Of all the acts at Edinburgh dealing with the events of September 11, country-and-western diva Tina C's is the most eye-catching. Perhaps it is the poster image, in which this drag act bestrides New York, her mini-skirted legs standing in for the World Trade Center's twin towers. At the fringe, shock tactics often denote desperation. So it is a pleasant surprise to find that Tina C (archly played by Chris Green) offers a shrewd comic critique of September 11 sentimentality.
The character is a monstrously shallow Nashville doyenne whose career is on the skids. The depiction of a mediocre act hitching a lift to success on tragedy's back is risky: if Green had got it wrong, that is how critics might have described his own show. But from the moment Tina C sheds her burka and says hi, we feel we are in safe hands. Introducing songs from her album 9/11:24/7, she is all touchy-feely, queen-of-hearts compassion. Trussed up in a figure-hugging frock, and with rhinestone twin towers stitched into her Stetson, Tina touts her CD ("I think it's important that you purchase") and croons the tunes with vowel-torturing gusto.
Comic songs are almost always a delight, and Tina C's are right on the button. "I bet you couldn't find the real pathos of loss/ So I wrote this song to ram the point across," she sings on Kleenex to the World. "I'm sorry that you're hurting," she coos to those suffering in the Middle East. "But most of all, I'm sorry that you're hurting me." It is a wicked riff on America's, and celebrity's, egocentric response to September 11.
· Until August 26. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
