Five shows to catch as the Edinburgh Fringe enters its final stretch

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is past its halfway point, but every production below still has performances left before the end of August. Five to see, across Assembly, Summerhall, ZOO Southside, Underbelly and the Gilded Balloon.

BIRDS hands the stage to Alex Hines and Sarah Stafford as two women who have decided that the apocalypse is no reason to give up a good sunbathing spot. Shayna, five times divorced and comfortably rich, and Beverley, mother to twelve boys, arrive at the beach in enormous wigs and very small bikinis, and simply stay: days stretch into years, birds drop out of the sky, their skin begins to melt, and neither woman leaves her deckchair. The company bills it as Waiting for Godot meets Kath & Kim, which is fair warning. Presented by House of Oz and Sons of Susan, it plays Assembly George Square, The Box until 30 August at 7pm, runs an hour, and is for ages 16 and over; expect strong language.

LAUGHING OUT LONELY (LOL) takes its words from strangers. The lyrics are drawn from anonymous social media posts, and countertenor Morten Grove Frandsen performs the whole thing alone, turning typed-out confession into live music and asking what loneliness amounts to in a world that never stops connecting. Made by the company OPE-N as part of the #Danish Showcase, it was called "a sublime, violent, sometimes grotesque - but always captivating - opera" by Quebec's Monsaintroch. It runs at Summerhall's Dissection Room until 31 August, at 1.15pm and 2.15pm, lasts 45 minutes and is for ages 14 and up; there is strobe lighting and some distressing material.

ALIENS puts a real mother and daughter, Marta McIlduff and Alessandra Celesia, in a car and sends them from Donegal to southern Italy. They gather the testimony of Italian immigrants in Northern Ireland and of the migrants, activists and strangers they meet on the road, assembling the piece out of live performance, video, archive material and electronic music, and pressing throughout at who is entitled to draw the line between us and them. The Irish Times judged it "an ambitious, memorable piece that treats familiar themes in new, even alien ways". From Curious Industries and Dumbworld, it plays ZOO Southside until 30 August at 4.20pm, runs 75 minutes and is for ages 12 and over.

HOUSE OF LIFE returns billed as one part sermon, one part purge and three parts party, which is about right. Sheep Soup's show is led by the glitter-clad RaveRend through 70 minutes of music, movement and collective noise aimed squarely at existential dread; the critic Lyn Gardner called it "the show that turns strangers into friends". It is at Underbelly George Square's Udderbelly until 30 August at 9.45pm, for ages 14 and over.

STAY is a solo piece about a life reorganising itself without permission. Sally likes her days orderly, private and answerable to nobody, until one small kindness towards a child she barely knows pulls her into the orbit of a grieving widower and his strong-willed child, and the arrangement she had made with herself comes apart. By turns funny and unsparing, it follows her from bystander to carer, and makes the case that staying put through the mess is the braver thing to do. Produced by Ines Wurth, it runs at the Gilded Balloon Patter House, The Penny until 30 August at 3pm, lasts an hour and is for ages 16 and over.

All five play until 30 August, with LAUGHING OUT LONELY (LOL) continuing to 31 August.