Now here's a little beauty. Jamie Adkins' one-man circus show takes its inspiration from vaudeville and the old-style clowning of silent-movie greats such as Buster Keaton. Like many people, I'd quite honestly rather opt to eat my own feet than voluntarily go to a clown show, but I'd had sufficient tip-offs about this sly little entertainment that I couldn't ignore them.
I'm glad I didn't. This low-key, largely silent piece consists primarily of object manipulation and some slackwire work, wrapped up in a meditation on success and failure and how, when even on the verge of disaster, we keep on going. Adkins' shock-haired clown is the eternal little man, constantly astonished to be one step ahead of a universe that is forever tripping him up. He is a sweet fool. The pleasure is in Adkins' initial amazement at his own prowess and then the way his little ego starts to swell and he demands our applause.
He deserves it too. This neatly packaged, sweetly old-fashioned piece offers entertainment for all ages and has a highly developed sense of the absurd, as grapes are caught on plastic forks, oranges are bowled like cricket balls at Adkins' face and he constantly dodges disaster, often of his own making. There but by the grace of God go all of us, although in Adkins' case it's cleverly disguised skill, not luck, that is saving him from collapsing ladders, tipping chairs and ping-pong balls swallowed down the wrong way.
He plays the hapless idiot to perfection in an apparently unstable world, a place where gravity and the laws of physics must be bypassed if he is to survive. There are times when this is so underplayed and gentle that it's almost imperceptible. But that makes it all the more of a little marvel.
• Until 24 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000. Venue: New Town theatre
