Holes[author-post-rating] (4/5 Stars)

Some men, as that guy in Batman once said, just want to watch the world burn; others are less keen to get in on the burning but would love to be in charge of the resultant admin. Ian is one such man.

After their plane goes down somewhere between London and Sydney, the sole survivors, three conference organisers and a teenager, pick through the plane food and the fruit growing in the jungle of their desert island, and try to decide what to do while they wait to be rescued. But when they hear a horrifying M’aidez call over the plane’s radio, they begin to worry that no-one is coming, because there is nobody left to come.

Daniel Rigby is perfectly pitched as Ian, an insignificant man back at home who feels able, here, to take charge, to become the real man he has always known in his heart he could be. He is not-so-secretly thrilled at the prospect of starting a new life on the island – and if they’re faced with the prospect simply because him, two work colleagues he barely knows and a teenage girl he’s never met before are all that’s left of humanity, so be it.

Tom Basden’s script is unbelievably fast-paced and relentlessly funny, with the jokes coming thick and fast, especially from Rigby and Katy Wix’s excellent, shallow Marie. Marie is Head of HR and she works very hard, so really this is a great opportunity for her to get the beach holiday she both needs and deserves. It’ll all be fine as long as she doesn’t get sunburned – which she is at risk of, actually, because she does have ginger cousins.

All four performers get a share of the laughs, but the cast of Holes is by necessity split between the grotesques and more sympathetic characters; Matthew Baynton as Gus, concerned for his children back at home, and Bebe Cave as Erin, who lost her family in the crash, give Holes its emotional heart.

Staged in the round and in the middle of nowhere (coaches collect groups of people from the Assembly George Square and ship them out to a secret location), this is a great play with a few attached complexities that feel mostly unnecessary. It’s a little hard to imagine there were no more central venues in which Holes could, with some fiddling and ingenuity, be staged, plus, the vastness of the actual venue and the in-the-round staging make it hard sometimes to catch the quick-firing dialogue, nailed down perfectly by director Phillip Breen.

Still, this staging makes them feel oppressively walled-in, stuck with each other, further underlined by the small stage they occupy on what must be a relatively vast island. There’s also something nice about being able to see people opposite, peering at you even as the four survivors discuss their assumed status as the last humans alive; it drives home the enormity of this claim while also making them look just a little ridiculous. Excusable flaws, then – not least because this has to be one of the funniest pieces of theatre at this year’s Fringe. Basden’s excellent script and the remarkable comic timing of the cast make Holes more than worth the trip.

Holes can be seen at various times every Friday, Saturday and Sunday until 25 August. For more information and tickets visit the Edinburgh Fringe website.