Review by Steve Bennett

From the moment he walks onto the Traverse stage, it's crystal clear that American political comedian Will Durst knows exactly what he's doing.

He exudes the quiet confidence of a man with decades of experience, softly drawing the audience in until they are transfixed.

The obtuse title of the show, he explains, is a reference to his own baby boomer generation. The image is that of the post-war bulge in the otherwise flatlining graph of population growth - like a snake that has swallowed a pig.

His generation were the rebels, passionately tilting at authority. But now, as he says, "We are The Man, man."

And that's also Durst's drawback as a comedian. What was once trailblazing is now commonplace - as every generation of comics come along with their own agenda, what has gone before becomes hackneyed.

So Durst, though a long way from stale, is now saying exactly the same sort of things as everyone else. He no longer stands out from the crowd.

He starts, for example, with some unexceptional cannabis material, and the fact that Clinton famously did not inhale. Perhaps he chose safe ground because on this, his first Edinburgh performance, as he was uncertain which references British audiences would grasp (indeed some later gags did require a bit more knowledge of US political figures than most people possessed), but it doesn't give the impression of someone pushing the envelope.

Other segments about the inadequacy of airport check-ins and the stupidity of George Dubya are again things we've heard before.

Which leads to Durst's other problem - that politics has gone beyond satire. The US is run by a slow-thinking president, elected in a dubious poll in a state his brother governs. The attorney-general was defeated in an election by his two-months-dead opponent. We're bombing one of the most backward countries in the world 'back to the Stone Age'. This stuff writes itself - which makes the comedian somewhat redundant.

Though there are plenty of others now covering this sort of ground, Durst does still remain one of its finest exponents, with unrivalled performance skills.

So the rare opportunity that Edinburgh offers to watch a comedian of Durst's standing should still be seized, even if the gig isn't as white-hot as his enviable reputation would suggest.

Review date: 1 Jan 2002
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett