And On Your Left… Ruth Bratt

It’s been a mixed bag of a Fringe for female character comics, but Ruth Bratt’s collection of mad hatters certainly puts her in the top bracket. Set up as a road trip around the sites of Edinburgh, the show introduces a tour guide who is a mixture of cloying charm and self-absorbed mania. Rife with jealousy, she is more keen on spotting the lover who spurned her than on giving her passengers a journey to remember around the capital’s tourist hotspots.

Along the way we encounter a middle-aged Christian housewife whose husband is on a mission to extinguish himself, a pervy stand-in shopkeeper with an eye for the ladies (even if he happens to be related to them) and a Diana-obsessed New Jersey dame. All of those are winners, although the rough east European diamond character already feels like a stock creation. Not for nothing has Bratt (a regular with the Reduced Edinburgh Fringe Impro Show) been described as having ‘twinkly-eyed innocence that barely hides a demented mind’. There is much method to her madness.

Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, until 25 Aug, 2.30pm, £10–£11 (£8.50–£9.50).