Caroline Mabey's One Minute Silence

Caroline Mabey has an endearingly daft persona, super-confident and disturbed in equal measure. And there’s an amusing premise to her second Fringe show – that among the hustle and bustle of the festival, she will preside over its greatest one-minute silence.

The full extent of this challenge quickly becomes apparent as, in a flurry of hyperbole, she ramps up the life-changing possibilities of achieving this feat for the entire audience, backing it up with the pseudo-science of her projections and reiterating her superiority by “destroying” a “maggot” in the front row with disproportionate putdowns.

The crowd buy into this madwoman’s fantasy at first, as Mabey possesses enough bluff front and surreal non-sequiturs to make it weirdly entertaining. But unless it’s extremely well executed, a show with nothing at its core eventually starts to frustrate. Bringing back Kip the animated coffee pot and scrambled egg Mr Skrangles from her debut is an odd move, as anyone who missed that markedly better hour will be bewildered as to their appearance here, with the pair seemingly just filling time.

Mabey slips some memorably self-deprecating lines through the cracks in her all-conquering facade and there’s some droll insight into her innermost thoughts. But her audience interaction just baffles, even if the eventual silence itself has dramatic tension, everyone wondering if anyone will break it. An ambitious, potentially maddening show like this makes big demands on a comic and Mabey doesn’t quite have the brazen skill to pull it off.