The Edinburgh Fringe curse strikes again. This two hander looking at the life and death of Monty Python's Graham Chapman was a festival hit, but its only achievement is to make an interesting, funny and in many ways tragic figure seem uninteresting, unfunny and very ordinary. In a way the title sums it up, the show never probes deep enough to discover exactly what it was, besides a daily three and half pints of gin, that made Chapman tick. The result is a rather ridiculous figure suffering from arrested development: a pipe-smoking gentleman on the outside and a shy, inadequate eight-year-old inside.
If the cod psychology doesn't get you down then the clumsy staging and lack of humour (or indeed pathos) will. If you know little about Chapman it doesn't tell you enough, and if you know a lot it doesn't tell you anything new or present the information in a new way. Most bizarrely, the piece seldom succeeds in giving any real sense of how and why Chapman was funny, largely because he is filtered through the eyes of John Cleese.
There are odd moments when the show has a little spark, often in its more anecdotal passages. Chapman's Cambridge interview, when he is given a place by the admissions tutor at his chosen college within 20 seconds and yet protests bitterly that he has not been given a good interview, gives some indication of the tortured workings of his mind, as does his decision to allow the Queen Mum to decide for him as to whether he should carry on with medicine or go into the theatre. The famous Cleese eulogy at Chapman's funeral slips down well too, but by then the show has buried itself.
· Until May 8. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
