Serate Bastarde (Fringe 2009 Repeat) The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown (Tramway 2008 Repeat)

I hate comedy. Preening stand-ups have abdicated any sense of moral responsibility, preferring to comment on the supposed differences between the genders rather than address the socio-political malaise that has led to the modern economic meltdown. The Fringe is submerged beneath a tidal wave of grinning male egos that have all the charm of the passer-by who tells you "cheer up, love, it night never happen".

Thankfully, Serate Bastarde is more than just funny. The subtle word play and timing that comedy needs is sometimes lost in the translation from Italian. There are moments of slapstick hilarity - three women pouring Berlusconi's sperm over themselves, and the entire Fez and The City short - but what has been left behind is a smouldering fury that shoots at American imperialism, moronic celebrity and the gradual destruction of Italy by a government that doesn't understand "conflict of interest".

By the time that they quote Bill Hicks in the finale, Dionisi have successfully subverted the sketch show format, reminding us how it can be used for the bleakest satire that is both darkly funny and absurdly familiar. They never quite rant: the Sex and the City parody avoids becoming too explicit, even when the toothsome foursome are wandering around in full burqas, and the Burn Victim Beauty Pageant sends up celebrity TV with attention to detail and a lovely nastiness. A sense of frustration is palpable. Yet it is nuanced and precise, aware of its own culpability and only occasionally hitting too easy a target.

The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown is seductive and frustrating: it rejects structure, begins before the audience enters and continues after the audience is ushered out. Infinite Pleasures is multi-media - the performers' movements are relayed on a large screen that separates them from the audience - and bracing.

The audience is encouraged to walk around and inspect the auditorium, even leave and come back. Popcorn has been scattered about the seating, a convincing police-man wanders around, inspecting the set while a taciturn security guard guards proceedings.

On stage a fictional company, Troupe Mabuse, are caught in a perpetual loop of terror and anxiety. These repetitious tableaux and short choreographies are based on King Lear and The Testament of Dr Mabuse, but both sources are incoherent. The passages from Lear have been garbled: Mabuse plays on-stage, invisible to the audience.

None of this is really important. Bock and Vincenzi aren't telling a story, but creating an atmosphere, a haunting spectacle that resonates beyond the immediate experience. As theatre, it is dull and weird. By inviting the audience to wander about, they move beyond theatre, creating something mysterious and austere.

Like a segment of a David Lynch film in the flesh, like wandering upon an alienated cabaret, Infinite Pleasures lurks at the threshold of understanding. Sudden moments of activity - a brief dance to some reggae or a Gothic camp rendition of Beginning to See the Light - engage, but then retreat to leave behind more mystery. This really is one for the dedicate

I really used to use short sentences...

Kirk Attacks Vile: Dunsinane II

Gareth K Vile’s review of Dunsinane might be agreeable in the dramatic specifics – good performances, well written, a mixture of grand tragedy and comic interludes – but his regionalist sympathies have blinded him to the political meaning of David Greig’s sequel to Macbeth. For all the humanist sympathy for the English squaddies, who kill and die for a cause they barely understand, the relationship between England and Scotland is repeatedly shown as unequal and abusive.

Above all, England is clearly an invader: it is English troops that ravage the countryside, and an English leader who worries about an unstable Scotland. The brutality of the second act – children are killed and quartered, entire villagers are massacred – is precipitated by the thwarted passions and good intentions of the English commander. When the Scottish clans respond with a medieval version of suicide bombing, which stresses the link between past English adventures and modern jaunts into the Middle East, it is the desperate violence of the dispossessed. Greig, a visitor to Palestine, is not unaware of the parallels and pressures that lead to extremism.

Scotland is depicted as both geographically and culturally different to England. The soldiers’ descriptions of the landscape, poetic and precise, contrast the mountains and snow with the flat and warmth of England. Their desire to integrate – seduce local girls -  is thwarted by a language barrier. The English commander Siwald, a warrior who looks for peace, is disgusted by King Malcolm because he does not understand the nuance of clan rivalry.  What appears to him as decadence is merely a way to avoid violence. Malcolm’s strategy, of being too ineffectual to attract envy or threat, is familiar to anyone who has caught the 38 bus across Glasgow on a Saturday night. The relentless English insistence on honesty and reason leads to the resumption of a civil war. The message is clear: the two nations do things differently, and England’s presence is a disaster.

Greig is quite obviously more sympathetic to the moderate, and dishonest, characters. Malcolm, and Siward’s assistant, have different moral compasses, and this allows them to survive in the chaos. Like heroes from a Grahame Green novel, they lack the sort of intensity that makes them tragic, yet they do less harm. When Greig moves Siwald and Lady Macbeth to their dramatic finale, the echoes of Greek tragedy insist on the consistent message of Sophocles: it is better to small than great.

If Macbeth is an obvious source, Greig is dealing with more ancient plays: the tragic ending brilliantly recalls Virgil’s Aeneid IV, as Lady Macbeth’s appeal to future generations echoes Dido’s curse on Aeneas. For Virgil, this explained the violent enmity between the Carthaginians and the Romans: here, Greig mythologizes the Anglo-Scottish bitterness. And like Virgil, Greig recognises the importance of the poet in defining a nation.

That Greig avoids the obvious – Malcolm is no English stooge, and Lady Macbeth is not stripped of her malevolent majesty – and pictures a complex nation, prone to self-harm and proud. Not naive enough to see nationhood as simple, nor willing to relinquish a common humanist compassion, Greig rescues nationalism from the politicians that Gareth K Vile despises.