Review: Tim Key: Masterslut – Northern Stage, Newcastle

Tim Key

Tim Key is playing in Newcastle for the very first time tonight, though sadly not many people know about it.  The Northern Stage’s main room seats over 400 people for a busy show, but it looks even more spacious when only half those seats are filled. Poor Tim.

It does make Key’s first visual gag slightly easier, however, as he awkwardly climbs around the audience to complete a series of ‘tasks’ before Masterslut can officially begin: kissing a row of punters on the forehead, hugging another and selecting one enthusiastic bloke in the front row to keep his towel safe.

Poetry that makes you laugh is Key’s forte. A risky prospect for the less comedy-savvy in the crowd perhaps, but he’s so slick and inventive with language that we’re wilfully submerged into his twisted vision of reality, where poems are read from pornographic playing cards, a single sentence is constructed by 20 people in an improv game and the stage is dominated not by Key, but a large, glowing bathtub.

Key builds the mystery of the tub throughout the show, ducking his head at various stages while quirky visions of his underwater world are broadcast on the screen above the stage, before eventually immersing himself completely for the big finale. Quite how he manages to hold his breath for so long is a mystery, but then again so is much of Key’s comedy.

Pregnant pauses, pointless props and poems without a punch-line often provide the biggest laughs here, as Key proves tonight that sometimes the words not said are more important.

Date of live review: Tuesday 6th November 2012.