Tim Key – The Slutcracker, The Invisible Dot Ltd – Pleasance Dome

**** (4 stars)

By the time this review has been published the show’s run will have ended. If you missed The Slutcracker, pack your bags and go home as surely you have missed the best show this year, either that or master time travel. Key is like the illegitimate child of Jeremy Paxman and Reeves and Mortimer, smart as a whip and funnier than most. His show was a ramshackle adventure through his poetry and all the baggage that comes with it, his father not knowing how to google himself and his mother calling Key’s performances ‘concerts’.

We turned up because of his supporting acts in both Charlie Brooker and Mark Watson shows. Unaware of the accolades he had gained for last year’s show we had low expectations, like when the lead singer of your favourite band releases some shoddy solo album. My only clue to the excellence of the show was a man in the queue saying he had seen Key last year and it was brilliant, but what fool would openly admit to going to a bad show twice?

I had spent the afternoon drinking in my kitchen as I suspect everyone else in the audience had also, so the collective attention span was somewhat diminished. This proved no problem though as the show was spliced together with short films and other such fun. The films were a cut above; it was not the pixelated high angle web cam affair we have come to expect from all the amateur comedy films on youtube. Smooth tracking shots and complex camera trickery made them an engaging, albeit incredibly short break from the borderline lunacy that was being carried out on stage.

His confidence and daring were the real strike out features. He commanded the crowd, instead of coaxing laughs out of them you were almost terrified not to scream out in hysterics. His iron grip was directed with a conductor’s baton which he twirled around in an eccentric dictator-like display, barking orders at his sound and music guy ‘Fletch’ and the poor bastard in the front row who had been pressed with the job of holding Key’s drink all night long. For all his inventiveness and originality I hesitate to give the full five stars as I spent the entire evening desperate for a pee and too terrified to be seen leaving. You may call this unfair but I am the reviewer and my kidneys almost burst, instead it gets a hearty 4 out of 5 stars.

Jonah Sugden