Simon Munnery, Self-Employed

Roughly midway through Self-Employed, after a sequence about Icarus and Sisyphus, Simon Munnery gently and self-effacingly remarks that "some background reading might be required" to fully appreciate his act. Yet for every reference to mythology or philosophy in the set, there follows a playful punch line or a delightfully childish monologue. Munnery’s show is a cerebral experience, but it is also an entertaining hour spent with an inventive and bewitching comedian.

Self-Employed opens on the set of a restaurant called "La Concepta", where Munnery is the maître'd, chef and kitchen trainee all in one. It is not food that is served, but experience –small conceptual artefacts, presented to the diners (the audience) as enriching objets d’art. A plate decorated with a black pool and a diving board, for example, is entitled "The Void" and is served to prompt the customer to consider their own being, and the possibility of nothingness. It might sound contrived, but Munnery, in a stick-on pencil moustache, is an enthralling host for a faux spiritual three-course meal.

Munnery devotes the show's slightly less interesting second half-hour to the typical musings of a standup comic, covering topics such as his children and his health. There is a delicacy to his humour, and lines such as "love is not a finite resource, unlike time... moving on" are enjoyable in their simplicity. Self-Employed is the work of a highly articulate humorist and performer.