Simon Callow in Tuesday at Tescos

Renowned as a Shakespearean actor from the finest traditions of the boom-and-bellow school of English theatre, Simon Callow is one of the best-known faces at this year's Fringe. Which makes this English-language adaptation of French playwright Emmanuel Darley's Le Mardi à Monoprix even more of a disappointment.

Callow plays Pauline, an aging transvestite who cleans for and looks after her elderly, obstinate and grumpy father. Her father, however, refuses to see Pauline for who she really is; to him, she is Paul – the old man's son.

The problem, though, is that Tuesday at Tescos is a really crass production. The staging—dominated by a large neon hoop running along the perimeter of the stage—doesn't make sense. The script, which wallows artlessly in the minutiae of domestic life, is the very definition of turgid. And the performance does nothing more than show that Callow can sound a bit like a transvestite and do a cockney accent. 

But worst of all, Tuesday at Tescos is criminally boring. There may well be plenty of men and women in this country who find the idea of Callow in drag so shockingly outrageous that they simply have to see it with their very own eyes, but for everyone else there's nothing here. There's no character development or plot. No thoughtful ideas. No subtlety. This feels like a famous actor coming up to Edinburgh and phoning it in.

In the end, Tuesday at Tescos feels like a Value range production masquerading as Finest.