"Prepare to have your world rocked in quite a gentle way." Watching David O'Doherty's comedy is like being tickled by a teddy bear. He's got a great tousled mop of hair and he pads around the stage with the daffy air of a man untouched by the slings and arrows of a cruel world.
How has he preserved his innocence? This year's Edinburgh offering (shortlisted for the if.comeddies award) ought to supply some answers, given that it is ostensibly a musical biography of the Irish stand-up's life. The template is rapper 50 Cent's movie Get Rich or Die Tryin', albeit with fewer gun-fights. But the premise is little more than a loose peg for O'Doherty's fanciful rambling. Look elsewhere for urgency: "If procrastination was an Olympic event," says O'Doherty, "I wouldn't even turn up."
I find O'Doherty easy to enjoy but hard to get too excited about. He repeatedly quotes a critic's description of his act as "very low-energy musical whimsy," and seems happy to live up to it. It makes for a sweet hour's stand-up that flickers into brighter life only when O'Doherty takes to the keyboard. There's an irresistible ditty in which he lists his Very Mild Superpowers: "I'm a very good judge of whether things'll fit through doorways."
There are lovely routines here, including one in which a surprised O'Doherty hears himself on the radio giving an interview that he had conducted in his sleep. Like his superpowers, O'Doherty's comedy is mild: if you describe yourself as low-energy, you're unlikely to generate much comic heat. But to compensate, there is charm in abundance.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0131-226 2428
