Rob Copland @ Monkey Barrel Comedy

Copland's last show won the 2024 Comedy Award Panel Prize, and his return to the Fringe reveals success has not been straightforward. The Fringe experience can be complicated for performers, and ambivalence is a key theme of Copland's new show. With antic physical comedy very much his bag, Copland perfectly distils the ambiguity into one particular gesture: a hand heart made hostile.

He got the award, made the money, went on a world tour - but the money didn't go far and the world tour wasn't all that. Not only has success not been sweet, it's been actively stifling - prompting a severe case of writer's block. Bring a 3-month-old daughter into the mix and the return to the Fringe becomes distinctly testing. But Copland's still in love with comedy, he assures us, still smitten by the magic of being in a room with an audience.

And there is magic here: from the oddball observational material which scampers from the delights of industrial blue-roll to the utility of the guillotine, to flourishes of the fantastical: the unveiling of Coplandia, for example, where all the balconies face inwards, each inhabitant forced to stare balefully at one another. He has a gift for opening up unlikely seams to find treasure: the perils of a countdown, the intricacies of a yodel - these are moments which feel distinctively Coplandian.

There's audacity, too, in his nervy candour, which sees him outing predatory male performers and mocking comedians for prizing their pain (salved by a good review). Some moments don't fly - the sequence about his time on tour in India, lonely and bored, could be sharpened up, but Copland works wonders here, transforming ambivalence and self-doubt into comedy gold.

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Rob Copland: ONE (more please), Monkey Barrel Comedy (O'Neill's/The Tron), until 30 Aug (not 26), 5.50pm, £12.50-£15.50