A fine flying circus

And now for something completely different. The notion of performing the works of Palin and co in French in Edinburgh is decidedly perverse. A little like doing The Fast Show in Spanish in Dublin. Yet, despite grave misgivings, this rapid-fire romp is remarkably enjoyable.

Director Remy Renoux has already scored a hit with this authorised homage in Paris. Five actors - four men, one woman - stylishly recreate skits, such as The Dead Parrot and The Lumberjack Song. They are certainly not lookalikes.

In fact, the petite Marie Parouty takes on parts once attacked with lanky gusto by John Cleese.

What the team lacks in the resemblance department it makes up for in sheer physicality. It is interesting to note how much of Python, usually seen as Oxbridge and wordy, works as pure farce. Custard pies fly with abandon and there are more bare bottoms here than in the entire Carry On canon.

The introduction, featuring a pair of mountaineers climbing over the auditorium seats, is a beautifully

ludicrous variant on a great Python movie-hero send-up. But the choices are not simply the most obvious ones. The Ministry Of Silly Walks inexplicably did not make the final cut.

The Philosophers' Song featuring René Descartes and the competition to summarise Proust should have been natural inclusions but were absent.

Instead, The Four Yorkshiremen were reinvented as vintage cognac drinkers, and lacked the gritty character usually evoked by Fred Trueman-style accents.

Technological teething troubles unfortunately meant that the digital subtitles disappeared during The Argument Clinic, although most fans will know the bickering banter. Yet even errors added to the entertainment. When the translation ran slowly there were two punchlines, one visual, one verbal, which increased the appealing sense of comic dislocation.

This is a compellingly bizarre show. On the one hand a tribute akin to Jerome Flynn's recent Tommy Cooper, on the other a radical reinterpretation.

Against the odds it mostly works. Maybe it makes perfect sense. The Pythons were, after all, hugely indebted to the Gallic tradition of surrealism. The French are simply reclaiming them. Vive la difference.

Until 10 August. Box office: 0131 556 6550.