Tim Key (poet; bearded) made his return to Cambridge last week with his Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning stand-up show, ‘The Slutcracker’, with which he is currently touring around the country. A former Footlight who did not attend the university, there was a genuine warmth in his declaration at the end of the fantastic performance that “this is probably the only show on the tour where people I went to school with will be in the audience”, as he showed his appreciation to the crowd.

Anyone who has seen Key before, either in the underrated, cult BBC Three sketch show ‘Cowards’ or in the two sell-out runs of ‘Slutcracker’ at the Edinburgh Fringe, would know precisely what to expect. His comedy is very esoteric, reliant upon his delivery and the unique atmosphere whichhe creates – something hard to describe. The core of the show is his bizarre poetry, mockingly pretentious and spoken with the utmost seriousness. One deals with a cook who decides to use dew as an ingredient; another features the violence of the African plains. Yet in isolation these poems would quickly become flat and uninteresting. Instead, to keep the pace going Key takes himself off on brilliant sidetracks in a quirky observational mode, telling anecdotes about, for instance, the difficulties of the kiss as a greeting and his dad’s revival of the ‘keep off the floor’ game.

The show managed to be a highly artistic performance, whilst retaining an air of spontaneity and unpreparedness. With a bizarre array of props on stage that remained unused for the most part, Key was able to provoke laughter with the smallest of facial tics. Some of the largest laughs were reserved for his lists of different animals that provide, in his words, a break of ‘vaudeville’: those he could fit into, those he couldn’t fit into, and those he could fit into if he had some help. Again, delivery is key here, as he allows the audience to voice their agreement or disagreement, bantering with one crowd member, ‘eyebrows mcgee’, over whether or not he could squeeze inside an eel. Another highlight was his childishly hilarious attempt to travel from the back of the auditorium to the top of the fridge placed at the rear of the stage without touching the ground.

The only flat moments came in the form of unexplained videos of Key trundling towards the camera to a backing of 90s dance hits. It is a tribute to the quality to the show that despite the early start time and consequent lack of alcoholic lubrication, the response was so good. A severely under-recognised comic, any chance to see Key should be seized upon.

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