Every August, the Scottish capital plays host to the world's biggest season of arts events. Here, NS critics preview their highlights of this year's festival

Theatre

Andrew Billen

When it comes to the theatre at Edinburgh, the best advice is to trust nobody, and certainly not previewers. That said, 365 at the Edinburgh Playhouse for the International Festival (22-25 August) sounds as good a bet as any. A new play by David Harrower, who wrote the clever abuse drama Blackbird, which made it to the West End two years ago, it is set in a "practice flat", where children in care begin their transition to the wider world. This is a real issue and has obvious Big Brother/Elling dramatic potential. Elsewhere in the official festival, I count three plays with Nazis in them (yawn). And, looking further on, a play by Heiner Goebbels (not Joseph) catches my eye: I Went to the House But Did Not Enter (28-30 August) combines music with poetry in an "exploration of the meaning of 'I'". It could be ghastly, but Goebbels has good form with Edinburgh audiences.

On the Fringe, you might start at the Traverse, with Free Outgoing (31 July to 24 August) by Anupama Chandrasekhar. This tale of a girl who becomes a YouTube star after being filmed having sex did well at the Royal Court in London last year. It is also good to see Steven Berkoff keeping faith with the Fringe - 20 years ago every third production was of one of his plays. Now the man himself directs an adaptation of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (31 July to 25 August) at the Pleasance, a hub of the above-average. It sounds pointless, but had good reviews in Nottingham.

Finally, I won't be able to resist "Mr Spock Does Vincent Van Gogh" at the Assembly Rooms. Vincent (31 July to 25 August) is a one-man play written by Leonard Nimoy about the artist's brother Theo; rave reviews in the States, apparently. I say finally, but no doubt someone winsome with a flyer will tempt me into something quite terrible, too.

Art

Sue Hubbard

The Art Festival, now in its fifth year, has expanded from humble beginnings to include 130 exhibitions. "Impressionism and Scotland" (until 12 October, National Gallery of Scotland) and "Tracey Emin: 20 Years" (2 August to 9 November, National Gallery of Modern Art) are aimed at bringing in the crowds. Beyond these rather predictable options, however, is a whole range of shows to watch out for, by established and young artists.

"Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918-1945" (from now until 31 August) promises gems by ászló Moholy-Nagy and Hannah Höch. And multimedia installations by Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller combining images and objects with sound and music will be on show at the Fruitmarket Gallery (31 July to 28 September).

One new venue this year is Eskmills, a former fishing net factory, which plays host to the Polarcap collective (their show "Eskimo" is on from 26 July until 31 August). Another is Echo at the arts complex in St Margaret's House, an initiative run by Edinburgh artists, using "in-between spaces" to display a range of contemporary art from Glasgow and Edinburgh (7-21 August).

Atticsalt in Thistle Street will be showing the iconoclastic religious imagery of the Irish artist Ian Healy in "Offerings" (31 July to 30 August), while Doggerfisher gallery in Gayfield Square will present the work of Alexander Heim, the young German artist selected for last year's "New Contemporaries" (31 July to 13 September). Also worth seeking out is "Mutatis Mutandis" at the Embassy Gallery (2-31 August), in which performance, installation, photography and painting meld with storytelling and popular culture.

Music

Rick Jones

Highlights of this year's jamboree include two celebrations of Olivier Messiaen's centenary. First, at the start of the festival, our unofficial host, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, performs the composer's last work, Éclairs sur 'au-delà ("Illuminations of the Hereafter", 10 August). Then Naji Hakim, his successor as organist at the Église de la Trinité, Paris, makes two late-night appearances at St Giles' Cathedral (9 and 11 August). He kicks off with Dieu parmi nous, and the most exciting opening chords in music.

Two string quartets catch the eye - the Belcea and the Pavel Haas - the former with a two-concert Bartók cycle (15-16 August, Nos 4 and 6 are the best), the latter with Haas's 1938 Third String Quartet, Opus 15 (22 August), replete with Czech national themes in defiance of the Nazi regime that killed him - but not his music - six years later. The Russians then did their best to suppress the Latvian states, but ultimately could not stop the emergence of composers such as Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis, whose hard, bracing harmonies and driving rhythms still feed some of the world's most thrilling choirs, represented here by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Paul Hillier (11 August at the refurbished Usher Hall).

Solo artists appearing include the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter singing Rameau and Charpentier with Les Arts Florissants (22 August), Alfred Brendel playing Mozart's Piano Sonata in F major with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (21 August), and the gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos, who plays Hungarian dances in a way that might have inspired Brahms (15-17 August at the Hub).

