Imagine an all-female Addams family, with musical instruments and sexual repression. The Kransky sisters are a kohl-eyed, polka-dotted Australian trio, who live secluded, spinster lives together in rural Queensland. They listen to the radio, read celebrity magazines and wallow in dark memories of the time father locked Mourne in the closet, or when Eve was discovered sucking on the teat of a cow. Now they're on the Edinburgh stage, genteel, troubled and - on tuba, reed keyboard and musical saw - playing us some of their favourite tunes.
File this one under "Fringe curio". It's performed with sinister commitment by Annie Lee, Michele Watt and particularly Christine Johnston as Eve. Her boggle-eyed sexual wonderment when an audience member gives her a peck on the cheek is the highlight of the show. Men, you see, are strictly forbidden by the matronly Mourne: "It is a known fact," she trills, "that some of them are hairy."
All three performers succeed masterfully in suggesting that, beneath the prim (if gothic) exterior of these haunted homebodies, great torrents - of lust, fear and mutual resentment - rage.
This is creepily amusing rather than hilarious stuff. The same goes for the songs, homespun arrangements of pop standards from Michael Jackson to AC/DC. The musicianship is impressive, especially given that one of the instruments is a toilet brush. Likewise the sisters' harmony-singing, and Mourne and Eve's tambourine work on the Sugababes' Overload.
But I'd have liked more self-penned compositions, and some lyrical insight into the Kranskys' eccentric world. As it is, We Don't Have Husbands remains the most kooky and crepuscular of Fringe oddities.
· Until Aug 28. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
