Review by Jay Richardson

'Hello potential enemies!' Igor Meerson greets us warmly, fully aware that with the situation in the Ukraine, Russian standing in the West could probably be higher.

Of course, his concern is unfounded. He is, he's eager to stress, not the lumbering brute our misinformed pronunciation of 'Igor!' implies.

Nevertheless, he did learn English during the Soviet era, with the barked, threatening commands he was taught of only limited use when he eventually met an actual Brit and couldn't make head nor tail of them.

Such colloquialisms are a source of tremendous delight to Meerson in a show that, as his title suggests, focuses heavily on translation. The sheer inefficiency of 'easy peasy, lemon squeezy' blows his mind.

He derives plenty of laughs too from sharing the Russian equivalents of proverbs such as 'a bad workman always blames his tools' or 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear', with no logic as to which language holds the monopoly on poetic or brutally pragmatic expression.

The Russian stereotype of a Brit, an aristocratic gentlemen he suggests, is likely what we'd all imagine. Yet he extends it to suggest that feminism in the UK has gone too far, twisting the political incorrectness of our old-fashioned manners into an encounter with a thoroughly modern woman, whereby he becomes the aggrieved party.

A lovely bit of topsy-turvy, role reversal, he probably should leave it there, though. His follow-up, on why Russian women are smarter, because they know just enough to exploit a man, makes a worse fist of convincing you that he's being tongue-in-cheek rather than regressively sexist. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt though, because he's sharp on the respective attitudes of the UK and US to immigrant workers.

You might not pay much attention to Meerson's face until he points it out. Yet once identified, it's impossible to ignore. He has startlingly 'international' features and is doomed to be gabbled at wherever he goes by natives who assume that he's a local.

Initially, this seems to have prompted only a trite observation on French being a romantic language, German an aggressive one. However, he successfully and impishly pushes it into bad taste territory.

Perceptively aligning a lack of British culinary expressions with the famed mediocrity and indistinct character of our food, he rather disappears up a blind alley picturing the Queen fretting about what to serve visiting heads of state once fish and chips are exhausted.

So at this point, it's a relief when he asks three volunteers to participate in a vodka drinking game. A diverting wheeze, it also shrewdly shifts the focus and pressure off him for a while. Because although his English is better than competent, you do find yourself making some allowances. Ad-libbing, understandably, is not his strength. And on a few occasions, he takes slightly too long to establish a scenario.

With everyone suitably refreshed, though, he can delve into the intriguing psychological differences between British crowds and their Russian counterparts, suggesting a comic like Dara O Briain would be receive sympathy and help in his homeland rather than applause for his inadequacies. Although not an entirely arbitrary choice, one rather gets a kick out of picturing the Irishman's expression at being singled out in this way.

A penultimate routine on extreme sports and their application to the rest of life doesn't really gel, despite Meerson's bafflement at the bureaucracy of a parachute jump consent form.

And he closes, somewhat surprisingly, given his previously puckish mien, with a sincere plea for us to disassociate him from Vladimir Putin, while maintaining that British newspapers, like the Russian press, only print half the story.

Urging rejection of the 'borders in our hearts', it's a touching, almost mawkish ending that dispels Fringe cynicism for a moment or two.

Review date: 4 Aug 2014
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard