The best art, theatre, comedy, music and dance at this year's festival

Sue Hubbard on art
Amid the buzz of the alternative comedians and fringe theatres playing in every available church hall, the sixth Edinburgh Art Festival (5 August to 5 September) provides a showcase for leading British and international artists. With 50 galleries participating, including 11 new spaces, this year's festival demonstrates that the event is fast becoming a major contender on the visual arts scene.

The Fruit Market is exhibiting innovative studio work by the late German-born American artist Eva Hesse, including previously unseen pieces, while at the Institut Français d'Écosse there will be the first Scottish showing of photographs by the Belgian surrealist and poet Paul Nougé. At Inverleith House, the American artist John McCracken, best known for his elegant "planks", constructed rather like surfboards, blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

At the Doggerfisher Gallery, there is a chance to see the Turner Prize nominee Lucy Skaer who, in collaboration with Rosalind Nashashibi, has made a 16mm film based on Paul Nash's painting Flight of the Magnolia. This year also sees the Grey Gallery moving from the shabby chic of a derelict warehouse to the opulent surroundings of Hawke & Hunter to show Bob and Roberta Smith's This Artist Is Deeply Dangerous, an 11-metre painting of nine panels based on the Guardian sports writer Steve Bierley's review of a Louise Bourgeois exhibition. The Ingleby Gallery will mark its move to Calton Road by showing the work of two Turner Prize nominees: poetically seductive abstract paintings by the Edinburgh-born Callum Innes, and Tacita Dean, the latest artist to create work for Ingleby's Billboard for Edinburgh project.

At Dovecot Studios, Alan Davie is celebrating his 89th birthday with a major retrospective of work spanning seven decades, including paintings, rugs, prints and poetry, while over at Edinburgh Printmakers, in association with the Paul Stolper Gallery from London, is the Scottish debut of The Venice Suite by the father of British pop art, Peter Blake.

For those of a more historical turn of mind, the National Galleries of Scotland's programme "The Discovery of Spain" promises outstanding examples of Spanish art by Velázquez, El Greco and Zurbarán.


Andrew Billen on theatre
I am optimistic for Optimism, Tom Wright's adaptation of Candide, an obvious highlight of the official festival (15-17 August, Royal Lyceum Theatre). Starring Frank Woodley, an established Australian comedian, it was well reviewed Down Under as an updating of Voltaire to a post-Enlightenment, post-9/11 world.

Grimmer and more Scottish is Traverse's The Last Witch by Rona Munro, based on the true story of Janet Horne, the last witch to be executed in Scotland (23-29 August, Royal Lyceum Theatre).

If you want real hellfire, turn to Silviu Purcarete's wild, pantomimic, promenade retelling of Faust (18-22 August, Lowland Hall, Ingliston).

On the Fringe, the recession is being told through the lens of the 1929 Wall Street Crash in Spitting Distance's Suckerville (6-31 August, C cubed). An attack on the complacency of Scotland's nearer, richer neighbours is mounted by Dennis "After the End" Kelly in Orphans: a quiet English couple get a bloody comeuppance, we are promised (1-30 August, Traverse). Even closer to home, Stellar Quines presents a reworking of the Edinburgh native Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means, a magical novel (6-31 August, Assembly Rooms). As for one-man shows, David Benson is a considerable performer and has previously brought both Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd to life. This year, he incarnates Samuel Johnson in Doctor Whom? (22-31 August, Assembly). If that doesn't sound camp enough, try Julian Clary, late of this parish, in Lord of the Mince (22-30 August, Udderbelly's Pasture).

Sophie Elmhirst on comedy
The Fringe runs from 7-31 August, and comedy makes up around a third of the 2,000-plus shows. So let's get the big beasts out of the way first. Simon Amstell is at the Bongo Club with Do Nothing (14-30 August). Once described as the closest you can get to a man emotionally and philosophically disembowelling himself on stage, he's worth a visit. And Daniel Kitson (see main feature) has a typically cheerful-sounding one-man play at the Traverse, The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church (6-30 August).

