There’s one thing you can’t accuse Luke McQueen of and that’s not being totally committed to his craft. The mask barely drops for a second as he plays a man not so much on the brink, but one who’s gone past the precipice and is hanging on by his badly burned fingers. You may have seen a pre-Fringe video of him walking into a pub during a World Cup night, and switching the plasma screen TV off to perform ‘the comedy’; this is the kind of ballsy aesthetic he drags into one of the Pleasance Courtyard bunker venues, an ideal room to heighten the sense that we’re in a full-blown hostage situation.

McQueen starts under a sheet while strapped to a chair, ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ ominously playing over the top. Instructions are left for audience members to activate proceedings and only then does the full terror ensue. He flirts with a woman while mildly threatening her partner, insults a reviewer’s employer and picks out a surrogate father.

It’s an intense and uncomfortable experience for a crowd in an unforgiving compact space and, you suspect, McQueen is having a pretty torrid time too. Genuine edge of the seat stuff with nervous laughter your only release.

Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 24 Aug, 8pm, £7.50–£9.50 (£6.50–£9).