Edinburgh Fringe: Stuart Goldsmith/ Steve Mason/ Peter Straker

You may think the very well-presented comic Stuart Goldsmith - clean-shaven and wearing sensible Merrells (“which says I’m not wearing a fleece but I own one”) - is the sort of  bloke your mum always hoped you would end up marrying or having as your best friend. His show is titled The Reasonable Man, and Goldsmith is indeed utterly dependable, he tells us, plus he comes from that most nondescript of towns, Leamington Spa. But he would like to break out a bit.

Stuart Goldsmith, Pleasance Dome ****

There’s more to Goldsmith, though, than good looks, an extremely likeable manner and a bright intelligence - full marks for his semiotics joke - as he was once a goth (although ruined the all-black look with bright white trainers that he thought made him look even cooler), and then became a street performer. He was a proper one, mind - not one of those irritating silver-painted twats who get in your way as you walk down the Royal Mile - and went to circus school, where he spent a lot of time “crying beside Germans in leggings”.

But neither fact is the rabbit that Goldsmith pulls out of the hat - he also likes to live a bit on the wild side sexually. He drops that bomb early in the show, to return to it in a perfectly judged, lengthy anecdote that ends the hour. The pace and tone of the show changes rather abruptly at this point and I would like to have have been slightly more, er, eased into it, but this highly accomplished debut proves street performance’s loss is stand-up’s gain. Until 30 August Veronica Lee

• Book tickets for Stuart Goldsmith here

Steve Mason, Liquid Rooms ***

The founding member of late-Nineties coulda-beens The Beta Band, Steve Mason has struggled for years with mental illness, which at one point left him on the brink of suicide and effectively sabotaged a career replete with promise. He’s now restored to better health and the release of his solo album Boys Outside, his first, suggests there’s still time for him to make his mark.

The album formed the spine of last night’s 60-minute Edge Festival set. Backed by a conventional three-piece band, with Mason playing guitar, some of the delicate light and shade of the record was inevitably lost; indeed, there was an occasional lurch towards rather hackneyed rock dynamics.

But there’s no question that Mason has finally got his act together. Dressed like a soulful football casual, he displayed the semi-simian, tambourine-shaking charisma of Ian Brown in his prime, except with a proper voice and some fine songs. He moved easily from the dark, swampy groove of “Lost and Found” to the delicately rendered regret of “I Let Her In”. “Boys Outside”, meanwhile, sounded even more like one of the great tunes of 2010, one of those songs that somehow captures not just the end of summer but the end of everything; and the start of something new. Were we living in an age of hit singles, it would be one.

He encored with a “wee bit of nostalgia”, a lovely solo rendition of the old Beta Band song “Dr Baker”, greeted by the crowd like a long-lost piece of treasure. Mason has a following wind at his heels. It would be great to see him fly. Graeme Thomson

• Book Edge Festival shows here

Peter Straker, Pleasance @ Ghillie Dhu ****

“I’ve seen good times, I’ve been through bum times, but I’m still here,” Peter Straker sings at the top of the show, at the Pleasance’s new venue, a converted chapel strikingly decorated in baroque style. The magnificent room, laid out as a cabaret venue with tables as well as bench seating, is perfect for his warm presentational style, in which he likes to tell an anecdote or give an explanatory note on the songs that follow.

Straker takes us through his 40-year career, which began as a member of the original London cast of Hair, and displays an astonishing vocal range as he sings songs by, among others, Queen, Mika, Simon and Garfunkel and Jacques Brel. His encore, Randy Newman’s "Louisiana 1927", is quite simply stunning. He is backed by a kicking five-piece band under the leadership of Warren Wills on piano, and the show is written and directed by Mel Smith.

This is a mostly delightful hour of cabaret - but please, cut the “comedy” elements, which are just painful to watch. Until 30 August Veronica Lee

• Book tickets for Peter Straker here