Comedy review: An Audience with Yasmine Day, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

Don't call it a comeback because Yasmine Day never went away.

An Audience with Yasmine Day, Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

An Audience with Yasmine Day, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh * * *

The endearing creation of Jay Bennett, the eighties pop princess gamely ploughs Dorking's pub and restaurant circuit. But in her head and perky execution, she's a slumbering luminary of the decade that taste forgot, offering her advice to Madonna, crossing swords with her nemesis Cheryl Baker.

Wafting onto the stage in a riot of music video clichés, Day belts her way through Total Eclipse of the Heart. Secure in her star power, she patiently reacquaints the audience with her place in music history, the modesty of her achievements unreflective of the importance that this well-spoken songstress places upon them. While the character's backstory makes little sense, even allowing for anachronisms and wannabe-diva logic, Bennett fully inhabits Day and brings her vividly to life, assisted in no small measure by the fact that she's got a great voice and never breaks character. Sharing a rendition of Eternal Flame with only the vowels, Toto's Africa for the Costa del Sol crowd and the remnants of a duet with her estranged ex-partner, she's a vivaciously charismatic pixie, casting a deluded but entertaining spell.

Until 25 August

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