Piloting in for the final week of the fringe, Rich Hall has only half a new show to share with us. Perhaps we should blame Roy Chubby Brown, who spurned Hall's intriguing offer to guest star. There's no northern scatology, then, just Edinburgh's favourite gravel-voiced Yank righting the world's wrongs with a mic and a home organ. Hall is firing on no more than a cylinder or two here, and some material is rehashed from previous years. But the revived jokes are good ones, and the show still betrays an estimable comic intelligence at work.
Predictably enough, the set is dominated by satirical broadsides against Bush's US - although, to Hall's credit, he's been apologising for America for years. At his best, he's funny and insightful. "Most Americans confuse terrorism with inconvenience," he suggests. Instead of spending $80bn on a war that was marketed like a Steven Seagal film (Enduring Freedom, indeed), the US might have given $4,000 each to Iraq's 20 million citizens. That's one part joke, two parts revolution in foreign policy.
On the second night, Hall's set meandered rather. His improvised serenade to a lady in the front row was weak. But he's written some tender, Tom Waits-like new tunes, too. Aberdeen is traduced in song: apparently "even the rainbows are monochrome". And there's a beautiful tragicomic ode to a Klanswoman called Roberta: "Hate tattooed on your knuckles/ Shotgun down your pants/ Wondering why no one is asking you to dance." When he's good, he's very good.
· Until Monday. Box office: 0131-226 2428
