Tender is the night

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There is a moment about five minutes into A Made Up Story when it dawns on the audience that Daniel Kitson wasn't joking when he said that his show this year was ''not really stand-up'' and that it could very possibly be ''really very bad''.

At that moment the audience realises that A Made Up Story is not going to be some long shaggy-dog joke with plenty of tangential musings, quips, and y'know jokes. It is, in fact, going to be a love story, albeit a wry and frequently funny one told to them by an incredibly hairy bloke from Derbyshire. It is what the audience does as that realisation

kicks in that makes or breaks this show. As far as this performance went, around 99% of them took a look at the bearded, besuited guy with the glasses and the occasional stutter, and decided they trusted him.

Not that it should affect the assessment of a reviewer, but Kitson is a performer with a very picky approach to his audience. He has made it abundantly clear in pre-Festival previews that the kind of audience that goes to Late'n'Live boozed-up and ready to heckle anyone who has the audacity to try to entertain them, would not be welcome at this show. What makes people use the word genius in association with him, however, is the fact that he can deliver his fragile, occasionally melancholic tale of how urban loneliness can give way to love of a heart-rendingly tender variety, then pop off to the aforementioned bear-pit of depravity and take to the cleaners anybody drunk and stupid enough to have a go at him.

Kitson deserves applause, first, for coming up with a stonkingly juicy show and, secondly, for having the balls to do it. Perhaps it is stretching the boundaries of different artistic forms too far to suggest that it has the same emotional and stylistic tone as Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia, in as far as an English comedian telling a novella live can be compared to a Hollywood film. Kitson, though, is concerned with the same sense of the miraculous in an apparently mundane world. He's got the same magical-realism-for-white-nerdy-guys thing going on as well as a single song as a refrain (although Cartwheels by The Reindeer Section is a far better tune than the Fiona Apple mulch in Magnolia.)

This, as you may have guessed, is not a show for those of a cynical disposition. It is a show for anyone who is, if not actually in love, then at least without any deep-seated aversions to being so. If you are more of a power and self-loathing kind of person, Daniel Kitson can still help. You just have to wait until later in the evening.

Demetri Martin

Assembly Rooms, 9.15pm, until August 23

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As someone smart once said: ''The geeks shall inherit the earth.'' Demetri Martin, member of the math team at school, setter of a 3-D crossword puzzle while at law school, and owner of a unicycle, is not just any old geek either. He is the American movie cliche writ large. He is a man who has gone through the list of all that is geeky and ticked all the boxes. Rubik's cube proficiency? Check. Fascination with palindromes? Yup. Self-obsession? Unfortunately, that too.

For if Demetri Martin has provided himself with a great deal of material with his own neurotic cleverness, it also is an impediment to his performing style. This isn't a stand-up show; it is an amusing lecture. There is a great deal of verbal dexterity and cerebral fireworks in his material, but it fails ultimately to entertain because he performs from within a glass bubble. It is a highly polished glass bubble, of course, and there are a few good jokes at his own expense, but Martin in the end fails to make a connection with this audience despite being an otherwise likeable guy with a fine line in self parody.

today's choice

l flight of the conchords

Gilded Balloon, 0131 226 2151, 10.45pm, until August 25.

Late-night folk comedy. Sounds absolutely terrible, doesn't it? These New Zealanders were one of last year's word-of-mouth successes and are back with an arguably better show.

l the dinks

Pleasant Courtyard, 0131 556 6550, 9.20pm, until August 25.

Yes, it does have the air of a sit-com that those usually clever chaps at Channel 4 turned down, but the Dinks's junkyard tomfoolery is anarchic, odd, and very funny.