Jason Byrne's Special Eye

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All right. That does it. Sit down, Edinburgh. Let's settle this whole 'audience participation' thing once and for all...

At its best, when Fringe comedy draws its onlookers into the proceedings, using playful interaction to produce spontaneous inspiration, it can be a joy to watch and a pleasure to take part in. In such cases, enjoyment is mutual and there is always a sense of consent. At its worst, audience participation is lazy and bullying, forcing unsuspecting punters to humiliate themselves in order to yield laughs from the rest of the crowd, drawing attention away from the comedian's lack of talent. When Jason Byrne takes to the stage and immediately drags half the front row on stage to join him in bouncing on space-hoppers, it is obvious that this show will not be the former.

Even when such antics have died down and Byrne begins pulling his own weight, things do not improve much. His ongoing banter with the audience is more harmless than the beginning (and the end, which involves one of the erstwhile hoppers being pulled onstage again for an unfunny card trick involving a dildo), but it pads out an hour that otherwise would not have enough material for half that time. Byrne has decided there is nothing funnier than the differences between Scottish and English people; this leads into a running gag (about hitting your little sister) which makes unilluminating use of ethnic stereotypes of all kinds. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, this isn't even a fresh hell.