlement, consumption and digital technology.

Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation

The Studio

Actor and playwright Tim Crouch joins forces with the National Theatre of Scotland for a piece of apocalyptic meta-theatre. Contemplating our need to come together in a theatre to see a fictional tale played out, he asks the audience to join with him to do exactly that – and maybe change the world.

Dance and circus

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Twitchy energy … Oona Doherty in Hard to Be Soft – A Belfast Prayer. Photograph: Luca Trufarelli

Hard to Be Soft – A Belfast Prayer

Royal Lyceum

London-born Oona Doherty arrived in Belfast aged 10. Hard to be Soft recreates her observations of the alien culture she landed in, from the twitchy energy and pent-up aggression to the “harsh strong girls” practising for disco-dancing competitions. David Holmes provides the soundtrack.

The Crucible

Edinburgh Playhouse

A world premiere from Scottish Ballet, celebrating its 50th anniversary year. American choreographer Helen Pickett digs into the drama, claustrophobia and fear of Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible. Danced to a new, live score by the appropriately monikered Peter Salem.

Trisha Brown: In Plain Site

Jupiter Artland

Postmodern dance icon Brown died in 2017 but her company lives on. In tune with the choreographer’s interest in bodies interacting with the structures around them, the dancers perform some of Brown’s short pieces amid the sculptures at the wonderful Jupiter Artland.

Looping: Scotland Overdub

Zoo Southside

An Afropunk ceilidh club night with a political edge, led by Scottish Dance Theatre and Optimo records. SDT’s dozen dancers let loose in moves by Felipe de Assis and Rita Aquino, who created the original Brazilian show that inspired this Scottish spin-off.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Charming … This Time by Ockham’s Razor. Photograph: Nik Mackey

Ockham’s Razor: This Time

Saint Stephens theatre

British aerialists Ockham’s Razor make work that is full of charm, warmth and humanity. At 2016’s festival they won a Total Theatre award for Tipping Point and now they’re back with a meditation on time, performed by a cast aged 13-60.

The Hospital

Dance Base

Twisted dance theatre from Norway’s Jo Strømgren Kompani, The Hospital was first seen at the Edinburgh fringe back in 2005. Its original cast returns, 14 years on, as three sadistic nurses in an empty hospital playing out a gory comic horror.

Body Language

Dance Base

Inspired by the idea that 65% of our communication is non-verbal, this UK premiere from the excellent Dublin company CoisCéim Dance Theatre promises a spontaneous performance each day, created in real time from live interviews, photography, video, music and dance.

Rachael Young: Nightclubbing & Out

Summerhall

A theatre performer and live artist increasingly using movement to make her point, Young has been garnering praise for two defiant shows looking at black and queer bodies and their space in the world, via dancehall, Afrofuturism and the goddess Grace Jones.

Super Sunday

Circus Hub

Think Jackass doing circus. This grungy, freewheeling show from Finland’s Race Horse Company makes its Edinburgh debut, packed with japes and genuine peril, from the Wheel of Death to the human-sized catapult, plus some of the most joyfully transcendent trampolining you’ll see.

Raven

Assembly Roxy

The brilliant Bryony Kimmings worked with Berlin circus trio Still Hungry to bring some of her straight-talking style to this piece exploring the realities of motherhood. NB. For more a more millennial take on feminist circus, check out mouthy Australians Yuck Circus.

Comedy

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Comic laureate of suburban bathos … John Kearns. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

John Kearns

Monkey Barrel

Still the only comic ever to win Best Newcomer and Best Show at consecutive festivals, the buck-teeth-and-tonsure-wig funnyman – a comic laureate of suburban bathos – returns with Double Take and Fade Away, his first show to premiere at Edinburgh since his 2014 Comedy award win.

Stephen Fry

Festival theatre

There aren’t many acts of whom you can say, “embarking on his first tour in 40 years”. Step forward Stephen Fry, bringing the stage version of his Greek legends book Mythos to the EIF as the opening dates of a UK tour – his first since hitting the road with Hugh Laurie four decades ago.

Sophie Duker

Pleasance Courtyard

Full fringe debut for the much-touted “sexy-cerebral comedy underdog” Duker, of C4’s Riot Girls and club night Wacky Racists. Her show Venus is described as “an unconventional journey of woke self-discovery”, addressing her daddy issues, hatred of Yorkshire puddings and penchant for sexy racists.

Nick Helm

Pleasance Dome

The last time he brought a new show to the fringe, Nick Helm’s One-Man Mega Myth was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy award in 2013. Six years on, the star of Uncle returns with another fragile/aggressive nugget of hoarse, heavy-metal comedy.

Catherine Cohen

Pleasance Courtyard

Known for her weekly cabaret at Alan Cumming’s Manhattan club, the 27-year-old alt-comedy darling specialises in self-mocking jokes and songs about dating in NYC. This is her Edinburgh debut.

