[ I began this job immediately after a vintage Edinburgh Fringe... ]

I began this job immediately after a vintage Edinburgh Fringe, at which a new hero of Scottish theatre was identified, duly fted and eventually packed off to parade his wares at the National Theatre. Gregory Burke's debut Gagarin Way at the Traverse brought global issues into the factory workplace in a compelling and funny drama that cannily exposed the emptiness of gesture politics. The swansong of John Tiffany - one of the brightest young directors to emerge at the Traverse, now based in London - it became the hottest ticket in town and promptly sold out. No pressure at all for Burke's follow- up, then.

Elsewhere on the Fringe, the brilliant film actor Philip Seymour Hoffman demonstrated his prowess as a director with a gripping and hugely energetic production of Stephen Adly Guirgis's high-octane prison drama Jesus Hopped The A Train, which threw two killers into adjacent exercise cages and allowed them to thrash out their personal moralities. The actors of Hoffman's New York-based company were no slouches either.

The International Festival's highlights included Thomas Bernhard's Alte Meister - a quirky slice of Austrian existentialism which tackled life, death, art and other trivial matters with a sly comic touch - and Office, the debut of Scots-Asian writer Shan Khan, a sharp and witty tale of everyday drug-dealing folk which carried powerful echoes of Pinter and Beckett. Novecento, meanwhile, was a profoundly beguiling piece - more so than can normally expected from a solo performance - the tale of a jazz pianist who lives all his days on an ocean liner.

Later in the year, Giles Havergal turned in a terrific, rather dark production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Citizens', with Malcolm Shields an outstandingly agile Puck; while Edinburgh audiences made the welcome acquaintance of Finnish playwright Laura Ruohonen, whose Olga was a sad, sometimes bitter but ultimately life- affirming tragi-comedy. Teenage girls have always been a bit of a mystery to me, but Blooded, Isabel Wright's searing study of young female friendship performed by Boilerhouse on tour, set me right on a few things and had me thoroughly absorbed.

In April, Robert Lepage returned to earth with his latest project Far Side Of The Moon and proved as odd, witty, charismatic and searching as ever, fusing a tale of two siblings to a potted history of the space race. Lepage's great strength is exploring esoteric issues with deft, accessible stagecraft, but the year held more obvious pleasures too, among them a number of lavish musicals. These included a dazzling Chicago and a beautifully made Sunset Blvd, but I especially enjoyed being reminded how well Bernstein and Sondheim's enduring West Side Story fills a stage - though this was not a year when you wanted to live in America.

I was bowled over earlier this year by Tam Dean Burn's performance in Filth, the 2000 adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel by Harry Gibson. But the new Welsh/Gibson effort Glue was the year's biggest disappointment: a show about masculine relationships that failed to depict any.

Andrew Burnet's top 10 Alte Meister (Edinburgh International Festival) Blooded (Boilerhouse on tour) Far Side Of The Moon (Tramway, Glasgow) Gagarin Way (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh) Jesus Hopped The A Train (Pleasance, Edinburgh) Midsummer Night's Dream (Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow) Novecento (Edinburgh International Festival) Office (Edinburgh International Festival) Olga (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh) West Side Story (Commercial touring production) Playing away from home: Amelie, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, was my film of the year by a long chalk, for its vibrant colours, its crackpot details, its humour and its joyous, romantic philanthropy - not least because I saw it the same weekend as The Piano Teacher, which I found relentlessly and gratuitously grim.

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