Review: From teenage kicks to poetry in motion

Once And For All…, Traverse Five stars

66a Church Road, Traverse Four stars

Dybbuk, King's Theatre (International Festival) Three stars

The Tell-Tale Heart, Royal Lyceum (International Festival) Four stars

Jidariyya, Royal Lyceum (International Festival) Three stars

IT'S WEDNESDAY afternoon and I'm approaching a gang of teenagers on a street corner. One of them launches his stunt bike into the air and lands with a splash in the middle of a puddle. The others, a mixed crowd of girls and boys, form a collective embrace then bounce up and down while yelling the chorus of 'Chelsea Dagger' by the Fratellis. A few hours earlier I might have crossed the road, alarmed by so much wayward teen energy. But now it's all I can do not to join in.

The reason? It's because I'm not long out of the latest extraordinary show by Belgium's Ontroerend Goed – full title: ONCE AND FOR ALL WE'RE GONNA TELL YOU WHO WE ARE SO SHUT UP AND LISTEN – a piece so contagious with adolescent joie de vivre that you simply can't maintain your grown-up prejudices for a moment after seeing it. Performed by 13 teenagers under the direction of Alexander Devriendt, it is a cheeky, ribald, sensuous, funny and knockabout celebration of all those aspects of adolescence that put adults on edge. It is the best show on the Fringe.

An inspired fusion of anarchy and discipline, it consists of the same scene repeated over and over in ever more inventive ways. Each time that we see the teenagers go through a pattern of fighting, playing, snogging and fooling around, it is to reveal a new aspect of their experience, from the self-control of ballet dancing to the letting go of a party. They show us life on their terms, unapologetic, vigorous and passionate, and they challenge us to see beyond the clichés of feral youth and awkward adolescence. No wonder it's the talk of the Traverse. My 14-year-old daughter loved it too.

Also at the Traverse, Daniel Kitson continues to prove his worth as a stage performer good enough to match his formidable reputation as a stand-up. Although more limited in emotional range than his sublime C-90 two years ago, 66A CHURCH ROAD is a gorgeously written and consummately performed piece of storytelling that draws on his own experience of falling in love with a rented flat. As well as being very funny, it is a subtle meditation on the nature of nostalgia and a heart-warming call for the value of love in a money-driven world.

Kitson captivates because he understands the fine details of rhythm and structure. His sentences sing and his story flows. It is this sense of narrative assurance that I missed in DYBBUK (run ended), the opening production of the Edinburgh International Festival. Although enthusiastically received by many, this amalgam of the play by Szymon Anski and a short story by Hanna Krall seemed to suck all drama out of the stories in favour of ponderous philosophising. Powerful scenes in which Magdalena Cielecka and Andrzej Chyra are possessed by spirits were little oases of energy in a good-looking but self-indulgent production by Krzysztof Warlikowski for Poland's TR Warszaw.

For me, a more compelling example of storytelling is Barrie Kosky's interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's THE TELL-TALE HEART (run ended). It begins with a painfully slow descent into darkness and a breeze of cool air as the curtain is raised beyond our vision. Thanks to a lighting design of majestic precision by Paul Jackson, the head of actor Martin Niedermair appears to float somewhere in space. By the time he begins the gothic tale of a murderer who thinks he has committed the perfect crime, standing compellingly still on a vertiginous staircase, we are fully signed up to be spooked out.

There are no great depths of meaning, but Niedermair's musicianly performance set against Kosky's live piano accompaniment create a ravishing piece of theatre, as simple as it is striking.

Also striking is JIDARIYYA (last performance tonight), a rare chance to catch a flavour of Palestinian culture in the form of a dramatised poem by Mahmoud Darwish who died only days before opening night. Directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi on a clean white stage of heavenly proportions, the National Theatre of Palestine show is a visually inventive meditation on life, death and language as a hospitalised poet contemplates mortality and immortality, the past and the future.

It's a challenge to take in such rich, allusive poetry in translation at a single sitting – a second viewing would reap further rewards – but the fluid, dreamlike staging in which the pulse of a bass guitar matches a heartbeat, while nurses morph into sheep-headed portents of death, is beautifully realised. There's a wry wit too, despite the subject matter, as Makram J Khoury playing the poet and Khalifa Natour playing his younger self (endearing performances both) try to get life and literature in perspective.

"What good is our wisdom without youth?" the older man cries and suddenly you realise this is a perfect counterpoint to the teenage kicks of Ontroerend Goed. v

Once and For All…, Traverse (0131-228 5383), until August 24, various times; 66a Church Road, as before, 10pm; Jidariyya, Royal Lyceum (0131-473 2000), tonight, 8pm