For fans of Sheffield singer-songwriter and retired security guard John Shuttleworth, this is a must-see - even if Graham Fellows hasn't quite scripted the set to show off his new character to its best advantage.
Tordoff is a concreter from Goole, whose speciality is laser screeding - and we're shown the promotional video to prove it. Tordoff has made a bob or two from the business, and has got his wellied feet giddily high up the social ladder. These days, he tells us with great self satisfaction, he buys classy wine - "you know, the £7.99 stuff" and plans to promote himself as an after-dinner speaker. "I am," he says, with a very Shuttleworthian lack of self-irony, "living the dream".
Having wallowed for so long in Shuttleworth's failure, this is Fellows' take on success - of a characteristically low-horizoned northern vintage. Kevin Keegan has told Tordoff you can trouser five grand for half an hour on the after-dinner circuit. "And it'd be lovely to say to my wife: 'There you go, there's 5k - get your tits done.'"
There's a touch of Abigail's Party in Tordoff's nouveau riche vulgarity: this is a man who confidently states David Gray's superiority to Dylan. But Fellows' currency, here as previously, is with the bathetically banal details of his characters' everyday lives. Dave has been watching Lebanon burn on the news. "A lot of the images of suffering are very vivid. Well, they are on my TV, it's a plasma screen!"
It's a little anticlimactic that Tordoff's promised after-dinner speech never materialises (he gets distracted by a phone call from colleague Shane, telling him that "the lad on the screeder has had an epilectic fit". In its absence, the set's highlight is a ghastly video Tordoff has made to sell himself and his success, in which he is seen "strolling through the grounds of his ranch-style property". The show might profit from a more dramatic shape. But the character is very funny and Fellows' performance as rich and lovingly detailed as ever.
· Until Aug 27. Box office: 0131 556 6550.
