Merchant City Festival

It may only be a weekend, but the Merchant City Festival is stepping up as the first reply to the Fringe. With a few acts fresh from Edinburgh - Ian Smith and David Leddy both triumphed in August - a couple of nights unique to the West Coast and plenty of wandering street theatre antics, this brief blast of Indian summer drama will keep the aesthetic wolf from the door.

The performance is taking to the streets, leaping off the stage and refusing to charge the audience. Smith will be strolling about as the Hurty-Gurty Man, a typical piece of comic Live Art that is part of his ongoing celebration of his fiftieth year. Seagulls will be dropping in and out, amusing passers-by with their cheek and the church of steppology will be kicking it live with some sort of exercise-cum-messianic cult. There are also a pair of rival politicians who threaten to kick off with each other somewhere in the town.

The Britannia Panopticon presents an old time music hall at regular intervals across the weekend - another free event - in the place where Stan Laurel got his first break. And the Tron weighs in with a pair of plays: Leddy's White Tea and Motherland, the latter stories of survival and hope from the women of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Finally, there is Wildwork's Memory Projector, part funfair, part story-telling machine. Live Art, quality drama and a bit of techno-trickery. Glasgow's challenge to Edinburgh begins here.