There is so much to enjoy about Spencer Jones’s The Things We Leave Behind that it is difficult to know where to begin. There’s its heady inventiveness. There’s its magnificent sense of playfulness. And it is that rarest of beasts right now — a show that is almost an entirely politics-free zone.
Jones has been popping up on television this year so you may have caught his D-I-Y brand of Tommy Cooper-meets-Noel Fielding prop humour, turning random objects into comedy gold. But seeing him on screen is nowhere near as hilarious as seeing him wear fake eyeballs onstage.
From the moment he walks on his funny bones make everyone laugh. In his shiny shellsuit he resembles an ageing raver direct from a field off the M25. The dance motif continues as Jones starts to build comic songs by sampling words and beats on his tabletop looper. We are supposed to be in Jones’s house where he is trying out new ideas but has to keep the noise down because his wife and children are asleep upstairs.
Between musical highlights he wanders around cracking gags, doing Elvis impressions and off-kilter puppetry, or making teeth out of chewing gum. It is nonsense but brilliant nonsense.
This is not just silly purely for silly’s sake though. We gradually get more backstory. A part in the sitcom Upstart Crow brought in cash, but there have been hard times too. With a few turns of phrase he evokes the agony of being skint and then the Flash Harry ecstasy of being minted.
For anyone looking for further subtext, Jones mentions that his parents split up when he was young. He half-jokes that his trauma is why he yearns to create so much happiness by performing.
It is also clearly why he has a hands-on relationship with his children, movingly demonstrating how he is teaching them to love urban detritus too.
This really is a wonderfully unforgettable show about memory. It bagged Jones an Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination in August and he now has a BBC sitcom, Mr Winner, in the pipeline. Those days of being skint may soon be a thing of the past.
Until December 14 (0207 478 0100, sohotheatre.com)
