Dan Haynes – Had Some Falls Tour, theSpace @ Surgeons Hall three stars

Dan Haynes might be familiar to regular Fringe-goers as one half of the Bookends duo who have been paying homage to Simon & Garfunkel over the past five or six years. This show is the first time the quietly spoken Haynes has featured his own material onstage since forming Bookends and it reveals a nice line in rolling guitar patterns over which Haynes sings gently with warmth and tenderness.

He could use a little more clarity in his singing as it wasn’t always easy to follow his lyrics, although they are often as intricately threaded together as his guitar lines and his cynical-pinnacle rhyming couplet came over clearly.

Four or five songs in he is joined by Jonny Knight on acoustic and electric guitars and supporting vocals and the two work well together, creating a sunny, soft-rock sound where Knight’s yearning electric guitar and staccato single note picking add atmosphere and impetus.

Overall a pleasant mid-afternoon show and if Haynes’ story about his two-year-old son’s experiments with his guitar machine heads leading to the open tuning he uses on I’m Sure You Don’t Mean To is true, he should encourage the youngster.

Run ends August 24.

Reuben Kaye, Assembly Checkpoint, four stars, Rob Adams

Reuben Kaye needs no introduction. Not because this Aussie force of nature’s reputation precedes him so much as because he is up close and personal with his audience meeting and greeting them on arrival. Horse tail-adorned mic in hand, he then barely pauses for breath throughout a show that overruns due to his rapid-fire wit and enthusiastic garrulousness.

As camp as a crate of chicory coffee essence, he’s well into his ribald pun and bum fun schtick before he introduces his patient but well-drilled and necessarily alert band, the Kayeholes and requests that any heterosexual men pass out facing down. Potential victims suitably warned, Kaye puts himself about mercilessly but with disarming, uproarious mirth and the musical numbers, including cabaret fave Alabama Song, become almost incidental, even allowing for his impressive voice.

The show’s centrepiece, a reworking of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights into a tale of violently unrequited schoolboy crush manages to be both deeply disturbing and very funny, and Kaye’s appropriation of fellow Australian Iggy Azalea’s Fancy into a motormouth rapper’s medley is brilliant. Over-sixteens entertainment for sure but there’s good writing, wide cultural awareness and talent behind Kaye’s outrageousness.

Run ends August 25.