Kate Dolan @ Assembly George Square

Everyone has an inner critic – whether it’s the disembodied voice of a parent, a friend, or just your inner monologue – but very few are aired so publicly as Kate Dolan’s. Hers comes out as a vocoded voice she mutters into the curtain behind her, undermining her with both savagery and self-love and revealing her inner-most anxieties.

There’s a cartoonish, screwball-like nature to Dolan’s energy with threads unspooling madly then picked up and tied elsewhere, almost like a detective’s string map of gags. Even when the comic’s freneticism comes to a halt in an almost out-of-body moment of contemplation, Dolan has you sucked in for the long-haul.

The Critic is a genuinely alternative hour of stand-up which lurches from sharply written punchlines to physical comedy to a poetry planetarium and a showstopping impression you won’t see coming. Somehow it’s both in-yer-face and surprisingly tender, hugely animated and disquietingly still, yet Dolan manages to do it all without the jumps in style giving you whiplash.

At a festival where so much alternative stuff comes in the form of a Gaulier-grad (we do like clowns, we promise), there’s more than a little magic in Dolan’s work. It’s a very alternative show, yet super accessible for those not indoctrinated in the sphere of alt.

When you find an artist who genuinely surprises you at the Fringe, you don’t let go of them. We are so, so excited to see what Kate Dolan does next.

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Kate Dolan: The Critic, Assembly George Square (The Box), until 24 Aug, 6.25pm, £9-14