Edinburgh has become the home of a new phenomenon, comedians setting themselves up as actors, often to occupy their days prior to late nights telling jokes in no longer smoky clubs.
One of the most successful cross-over artists is Phil Nicoll, who last year won the Stage Best Actor Award. Now, with the same director, Maggie Inchley, he joins three other stand-ups for an extreme comedy from Sam Shepard.
Nicoll plays a straight-laced film screenwriter Austin, who is house-sitting while his mother holidays in Alaska. Things go wrong when his kooky brother Lee - Tom Stade giving a well-judged portrayal - arrives fresh from three months in the desert.
The ever-threatening Lee, who has something of a messianic look, decides that his story would make a good film and enlists his brother's writing skills.
To general surprise, Dave Johns' bigshot producer Saul goes for the unknown writer's contemporary Western, much to the chagrin of his ditched brother.
The play concludes with the arrival of something like sanity in the form of the men's returning mother, played by Laura Brook using an accent that needs a lot more work.
With its mix of human foible and madness and chalk and cheese brothers, this is characteristic Shepard. The comedians take on their new roles pretty well, though whether this trend and its implication that comedians can act as well as those trained for years has not yet been fully proven.