Smart way to score intelligent laughs

0 Simon Evans offers a masterclass in socio-political comedy a show moaning about the good old days. We get Pornhub and pubes, memes and clownfish, cats and logistical nightmares. We get more laughs per minute than a Corbyn lookalike thumbing through the Guiness Book of Records and quoting John Stuart Mill could ever be expected to create. On the edge of a swimming pool, you’d say it had rather more poetic intensity than clarity of thought.

It looks rather beautiful with its underwater LED lighting, glowing red orbs and floating lights, all backed by video projections taking us on a train journey through 20th century Russian history.

A figure is trapped in a watery cage, while another man, perhaps a doctor in the mental hospital where the young Brodsky was confined, produces blackand-white prints at the basis of this extraordinarily accomplished hour, I vote that Evans should be allowed to run comedy, the country, the Brexit negotiations, the Royal Family and anything to do with political correctness. The show is called Genius. It comes very close. KATE COPSTICK pool side. We listen on headphones (Russian and English versions available) to an elliptical interrogation in which numbers have taken the place of names as if in some alienated dystopia.

More thought has gone into the production than is easily picked out. Who are these men? Why are they in a swimming pool? How do the elements relate? Fascinating though it is, it would help to have a clearer route through the material. MARK FISHER