Mainstream (Fringe)

Samuel Beckett Centre

October 6th-9th, 9 p.m.

The prolific young Scottish playwright, David Greig, has written an intricately structured, layered ensemble piece. Timing is crucial, as four actors play multiple roles. Changing character every few minutes in a series of short, staccato scenes, they depict alternative aftermaths of brief sexual encounters. Fresh from its Edinburgh run, it is impeccably directed and performed by Suspect Culture, the company which Grieg cofounded.

Happy Birthday Mister Deka D (Fringe)

The Big Tent, Iveagh Gardens

October 4th-9th, 8 p.m.

The Nigerian playwright, Biyi Bandele (who recently adapted Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko for the RSC) was commissioned to write this by Told By An Idiot theatre company, who usually devise their own work. The result, which premiered in the Traverse Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival, is a small, absurdist piece in which two characters meet after an absence and conduct an elliptical, inconclusive, cyclical conversation in front of a man who sits silently, wearing a paper hat. Echoes of Anouilh and Beckett abound in this fractured world, and threaten to overwhelm Bandele's tiny, fragile web of wordplay and nuance.

Often I find that I am Naked (Fringe)

Tivoli Theatre Studio

September 28th-October 16th, 8 p.m.

Jezebel (yes) knows that she's an intelligent, successful and attractive woman in her mid-30s - her sexual prime. But - hah! - can she find a decent male partner? This sounds like jaded, Bridget Jones's Diary-stuff, but it turned out to be one of the pleasures of the recent Edinburgh Fringe. It's a witty, black, moving and candid trawl through the depths of 1990s sexual politics.

R&J

Meeting House Square, Temple Bar September 29th-October 2nd, 8 p.m.

Kabosh is the Belfast company which brought us the sweet-bitter tale of Mojo Mickeybo last year. Now director Karl Wallace has turned his attention to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, but has pared it down for a cast of five - all male, as they would have been in the Bard's day. Some years ago Cheek by Jowl showed festival audiences how resonant the sexual politics can be in Shakespeare with all-male casts, and Kabosh has thrown into the pot the inspiration of Baz Luhrmann's exciting film version of the play.

Marsyas, the Hippest Satyr

Andrews Lane Theatre

September 28th-October 2nd, 10 p.m.

`Amodern `beatnik' satyr play for narrator and music ensemble" - just the kind of thing you expect from any self-respecting Fringe. The American writer Roger Gregg has teamed up with guitarist Giordai O Laoghaire (late of the Nine Wassies from Bainne), and with Molly Magaghy (piano and cello) to tell the story of a promiscuous satyr who foolishly jeopardises his hedonist existence by challenging Apollo to a musical duel with a magic horn.