Lizzie Roper: Peccadillo Circus, The Gilded Balloon<!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Sex lives and ordinary folk

The sexual predilections of celebrities sell tabloid newspapers, but can the same stories from the general public sell a Fringe show? In truth, there's only so much prurience one can take before a conversation about sexual mores becomes like a conversation about work, perhaps with the exception of outright pornography and even that quickly becomes repetitive.

The revelations that actress and comedian Lizzie Roper brings to life via recorded interviews are for the most part hardly brimming with humour, self-deprecating or otherwise.

While vox-popping can bring honest moments to the fore, the show also reminds us that people can be dull when talking about their own lives e.g. the bouncer at a fetish club who is (admittedly) paid to be matter-of-fact about what he sees. If there is a show-stealer it is the 76-year-old Jungian psychiatrist who once got fresh by a roadside. While the lady is something of an off-piste rambler the characterisation is sufficiently on-the-ball to make her interesting.

Roper's characterisation of her subjects is fully realised but not so distinct as to discern her female characters from her male ones. Whatever their gender, her interviewees seem to have little to say by way of entertainment or enlightenment and you wish that something more salacious had been scripted.

To 28 August (0131-668 1633)