Tim Key: Single White Slut, comedy review

Arcola Tent, London

Arguably Tim Key's most successful show to date, Masterslut, saw him perform in an in-the-round venue with a bath as a centrepiece.

The Arcola Tent provides him with another 360 degrees of opportunity, this time his household item of choice is a bed.

Despite this apparent recipe for success, lightning doesn't quite strike twice for the storyteller and poet.

With his bed centre stage, the burly, bearded 37-year-old louchely strolls and struts around it, lounges and lolls on it, while recounting tales of thwarted romance and lust. These are punctuated with bursts of poetry that are sometimes brutish and always short, especially by comparison with the faux tenderness of his stories.

With Key's persona a mix of gauche and languid, the show sometimes feels like it could unravel at any moment. It never does. There are damp squibs; some tales trail off and some poems are a little too throwaway for their own good.

Nevertheless, even Key's most fleeting aside can demand attention, with “she sashayed off for a dump” among his most memorable juxtapositions.

“It's riddled with my DNA” Key earlier warns an audience member who has joined him on his bed for some harmless badinage. This 75 minutes, meanwhile, is punctuated with excellence, if not exactly riddled with it.