Concrete Playground

Tim Key is a bad poet. A bad, terrible, awful poet. Or so he would have you think.

Key's show, The Slutcracker, is actually a deadpan stand up act masquerading as a sincere piece of performance poetry. A carefully constructed shambolic mess. It begins with him lurching on stage, drinking a can of beer to change into his dishevelled suit in front of the audience and ends with a bare-foot party game. In between he reads his awful (very good) poems, screens his pretentious (funny) art-house movies and bickers (banters) with his off-stage sound man Fletch.

The comedy hinges on Key's droll onstage persona – like a mix between a very dry Daniel Kitson and a super-pretentious Bill Murray. The show was a smash hit at this year's Edinburgh Fringe where it won the Comedy Award. It’s now on at The Sydney Festival as apart of their ‘About An Hour’ program, which presents hour-long, world standard, Fringe theatre for only $30.