Comedic persona can be a strange beast. Some acts are very much themselves when working... Marc Maron, Carl Donnelly and Jessica Fostekew spring to mind. Who you get as the person with a microphone is almost indistinguishable from who you meet for a coffee after the show, give or take some minor tweaks. Then you have stand-ups so hidden within the cocoon of their stage character that when some autobiographical reality slips out it almost feels illicit. Johnny Vegas, John Kearns and Maria Bamford are three strong examples of acts who play between the space of who they are onstage and their more complex life away from it. They aren't quite character acts, but they certainly aren't themselves when performing. They have built up a heightened, extreme armour of look and ego so they can make their writing work; plastic surgery for a confidence that might have been missing when they started out. A disguise so they don't feel tethered to the reality of their audience.

Yet acts do outgrow their comedic voice. Much like the Arctic Monkeys probably no longer feel comfortable singing about sharing taxis and estate sex workers, one cannot expect a comedian to maintain a false version of themselves every August... Otherwise staleness will set in 10 or 20 years down the line... Eventually the armour of a forceful comedic voice will become a limiting trap. The mask that allowed you to say anything will diminish the possibilities of what people expect to hear from you...

Simon Evans: an old fashioned comic with old fashioned views. He leads by saying he feels just as aged out of the Fringe as his audience. They're a sombre bunch (balding, greying, Blue Harbour clad - have I found my people at last?) politely chuckling if he finds their funny bones; often nodding instead of rolling in the aisle. If a topic doesn't hit the spot then they have three very differing degrees of silence - stillness, lip tightening and a deafening absence of response. This is what the right wing conservative wedge of the Fringe feels like. The show that the parents of all those acts who spend a month hiding their Coutts account go to after they have endured their brat's latest artistic venture. Evans seems happy enough with them and their lack of volume. He is quite the gent... though I am sure I haven't found my people about 5 minutes in. After some admin, the punchlines come regularly and persuasively; the unacknowledged deficit of joy in the full house is irritating.

I don't agree with Evans' politics (the politics of half the voting age population of England by the way) but his routines are robustly researched and evidenced; sometimes they even betray the appealing tight misanthropy he made his name with. Clad in a black dress waistcoat and big collared white shirt, sherry in a snifter - he has certainly put in more effort than the posho plebs who populate his much self-mocked spiegeltent. He looks like a particularly dodgy market trader after a court appearance, a snooker player receiving a Sportsman Of the Year trophy or the roguish head valet helping himself to the master's reserve after hours. Clown fish, Stoptober, his body's gradual decline and, most controversially, deadly domestic cats, are his surest shots. His occasional casual swipes at Nicola Sturgeon and trans rights garner the frostiest response. The routine about Prince Andrew and Epstein is the only moment he resurrects his old gleeful, contrarian ambiguity. Even if our sociological views are oppositional it is nice to feel at one with a seasoned gagmeister when he hits a rich seam.

If there is a subtext to this seemingly formless B-Sides and Rarities compilation, it is that we all have secrets and limitations in our biological make up that we might just have to accept and put up with. It starts with a few PowerPoint slides which put into infographic form evidence of his crumbling health but later there's a surprise origin story that, while undeniably fascinating, needs punching up or a whole hour of its own to breathe. The sum total works because of the force of Evans' personality. He is a better comedian than his audience and a better comedian than this particular show. At least Have We Met? is elegantly footnoted, eruditely pessimistic and ends on a shockingly hopeful epilogue. Shockingly hopeful epilogues seem de rigueur this year no matter what echo chambers you reside in.

Going back to the introduction about persona, it is fair to say being pointedly not Leftie Loosey may be Evans' default settings but they have walked him down a path that leads to a dead-end audience. Sure, they pay and fill a room but if I can find enough here to laugh out loud about despite being a Green voting socialist then surely they all fucking might. The prankster in me hopes one day he and, let's say, Sofie Hagen, swap stages on an unannounced Freaky Friday. I reckon he might reinvigorate himself when faced with the challenge of a crowd who won't be on board but might at the very least have a few hormones coursing through them.

There is no such entropy in Stuart Laws' or Paul Foot's new hours.

Untrustworthy [pb]Stuart Laws[/bp] finally takes off the gilet and abandons the fibbing film-flam to reveal his true personality in Is That Guy Still Going?. Yet somehow Laws manages to cram in just as much tight, discombobulating nonsense as in his previous hours over which he has built his cult comedy reputation. There are the strange strained accents, the mispronounced words, the sticking to his guns about the mispronounced words, the Christopher Nolan inspired structure, the flair player distractions (beer mat flipping is this year's newly revealed talent / duplicity), "Honk Honk!"... and he powers through all the expected unexpected in the first 10 minutes.

