A Table Tennis Play

Underbelly, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 12:30pm

Ping-Pong. WhiffWhaff. Gossima. Table tennis’s terminology might be up for grabs, but Sam Steiner’s new play stakes its claim as a spectator sport— sometimes tense, sometimes hypnotic— as two strangers bat a ball back and forth. He has the makings of a mighty miniaturist, as marked by his debut, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons.

Are we not drawn onward to new erA

ZOO Southside, 2–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19, 11am

Year after year, show after show, Ontroerend Goed set a firework off at the Fringe. The Belgians have bound us and blindfolded us, dated us and hated on us and watched the world end. Their latest is timely, in more ways than one. Built as a palindrome, it asks whether human history is progress or inexorable decline.

The Examination

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 13–25 Aug, not 19, 8pm

Judge a society by the state of its prisons, urged the dissident author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Brokentalkers take him at his word in this interrogation of healthcare in Ireland’s penal institutions that combines personal testimony with political fury. A company that routinely breaks new ground, they’re well worth catching.