Deep Cut
****

Finished with Engines
***
Traverse
Edinburgh Festival

While comedy wraps its tentacles around Edinburgh, theatre on the Fringe tends to fare best when it puts on its most serious face to examine the big issues. This pair of offerings deftly takes a long, cold look at British and American military malfunctioning.

Between 1995 and 2002, four young recruits died in suspicious circumstances at the Deepcut Army Barracks. No proper forensic tests were carried out and verdicts of suicide were passed despite less than compelling evidence. Using a canny mixture of verbatim testimony and public documents, writer Philip Ralph focuses compellingly on the family of Private Cheryl James as they struggle in vain to wrest the truth from an obfuscating establishment.

There are accounts from lawyers, journalists and ballistics experts, but the beating heart of the piece is Des and Doreen James (Ciaran McIntyre and Rhian Morgan) and the quite wonderful Jonesy (vivacious Rhian Blythe), a pragmatic army friend of Cheryl. As the loving, anxious, disbelieving parents sit with cups of tea in their living room overlooked by a portrait of their beaming daughter who was "just a joy", grief seems to deflate them before our eyes. I'd heartily recommend a London run for Mick Gordon's lovely production for Welsh company Sherman Cymru.

Martial matters aren't looking any more promising under the Stars and Stripes. In writer/director Alan McKendrick's Finished with Engines, a brisk volley of 10 staccato scenes, two members of the US navy carry out an assignment on an "observation platform" just off the coast of some revolution-beset island. Apathy and boredom creep in and thoughts turn to nuclear warfare: "Our big red button is bigger and redder than yours."

Stephanie Viola is all coiled tension and spiky verbosity as petite powerhouse Megan, increasingly frustrated by the lackadaisical approach of her would-be writer shipmate Hemingway (Drew Friedman). Nonetheless, a slight suspicion persists that this is merely an accumulation of slick words that doesn't actually amount to anything.

Both until 24 August (0131 228 1404).