Not much serious happens on the Fringe. The former buskers in the string quartet Graffiti Classics (9-17 August, Pleasance Theatre) are worth hearing and seeing, and a show called "Learn to Play the Ukulele in Under an Hour" (30 July to 25 August, Gilded Balloon) could not be more explicit. Students, presumably.

Dance

David Jays

This programme is brought to you by the letter "d": drumming, dervishes and Dorian Gray. Drumming is one of seven works that the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker has set to music by Steve Reich (15-17 August, Festival Theatre). The scores seem to bring out her most ferocious, most exhilarating dance - minimalist music inspiring maximalist impact. The whirling dervishes come from Istanbul (29-30 August, Festival Theatre), but the hottest ticket is the premiere of Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray (22-30 August, King's Theatre). Wilde's mordant tale is remixed for 21st-century London, making the irresistibly pouting Dorian a photographic muse who dallies with his satanic side. We have also heard good things about Australia's Chunky Move, who trigger light and sound in response to movement (17-19 August, Playhouse). Ballet proper comes from the Bolshoi prima ballerina Nina Ananiashvili with her State Ballet of Georgia in Giselle and a mixed bill of Balanchine and Ratmansky (9-13 August, Playhouse).

Dance always wins less attention on the Fringe than stunts and ha ha, especially this year, which lacks the pioneering Aurora Nova programme. However, there's a lively clutch of work from across Asia in ClubWest's InvAsian Festival (3-25 August), including a big Korean contingent, while the witty, kohl-eyed Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs will be Dancing on Your Grave at the Assembly Rooms (1-25 August).

Comedy

Stephen Armstrong

The comedy Fringe (most shows run from 31 July to 25 August) has proved rich in satire and social comment over the past couple of years. Curiously, this year is an exception: the recurrent theme appears to be love and marriage, with Ed Byrne, Glenn Wool and Wendy Wason riffing on their weddings and, in the case of Wool and Wason, subsequent divorces. Fatherhood also gets a look-in with Andrew Clover and Richard Herring, while in School of Comedy kids do sketches for adults (18-24 August).

If you're looking for current affairs (of the non-affective kind), last year's romantics Lucy Porter and Dan Atkinson have turned their attention to climate change and the oil crisis. Porter's Bare Necessities is especially recommended, being a smart assault on life's irrelevant and destructive trinkets.

Rhona Cameron and Omid Djalili - who always have nice lines on race, sex and class - are doing only short runs towards the end of August, but are worth waiting for. So is Reginald D Hunter.

Pappy's Fun Club is probably this year's best sketch show, offering tomfoolery and clowning with a surreal tinge. The canny punter should also see the German stand-ups Henning Wehn and Otto Kuhnle, who give the lie to the Germans-have-no-sense-of-humour myth. Indeed, with Wehn in particular, the joke is very much on us.

Opera

Ian Irvine

The Mariinsky Opera Company, under its titanic musical director, Valery Gergiev, is bringing four uncommon and intriguing works to the festival this year. The first is a staging of Karol Szymanowski's Kró Roger ("King Roger", 25 and 27 August, Festival Theatre), the Polish composer's passionate love letter of 1926 to Mediterranean culture. In 12th-century Sicily, a charismatic shepherd boy (eventually revealed to be Dionysus) inspires the court of King Roger to abandon Christianity and embrace his hedonistic teachings. Only the king himself resists, choosing reason over emotion.

As one might expect from a composer inspired by Wagner, Richard Strauss, Debussy and Ravel, the deeply philosophical libretto is paired with some richly scored Romantic music.

The Mariinsky will also perform concert versions of Rodion Shchedrin's Enchanted Wanderer (26 August, Festival Theatre: UK premiere of his 2002 Russian epic), Rachmaninov's one-act tragedy Aleko and the triumphant third act of Proko fiev's Bolshevik opera Semyon Kotko (both 24 August, Usher Hall).

Scottish Opera, too, has been rummaging in the less frequented parts of the repertoire and, after a two-year absence from the festival, returns with a new production of Smetana's The Two Widows (9, 11 and 12 August), a sparkling romantic comedy set in a castle in the Czech countryside. The Scottish soprano Kate Valentine and the English mezzo Jane Irwin are the bereaved pair. Francesco Corti will be making his first appearance as conductor for Scottish Opera since his appointment as the company's musical director.

For more information and booking advice, log on to: http://www.eif.co.uk (Edinburgh International Festival); http://www.edinburghartfestival.org; http://www.edfringe.com (Edinburgh Fringe); and http://www.edcomfest.com (Comedy Festival)

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