Stuart Goldsmith: The Reasonable Man

A nice lad from boring Leamington Spa, Stuart Goldsmith has strived so hard to rebel – from a failed brush with teenage gothdom, to joining the circus and aiding and abetting the kicking of a small child in the head. A metrosexual of sweeping romantic inclination, he totally exhausts an ex-girlfriend’s carnal repertoire. At the top and tail of this assured solo debut we find him wearing a negligee in a fetish club, the whipping he receives a moment of epiphany.

Yet for all his supposedly transgressive behaviour, Goldsmith can’t stop seeming eminently pleasant and reasonable – a Blue Peter presenter lookalike to whom prospective mothers-in-law are delighted to be introduced, prone to handily dispensing home tidying advice. His conventional nature might frustrate him, but it also makes him a detached, keen observer, never fully part of a scene yet honest enough and sufficiently motivated to throw himself in wholeheartedly. He even showcases the juggling skills he acquired while a street performer, an anecdote with all the more resonance for being recalled so close to the Royal Mile.

The show develops in entertaining fashion, and Goldsmith’s experiences are rare, intriguing, but largely relatable, their growing edge conveyed with the same equable, boyish charm as those that went before. Self-mocking, he rarely wallows in his loser status (a nerdish love of Velcro notwithstanding) and over the course of this varied hour, human statues receive a measured but well-deserved slating, while threesomes are deconstructed for the precise slapping of male anatomy that constitutes homosexuality.