Robert Newman's New Theory of Evolution

An Edinburgh Fringe reprise for Robert Newman's long-touring, wry, lecture-refuting neo-Darwinism in the most contrived, ukulele-strumming manner, New Theory of Evolution has evolved little in a year but remains a marvellous blend of scientific enquiry, literate storytelling and waggish pomposity-pricking. Under the auspices of proving genetic behavioural inheritance in turkeys on the Franco-Belgian border, Newman elegantly blinds you with contemporary thinking on evolution, the persuasiveness of his scholarship challenged only by his goofy methodology and the tunnel-sighted focus of his character.

Sardonically refuting Richard Dawkins' ideas about the transmission of language, as a layman, I think it's fair to assume that his postal worker friend's account of the evolutionary biologist and popular science author defending his territory somewhat misrepresents him. Still, it's rip-snortingly funny and extends logically from Newman's arguments. Championing the role of co-operation in propagating species, he won't dismiss the role of competitiveness in the fight for survival, regardless of his daughter's appropriating his bad habits, but outlines its negative impact in our adherence to market forces and handling of the Euro bailout.

Elements, such as the vision of a manipulative Hans Christian Andersen staying with Charles Dickens and his family add little to the central thesis when compacted for this hour-long version, though other, more meandering sequences, have been excised. Whoever thought such a dense, ideas-filled production belonged in a venue beset by noise from outside misjudged badly. But it remains a dryly entertaining piece, witty, erudite and mischievous.