Divine comedy | 8 August 2019

The locals probably can’t bear the Edinburgh festival. Their solid, handsome streets are suddenly packed with needy thesps waving and flapping at them from every kerbside. ‘New interactive comedy quiz, starts in five minutes.’ ‘Award-winning monologue about growing up Chinese in Droitwich.’ ‘Stalin the Opera performed by tone-deaf choir.’ There’s a waggish actor who stands on George IV Bridge challenging passers-by not to take a leaflet. ‘When I hand out my next flyer I’m going to jump off the parapet.’ He’s there every day.

One of the first shows I sampled was Titania McGrath Mxnifesto (Pleasance Courtyard, until 25 August). Titania McGrath, the woke guru, demolishes the alt-left orthodoxy in 45 minutes of venomous satire. ‘I’m a simple Kensington girl,’ she announces dictatorially, ‘with a moderate trust fund and a thirst for justice.’ She plans to set up a new progressive party, Shame UK, based on the precept that ‘whiteness is rape’. Titania is an intriguingly detailed character study. She’s bigoted and arrogant but also snobbish, callow and sadistic. ‘I need a new labradoodle, I had to shoot the last one because it stank.’ She likens herself to a ‘modern-day Rosa Parks, except that I wouldn’t be seen dead on public transport, obvs’. A readiness for violence flashes through her rhetoric. ‘I’m going to blow your skulls out with my wisdom.’ She’s not remotely interested in morality or politics, only in her belief that she’s right about everything.

Though expensively educated, she’s shockingly ill informed. ‘Jews are great,’ she says, explaining her opposition to anti-Semitism. ‘They’re really smart. And cunning. I even read that Anne Frank novel. But it’s got a shit ending. It just sort of stops.’ Some of her lines are straightforward stand-up. ‘If we could eliminate heterosexuality, future generations would thank us.’