After rave reviews, Kim Noble’s solo show - a multimedia mix of stand-up comedy and performance art - returns to the Soho Theatre having lost none of its power to discomfort or distress.
Over an excruciating 60 minutes, Noble shares his thoughts about depression, sex and suicide, followed by his opinions on, yes, depression, sex and suicide. Half-dressed in a Superman costume, with a silly hat and white face, he mixes quiet chat with home-made films and projections.
As Noble tells his stories, he involves audience members in a series of humiliations which satirise our obsession with celebrity culture and our latent narcissism. Money is given away, then taken back - a member of the audience is voted out of the auditorium. It feels cruel, daring and dangerous.
Other subjects include tense relations with parents and family, and even tenser relations with lovers. His escapades include substituting DVDs of The March of the Penguins with his own short cartoon film and then replacing them in shops, or adding new pages to books by famous people and planting them on bookshelves.
Revoltingly, there is a film of him eating dog food, another of a woman urinating on his face, and lots of shots (sorry) of his penis ejaculating. He’s never boring, but his brand of unpredictable edginess makes you squirm rather than jump.
And much of the content is derivative - “improving” books imitates Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, the explicit sex is reminiscent of Tim Fountain’s Sex Addict and the cutting comes from Franco B by way of Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill. So while his stage persona is as dry as a throat that has smoked 60 fags and downed a handful of barbiturates, this theatre of intimacy might simply make you want to look away, or wash your hands after you’ve left.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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