Edinburgh Festival `99: Fringe Comedy - The Millennium Musical

The Reduced Shakespeare Co Assembly Rooms, Venue 3, (0131-226 2428) 11.15am, to 30 Aug

All right - you have to hand it to them - the love duet between Genghis Khan and Hitler is inspired. But while the Reduced Shakespeare Company's all-singing, all-dancing flit though the millennium contains the odd golden moment, is it really anything other than a groanfest destined to get a wide range of historical figures jerking in their graves?

From the start you are pounded by puns, and besieged by 14-year-old humour. Giving Walter Raleigh a laryngotomy is funny, but having the Impressionist painters doing impressions is last-pint stuff - it makes you wonder what else they found while scraping the bottom of the millennial barrel.That said, if you like your history served up with plenty of cheese, then Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor's musical may be the one for you.

The cast of three certainly seems to thrive on its diet of puns, and forms a slick and engaging ensemble, while Nick Graham's music wraps itself amiably around the gags. Groan and be damned.