Daniel Kitson's entry to the comedy world has enfranchised the geek. Last year, his bespectacled nerdiness and accounts of adolescent inadequacy saw his show hailed as one of the fringe's finest debuts. A year later, his strongest material still derives from his outsider's eye on society. He suggests the reservoirs of resentment that churn in the minds of the meek and socially inept. And he is not averse to a little tenderness, too.
It is particularly bracing that this year, Kitson aims his bumbling bitterness at the moronically self-confident: those who chat up the opposite sex unselfconsciously, or join the army, or programme jaunty ringtones because "that means I'm an individual". His hatred of the laddish majority is positively bilious - and because that category includes many of his stand-up peers, he takes pops at lazy comedy too. But he knows that belligerence rings pretty funny coming from one so goofy, and he never denies the vulnerability from which his rancour springs. "I want to be in the film of my life," he says, "rather than my life."
While a certain rambling tattiness is undoubtedly part of Kitson's charm, he could work on the shape of his set. He more or less admits the dramatic inadequacy of his show by telling us, at the end, what he thinks it has been about. But he remains one of the fringe's most distinctive personalities, giving cantankerous voice to those excluded from our flashy, sassy culture.
Until August 26. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
