Levelland

Rich Hall's searing debut play is a fierce, intelligent and neatly constructed attack on American values - and not just the same easy targets that do-gooder liberal playwrights across the Fringe are earnestly attacking, either.

It's also an edge-of-the-seat thriller that zips along at a cracking place and features countless terrific one-liners - perhaps no fewer than you'd expect from the Perrier Award-winning creator of Otis Lee Crenshaw.

At first, it appears that talk show DJ Wayman Tisdale (Hall) might be little more than a thinly-veiled mouthpiece for his creator. The quick-witted Texan puts racist, xenophobic and war-mongering callers firmly in their place with a stream of savage tirades - it seems that these ignorant rednecks can't help but rise to his bait - but things take an uglier turn when his carefully controlled world is invaded by a fidgety young man on the run.

Scrope is on the run - literally, since petrol prices have soared to $10 a gallon and his hitch-hiking etiquette leaves a lot to be desired. He claims to be responding to a subliminal advertisement he heard on Tisdale's show, and he has an extraordinary story to tell. Tisdale doesn't believe in extraordinary stories, though. He believes in truth.

Disregard any lukewarm reviews you may have read elsewhere (comic-turned-playwright snobbery? Confusion because the words 'petrol' and 'Jesus' don't feature in the title of this one? Who knows?), and join the queue for what must surely be one of the most assured, satisfying debuts on the Fringe.