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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Brian Logan

Will Smith

Can privilege ever be as funny as misfortune? Jimmy Carr pulls off aristocratic humour - but Jimmy Carr's persona is heightened to the point of caricature. By contrast, Will Smith, a bumbling, unfashionably posh Hugh Grant-alike, appears to be playing it straight. This is problematic. There's a bit here about Smith's efforts to sell his car, a routine driven by an almost primal terror of the working classes. It's less likely to make you laugh than to sadden you at the divisiveness of the British class system.

But Smith has some promising qualities. He casts his show as a defence of eccentricity. He presents the rosettes his moggy won at the Jersey Cat Club. He invites challenges to his encyclopaedic knowledge of the TV cop show Bergerac. He shows us fan mail he wrote, when young, to Margaret Thatcher. "Now why can't that be individuality rather than freakishness?" he asks, challenging the myth that we live in a society that celebrates diversity.

Trouble is, he doesn't follow through. I back to the hilt his attack on Heat magazine and celebrity culture, but he undermines the critique by positing his own nerdy obsessions as an alternative. The recurring hints that he might be gay, meanwhile, are just childish. Smith's persona and material need some thinking through - but there's enough here for an interesting show.

· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-556 6550.

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