Reuben Solo @ Gilded Balloon Teviot

“Another night, another crowd… If these walls could talk, I wouldn’t be able to understand the accent.”

So begins Reuben Solo’s noirish opening monologue to Someone In This Crowd Will Betray Me. That pre-recorded monologue, redolent of smokey San Francisco, plays stark counterpoint to the show’s madcap contents. As Solo searches for the audience member who will turn on him – a search that will result in a swords-as-lightsabers on-stage clash – it’s easy to forget that overarching plotline, because the focus here is on crowdwork as Solo hunts for in-the-room magic.

There are inventive one-off jokes based on a printed-out door list for today’s show. There are gags enabled by the GoPro strapped to his head throughout. There are impish antics that you’d more often seen from the clownier corners of the festival, like sending out an audience member to buy Solo a gin and tonic. Most conspicuously, there’s the soundboard: throughout, the on-stage Solo is in such a continuous dialogue with his tech desk’s noise machine that it’d be fair to bill this as a two-hander (on the desk is character comedian Casey Filips, whose excellent show What a Character is playing at Assembly). The sound desk’s job is to be as interruptive, digressive and recursive as possible, turning the show into a barrage of callbacks, sound puns, memes and punctuation.

For some, this schtick will be new and hilarious. Some seasoned comedy-goers, though, will run up against a problem: the soundboard schtick has become so synonymous with Stamptown’s iconic duet between MC Jack Tucker and techdesk maven Jonny Woolley. Audiences who have seen that show (and they are legion at this festival) will wonder if what they’re seeing here is a development or a tribute.

Fun? Yes. Deep? No. Have we seen a little too much of this before, in a tent across the road? Probably.

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Reuben Solo: Someone In This Crowd Will Betray Me [Revenge Edition], Gilded Balloon Teviot (Wine Bar), until 31 Aug, 8.05pm, £16-£18