Katie Mitchell's Waves made waves – and not just because it's a controversial and remarkable theatre piece – when it first surfaced two years ago.

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"In theatre, people are desperate for stories. So what happens when a character comes on stage who does not have one, or does not know it, or does not want to tell it? What does that mean for an audience?" asks the director Vicky Featherstone. It means, in 365, that the audience is as lost and unengaged as these 14 characters in search of a play.

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Matthew Bourne is now the world's most popular choreographer, an international hit since the success of his Swan Lake with male swans. The advance ticket sales for his new Dorian Gray have already made it the most highly attended dance event in the Edinburgh Festival's history.

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Alan Bennett's Enjoy was not enjoyed by the undiscerning critics, and flopped when first presented in 1980. It has since been acknowledged as a play that's not just wildly funny but also weirdly prescient of the soon-to-be-booming heritage industry, and of all the dishonesties and contradictions inherent in that.

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Before sex and drugs were co-opted by rock'n'roll, they belonged to Edith Piaf. A diminutive woman whose looks were far from stunning, Piaf rose from singing on the street to become the highest-paid performer in the world, while engaging in countless affairs and, later, developing a morphine addiction. In this new production of Pam Gems's 1978 play-with-music, the Donmar has struck gold.

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Before sex and drugs were co-opted by rock'n'roll, they belonged to Edith Piaf. A diminutive woman whose looks were far from stunning, Piaf rose from singing on the street to become the highest-paid performer in the world, while engaging in countless affairs and, later, developing a morphine addiction. In this new production of Pam Gems's 1978 play-with-music, the Donmar has struck gold.

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Before sex and drugs were co-opted by rock'n'roll, they belonged to Edith Piaf. A diminutive woman whose looks were far from stunning, Piaf rose from singing on the street to become the highest-paid performer in the world, while engaging in countless affairs and, later, developing a morphine addiction. In this new production of Pam Gems's 1978 play-with-music, the Donmar has struck gold.

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As he tells it, beneath the imposing dome of his balding pate, Sir Alan Ayckbourn's head is a strange, dimly lit creative cavern. "When you dream up a play," he says, "it starts to come slowly, like water dripping in a cave. The thing grows like that, drip by drip, on its own. After a while, you go in there and bring one out. Occasionally it'll disappear on you, but you notice another one. There's usually two or three in there at a time."

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If you can read Idomeneo as a drama about Mozart and his father, you can read it as a drama about Graham Vick and the Arts Council. Of the organisations to be threatened with having their funding axed last year, Birmingham Opera Company seemed the least deserving, having consistently married artistic excellence with community involvement and audience development. They appealed and were heard, much as Idamante is finally spared by the capricious gods, but the memory is evidently still raw.

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Alan Bennett is giving himself no pats on the back about his largely forgotten play Enjoy 28 years on from its slated premiere. The Peter Hall Company's intriguing revival comes with the dramatist's own self-deprecating critique. In a programme note, he sighs that the script is "too long, for a start". Once bitten, twice shy.

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Beauty, said Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ends where intellectual expression begins. In which case Matthew Bourne's version of the story can be relished to the end. Certainly there can hardly be a better potential Dorian than Richard Winsor, with his easy feline grace and poutingly cruel, pugilistic-angel features. Watching him, it is easy to understand what Wilde meant when he described his own double life as "feasting with panthers". Unfortunately, apart from a feted pretty face, swiftly corrupted by fame, Bourne seems to have no compelling idea of who or what a modern Dorian Gray might be.

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It hasn't been a vintage Fringe for comedy this year. There's certainly been no shortage of enjoyable shows, but there has been a shortage of unknown acts who have booked themselves into venues the size of broom cupboards, and then found themselves making the leap to stardom. The comedians who have provided the most laughs this August are the ones who were already big names, in Fringe terms, way back in July.

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He might be 32, but he's down with the youth, and a show about text messages, Jay-Z, and the impossibility of finding true love won David O'Doherty the if.comedy award last night.

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It's best if Matthew Bourne's characters don't get too sure of themselves. When his would-be model Dorian sees photographer Basil, they're both struck and both uncertain. Circling each other, posing and being posed, they mix sexual attraction, pragmatic interest and narcissism. As the scene shifts to a romantic pas de deux, all the life goes out of it. It's the doubts and ambiguities that make Bourne's people human and compelling.

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It's rare to see dancers, who are so vulnerable to injury, risking dangerous conditions. Most dance shows are called off at the first sign of wet – or at least held up, while everyone gets the mops out. In one of the oddest interruptions, The Royal Ballet once had to stop the ghostly second act of Giselle when the atmospheric dry ice left a layer of slippery grease all over the stage.

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The Festival Fringe has grown to be the largest of Edinburgh's festivals due to its free spirit. Anyone can take part, perform and open a venue. Yet, when four venues within the Fringe combine to create a single entity to present The Edinburgh Comedy Festival, the very people who claim to hold fast to the roots of this freedom object.

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The Book Festival talk by Jonathan Powell, former Downing Street Chief of Staff, was packed with fascinating anecdotes about the Northern Ireland peace process. He recalled the logistics of the first meeting between Sinn Fein and the DUP: "The DUP wanted to sit opposite Sinn Fein to signify that they were antagonists, but Gerry Adams wanted both parties side by side, to look like colleagues. In the end, we opted for a diamond-shaped table so they could be both opposite and beside."

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Paul Foot's reputation as an eccentric and erratic performer means that when he's off form he's really off form. I may have winced more at other comedians because of their bad material, but Foot's crime is an apparent total lack of thought towards his show.

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Repetition is so much the point of these dances that it seems weird to complain about it. The Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker made her international breakthrough with dances to Steve Reich's music. At first, the looped patterns have an attractive focus and precision. Over two hours of the same ideas, exhaustion sets in.

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