Tim Harding's comedy diary

Reviewer Tim Harding gives a rundown of the comedy he's been watching in London in the last two weeks.

One of my favourite discoveries of the last few years has been the ventriloquist / comedian Lachlan Werner, primarily because he brings a whole new mode to ventriloquism. I’m sure a queer theorist (or maybe Werner himself) would be able to explain why queerness and ventriloquism are synergistic in a way that goes beyond ventriloquism’s base associations with camp – I am not that theorist, but I can see that when Werner explores his sexual identity through puppetry and voice-throwing, a specific kind of chemistry occurs.

After spending his debut show Voices Of Evil playing a servile gay boy being bullied by a witch, he’s now exploring a similar dynamic through another angle. Here, Werner is a circus performer; the strongest twink in the world, and his two new puppets are his best friend Slippy, a performing seal, and his frightening circus master father, something of a riff on the mad scientist father from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The circus, Tim Burton, ventriloquism and being gay – peas in a pod, perhaps ultimately to the show’s detriment as spectacle, corniness and camp innuendo often overwhelm it, muscling in to the many gaps where Werner’s script goes light on jokes. The decision to perform the whole thing in a variety of American accents provides an unhelpful extra layer of artifice onto a production that already struggles to connect.

It’s always watchable – Slippy the Seal might not hold the stage in the same way that Brew the Witch did in Voices Of Evil, but Werner gives himself freer rein on his own great physical charisma.

Confidently outlandish, watching him move is the best part of this show. The rest of the time, it feels overproduced, with a barrage of music, lighting cues, and plot twists that smother Werner’s inherent star quality and crescendo – like Voices of Evil – in another Grand Guignol climax that quickly starts to feel drawn out. 

He’s a very talented man – if you read the arc of these first two shows as a performer learning to become himself on stage, we can expect great things when he pares back the gubbins a little.

Hotly tipped in some circles, Scottish comedian Ayo Adenekan brought his breakout show to the Soho Theatre, unfortunately demonstrating that some tips need a little extra time in the oven. Perhaps not a debut technically, it still shows all the signs of an introductory show, covering Adenekan’s childhood growing up black in Edinburgh in very broad strokes. 

As a performer, he’s low-key and likeable, swivelling and gesturing like a politician, and making the most out of his gentle, squeaking Edinburgh accent. Funny, handsome, black and bisexual, he could have the world at his feet if he dug into the writing a little more.

The material is rough around the edges, feeling more like an early June work-in-progress even after a month of decent notices in Edinburgh. Much of it is focused on race, and it feels like there should be an interesting perspective there as a relatively affluent black man growing up in a very white city, but his observations never move beyond the generic. A lot of it revolves around encountering people who unintentionally or obliviously commit a microaggression, whereupon Adenekan can shake his head and cock his eyebrow, but it’s an area he goes back to again and again without finding any gold. 

His routine about getting his hair cut by a white barber seems poised to deliver some sharp lines or insights, but he once again backs off almost politely, before abruptly ending the show only 40 minutes into a projected 60-minute runtime. You can see why he started generating some buzz, as there’s the kernel of something exciting and saleable here, but he needs more miles on the clock if he’s to capitalise on his potential.

Finally, the icon Dina Martina returned to Soho Theatre with her new show The Comparable Dina Martina, cementing her status as my favourite drag act. Now drag has many fascinating and alluring aspects, but I wonder if I’m alone in finding that glamour and even aptitude can sometimes be hard surfaces – surfaces off which you might bounce. Here then is a drag queen for the humble, the incognisant, and those without talent.

Dina Martina, the alter ego of performer Grady West, is a dopey, sweet-natured wreck, imprisoned in showbiz from an early age despite her honking foghorn of a singing voice, mispronouncing every third word like she learned English from reading Barbra Streisand’s autobiography and wearing her daughter’s goitre as a bracelet.

For her act, she butchers a number of classics, but a good butcher can be tender and careful, and it’s remarkable how the songs stay funny and enjoyable to listen to even though she’s objectively singing them very poorly. But that’s the thing about Dina: even if she doesn’t have talent, she’s got so much SOUL, and it carries you aloft through the ‘bad’ singing and the interstitial bits of stand-up, usually rambling and nonsensical stories like how she met the Greek god ‘Dialysis’ in a dream. 

That humility makes her easy to love, and at Soho Theatre in particular she creates a rare atmosphere of total adoration. If you’ve ever thought of getting into drag, may I proffer Dina Martina as the beautiful sequinned goitre that she is.

Published: 10 Nov 2025