Making her return to stand-up after 25 years and a solid career as a comic actor, Juliet Cowan’s Fringe debut is an ambitious but ill-conceived attack on sexism that often tips uneasily into polemic. With the patriarchy represented by an ever-present, dangling child’s action toy, Cowan bounces back and forth between her troubled teenage self living in fear of nuclear Armageddon and under the yoke of hormones and male expectations; and the present, where entering the menopause has coincided with a period of liberation, sexual appetite and generally unfettered behaviour.

Featuring a bewildering array of props inexplicably conveying things like oestrogen imbalance and some frankly terrible audience-interaction elements, doubtless at least as excruciating as the teenage flirtations with boys that inspired them, Fuck Off And Leave Me Alone is forcefully delivered but a confused mess. And for all its palpable, generalised anger, it seems a bit uncertain of the specific targets of its opprobrium. This feels like a show that badly needs more creative detachment, composure and perspective from the highly personal source material.

Juliet Cowan: Fuck Off And Leave Me Alone, Pleasance Dome, until 25 August, 7pm; main picture: Karla Gowlett.