Comedy review: Gein's Family Giftshop: Volume 3

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Ultimately a bloody mess, this third instalment of depraved sketches from one of the recent torch-bearers of the genre is a significant disappointment.

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

***

With James Meehan focusing on his solo show, or unable to work with director and ex-partner Kiri Pritchard-McLean, depending on which version of events you choose to believe, performance is left to Kath Hughes and Edward Easton. For supposedly dramatic reasons, the shake-up isn’t explained until the confusing end, making it a nagging distraction throughout,

as you’re constantly anticipating Meehan making a belated entrance.

Hughes and Easton are a capable double-act but forced to do more of the heavy lifting, they essentially drop the pretence of ever playing characters, with Hughes becoming especially one-note with her anger management issues.

Plenty of these are directed at Adam Rowley, the LAMDA-trained actor they actually have kind of drafted in to replace Meehan, his privilege inciting entertaining, class-based aggression from the chippy northerners. However, Rowley’s relatively restricted time on stage – and the general mishmash of tropes from Gein’s previous shows alongside some fresh, self-abasing horrors – suggests frantic, last minute re-writing, the sense of remaining hands scrambling to the pump practically acknowledged by the crouching, additional presence of Glenn Moore on stage throughout for a single, throwaway joke.

Until 28 August. Today 10:20pm.