Comedy review: Tim Key's The Slutcracker live at the Soho Theatre, February 19th 2010

Reviewing a comedy gig seems like a particularly futile exercise. It is, of course, impossible to predict whether you'll find something funny without hearing the jokes, and a review can't tell you any of the jokes without spoiling them for you. If indeed you would have found them funny in the first place. All in all, it's like trying to describe a BMW driver without once using the phrase "self-important, overcompensating bumsniffer". Almost impossible, I'm sure you'll agree. However, occasionally indulging in futile exercises is the only way to strengthen your Quixotic Obstinatrix muscle group*, so on with the show!

Now I don't like to make a habit of issuing brash proclamations. They always come back to haunt you like the ghost of that Papa Roach album you once thought would change the world. What I will say is that Tim Key is the future of comedy.

One of the finest comedians to emerge from the group of innovative, Edinburgh-approved performers that have been trickling into the mainstream of late, you may recognise Tim Key from his poetry recitals dotted throughout Charlie Brooker's Newswipe or as the questioneer from the recently-aired comedy quiz show We Need Answers.

But it's clear that The Slutcracker is Key's baby. And what a charming, delightfully malformed baby it is. Ditching traditional set-up/punchline structure in favour of poems (read and analysed almost simultaneously), supported by video clips, music and childishly anarchic physical comedy. It sounds a bit fiddly, but such is Key's control that the show slides effortlessly from poetry to short films to shambling acrobatics in the grand old tradition of larking about.

To quote from Key's poems would be to take them out of their proper context and butcher them most cruelly and inhumanely, so I won't. But the fact that he can fix an audience with that dead-eyed gaze (see image above) and give a description of bollocks being bitten off and elicit laughs rather than screams is a testament to his skill. The secret is in the flightiness of his delivery; mock-seriousness swiftly gives way to tension-relieving affability, often through Key's idle chit-chat with sound man Fletch. It's a mix of surreal inscrutability and rosy-cheeked English chumminess that never errs too far on the side of one or other.

Given the shambolic nature of the show, it's a minor miracle that by the time it ends with a finale that takes audience interaction to a new level (I won't spoil it, but let's just say he almost broke my girlfriend's goddamned wrist), it all seems so complete. Apparently plucking coherence out of chaos is another grand gift that Tim Key can add to the long list.

Tim Key is currently performing The Slutcracker at the Arts Theatre in the West End. This extra run lasts until 13th March.

* The most important of the made-up muscle groups.