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.

Soho Theatre Walthamstow, the grandly gorgeous new second venue for Soho Theatre, many years in the making, feels like it’s been struggling to find its identity since opening. 

Most of the country’s most exciting comedians still perform their hours at the Dean Street venue, while Walthamstow locals often  have to settle for the same blend of mixed-bill nights and children’s theatre that you’d find in any regional arts theatre.

Last week though, the venue was used perfectly, perhaps for the first time, as one of our finest living actors brought us his show about being a magical love spirit trapped in an ancient chest. John C. Reilly’s Mister Romantic is comedically coded without really being a comedy show. 

Instead, Reilly, dressed in coattails, accentuating his elite tier showbiz noggin with rouged cheeks and mad hair, sings a number of romantic standards very well with backing from his funereal band members Charlie Chips, Vigorous Flitch, Buster and the Night Walker. 

During the instrumental bridges he will usually perform a short mime based on the song, and between the numbers he ventures into the crowd to search fruitlessly for the audience member who will love him forever, and save him from another 2000 years in the chest.

I hope it’s not just the starriness of his presence and the swooning tone of the show that moved me to find him overpoweringly charming. Mister Romantic is an eccentric but deceptively simple idea, a celebration of romance by someone with the chops to tap the well of that concept and drink it dry. As Stewart Lee once said, the last taboo of comedy is something done sincerely and well, and this is exactly the garden where Reilly gathers his roses.

In another exquisite venue, Wilton’s Music Hall in Whitechapel, Tim Key commenced his tour of his new show Loganberry, a sequel of sorts to Mulberry, the Covid show that seemed to revitalise him as a performer. Loganberry is a show about ageing, touching briefly on his recent scary melanoma diagnosis, but dwelling longer on his parents, his legacy, and his place in the industry, still feeling himself an underdog while recognising his status as a ‘genuine film star’.

These thematic strands, focused through the prism of a meeting with Gabby Logan, are lightly stitched into the fabric of the show, lending meaning to the comedy beats, which are the same in all his shows but always very funny. Having fully formed himself early in his career, he’s been around for a long time now without changing very much, and sure, sure, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But it does mean that the elements that have never quite worked still don’t quite work while the bits that do work get progressively longer in the tooth.

I’ve never found the shouting very eloquent as a comedic device, and, while I share his fandom for Russian poet Daniil Kharms, the absurdity in Key's poems can feel shallow in comparison to his inspirations. He’s secure as one of the greats, and continues to evolve incredibly in his film work; I hope his stand-up can remain a living thing as well.

Vital to an almost alarming degree, Lou Wall returned to Soho Theatre with their show Breaking The Fifth Wall, a narrative that blindfolds you and spins you round for 50 minutes straight before asking you to consider complex questions about the role of truth in comedy.

 In their usual hyperpop style, flush with music, memes and video stings, Wall deconstructs their most famous routine, Facebook Marketplace: The Musical (which is a must-see entry point if you’re unfamiliar with their work), alternately slopping on and peeling back the layers of artifice involved in creating an all-time classic five minutes.

The tricky sensibility of director Zoe Coombs Marr is all over this hour. As a performer, ZCM loves her rug-pulls and her switcheroos, and here she’s helped Wall overload the show with such moments, but ultimately it goes a little far: it’s delightful at first, but by the 15th reveal you’re likely to find yourself struggling to invest. Twists are easy in and of themselves, the craft in their usage is to select the twists which provide colour and flavour to the narrative. In Wall’s show, the twists initially pull you deeper before eventually centrifuging you out of the sweet spot.

While there’s a lot of good material here, Wall’s deconstruction ends up proving the value of disbelief’s suspension in comedy. Maybe that’s because laughter is instinctive, and Breaking The Fifth Wall teaches you not to trust your instincts. Whatever the reason, with the truth on seriously unstable ground for the back half of this show, it became noticeably harder to laugh, even at the good stuff.

Lastly, a shout-out to Comedy Diary favourite Rob Duncan, whose latest Fringe show Printer Of The Year 2024 I finally managed to catch at the Bill Murray this week. Finding himself abandoned by his brother and comedy partner Andy, who’s gone to have a baby and taste the bright lights of LA, as well as by former Legs/Logs collaborator Julia Masli, he’s responded by creating what is unequivocally his best solo work yet.

In his day job, Duncan is an (apparently feted) industrial printer, so he’s taken the logical step of replacing Andy with eight printers of varying vintages, all of which cause chaos throughout the show by printing out messages at random times. 

Red-faced and bellowing, in a tux with two wigs stacked on top of long balding hair, Duncan presents himself as a man on the edge, using the last vestiges of his professionalism to cling on to control. His abundant material on the printing industry is genuinely charismatic and interesting in a quotidian way, although it’s mostly used here (to my mind) as a stand in for just how insufficient work and technology is as a substitute for love and human connection.

But this reading might be one of those things that just exists in the mind of the beholder. A more objective truth is that Duncan is going from strength to strength as a performer, and the comedic ideas that he’s been developing in late night shows for the last few years have now become fully synthesised into some truly class clowning.

If you were a cultist for Legs and Logs a few years ago, it’s past time to get back on the Duncan train.

Published: 25 Nov 2025