In fact, it's a bit of a year for comics doing plays. Tom Basden, winner of the 2007 if.comedy Best Newcomer award, has written a timely play about a hopeless political party (Party, 6-31 August), and has a hotshot young cast on board: Tim Key, Anna Crilly, Katy Wix and Jonny Sweet. All have their own solo shows, too, and come under the Invisible Dot promotional umbrella - a comedy set-up in Camden that's proving to be quite the breeding ground for young hopefuls.

It should be a good festival for the sketch show, too: check out the downbeat surrealism of Two Episodes of Mash (5-31 August) and the Umbrella Birds (fresh from Radio 4; 6-31 August). And if Kristen Schaal (of Flight of the Conchords fame) and Kurt Braunohler's preview at Union Chapel was anything to go by, their show (21-30 August) will be wonderfully daft.

Let's not forget the solo stand-ups, either: David O'Doherty, Sarah Millican, Carl Donnelly, John Gordillo and Nick Mohammed all promise great things (Mohammed's show is moon-landing-themed in celebration of the 40th anniversary). Then there's Brian Gittins in Roadside Café Owner (name of his show and his job). He supported Ricky Gervais, and comes with a strong recommendation from the comedian-turned-questionable Hollywood actor: "One of the best comedy characters of the decade."

Rick Jones on music
On holiday, choose local dishes to eat and local musicians to hear. In Made in Scotland on 16 August at the Usher Hall, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Paul Daniel performs works by James MacMillan, who is a Scot, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who isn't but lives on Orkney. His Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise is a poignant, vivid tone poem.

In the same place, on 26 August, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Sir Charles Mackerras performs two symphonies by Haydn and a world premiere by Giorgio Battistelli. On 17 August, at the Queen's Hall, the top Scottish soprano Lisa Milne sings Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert songs inspired by Scotland, though only Mendelssohn bothered to visit the country.

If the home bands have the feel of the festival, the touring outfits are on their mettle as honoured guests. There is none better than the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra under David Zinman, performing Mahler's Symphony No 4 in G major with the soprano Dawn Upshaw on 27 August at Usher Hall. A close second is the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester playing Berg, Webern and Brahms under Ingo Metzmacher at the Usher Hall on 2 September.

On 21 August at the Queen's Hall, the Baroque strings of the Italian group Hespèrion XXI under Jordi Savall perform music for viols by Dowland, Gibbons and Scheidt. Meanwhile, the American prince of lutenists, Hopkinson Smith, performs Baroque lute works by J S Bach, Weiss and Gaultier at the Queen's Hall on 28 August.

Sanjoy Roy on dance
Michael Clark, the bad boy of ballet, comes home to Scotland for the premiere of a new work inspired by his "holy trinity" of rock musicians: David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Expect a mix of severe classicism and trashy beauty with a shot of up-yours attitude (Edinburgh Playhouse, 28-31 August).

Scottish Ballet is proving to be one of the most versatile companies around. Its festival programme features a new version of Petrushka by the maestro Ian Spink to mark the centenary of the Ballets Russes, plus Workwithinwork by ballet's brainiest choreographer, William Forsythe, and the sublime Scènes de ballet, a 20th-century masterpiece by Frederick Ashton (Playhouse, 4-5 September).

There's more retelling by the Royal Ballet of Flanders in The Return of Ulysses, Christian Spuck's tall tale of patient Penelope, featuring Poseidon in a tutu and flippers and Athena as a tour guide. With songs by Purcell - and Doris Day - performed by the Welsh soprano
Elin Manahan Thomas (Edinburgh Playhouse, 21-24 August).

As ever, the Fringe is packed with all kinds of dance, from "world dance" showcases to cheeky cabaret and conceptualist choreography. Worth
a look is David Hughes's The Red Room, a new take on Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Masque of the Red Death" using ballet with contemporary, hip-hop and Indian dance (Traverse Theatre, 8-16 August). There's also a welcome chance to see Liv Lorent's achingly sensual Luxuria in an alternating programme by the ever-fresh Scottish Dance Theatre (Zoo Southside, 18-30 August). And if you've found Strictly Come Dancing either appealing or appalling, check out the Sugar Dandies (the champion same-sex dancers Sören and Bradley Stauffer-Kruse) in Ladies Not Required, the not-so-strict adventures of a gay couple in the world of ballroom. Their poodle foxtrot takes the biscuit (C, Chambers Street, 5-15 August).

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