It's a pretty impressive skill to conjure hilarity out of thin air. An ever-shrinking proportion of Jason Byrne's stand-up is actually scripted; on this showing, he barely needs a script at all. For Byrne's speciality is making the audience the subject of the show, making them seem, in fact, funnier than he is. At the performance I saw, he got apparently limitless comic mileage from two Martini-swigging 17-year-olds he plucked from the front row. It's easy to assume that the pair were a gift for Byrne. In fact, it's Byrne's gift to make it seem so. His trick is to feign ever-more-exasperated impatience that his audience, and his onstage guests, are upstaging him.
It's fascinating to study how Byrne's improvised banter sustains itself - how he is alert to new triggers from the crowd, and how he judiciously reincorporates earlier ones. It's about comedy radar, and Byrne's is highly sensitive. Next to this, his short bursts of prepared material seem pedestrian - although they're greatly enlivened by his capacity to make the slightest thing seem like the most outrageous he's ever encountered. A recent visit to Australia provides a riff on dangerous animals. His three-year-old kid furnishes some gags about toddlers' fearlessness. It doesn't add up to anything substantial. But maybe's that's the point. Why should I bother making up jokes, Byrne seems to be saying, when you lot are so funny?
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
