Following the award-winning Kraken, this show delivers another helping of the same delicious dish. This is not a reference to Wakenshaw’s boyish good looks, but his singular expertise in the art of divergent thinking. Over a number of routines he elaborates simple visual starting points into highly imaginative stories using his virtuoso skills as a clown and mime. It sounds and looks simple enough, like child’s play in fact, but the hilarious results frequently lead people to ‘lose it’ to such an extent one wonders if a medic should be standing in the wings next to the fire extinguisher.

A chicken lays an egg-shaped egg timer to time himself boiling his own eggs. The egg timer hatches into a chick, which he immediately blends in a food blender. It just sounds stupid in print, but in the flesh it is delightfully funny. Wakenshaw’s extreme physical and imaginative dexterity allows him to lead the audience on ever-evolving associative journeys. The merest flicker of an expression across his face leads us to anticipate the next realm of possibilities, and these new ideas often bubble up so quickly that missing a moment can result in losing the trail. After scribbling a brief note I looked up to see him engaged in some meaningless abstract gesticulations, whilst everyone about me were laughing their head off.  (Later I realized that what they were seeing was a lamb spinning his own pubic hair into a noose with which to hang a man who had stolen the suit of woollen clothes the lamb had made for himself.  Oh, what’s the point in trying to describe it!)

At other times the pace slows and it is his sheer persistence in a one simple idea that brings the audience to the boil. He gives a mimed stand-up routine, with very few obvious gags, that is much funnier than many stand-up comedians. At other times he leaves us hanging just long enough in order to set up a knockout punchline, and after the lip-syncs to the song ‘You make me feel’ it seemed he had totally won us over.

Between the routines he returns to variations on an ambiguous image of himself in a spotlight, grinning and crouching like an entertainer caught escaping from prison, accompanied by a tune on the zither (?). This is the one clear element that distinguishes the show from his previous one and I’d be interested to see how he might intertwine the narrative arcs more across the length of future work. For now I was happy enough to see more of the same because this is a performer who has developed a distinctive style of work through which he expresses a real comic genius – which might one day make Trygve Wakenshaw a household name that people know how to pronounce.