Comedy review: Carmen Lynch: Lynched

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Carmen Lynch's dry, ­deadpan delivery isn't a great ­combination with her boxy, attic room, making for a rather airless performance, her lethargic, nihilistic drawl suffocating some otherwise sharp writing.

Laughing Horse @ The Counting House (Venue 170)

***

The New York-based comic’s material tends towards the bleakly cynical, establishing her tone with a darkly funny morning-after-pill gag soon after her ­insincere gratitude for ­Donald Trump’s presidency.

At her best, she’s surprising and quirkily original, setting out a contentious position before justifying it with perverse logic. Too often though, she allows a good punchline to simply drift away into the ether with a blank, expressionless look. Unusually tall, a bundle of therapy-requiring neuroses and blessed with an overtly dramatic ­Spanish mother, she’s got plenty to stoke her insecurities. Her characterisation of the latter injects a little welcome energy into a show that runs comfortably short of an hour, as if Lynch simply runs out of momentum. That’s a shame because you suspect that with a minor tweak in presentation, a little more early ingratiation with the crowd rather than detached observations about how we’re staring at her like she’s crazy, and Lynch might be a force to be reckoned with this Fringe.

Until 27 August. Today 4pm.