Ruby McCollister @ Underbelly Cowgate

How can Ruby McCollister reach the same heights as her Hollywood heroes? Through talent? Tragedy? It’s actually both, she explains, in her charismatic, frenetic Edinburgh Fringe debut.

McCollister was born and raised in the palm-lined, heady, sex-shop-on-every-corner streets of LA. Her childhood was spent blissfully running around the Coronet Theatre in Tinseltown’s Beverly Grove, taking in one-woman shows from faded stars and a glitzy world premiere staging of an esoteric Philip K Dick text. As time passes, she begins to idolise stars of days gone by – Andy Warhol’s muse, an internet-famous teen party gal, and Karen Carpenter – internalising their tragedies as rules by which to live her own life.

McCollister’s own tragedies are told with the lightest of touches amidst more stage slides and kick-ball changes than you’ll ever need. She croons her thoughts into the microphone, speak-singing like Liza Minelli whilst looking like Natasha Lyonne meets Millais’ Ophelia. However, the few full songs she offers are either earnestly, uncomfortably straight, or are riffs on internal thoughts which are repetitive and give no further drive to the story (bar one which progresses the show literally and figuratively).

McCollister is a manic joy to watch on stage. Her storytelling is compelling and she has a knack for hugely engaging, gross-out stories (the lengths she goes to to keep a French boyfriend at college know no bounds), but the show can sometimes be lacking true comic relief. Tragedy makes for a compelling debut, and despite comparisons with Catherine Cohen, McCollister cuts a much stranger, more intriguing shape against the wave of Fringe 2023’s musical and US comic influx.

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Ruby McCollister: Tragedy, Underbelly Cowgate (Belly Dancer), until 27 Aug (not 15 Aug), 5.45pm, £11.50-12.50