There are comedians whose Fringe shows feel like extended auditions for sitcoms. Maria Bamford has gone a step further: her show is a one-woman faux sitcom pilot, about a disillusioned comic (name of Maria) returning home to live with her family. Bamford, a deceptively ballsy pipsqueak stand-up from Minnesota, plays every part herself, and the show is a mini-masterpiece of characterisation, as Maria's hometown life begins to make dying onstage look attractive by comparison. "We love you to pieces," her fretful mom tells her, "but you are not welcome at home."
What's impressive is the economy with which Bamford animates this community of family and friends. Her transformations aren't self-consciously artful. She's just a terrific mimic, who can bring characters to keen comic life with the slightest phrase or mannerism. Or noise. Some of the show's funniest lines are actually whimpers, grunts or sotto voce muttering. Her ageing dad is a symphony of wheezes and throat-clearing, much to the frustration of hard-bitten sister Sarah. Mother is busy, "trying to keep the house clean for when Rita comes to clean". Maria's seeking space for herself within this airtight dynamic, but it isn't going to be easy.
Bamford's triumph, both personal and artistic, is to fashion such an entertaining and affectionate portrait from all this mutual resentment and disappointment. Her mother may wish she'd get married and be successful. Her sister may well object to appearing in Maria's stand-up routines. But Bamford reserves her ire for the bitchy schoolmate she re-encounters at the superstore. Round one goes to the bored cashier: "It's just like at high school," she tells Maria. "You're not funny, you're just weird." But Bamford gets her own back in a hilarious finale, imitating her enemy mangling I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No in the high school production of Oklahoma! With a show this good, who needs a sitcom?
· Until August 28. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
