Kieran Hodgson: Maestro

It's tough getting a ticket for Kieran Hodgson, with some people queuing over an hour to see last year's Comedy Award nominee in the small back room bar at the Voodoo Rooms. The limited capacity makes sense from the start, as Hodgson shushes us for a wavering, acoustic violin solo: he's after intimacy.

Maestro is ostensibly the story of his hilariously precocious childhood ambition to write a symphony. Inspired by his love of Gustav Mahler, he's been working on the opus ever since, recently even recording it with an amateur orchestra. Divided into four movements—which provide the narrative structure—each is inspired by a seminal romantic relationship from his past.

Along the way, we meet the cast of his life, from friends and lovers to a sexually suggestive Classic FM host and Mahler himself—as played variously by Christoph Waltz, Andrew Scott and David Tennant. A character comedian by trade, this is Hodgson's forte – he's able to trigger laughter with the slightest gesture.

He's not a naturally warm performer, and the show is unashamedly snobbish. There are references to Proust, Shakespeare, transport design and medieval monarchs. Many are exquisitely funny, though it would be nigh on impossible to catch them all. But beneath this—the characters, the elitism, the occasional show-off moment on the violin—are moments of direct honesty that provide a creeping emotional intensity.

Intelligent, at times riotously funny, genuinely educational and finally emotionally engaging, it's not hard to see why some people are willing to queue for so long – Maestro is worth the wait.