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	Just the Tonic at The Caves (venue website) Musicals 1-12, 14-25 Aug, 9:00pm-10:00pm
Recommended for age 14+ only.

The cameras are rolling, the floor manager’s panicking and a nervous contestant is waiting off-stage. But this is no ordinary game show. In their sometimes-thoughtful, often-outrageous cabaret musical, Quite Nice Productions reprise the life of a recently-deceased young man… before we, the audience, are called on to decide whether to send him to Heaven or to Hell.

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	Assembly George Square (venue website) Theatre 1-12, 14-19, 21-26 Aug, 12:15pm-1:30pm
Parents or guardians should consider the content of this show if children are attending.

If you’re of the right age and background, the very words “Big Daddy” and “Giant Haystacks” will bring a nostalgic smile to your lips. If you’re not, then here are the astonishing facts: at 4pm every Saturday from 1976 to 1988, up to 12 million Britons tuned in to ITV, and watched a 26-stone man called Shirley pretend to fight a six-foot-eleven giant in a sheepskin coat. And this fast-moving show, which won one of our Editors’ Choice awards at the Brighton Fringe a couple of years ago, tells the whole incredible story.

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	Gilded Balloon Teviot (venue website) Comedy 31 Jul, 1-13, 15-26 Aug, 4:15pm-5:15pm
Family-friendly. Suitable for all ages.

Ever since their first Fringe appearance a few years ago, we’ve been fans of dapper magicians Rhys Morgan and Rob West. Filling their shows with warming old-world charm, their act is founded on a simple but brilliant idea: that they’re real Victorian parlour magicians, who’ve voyaged into their future to bring their homely style of magic to our brasher modern age. But this year’s show marks a change of focus for the devious duo – because for once, there’s no time-travel involved.

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	Gilded Balloon Teviot (venue website) Theatre 14-25 Aug, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Recommended for age 12+ only.

Think of an improv show, and you’ll probably think of madcap comedy from a gaggle of chirpy twenty-somethings. What The School Of Night do is rather different, but equally entertaining – and, if you’re the right kind of person, hugely rewarding too. Using actors from the hit improv musical The Showstoppers, the task they set themselves is no less than this: every day, they improvise a lost work of Shakespeare.

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	Gilded Balloon Teviot (venue website) Comedy 31 Jul, 1-11, 13, 15-25 Aug, 5:30pm-6:30pm; 12 Aug, 5:30pm-6:30pm, 9:30pm-10:30pm
Recommended for age 14+ only.

Welcome, watchers of illusion, to the castle of confusion. If you grew up in the right decade, the very name Knightmare may be enough to send you side-stepping to the box office – eager to recapture the innocent fantasies of a simpler, more wide-eyed age. But if, on the other hand, you weren’t a teenager in the early nineties… then perhaps we’d better explain.

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	Pleasance Courtyard (venue website) Theatre 31 Jul, 1-12, 14-26 Aug, 7:10pm-8:00pm
Recommended for age 12+ only.

For today’s preview we’ve picked out a brand-new play, based on an intriguing real-life story and from a company that’s impressed us in the past. Kubrick³ – pronounced “Kubrick Cubed”, we assume – tells the tale of London travel agent Alan Conway, who for a few bizarre years in the 1990’s convinced some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry that he was the reclusive film director Stanley Kubrick.

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	Gilded Balloon Teviot (venue website) Comedy 2-21, 23-25 Aug, 10:30pm-11:40pm
Recommended for age 14+ only.

A musical performed for one night only – because it’s composed on the spot. That’s the ambitious promise of The Showstoppers, the cult sensation returning for its sixth year on the Fringe, which in each performance weaves together a song-filled show from the threads of suggestions shouted out by that night’s crowd. It sounds impossible… but if its constellation of five-star reviews is anything to go by, it’s actually just impossibly good.

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	C venues - C (venue website) Theatre 31 Jul, 1-11, 13-26 Aug, 10:00am-10:55am
Family-friendly. Suitable for all ages.

We confess. This is one preview we trot out every year... but that's because we always look forward to this tongue-in-cheek homage to the Bard. Amazingly, it's the 22nd annual instalment of C Venues' Stratford-themed knockabout, served – as always – with coffee and croissants at the very start of the Festival day. And if previous years are a guide, Shakespeare buffs and lay-people alike will find plenty to tickle their humour, in what usually proves a cheerful, great-value show.

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	Hill Street Theatre (venue website) Theatre 1-12, 14-25 Aug, 2:15pm-3:15pm
Family-friendly. Suitable for all ages.

Our pick today is solidly traditional, thoroughly unchallenging… and in every way perfectly delightful. A warm-hearted one-man adaptation of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, we first spotted this show at this year’s Brighton Fringe – where actor Nigel Nevinson impressed us with his mastery of the character and instantly-likeable style.

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	Underbelly, Cowgate (venue website) Comedy 1-13, 15-25 Aug, 8:40pm-9:40pm
Recommended for age 12+ only.

How to describe The Dark Room? In 2012, we settled for “innovative, funny, exciting, dark-as-hell brilliance”. An unexpected word-of-mouth hit last year, The Dark Room is a lo-fi improvised game show, hosted by Aussie comedian John Robertson. Describing himself as “a brutal Old Testament God, who loves grammar and hates you”, Robertson invites selected audience members to navigate a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style maze – in the hope of escaping the eponymous “dark room” and winning a real-world prize.