Excess by name and excessive by nature, Freddy Sybourn’s most recent offering to the Fringe throws itself at the audience with such overwhelming exuberance that I’m surprised it doesn’t have any eyes out. Though no doubt partially intentional, its merciless barrage of frantic monologues, sobbed revelations, screaming confrontations and bitter accusations – most of which occur before we’re even quite certain of what the characters’ name are – cause more of a headache than heartache.

See, what’s happened here is I’ve launched into the attack before explaining what on Earth happens, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what Excess does. The lights come up on a sofa in a Dublin living room where siblings Joe (Ollie Smith) and Isla (Florence Keith-Roach), both rather broken individuals in their own particular ways, vaguely acknowledge some sort of estrangement and brutal family history before commencing the emotional sledgehammer-wielding battle of wills that the play centres on, because, tah-dah! Joe is going to have a sex change.

Fair enough, you might say. In our progressive, tolerant society, the concept of gender and sexuality has become fluid and unrestricted…or, at the very least, that’s what you’d expect your own sibling to say. But Sybourn takes a different tack, and perhaps the flaw lies in that Isla’s often offensive and prolonged overreaction jars so completely with how the audience, and hopefully most people, feel. We understand that it is her own myriad of difficulties that prevent acceptance of a change that is for her, one change too many, but the odd use of hand-puppets to illustrate her past tribulations detracts yet again from some much-needed empathy. Despite the heavy subject matter – the construction of identity, drugs, domestic violence – it still all seems far too light. Jokes about abusive fathers and reluctant threesomes come across as poor taste rather than the desperate coping mechanisms of a woman who frustrates rather than endears.

It is a shame because the script itself is sharp and confident, if a little too eagerly up-to-date on its pop culture references. In the end, it’s the one-million-miles-an-hour delivery and a tendency towards over-acting that lets the assured writing down. Furthermore, Excess is really quite loud, deafeningly loud, as if the actors have forgotten the intimate size of the venue. An all-round a case of too much, too fast – there’s just not enough time to forge an emotional connection with the two central characters and so their struggles and insecurities come across as childish and self-absorbed rather than anything we might relate to. Sybourn himself bags the best role as Sam/Samantha, Joe’s drag queen boyfriend, the source of some winning sardonic comedy and a truly stunning treatise on bad jokes – but lacks vision as a director. The un-inventive use of the sofa as the only piece of set contributes to an eventually stationary and tedious atmosphere, and even as the action drags out, the play’s conclusion feels like the place for an interval, not a finale. What Excess lacks in subtlety, it tries to make up for with enthusiasm, but despite the dedicated performances, it never quite reaches the highs, or the lows, that it intends to.

** – 2/5 stars

Excess played at C Venues as part of the Edinburgh Festival until 26 August.