Fancy a laugh? Try poetry for size. Comic verse is in rude health at this year's Fringe, and the spearhead of its revival is Luke Wright. A former member of "poetry boyband" Aisle 16, Wright returns with a more mature set than last year's, when his verses were notable for youthful charm rather than sophistication. That charge cannot be levelled at him now, not least because one composition here attacks the cult of youth (although he is only 25) and asks, "Why does a wrinkle have to be a bad thing?"
What you don't get here are nonsense haikus (see Tim Key elsewhere on the Fringe) or even brilliantly turned short verse à la John Hegley. Wright's poems are beefy affairs: they tackle a wide range of subjects - like South Mimms service station, say, or the fact that "everyone's got a mate who's fucked up" - and together form an eight-part Book of Man. They cull material from his own life ("I grew up in Colchester / Where very little culture stirs") and let him flex his opinions until the buttons pop off, as with a splenetic rant against Central Trains: "I have seen the best minds of my generation delayed outside Matlock." You haven't really howled, Allen Ginsberg, until you've travelled on Britain's railways.
In a voice that recalls Ben Elton's, Wright links together his Book of Man with erudite quotes and hit-and-miss jokes. There's a great riposte to Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians: "To be honest, you're still spaking like a child now!" Not so Wright, who recants the hectoring politics of his teenage verse, and embraces the heartfelt poetry of personal detail. This is best illustrated in a rejoinder to the Arctic Monkeys that tells his wife, I Bet You Look Good On the Sofa: "A night on the tiles for us these days / Usually involves grout." The point being that grouting, like poetry, may be much more fun than you'd imagine.
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
