A kind of comedy magic

0 Raymond and Mr Timpkins wear their incredible skill and comic genius lightly

and in the most gloriously random manner so that you never have any idea where the next gusset-threatening laughter-bomb will be dropped. The experience is like a visual version of Tim Vine on speed – although the pace changes in the central section where we are treated to a thrilling storyline involving amateur dramatics, betrayal and a dead vicar.

Happily it takes more than a blown-up church and shattered

thespian dreams to destroy this partnership and they are soon back eliciting shrieks of laughter around pictures of Farage, Heather Mills, and Girls Aloud, and those for whom there is no show without Trump will not be disappointed. Even Mr Timpkins’ painful problems with what looks to be quite severe IBS do not spoil the show – unless you cannot laugh at a good old-fashioned fart joke. This is comedy that

reminds us why we go out to see live shows. And it wears its incredible skill, its labourintensity and its comic genius so lightly one might think it is just a bit of silliness.

Everywhere we hear talk about “taking something away” from a Fringe comedy show. What I took away from this one was a sore face, a shortness of breath and the need for fresh underwear. KATE COPSTICK

Until 27 August. Today 8:30pm.

Rosy Carrick is an immensely likeable performer: she’s intelligent and not shy about it, articulate and funny, with an unshowy confidence in owning the physical space of the stage (tonight she breaks character to cheerfully check on a lighting issue, then resumes without any loss of momentum).

Her show is a deft blend of fact and fiction: from an account of the letters she would send herself as a child, she springboards into an adventurous timetravel narrative, weaving in autobiography, hangovers, self-doubt, the Russian poet Mayakovsky, David Bowie, the Large Hadron Collider and the birth of her daughter Olive.

It’s a compelling yarn bolstered by charmingly slapdash slides and anchored to the real world by official documentation (passports, scientific illustrations of time travel components etc). It also has something to say about the value of fiction in telling true stories, though Carrick wouldn’t put it so dryly. Aside from that, the show doesn’t reach for any grander truths, but not all shows need to; sometimes, an entertaining hour full of warmth and compassion is plenty (even if it does have one twist you’ll see a mile off ). NIKI BOYLE

Until 27 August. Today 3:30pm.