Preview for the week - 9-15 November

It's a mega-busy week coming up in Edinburgh's theatres. There's big issue theatre from local amateurs Leitheatre and the Grads as well as with Rainman at the King's - where kids also get to go hunting bears. The Playhouse opens its big festive season offering, the Traverse has some nifty new work, and dance fans get to thrill to the rather wonderful Richad Alston Dance Company.

The big opening is on Monday when the show based on the music of Queen,  We Will Rock You, officially opens after last week's previews at the Playhouse. Big production values, the biggest (and arguably the best) pomp-rock tunes and a pretty nifty script add up to pure escapist entertainment.

Tuesday sees Rainman open for a week at the King's. This stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning film sees Men Behaving Badly's Neil Morrissey take on the Dustin Hoffman role with Green Wing's Oliver Chris in the Tom Cruise role. Over at the Festival theatre, the very wonderful Richard Alston Dance Company arrive for one night only. Alston’s Movements from Petrushka and Overdrive bookend the programme with Martin Lawrance’s To Dance and Skylark - performed to Bach’s vigorous concertos - the meat in the sandwich.

On Wednesday Edinburgh's amateurs take on weighty matters. Leitheatre open their production of Brian Clark's Whose Life is it Anyway? at the Church Hill. Still topical after 31 years, it deals with a car crash victim who wants the right to die. Down at St Brides, the Edinburgh Grads have Margaret Edson’s 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning Wit, which follows the journey of Professor Vivian Bearing, who has been diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer. There is no Stage V.

Over at The Traverse on Wednesday, HoiPoloi bring The Story of a Rabbit, with Fringe favourite Hugh Hughes reprising his Fringe First award-winner, until Saturday. Friday is the final instalment of The Dough is Rising, with Alan Bissett's new play The Moira Monologues getting a first read-through. Also on Friday, for two nights only, Lung Ha’s Theatre Company have Il Panico di Pantalone, two very fast-paced Commedia Dell’Arte stories by Clark Crystal.

Young kids will be looking forward to Thursday, when the stage version of the We're Going on a Bear Hunt arrives at the King's until Saturday. Whether Michael Rosen's excellent text stretches to 55 minutes or Helen Oxenbury's wonderful illustrations can be equalled on stage remains to be seen. But it's certainly a show to look forward to.

Finally, Sunday sees a couple of slightly different offerings. The Traverse has Ten with ten new ten-minute plays from ten emerging playwrights. While the Festival Theatre has Grassic Gibbon, the recital of a new play by author and broadcaster Jack Webster which follows Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon through his struggle for recognition in his youth to his successful years and premature death at just 34.