Thom Dibdin, The Stage.

The Fringe has come early to to Edinburgh this year, with the arrival of Cock And Bull Story down in Leith. Crammed into one end of a tiny cafe with an audience of no more than 30, the production feels immediate and visceral as it tells the story of a young boxer Travis (Stuart Ryan) about to step out into the ring for what he hopes to be his last fight as an amateur.

With him in his changing room is Jacko (David Elliot) his best pal who is always there, psyching him up for the fight ahead. As the banter and aggression between them bounces back and forth, Richard Crowe and Richard Zajdlic's script leaks out their background in local gang culture, in violence and gay-bashing, in male bonding and conquests of girls who are immediately cast aside.

Under Liam Rudden's direction this oozes testosterone and sexual double standards. Ryan and Elliot have created characters who could easily have just walked out of a Leith boozer and straight onto the stage, with their dreams of sharing a flat in London and the further conquests they will have there when Travis turns professional.

Yet it is in those double standards that the meat of the play lies, in the realisation that Jacko's rampant homophobia and abusive attitude to women lie in his own self-denial. While for Travis, in the middle of the fight as the flow of adrenalin and the thrill of the engagement engorges his appetite for aggression there is a character whose sexuality might be more obviously in doubt, but whose complexities are must more subtle and up for debate.

Making a virtue of the bare, black-box nature of the staging, this focusses right down onto the characters and allows them to step out, off the stage. Almost literally at some points of the hair-raisingly choreographed fight sequences. A fascinating piece of theatre that thrills and engages from start to end.