Kieran Hodgson

Pleasance Courtyard

A treat for completist comedy fans, as multiple Edinburgh Comedy award nominee Hodgson revives his four hit solo shows – from the cute French Exchange to last year’s big-hitting Brexit pre-history ’75 – in rep throughout the second half of the festival. If you only see one: 2015’s Lance is a cracker.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coming early … Desiree Burch. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Desiree Burch

Heroes @ The Hive

Desiree’s Coming Early! runs the title of her new show – ironically, given she’s a year late for this engagement with fringe audiences, having had to cancel her 2018 run. The wait is likely to have been worth it for fans of the New Yorker’s unflinching and energetic comedy – as seen on Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and beyond.

Simon Munnery

The Stand

A little slice of comedy history here, as perennial fringe maverick Simon Munnery does a very un-Munnery thing, and revives his hit character from yesteryear Alan Parker: Urban Warrior. However will this “Wolfie Smith of the 90s” cope with the blasted political landscape of 2019? We’ll soon find out.

John Robins

Pleasance Courtyard

You’d forgive John Robins for feeling overlooked. Coverage of his break-out 2017 breakup show focused as much on his ex, Sara Pascoe, as himself. Then the show with which it shared the Edinburgh Comedy award – Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette – became a global phenomenon. Happily, no one is better than Robins at turning mortification and inadequacy into blistering comedy – as Hot Shame may demonstrate.

Jonny and the Baptists

Assembly Roxy

What do you do when you’ve been making “musical-activist” lefty comedy for a decade, and the country’s come to this? Pretend everything is just fine, according to Jonny Donahoe and Paddy Gervers, whose new show aims (it claims) to heal a divided world. Elsewhere in Edinburgh, Donahoe premieres his first solo theatre show since the global hit Every Brilliant Thing.

Phil Wang

Pleasance Courtyard

The title of Phil Wang’s new one, Philly Philly Wang Wang – hot on the heels of recent Radio 4 vehicle Wangsplaining – may not suggest sophistication. But judging by its rave reviews in Melbourne this spring, and the high quality of 2017 predecessor Kinabalu, a clever, contemplative and very funny show seems a certainty.

Eddie Izzard

Assembly George Square

Who knows what to expect from the standup turned actor turned activist, pitching up in Edinburgh – where he was nominated for the Perrier award 28 years ago – with a work-in-progress reading, of all things, of Dickens’ Great Expectations. It sounds like the quintessential fringe ticket.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dope queen … Phoebe Robinson

Phoebe Robinson

Assembly George Square

NYC comic and actor Robinson, best known for her hit 2 Dope Queens and Sooo Many White Guys podcasts, makes her UK standup debut. As per the title of her bestseller Everything’s Trash, But It’s OK, the show – called Sorry, Harriet Tubman – celebrates pop culture and analyses her failure to live up the black female icons of yesteryear.

Josie Long

The Stand

There are Edinburgh mainstays and then there’s Josie Long, indie comedy goddess, activist, film-maker – and now a mum, which is the subject of her new show. Like much of Long’s work, Tender will thrum with the tension between Long’s sunny disposition and the despair of being a progressive in grimly regressive times.

Zoë Coombs Marr

Monkey Barrel

A Barry award-winner (and Edinburgh nominee) as her sexist standup alter ego, Dave, then talk of the fringe in critique-the-critics theatre event Wild Bore, Coombs Marr steps out from behind the gimmicks (she claims) in this UK debut of 2018 show Bossy Bottom. Rave-reviewed in Melbourne, it takes aim again at the tired conventions of trad standup.

Rose McGowan

Assembly Hall

Where better than the fringe for big names to try something new? “It’ll be my first time performing a song live!,” says movie star Rose McGowan – now better known, of course, as a #MeToo campaigner. Her four-performances-only Edinburgh debut, mixing spoken word, visuals and music, promises to teach us “how to create a liberated, fairer society for ourselves”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Swashbuckler … Ciarán Dowd as Don Rodolfo. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Ciarán Dowd

Pleasance Courtyard

The returning crop of 2018 Comedy award contenders is strong this summer, with Ahir Shah, Glenn Moore, Sarah Keyworth and more back for another pop at the prizes. None whet the appetite more than Ciarán Dowd’s ridiculous Zorro pastiche Don Rodolfo, who swashbuckled his way to last year’s best newcomer gong and now returns, improbably enough, as a priest.

Lou Sanders

Monkey Barrel

Her 2018 show Shame Pig discussed her recovery from alcoholism, and – perhaps not coincidentally – was her biggest hit, winning the Comedians’ Choice award for best show at the fringe. Expect the outré but companionable Sanders to capitalise with follow-up Say Hello to Your New Step-Mummy.

Anna Drezen

Pleasance Courtyard

Some of America’s finest female comics announced themselves to the UK recently via eye-catching fringe runs – Michelle Wolf in 2016; Kate Berlant last year. Might 2019 be the turn of Anna Drezen – writer for SNL, editor of satirical woman’s mag Reductress, writer of How to Win at Feminism?

Ahir Shah

Monkey Barrel

Mr Dependable Ahir Shah has delivered consistently strong comedy sets in recent years – usually political, although 2018’s Duffer swerved towards intimacy with the tale of a trip to India to visit his sick gran. After two successive Comedy award nods, Shah’s new show, Dots, is worth a flutter for this year’s big prize.

• This article was amended on 17 June 2019 to correct the title of the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven.