Glenn Wool has been given a hero's welcome on his return to Edinburgh after a three-year absence. I don't quite share the clamorous enthusiasm with which some have greeted his new set – although I'd agree it showcases Wool's consummate technical skills to exemplary effect. This is a comedian who could read out your tax return and make it funny. But those powers are put to amusing rather than hilarious use here, in a show that reviews the Canadian's globetrotting adventures in the time since he last played the fringe.
The set is anchored to an experience Wool had in an Indonesian airport, when the comic was subjected at customs to a – shall we say? – immodest cavity search. Small wonder: he looks and talks like a classic stoner, and his comedy reacts to the world as if it's one eye-popping acid trip. Wool tells various travel tales triggered by his airport indignity, the best of which recounts his recent relocation to the US. His material on American mores, and about the mysterious way in which the US dispatched Osama Bin Laden, is the finest of the evening. When he tries, Wool's politico-cultural commentary is compelling and astute.
Elsewhere, there's a story about an Iron Maiden gig in Belgium, which Wool missed after a disagreement with the nation's unexpectedly strong beer, and an anthropomorphic routine about beavers. It's like a Wool greatest-hits set, with each of the personae he's tried on over the years – the hell-raiser, the addled surrealist, the political subversive – represented. Equally, it's neither one thing nor the other. But Wool's perfect timing and daft/declamatory cadences – he's half backwoodsman, half carnival barker – keep even the so-so material enjoyable. He's a master craftsman on entertaining, but not electrifying form.