His audience is still settling down when he comes out grinning with the devil in his eyes and pulls the rug from under our feet. Sets out his stall by bullishly getting an audience member to do his walk on announcement. The message is loud and clear: strap in, you'll need to be on your toes. Then it is risky business as usual; the outfit, the post truth comedy, the quicksand nature of his backstory. Ten slaloming minutes about his new wife and the pranks they like to play. And, spoiler warning, not a word of truth to any of it. The message to the faithful is 'I've still got it'. The message to the newbies is 'This is the high wire I operate on, I can dance across it at a speed that will dazzle you, keep up and it is worth it, just don't look down'.

Bona-fides established, he is just about to shift gears, let us pop open the safe where he keeps his authentic self... And a group of lads enter the room. They make heavy work of finding their seats, and when Laws first goes back to his script after welcoming them in, their reticence is audible. And these are five big muscular boys boys boys, stinking of fags and diminished experience. The couples, comedy geeks and greying hipsters who make up his room recognise some rogue cells are in the bloodstream of this gig. Never have these five future bankers and sales team fodder ever felt like the outsiders, the others. Yet Laws sticks to his guns. And eventually they start laughing in unconfident spatters; soon, they are as one with the rest of the now full house and the atmosphere reenergises.

Laws lays out what he is planning on revealing about himself. He promises secrets, further philosophising about his vasectomy, and grief. Yet he also establishes a running gag. He'll ease us in like we are lowering our bodies into a swimming pool for the remaining 45 minutes. As a little refresher between subjects, this callback works a treat and always finds a response from the room. Routines about aquatic birds performing sex acts and his zany life, now that he is officially more environmentally friendly than all his peers, have the trademark madness and clarity. Darker whimsical stories about a drunken philosopher driving a hearse, and a porn DVD purchase that still haunts him, dovetail into the largest personal revelation with an unflagged synchronicity. For a show that always keeps one hand on the edge of silly, no matter what depth he swims out to, the construction of the entire set list is artful and without superfluous lunges.

Reality, therapy and Thank You For Driving Safely signs whizz past in a blur during this quirky but consummate hour of packed over-confidence. Honesty is just the latest string to Laws' complex harp.

Paul Foot's Dissolve equally strips back his long established style and sees him expose some live and dangerous high voltage wiring within. Foot has been a constant presence on the stand-up scene for as long as I can recall. I vividly remember him headlining rooms above Soho pubs almost twenty years ago. Ploughing his unique furrow of ornate and tart surrealism. He looked like the Edwardian undertaker in a film made during the Swinging Sixties, dressed and speaking like an archetype Peter Cook or Murray Melvin might play. And what he was unleashing back then was so unique that he easily fostered followers before social media was 'a thing'. Handing out postcards with his online details and press ganging the curious into being "Connoisseurs". What he was doing was so special he understood cementing a fanbase was his best foot forward, and chances are if you liked Paul Foot, then you loved Paul Foot.

The delivery style is still quite similar: the barrage of half-finished sentences, the stretched consonants, the fey desperation and emphatic... almost manic... joy when he reaches the unpredictable destination of a point. But whereas in previous shows these tics would be enticingly deployed to sell some elaborate longform whimsy (a tale of a farmer who gets trampled by his heifer as he is too distracted by the sky - to paraphrase his own given example) here they are put to work so Foot can talk about his past, his health and his personal trauma.

Top hat left at home, kipper tie still dangling in the dressing room: this is Foot without adornments or charms. Well not quite. The pre-show warm up is a childhood story his mother told him about a lonely bird, only it erupts when he drags the off-stage mic into the spotlight as the sad little tale incenses him so much. A remembrance of his father taking him orienteering has as much of his old playful magic in the telling as it does Mike Leigh-esque comedic realism. There's a glorious fist of material about the invention of the first parachute. For the faithful, the Guild Of Connoisseurs, it may not be their irregular service but as bus replacements go, it proves pretty comfy and takes in the sights.

The meat of the show is change. Foot takes big aggressive swings at the generation that resists progress, almost as a point of blinkered pride. His most violent parries are for the corrupt political class that manipulates Britain from on high, amplifying a desire for stasis as an excuse to make things harder for all but the wealthiest. It feels very right on, his audience is in harmony with the ardent messaging, but he doesn't always find the funny in these impassioned ebbs. Though his rather chaste sex dream involving Chuka Umunna, who commits a financial faux pas on their dinner date, underlines both his inner frustrations and his external discontent with those who should be on the vanguard of moving the UK forward... yet seem neutered by their own selfish faffing.

The big personal status shift which the plot keeps returning to is a time last year when Foot's adult long depression disappeared while driving. He revisits the seemingly miraculous moment throughout the show hinting at the harrowing childhood event that caused his mental illness and trying to piece together the short term incidents that unlocked the out of the blue, overnight cure of his debilitating sadness. Again, it isn't a comedy goldmine but Foot has been entertaining his Guild Of Connoisseurs for so long now we owe him a Fringe where he can take his foot off from the ridiculous and focus on the real. His moment of enlightenment...his moment of clarity... is absolutely valid as a sustained talking point. And maybe, for the rest of us, this profound moment of unforced growth is an inspirational light at the end of all our tunnels given the dire state of the nation?