Rachel Parris: Live in Vegas

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If you're not familiar with Rachel Parris...don't be rude to the person showing you to your seat. You never know who it might be.

That said, if you don't know Parris, you should. A musical comedian at a Fringe awash with mediocre musical comedy, Parris succeeds in distinguishing her show from the herd with well-honed talent, and by the deceptively simple tactic of taking it as far away from Edinburgh as possible (in spirit, at least), setting it in Nevada's neon Babylon.

The conceit of Live in Vegas places it in the ballroom of the Bette Midler Memorial Hotel (to those who protest that Midler isn't dead, Parris points them to the hotel's slogan: "We're working on it."). Here, a series of bizarre, washed-up musical acts take to the stage: painfully posh English rock star Crispin Prentice, surprisingly progressive country singer Gracie-Lou Steinberg and monstrous diva Felice. All are portrayed by Parris, with varying consequences.

On her own, Parris is a winning presence, flitting between giddy ebullience and expertly applied darkness, easily finding the humour in between; it's therefore disappointing that the portion of the show where she plays herself is so brief. Crispin and Gracie-Lou are both one-note characters, but when inhabiting Felice, Parris taps into a rewarding vein of demonic narcissism and toyboy lust that results in her biggest laughs and a barnstorming finale. Such highs may make the audience wish for a more consistent performance, but the calibre of Parris's comedy is still far greater than most.