Endurance Reaps Rewards At the Edinburgh Fringe

Visitors to the Fringe can regularly find remarkable new work and some of the sharpest-elbowed comedy in the world. Among the shows highly touted by critics here this season are ''Thom Pain (Based on Nothing),'' a darkly funny Beckettian discourse by the Brooklyn playwright Will Eno; ''Bombshells,'' a series of women's monologues by Joanna Murray-Smith; ''Take Me Away,'' an Irish comedy by Gerald Murphy at the Traverse about the world's most dysfunctional family; ''Spiral Bound,'' an A-to-Z routine by the American comedian (and last year's Perrier winner) Demetri Martin; and ''Good Godley,'' featuring the hard-bitten Glaswegian comedian Janey Godley.