Theatre review: Jubilate! Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33), Edinburgh

WRITTEN and performed by seasoned comedy actress Rosalind Adler, this one-woman comedy introduces her as insufferably sanctimonious vicar’s wife Anna, self-appointed leader of a weekly course called Everything Explained, held at the church hall.

Jubilate!

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

Star rating: * * *

We also meet several of those she’s dragooned into attending, and whose various problems she’s taken it upon herself to solve: serial single mum Cheryl, browbeaten housewife Pat, timid spinster and mother’s carer Deborah, and posh, lubricious New Age devotee Lucy.

Despite the fluency and finely crafted detail with which Adler repeatedly switches between roles – each character making several brief appearances as the overarching, sting-in-the-tail narrative proceeds – complete with particularised accents, accessories, gestures and body language, the fact that all five women can be summed up in so few words points to the show’s essential problem.

Sharply turned and timed though its humour is, the laughs are ultimately based on broad-brush stock types, shading in Cheryl’s case towards offensive stereotype.

The most interestingly observed is Pat, deep in fearful, silly-me denial about the tragic travesty of her marriage – until her strand of the story is “resolved” with a disquietingly glib deployment of paedophilia as a plot device. This aside, it’s all undeniably enjoyable – just rather too cheaply so.

• Until 25 August. Today 12:40pm.