Our Brothers in Cloth, Assembly George Square Studios.When their drunken father walked out on the family, Alan saw it as his role to look after his younger brother Chris. In their tight-knit traditional community in Bunderr, County Wexford, the parish priest always plays a predominant role; and weren’t they excited when the new Father Mulvaney joined the parish! But so much can change over just nine years, and when Alan’s friend Mark briefly arrives from London, he tells him about something he once saw – which changes the lives of everyone involved. Poke the Bear’s production of Our Brothers in Cloth reveals the secrets that remain buried and examines how hard it is to believe that a respected member of the community could possibly have done unspeakable things. Smartly written by Ronan Colfer and based on a true story, the play keeps many twists up its sleeve and is constantly engrossing and believable. An excellent ensemble includes strong performances from Jake Douglas as Alan and Rosalind Stockwell as his mother Martina. Unsettling and disturbing, it exposes an uncomfortable truth that should never be forgotten. 4 stars.

Well Behaved Women, Gilded Balloon Patter House.Victorian England wasn’t a place for women to be taken seriously in any walk of life. However, brother and sister Fred and Hattie seem to share the responsibilities in their household, with a lady’s maid, Marianne, and a music teacher, Emma, ever present, making up the unconventional set-up. Hattie has an on-off relationship with another woman, and Marianne is trying to break into the world of journalism and cannot believe her luck when the Sunday Telegraph offer her a byline on article about salacious gossip and scandals. When cousin Chester comes to call, they are required to entertain him, and sensing there might be scandal here, they decide to hold a séance to find out if he killed his wife. However, the medium has the audacity to die at the last minute, so how can they go ahead with the séance? It’s an ambitious and original idea for a play, and writer Amy Yeo and director Hannah Rogerson have chosen to stage it as a very fast and frenetic farce. Unfortunately, despite a few interesting character insights, neither the writing nor the acting matches the plot, with too much shouting, unnecessary pratfalls, and lines delivered so rapidly that they remind you of the speed of the terms and conditions in a radio advert. With some calm and order injected into the production, the play could be developed into something more substantial and successful, but as it stands, this production was not for me. 2 stars.

Seating Plan, Gilded Balloon Patter House. David and Mavis find themselves sitting next to each other at Will and Em’s 25th birthday party – as far away from the main table as they could have been placed. David seems an amenable type of chap, but Mavis is a proper nightmare, hurling out conversational challenges, spitting out wine across the table, and being a right nuisance. At the next party a year later, they’re still seated together, only this time David is as drunk as a lord and proves to be a total embarrassment. Are they destined to continually meet each other year in year out at their friends’ parties, and will anything develop between them, or will they keep up their sequence of constant lies? Izzy Radford’s Seating Plan benefits from an unpredictable, quirky structure and features two tremendous performances by George Airey as David (including a superb drunk act) and Izzy herself as Mavis. Personally, I found the character of Mavis in the opening scene so awful as to be unbelievable, and I found it hard to warm to her as the play developed. However, there’s a great feeling for humour in both the writing and the exceptional performances, and that’s what drives the play towards its winning conclusion. 4 stars.

Amanda Hursy: Carted, Gilded Balloon Patter House. Over the years Amanda Hursy has become big pals with the police. It seems they’re always there whenever the slightest thing goes wrong! In Carted, she tells us of her Glasgow upbringing, her family life, her problematic dad behind bars, her degree in Politics, and her aptitude for getting sacked just at the wrong moment. This is her first solo Edinburgh Fringe show and it’s packed with hilarious original material about all the scrapes she gets into, told with working class Glaswegian good humour. She keeps the pace up perfectly and there’s never a lull in the flow, which is something few comedians can maintain over an hour. A terrific new voice in the comedy circuit! 4 stars.