"Welcome," rumbles Garth Marenghi, "to the Un-Pleasance." Marenghi's spook-troupe is one of several young theatre companies who have found a lucrative home in the comedy pages of the fringe brochure. Last year his Fright Knight lurched out of the shadows to secure an unlikely Perrier nomination.
His new show, Netherhead, is another comically wooden dramatisation of one of Marenghi's cult novels, this time about an Egyptologist, Ken Dagless, searching for the son he lost in a hang-gliding crash. The show spoofs to perfection the baroque pomp of horror writing, pointing up the chasm between Marenghi's imagination and his painfully literal prose. "They tried all the positions," reads one love scene, "on top, doggy and normal."
Netherhead represents a consolidation, not an advance, for Marenghi's group: it's as funny as, and more or less identical to, last year's hit. I'd hoped for a surprise. But there's no gainsaying the quality of the writing and performances here. There's a hilarious moment when the po-faced Garth and Alice Lowe's femme fatale growl raunchily at one another over the phone, pause awkwardly, then say, "Bye!"
Marenghi's matter-of-fact self-assurance is brilliantly undercut by his two co-stars, who cast rabbit-in-the-headlights looks at the audience every time the plot creaks. Don't fear those bumps in the night - they're the sound of Marenghi's spine-tingler soaring, then crashing to earth like a hang-glider that has collided with a crow.
Until August 27. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
