Fringe comedy

There is really no longer anything remarkable, exceptional or indeed especially funny about the fact that we are living in the information age, but the manifold pleasures of tweets, social media and blogging continue to be of endless fascination to the stand-up community.

Mark Watson, below, is an altogether genial and likeable comedian who in past years made his name by being altogether genial and likeable over mammoth 24-hour gigathons. Since then television's Mock the Week has brought his attractive personality to mass attention and he can now do the standard hour in one of the bigger theatres and still be noticed. The internet is indeed a jumping off point for much of his musing, but live text messaging is just as important to the show – a process that embraces members of his audience both absent and present. He thrives on the interaction but is never cruel and, at the time he is very funny indeed. But don't expect to take home much in the way of information.

To August 27

Stewart Lee: Carpet Remnant World, Assembly Rooms

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Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World has been on the road for months and I am sure it is far from as free-form as it appears. Lee also makes much use of information that can be gleaned online, from the horrifically explicit and sick reactions of some Americans to the death of Osama Bin Laden to some equally robust criticism of his own comedy. He gives as good as he gets, it should be admitted, with a bloke called Boyle and the many Russells from his line of work among those in the firing line. More edgily, a huge amount of his act is devoted to critiquing the reaction of certain sections of the audience with building sarcasm. This is bolder than it sounds in print and becomes increasingly squirmingly hilarious as the set goes on and he deconstructs both his jokes and the reaction to them. There is a lot of old-school vaudeville about Lee's schtick: the gentle, in front of the cloth comedy of Morecambe and Wise pushed into brave new dimensions. It is the intelligence that he brings to the mechanics of making people laugh that make it a really fascinating experience.

To August 26

Simon Munnery: Fylm-Makker, The Stand

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Simon Munnery's Fylm-Makker falls somewhere between a Simon Munnery show and the sort of shambles even Simon Munnery wouldn't dare to put before a ticket-buying audience, where – some of the time – it lies mewling on the floor waiting to be put out of its misery. Munnery is characteristically up-front about this, at least towards the end (up-back?), suggesting that it is a work-in-progress, without the progress. Certainly its technology is very lo-tech, its chief conceit being the use of a camera, supposedly in the same way a performer uses a microphone, with Munnery behind his audience and his face projected on to screens stage-front. He adds to this some table-top animation accompanied by a live soundtrack played by Mick Moriarty on acoustic guitar, and, at the end, a less-than-hilarious short film starring wheelie bins. It's a guddle, but a guddle spiced with some wonderfully lateral and original wit, as we have come to expect of him.

To August 27