Accidental life and death

EDINBURGH THEATRE

My Myspace Baby
****
The Plan
***

Actor Dan March asks if anyone has had a one-night stand with a stranger and found out he is a dad when she contacts them two years later through MySpace. No? Well, in a beguiling show, March explains how that happened to him.

On a bare stage, March wittily describes his lazy, hedonistic lifestyle before fatherhood was thrust upon him at the age of 33, but many of the funniest moments of his monologue come as he details the smugness and self-obsession of actors in a life governed by the next casting call, his ridiculous joy at getting a bit part in EastEnders and his desperation to join the Royal Shakespeare Company.

March made his Fringe debut in a play I produced in 1999 and I can confirm he really was the callow partying and girl-obsessed youth he describes here. But his readiness to accept responsibility for accidental parenthood marks the man and this heart-warming (but never icky) hour restores one's faith in humanity.

The Plan dumps us at the other end of human existence, as Death sits in her office, chalking up each fatality in car accidents as they are announced on the radio.

Lynn Ferguson flits between characters - cancer patient, accountant, vengeful wife - with just a change of expression or demeanour but it's the script (co-written with Elly Brewer) that stays in the mind. "With one foot in the future and one in the past, you can't help but shit on the present," the Grim Reaper says, justifying taking another life too soon.

Running at 50 minutes, The Plan feels too short: a longer version soon, please.

Both until 25 August (www.gildedballoon.co.uk; 0131 668 1633).