Comedy review: Dana Alexander: Breaking Through, Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 300), Edinburgh

THE title is something of a misnomer. This is Dana Alexander’s follow-up to her impressive Fringe debut, and as such it’s a disappointing, regressive one.

Dana Alexander: Breaking Through

Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 300)

Star rating: * * *

A relative newcomer to the UK, the Canadian has emerged as a formidable club comic and it’s a series of loosely-connected club routines that she trots out here. Not every show needs a strong throughline, but she’s considerably better than this, with fine material in her back pocket overlooked for more workaday musings.

She retains her bracing attitude, borne in part from being a “giant” amongst the “hobbits” of London; the childhood she missed out on when people assumed she was her father’s wife; and her eccentric Jamaican and Irish-Italian heritages, the glimpses she affords of her family overwhelmingly the most satisfying elements of this hour.

She can be entertainingly confrontational, charging the British with inventing globalisation, identifying the motives behind our hatred of the US and threatening cheating boyfriends with the shock of their life. But the world-weariness at 30 seems a bit forced and she loses impact whenever she strays from her own lived experience into generalistion and stereotype.

• Until 27 August. Today 10:35pm.