History of current affairs

For sheer intelligence and visual theatrical wizardry, it is hard to beat Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla.

The young and inventive Electric Company from Vancouver has devised a biography of the Serbian who revolutionised electrical science, in a piece which technically is worthy of a blossoming Robert LePage.

If the dramatic possibilities of the emergence of alternating current (AC) - as opposed to direct current (DC) - seem somewhat obscure, then this enlightening play certainly proves an unexpected treat, as it embraces Tesla's feud with Thomas Edison, his obsession with pigeons, his repressed love for a magazine editor's wife, Katherine Underwood-Johnson, and his almost autistic focus on his work.

The play's opening is strangely reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds, as it projects images of pigeons onto a large globe while their cooing fills the theatre - just the kind of tangential introduction you might expect from a production that conveys alternating current through two people whirling a coiled wire until it forms a horizontal S, and dares to turn some of Tesla's calculations into tap dances.

The only complaint to be made about this piece is that the acting can seem a little too caricatured - if only the highly competent cast could tone down the slightly forced comedy and allow the wit to emerge naturally from the intelligent script, this would be an unadulterated joy. Perhaps they could learn a little from the presentation style of Tim Crouch's far more low-tech and utterly beguiling My Arm, which puts a pseudo-autobiographical spin on a tale about a boy who puts his arm in the air at the age of 10 and doesn't take it down again.

Crouch's low-key, utterly confident presentation style is part of the secret to his carrying off a story which shows how initially insignificant objects and actions can have seismic resonances. Audience members are asked to contribute an object "no bigger than a shoe" from their bags, and with the assorted perfume bottles, photos, tickets, glasses-cases, pieces of jewellery and tiny toys, a whole world is created - a bracelet can become a step-mother, and a packet of tissues transforms into the family dog.

Positing himself as a toy Action Man who sits in front of a camera and is projected onto a screen, Crouch uses the power of suggestion to create a gloriously improbable yet terribly believable piece about how the boy with his arm in the air transforms the world around him. A small gem.

Brilliant!, until 24 August, Venue C, Chambers Street (0870

7015105); My Arm, until 23 August, Traverse (0131 228 1404).