Ed Night @ Pleasance Courtyard

There's a sense of Ed Night holding back in his sophomore hour. It's deliberate: he can't legally name the broadcasting company who left him on the cutting room floor because he swears too much for them. And while he does name a comedian who should be publicly shamed for his proclivities, it's not for Night to tell us what those are. Even the antidepressants he's taking won't let him let it all out, having given him the side-effect of anorgasmia. 

Some way through An Aesthetic, we realise Night has us rapt with routines on the difference between text and the person behind it, and how open secrets turn to phoney outrage and phoney removals of an artist from Spotify. It's hard to believe the likeable guy who, just prior to the show, was rolling a cigarette while simultaneously puffing on his ventolin inhaler, and who then warmed us up with a bit on Harry Potter houses, has led us here.

The flipside of this is that by holding back there are obviously times when we do want to know more. And that gives the show a slight frustration, because sometimes it's not only from the prurient interest Night reveals in us and won't allow – what did that comedian, who is sometimes lauded as a hipster Jesus, actually do? – it's because on depression, on social media hypocrisy and how we perceive someone's choices through their class background, a comedian as intelligent as Night has such insightful stuff to say. 

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Ed Night: An Aesthetic, Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two), 1-26 Aug    9:15pm, £6-10.50

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