Comedy: Brendon Burns: So I suppose This Is Offensive Now, Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
Not a classic Burns' night
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Your support makes all the difference.It's frustrating, but if I explain what the best element of this show is I will ruin it for audiences to come. Equally frustrating is that the brilliance of this section does not adequately explain the buzz around it.
For the last four years I have set and watched admiringly as the Australian laid bare his personality traits and defects in his "trilogy" won over as much by his effort as by his material. This year's show loses the intimacy built up by the previous shows and that takes the shine off the magic a little.
There's some good, brazen knockabout stuff, as you expect from Burns, the bull in the china shop of diplomacy – "Muslims are great because they stay up all night to give you fried food before you go to bed", for example, or explaining why he's none too happy being stuck behind a woman in a burka in an airport queue.
Unfortunately, other portions of the show are more hectoring and in dire need of work. However amusing the actions of John Smeeton were in the wake of the attempted bombing of Glasgow Airport, Burns' weary contribution to the widespread material about how rubbish recent suicide bombers have been is both tedious and complacent.
To 26 August, not 20 (0131-556 6550)
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