Watching a comedian crumble onstage is hellish. In Ted Walliker’s new play, the performer’s breakdown is deliberate but the show’s wider ambitions miss their mark. Pitched as a standup set that swivels into an absurd faux-confessional, this first foray into co-production for Riverside Studios is a one-man tangent.
The trouble starts with how quickly the framing device of a standup show is shoved aside. When bumbling posh-boy comedian Tony (Walliker) fails to get the laughs he wants, he tries on a tougher persona and launches into a violent story of misadventure with Mike, his best friend, long-time crush and all-round scoundrel. A delirious pep enters Tony’s step as he outlines a gratuitously gruesome night of pulled-off faces and munched-up bones. Spiralling from a mistake in McDonald’s where we meet the titular character, we are hurled into an entirely different play, with only the occasional address to us “folks” to remind us this is supposed to be a comedy set.
Into this second show we leap: a slapdash, Tarantino-esque odyssey told with non sequiturs and a total lack of consequences. The lightly told tale arbitrarily ticks off kidnaps, gangsters and cannibalism, with some thinly written nods to unrequited love as Tony avoids telling us what’s really wrong. We’re meant to know he is floundering, with Walliker’s outfit changes designed to make us feel a little loopy. But there is no incentive to get to the root of our narrator’s derangement. We barely know the guy.
There are big, bold expressions of creativity here. The most striking comes with the extravagant reveal of the set, hinting at the story coming to life around Tony, or at him falling too far into his own telling. Walliker has given himself a gargantuan task in writing, performing and co-directing the show (with Lev Govorovski, with whom he also designed the set and costumes), as well as doing the lighting and sound. He is an assured performer, neatly capturing the rhythm of standup and painting the story alone. But the show would benefit from letting us feel what Tony’s running from, rather than just watching him run.
• At Riverside Studios, London, until 5 July
