Subtitled A Requiem for the 20th Century, Peter Aterman's one-man show sits uneasily in the comedy section of the fringe programme. It is funny, but the laughs come from a very melancholy place. Aterman, a Toronto export dressed in shirt and tie, offers up a selection of dark scenes and monologues about European culture's surrender to Uncle Sam.
His are not a stand-up's skills, but those of the dramatist and actor. His writing makes sly but lacerating points about what he sees as the triumph of philistinism. Flitting from hangdog deadpan to money-mad dementia, he brings those points to brooding life on stage.
Riskily for an Edinburgh show, Slaves of Starbucks starts soporifically. The piece is book-ended by images of air travel (stage shorthand for existential dislocation), and we first hear a long voiceover by a Dutch pilot hymning the permissive society. From here, the show fractures into shards of jet-black comedy. Now Aterman is Celine Dion, whose live-your-dream values, she tells us, are inspired by Hitler. Now he is an American couple visiting the Vatican who tell their guide about the surgery they have had to allow them to eat more.
The world, according to Aterman, has sold its soul to McCulture. His ideas are as resonant as dreams: an Aztec priest running a Wall Street brokerage isn't just funny, it lays bare the superstitious, sacrificial character of capitalism. Aterman's conclusions are not reasoned, they are instinctive. Not unlike his British counterpart, Julian Fox, he is Everyman adrift in a world of Great Value! but no great values.
His show does not march to the Edinburgh up-beat: its elegiac, heartfelt character is entirely its own.
· Until August 26. Box office: 0131-226 6522.
