Bette Midler… and Me (Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh)

The four stars are for top-rate musicianship rather than musical theatre invention, as musical comedy veteran Sue Kelvin lives a parallel Jewish life with Hawaiian-born Midler in Didsbury, Manchester, with a little help from her friends, singer Alex Young and musical director Sarah Travis at the keyboards.

It's a good supper-time show and would probably do well at the Crazy Coqs in London, though Midler maniacs are probably lying low in a dark room after the bathhouse diva's recent UK tour.

Kelvin's credentials are fascinating: her grandmother used to play poker with Sophie Tucker whenever the last of the red hot mommas, one of Midler's inspirations, toured to Manchester; she's appeared, memorably, in Fiddler on the Roof, the musical that trapped Midler in a Broadway run for a year; and she loves Beaches, "the best worst movie ever made," evoking all its undiluted ghastliness with puppets, coy toys, and the big schmaltzy song,

Midler's not Streisand, and Kelvin's not Midler, but the links are obvious. And the best part of Kelvin's feisty, big-throated, large-hearted performance is her tacit acknowledgement of this, and her relish of it, too. In "Fat Stuff," she identifies totally with Midler getting down, opening her legs, and smothering her prey.

And she's equally at home with the camp side of Barry Manilow, opening with him in a legendary Carnegie Hall concert, not talking to him for 20 years, then re-bonding (classic queenie behaviour), as she hits the big time in movies, though that's never really all that big time: she's great in The First Wives Club but her TV Gypsy is merely OK, not Ethel Merman or Rosalind Russell.

Kelvin evokes Merman, too, in her Gypsy numbers; the songs that evoke Midler aren't half as good. Which is why Merman's a star and Midler's a cult. A wonderful cult all the same, and good on Kelvin for culting along with her big voice and excellent pals.

Bette Midler… and Me continues at the Gilded Balloon until 31 August