Key revels in puncturing the feelgood festive spirit in this baggy Christmas stocking of a show
“This is one of those situations,” says Tim Key, “where demand has outstripped whether or not I’ve written a show.” Lower expectations accordingly, and you’ll find plenty to enjoy in Father Slutmas, a baggy Christmas stocking of an offering from the Edinburgh comedy award winner. There’s not much method to Key’s collection of poems, film inserts and joshing interactions with volunteers from the crowd. But it’s good late-night fun. Key fosters a distinctive camaraderie with his crowd, his nuggets of verse are as darkly skew-whiff as ever – and the stooge who joins him onstage from a seat in the front row is touched (or endowed, to give Key due credit) with comic genius.
The joke – as with Nick Helm elsewhere in the capital – often involves puncturing the feelgood Christmas spirit with malevolence or smut. We get poems about an arson attack on Santa’s reindeer shed, and a standup riff in which Key barks turkey orders at his put-upon mum. He’s best when off-colour is also off-kilter; he’s great at making slightly wrong word choices (as with the character who “feeds himself into” his knitwear) or at stopping his haikus when they’re poised at a cliff edge.
Amid the ditties about the nativity (“Joseph was half-cut on myrrh”) or Jesus attending a 21st-century Christmas dinner (“Why were they wearing fragile hats?”), there are oblique videos of bad Santa loose in a forest, slaughtering elves for sport. And there’s Key’s onstage volunteer, mulling wine and making everyone laugh with what Key calls his “very traditional body language”. Our host shows a refreshing lack of ego in his dealings with this amateur sidekick. But there’s no competing with a man who turns the act of donning a too-tight Santa costume into a masterpiece of naive physical comedy. The show, by contrast, is loose-fitting – but highly convivial.
Until 20 December. Box office: 020-7836 8463. Venue: Arts theatre, London.
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