Fringe: Comedy: Perineum Intacta

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL 97

Comedy Perineum Intacta

Two women reminisce and advise about pregnancy and childbirth in a mildly amusing manner. The highly personal nature of the piece by Janice McSkimming and Alison Park is both a strength and a weakness: it gives the sentiments a pleasantly vitriolic tone but it can also be a little like being trapped next to a very chatty Difficult Birth at your local mother and toddler group.

Some of it is funny. My personal favourite was the first visit to the GP. Marigold gloves and miner's lamp at the ready, he is itching to perform one of the dozens of (largely gratuitous) internal fumblings that every pregnant woman has to undergo. Ice-cream scoop in hand, McSkimming's Dr Letch dives under the sheet like a rat up a drainpipe muttering: "You get more like your mother every day."

The show could go in one of two directions. To really work as a comedy it needs more real gags - a close study of medical student revue could prove instructive. Alternatively, they could consider beefing up the information and polemic and help mothers-to-be everywhere with an anti ante-natal video.

At Gilded Balloon II, Venue 36, 17.00 (0131-226 2151), to 30 Aug (excl 26, 27) Louise Levene