Audience participation in comedy has been hauled in recent years from the back row to centre stage. Adam Riches won the Edinburgh comedy award in 2011 with a crowd-terrorising show and, last week, Aussie Steen Raskopoulos bagged a best newcomer nomination for a set that seldom lets us rest easy in our seats. You'd best be prepared to be press-ganged on to the stage – to dance, shoot a man dead, or breast the tape for Olympic glory. If you are, the rewards are ample – Raskopoulos is less bent on your discomfort than Riches, and alongside the light-touch interaction there are several choice and often charming character-comedy skits.
It helps that Raskopoulos has an instantly attractive demeanour: easy, coy, playing at high status but not meaning it. That earns him the right to demand that we apply his sun cream, say – or in another participative nugget, get interviewed by him for a job then are sacked off when we answer his nonsense questions imperfectly. That's fun enough – but a later sequence, which sees a punter co-improvise a ghost story, represents a more novel use of audience interaction. Elsewhere, Raskopoulos plays a rapper saying "everybody put your hands in the air!", then – as part of the same song – berating us for our servility.
Sometimes, Raskopoulos dispenses with our services. When he plays a movie-reviewing Greek Orthodox priest, it's dumb but delightful. His plucky schoolboy, ignorant that his dad has abandoned him, is tragicomic, bordering on cruel – until Raskopoulos flips the scenario on its head. Other scenes, like the Spanish soap opera piss-take, or the schoolteacher skit that ribs the supposed hardships of overprivileged children, are more conventional. But this is an impressive set, combining acting flair, an eye for vivid character, and audience-handling deftness into one enjoyable – if occasionally nerve-jangling – package.
• Until 30 August. Box office: 020-7478 0100. Venue: Soho theatre, London.
