By Jay Richardson, Kate Copstick

Published 14th Aug 2023, 13:06 BST

Updated 14th Aug 2023, 13:13 BST

Adrian Bliss: Inside Everyone ****

Pleasance Dome (AceDome) (Venue 23) until 27 August

Atoms could do with some good press after Oppenheimer. So it's a pleasure to report that online hit Adrian Bliss, a man of many parts, has successfully leapt from TikTok to his live show debut with an easy reconstitution of his stardust. With impressive production values and bold, sweeping ambition, seemingly at odds with Bliss' slight, nebbish appearance and thin, reedy voice, this one-man show follows an atom's journey from before the dawn of time to the present day, passing through history's most famous figures.

From the beginning, as he appears in a Zorb ball, full of exploratory, molecular endeavour, before re-emerging as a casually indifferent dinosaur on the eve of the calamity that wiped them out, you sense you're in safe hands and can sit back for the ride. His source material is some of the most dramatic and blood-soaked in our collective consciousness, yet his legendary personages are invariably found bumbling towards their destiny, their greatness temporarily frustrated by some minor distraction.

As Julius Caesar gets creative at the salad bar, he makes idle chit-chat with an invisible Brutus, oblivious to the small talk presaging his impending doom. Boudica's visceral hatred of the Romans doesn't quite extend to her taste for their wine, inspiring a typically anachronistic gag that Bliss really runs with. And Shakespeare's genius only extends so far, his puffed-up ego manifesting itself in his self-defeating costume.

In dialogue with his own voiceover, Bliss' atom is a Zelig-like figure present at civilisation's defining moments. But there's a touch of another Woody Allen movie, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, in his portrayal of Hitler's father's sperm.

There could unquestionably be more jokes. But Bliss is a pleasure to spend eternity with, with some of his later characterisations, such as Albert Einstein and Vincent Van Gogh's renegade, rejected ear, some of the most entertainingly sketched.

Jay Richardson

Geraldine Hickey: Of Course We've Got Horses ***

Assembly, George Square (The Box) (Venue 8) until 27 August

Geraldine Hickey won best show at the 2021 Melbourne Comedy Festival for Of Course We've Got Horses and it's a charming hour, culminating in a glowing expression of love and affirmation.

But is it wrong to question how much it triumphed off the back of Australia only introducing gay marriage as recently as late 2017? No excitable ingenue, Hickey is a seasoned stand-up and broadcaster. She carefully parcels out her leisurely anecdotes with amusing detail and easy self-mockery. And when she tells you about her bodyboarding and birdwatching passions, it's with only the mildest admission of nerdiness.

Middle-aged and with a stable home life, this composed performer has little of the angst that bedevils some of her stand-up peers. Most challenging to a UK audience perhaps, is her straightforward disclosure that she and her wife own three properties and just as many horses, an expression of bourgeois, childless contentment that might seem smug if Hickey wasn't so down-to-earth.

For 40 minutes, she gently shades an endearing portrait of her and her spouse, very much the organiser in their relationship, then pays it off with a celebratory account of their wedding. Nevertheless, without the same gay marriage and celebrity context in the UK, I'm not sure it has quite the same impact.

Jay Richardson

This Is The Last Goldfish That I Am Going To Eat For You ***

Underbelly, George Square (The Wee Coo) (Venue 300) until 28 August

Grace Jarvis' great hook of a title reflects assumptions made about her, and the second-guessing that the amiable Australian comic does in turn. Switching between the present and her adolescence, there's plenty of retrospective self-revelation as Jarvis is forever coming out, both as a bisexual and someone who's only been diagnosed autistic later in life.

Her misfit status was cemented at school, though her tone isn't recriminatory recalling the mean girls, marvelling instead that they picked up on her being queer far quicker than she did. Indeed, Jarvis doesn't readily apply blame to anyone, such is her upbeat, whimsical effervescence, and you're left to fill-in the outrage yourself at the way her deeply conservative, Scottish Pentecostal school abused her.

Her offbeat, quizzical perspective proves a stand-up boon, with her niche interests and refreshing, have-a-go naivety informing original thinking about all sorts of subject matter. And when she latches onto something that really intrigues her, she'll poke it from every angle. Case-in-point is her exhaustive deconstruction of dreadful 2019 film The Tall Girl, though this routine is possibly too extensive, even if hyper-focusing on the trivial is part of the joke.

Outwardly winsome, internally complex, Jarvis delightfully exploits and eclipses the differences and difficulties of her life.

Jay Richardson

Charlie Lewin: Cockatiel ***

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Turret) (Venue 14) until 28 August

It's a bit on the nose, but Charlie Lewin's partly sung, late-night show about being a cockatiel in an aviary of magpies, growing up as a closeted gay drama kid in a deeply conservative, Catholic education system could probably do with some fellow cockatiels in the crowd to really make it fly.

A committed trouper, on the evening I caught it, the Australian couldn't mask his disappointment at finding his ironic shoutout for straight culture attracting quite such a heterosexually-dominated response.

Given his recent ADHD diagnosis and love of performing, it seems remarkable that Lewin was never not out. But with suitably dramatic scene-setting and spirited, showtune-style songs, he paints an evocative picture of the casual and overt bigotry that made him keep his head down.

His family were protective but misguided, with his father's attempts to take him and his brother on boring, masculine bonding trips relying on his burgeoning theatricality to extract them from at least one scrape.

And for all Lewin's arch, distancing quips, he does allow himself to be open and vulnerable about his long-term relationship. Moreover, the continuing capacity of his family to accommodate change suggests wider societal shifts will ultimately confine struggle stories like his' to history.

Jay Richardson

Nightwatchman ****

Just the Tonic at the Mash House (Venue 288) until 27 August

Pausing only to find out our favourite blue things and have a dig at Ivo Graham, the Nightwatchmen (Kit Lloyd and Ollie West) hurtle through an hour of the delightfully silly and the entertainingly strange. It is endearingly fragile, it feels fresh and very Fringey and is exactly the kind of thing you should be going to see of an evening.

Not absolutely everything hits the mark but that doesn't really matter, because that which is not hilarious is at least intruiguing and engaging.

You will get Pig Elvis and ambitious JLS backing dancers, Snog Radio and a non-stop tumble of physical comedy, violent death and The Art of Seduction. It does not all hit the mark, but I cannot find myself bothered by that. They are a great combination, one all high energy physicality and the other bringing an unexpectable cast of character creations.

Their hour hurls a new and differently funny at you every few minutes. Comedy this fresh does not come along very often and, when it does, you should enjoy it. I cannot remember the last time I sat in an audience with less idea of what might be coming next and that is a wonderful feeling.

Kate Copstick

Edinburgh Festival Fringe comedy reviews: Adrian Bliss: Inside Everyone | Geraldine Hickey: Of Course We've Got Horses | This Is The Last Goldfish That I Am Going To Eat For You | Charlie Lewin: Cockatiel | Nightwatchman