Receiving a lecture on intercultural relations from Brendon Burns is rather like attending a Pol Pot seminar on the value of human life. Burns is one of those comedians often labelled straight-talking but to whom the word boorish might equally be applied. With this year's show, however, he executes a theatrical coup that will live long in the memory, and which directly implicates his audience in questions of racial discourse and the boundaries of comedy. It's a talking point of this year's Fringe, no doubt - although the point it makes about how we deal with strangers in our midst is muddied by the noisy machismo of the material that precedes it.
Three-quarters of this hour, after all, is Burns in full aren't-I-outrageous mode, telling us what he thinks about "fat ugly chicks" and "retarded" people, congratulating himself on his own fearlessness for every plain-speakin' gag about Muslims. You can't fault the man's technique: every bellow into the microphone (and there are many) ratchets up the comic temperature another notch. And there are some good jokes, as when he mocks terrorists' desire to convert Britain to Islam: "Britain? Which has yet to convert to the metric system?" But the abusiveness and priapic aggression get very wearing, as does the swaggering self-love - notwithstanding Burns' unconvincing stabs at self-deprecation.
What happens in the final 10 minutes casts some of what has gone before in a different light, as Burns invokes our shared humanity - or, to be specific, the fact that we all started life emerging from a hole in the end of our dad's penis. The sleight-of-hand is brilliant, and shines an unforgiving light on our acquiescence in everyday racism.
I wouldn't turn to Burns for answers on the subject of prejudice or racial sensitivity: his conclusions are frequently confused and at odds with his delivery. But at least he's raising the questions - in this instance, unforgettably.
· Until August 27. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
